WITTGENSTEIN 2020 aqb-Budapest

Travel Exhibition

aqb Budapest

ARTISTS
Zarko Aleksic, Christa Bartesch, Mandarina Brausewetter, Oscar Cueto, Maria Grün, Forgács Péter, Halász Péter Tamás, Ágnes Hamvas & Hubert Hasler, Michael Koch, Yukika Kudo, Kútvölgyi-Szabó Áron, Valentina Lapcheva, Vlado Martek, Svetlana Mircheva, Virgilius Moldovan, Eva-Maria Schartmüller, Robert Reszner, Tóth Márton Emil, Borjana Ventzislavova, Franz Wassermann

Vernissage 29.2.2020 6 pm
Opening Performances Laura Rambelli, NOIMA

Curator Denise Parizek
Local Curator Kukla Krisztián

Supported by BKA Kunst, ACF Budapest, ICR Budapest, Italien Embassy Budapest, aqb, 12-14contemporary, Michaela Stock Galerie

WITTGENSTEIN Der Film / The Film von/by Krisztian Kuckla
German Version / English Version

Online Catalogue
2020-Wittgenstein-aqB_Catalogue-German_web
2020-Wittgenstein-aqB_Catalogue-WEB

WITTGENSTEIN

Die Wanderausstellung WITTGENSTEIN präsentiert Interpretation und Transformation von Ideen, Gedanken, Visionen. Der kuratorische und künstlerische Ansatz dieser Ausstellung ist vielfältig. Er ist weder interpretativ noch beschreibend. Wir haben uns zum Ziel gesetzt Schriften und Denkansätze Ludwig Wittgensteins aus heutiger Sicht zu beleuchten und kreativ umzusetzen.

23 Künstler.Innen aus aller Welt stellen ihre Vision / Interpretation als Ausgangspunkt für Perspektivenwechsel oder einfach nur ein Gespräch zur Verfügung.
Grenzenlose Kooperation und Kommunikation ist für uns als reisende Gruppe essentiell.

Ludwig Wittgenstein war ein begeisterter reisender Europäer, in einer Zeit wo Reisen weniger einfach war als heute. In Erinnerung an ihn weisen wir gemeinsam auf die Wichtigkeit der Kombination von Philosophie und zeitgenössischer Kunst, sowie auf die Notwendigkeit von Freiheit und offenen Grenzen hin.

2018 starteten wir mit der ersten Station WITTGENSTEIN 1918-2018 im Haus Wittgenstein, dem Bulgarischen Kulturinstitut, in Wien. Dieses Haus wurde von seiner Schwester Margarethe Stonborough-Wittgenstein bei dem Wiener Architekten Paul Engelmann in Auftrag gegeben, mit der Bitte, den desperaten Ludwig in die Planung mit einzubinden. 1975 wurde das Haus von der Bulgarischen Kulturministerin Lydmila Zhivkova gekauft, mit der Vision, es als Drehscheibe für europäischen Kunstaustausch und quasi als Tor zur westlichen Welt zu etablieren. Logischerweise folgte im November 2019 die Präsentation der Ausstellung in Bulgarien, in Veliko Tarnovo, der früheren Hauptstadt.

Der Plan ist 2020/2021 in die Gebiete der K.u.K. Monarchie während des ersten Weltkrieges zu reisen, mit der ersten Station in Budapest, im art Quader, Project Space. Danach weiter nach Belgrad ins PODROOM und im Muzeul da Arta in Timisoara.

Während des 1. Weltkrieges war Ludwig Wittgenstein zumeist in Schreibstuben am Balkan stationiert und beschäftigte sich hauptsächlich mit dem Katholischen Glauben, seiner eigenen Spiritualität und der Fortschreibung des Tractatus.

Eva Maria Schartmüller nimmt in ihrer Videoinstallation den Horror des 1. Weltkrieges samt Konsequenzen auf. Die Vergiftung durch Senfgas und die daraus resultierenden psychischen und physischen Beeinträchtigungen der sogenannten Kriegszitterer, die als unverstandene und oftmals unbehandelte Wracks durch die Nachkriegslandschaft geisterten.
Die Künstlergruppe NOIMA aus Rumänien wählt als Ansatz ihre jährlich in den Karpaten stattfindende Sonnwendfeier und den philosophischen Dialog über religiöse und spirituelle Kräfte. In ihrer Eröffnungsperformance malten vier der Mitglieder, Ciprian Bodea, Cosmin Fruntes, Gherman Dan und Sorin Scurtulescu mit der Asche ihres letzten Rituals und beschwörten archaische Kräfte.
Laura Rambelli aus Ravenna visualisiert die Stille in ihrer Eröffnungsperformance, die mit einem Bienensummen und Weihrauchnebel startete – dieser magische Moment der Leere zwischen zwei Perioden, dem zyklischen Prozess, den die Natur unaufhörlich vom Menschen abverlangt.

Die Entwicklung der letzten Wochen hat uns eingeholt: wir hatten viel Gelegenheit uns auf uns selbst zu konzentrieren, Werte, Ideologien, Standpunkte, Ziele, Visionen zu überdenken, das Tempo rauszunehmen, reflektieren statt selbst optimieren.
Hier schließt Valentina Lapcheva aus Veliko Tarnovo an: die Beurteilung des Inneren nach fragmentarischen Manifestationen des Äußeren. In ihrer Malerei stellt sie die Segenshand, ein häufiges Zitat orthodoxer Ikonen, dar, basierend auf dem Goldenen Schnitt. Überdachte Beurteilungen bedeuten neue Konfigurationen in einem Sprachspiel zu erstellen, das auf alten versteinerten Vorbildern beruht. Ebenso neu gefundene Wortfindungen zu überprüfen und auf ihre wirkliche Bedeutung abzuklopfen.
Borjana Ventzislalova legt in ihrem Video: It is not healthy Zitate aus dem Traktats Mitarbeitern des Haus Wittgenstein in den Mund. Die dadurch hergestellte asynchrone Synchronizität findet ihr räumliches Gegenstück im Fußballspiel von zwei Jungs auf der Strasse vor dem Haus Wittgenstein, die dabei zeitgenössische (bulgarische) politische Parolen austauschen.

Das Künstlerduo Ágnes Hamvas & Hubert Hasler thematisiert die Kommunikationslosigkeit, die Verkümmerung von Sprache, die Inhaltslosigkeit von Kurztexten und Postings. Frei nach einem Satz aus einem Theaterstück von René Pollesch „ ich höre dich aber ich kann dich nicht verstehen“.
Yukika Kudo erarbeitete mit dem Philosophen Alfred Schmid einen Dialog zwischen Wittgenstein und Moore, klassisch schwarz weiß gedreht, suggeriert der Film Kontemplation, Stille, innehalten.

Wittgenstein war mehr als ein Philosoph, er förderte zeitgenössische Kunst und Design, der Bau des Haus Wittgenstein kann als persönliches architektonisches Highlight angesehen werden. Inspiriert von den von den Heizkörpern im Haus Wittgenstein, Designer Stücke von ihm selbst entworfen, stellt Mandarina Brausewetter Fotos von zwei ein rippigen Heizkörper aus einem Amt in Bulgarien vor. Einerseits Design, andererseits Sparmaßnahmen.

In seiner Zeit als Lehrer in der Buckligen Welt führte er Unterrichtsmethoden ein, die später an Waldorf- und Steiner-Schulen angewendet werden. Er ging mit seinen Schüler zur Pflanzen Bestimmung in die Natur, kochte tierische Skelette aus, um den Kindern die Möglichkeit zu geben, die anatomische Struktur zu verstehen. Mit seinen Schülern entwickelte er das erste Schulwörterbuch, welches später Standard wurde.

Innovation und Offenheit für Veränderung schließen natürlich den Einsatz herkömmlicher Methoden, wie den Rohrstock, nicht aus. Fortschrittliche Ideen waren ein Luxus der Bourgoisie, unverständlich und realitätsfremd unter der armen ländlichen Bevölkerung. Kinder wurden für die Arbeit benötigt und hatten keine Zeit zum Studieren. Zwei Welten und Lebensweisen kollidierten.

In Krisensituationen zog er sich immer allein oder mit Freunden in die Natur zurück und wanderte durch die Landschaft. Dabei folgte er der klassischen These – wandern, den Kopf heben und die Gedanken fliegen lassen. Zu diesem Zwecke, der Kontemplation und Erdung, baute er ein Holzhaus als Rückzugsort in Skjolden in Norwegen.

Wittgensteins Liebe zur Natur und seine Demut, sind ebenso einer der Ausgangspunkte wie die Flut von Bildern in den Medien, denen Worte nicht mehr gerecht werden können.
Seine Schriften warnen vor dem Bedeutungsverlust des gesprochenen Wortes, dem übermäßigen Gebrauch von Abkürzungen und der Verstümmelung der Sprache, der Entwicklung des partiellen Analphabetismus.

Ein interessanter Rückblick ist Péter Forgács »Ludwig Wittgenstein – Tractatus« aus dem Jahr 1992. Er collagierte sehr poetisch mittels Super-8 mm Kamera Eindrücke aus seiner Vergangenheit und wieder entdeckte Bilder mit Texten von Ludwig Wittgenstein. Wenn auch das Erscheinungsbild des Films nostalgisch wirkt, ist der Inhalt immer noch aktuell und verweist auf die vielfältigen Perspektiven.

Mittels zeitgenössischer Kunst stellen wir diverse Aspekte aus Wittgensteins Schriften und Leben zur Diskussion, damit verweisen wir auch auf aktuelle Entwicklungen und angedachte Utopien.
Als Beweis dafür wandert WITTGENSTEIN weiter durch Europa.

Ludwig Wittgenstein was a fervent and traveling European, and in his memory we bring art from one place to another, across Europe, boundlessly connecting artists and thinkers.

We started 2018 in House Wittgenstein Vienna, planed by Paul Engelmann and Ludwig Wittgenstein on behalf of his sister Margarethe Stonborough-Wittgenstein the Cultural Forum of Bulgaria. The Bulgarian government under the Minister of Culture Lydmila Zhivkova acquired the “Haus Wittgenstein” in 1975 and decided to transform the unique Palais into a notable cultural institute. Therefor it is obvious that our second stop through Europe is Bulgaria, Veliko Tarnovo, the former capital and city of one of the Universities of Fine Arts in 2019.

Denise Parizek / Kuratorin 2020

PRESS LINKS

IKON

Ziarul Timisoara

Agentia de Arte

Modernismo

ARTISTS aqb BUDAPEST

Pictures of the Exhibition

Virgilius Moldovan

Halász Péter Tamás

Kútvölgyi-Szabó Áron

Kútvölgyi-Szabó Áron

Tóth Márton Emil

Borjana Ventzislavova

Maria Grün

Yukika Kudo

Mandarina Brausewetter

Photocredits Mute Insurgent 2020

ŽARKO ALEKIć  I DON‘T KNOW WHAT TO THINK  2018

transparent fMRI print on glass, 160 x 42 cm

„I don‘t know what to think“ is an installation that deals with the discrepancy between transparency and obscurity, and impossibility that artwork could be expressible or that it could convey the meaning to the viewer outside of the scull of the artist. It starts with the direct reference to the Mel Ramsden‘s work „Secret painting“ where the content of the work is known only to the artist himself. The piece shows certain activation patters of my brain while I was thinking The Piece for this exhibition (done in fMRI scanner during my long term project Brain Pictures that deals with the relation between imagination and perception) but since the code is unknown to the viewer he/she cannot know what is the content of the work and the work stays in the domain of private thoughts.

CHRISTA BARTESCH CíM NéLKÜL (Fehér képek 1-4), 2006

Oil on canvas

72. One thing was irrefutably clear to Goethe: no lightness can come out of darkness – just as more and more shadows do not produce light. This could be expressed as follows: we may call purple a reddish-whitish-blue or brown a blackish-reddish-yellow – but we cannot call a white a yellowish-reddish- greenish-blue, or something similar. And that is something that experiments with the spectrum neither confirm nor refute. It would, however, also be wrong to say, ‘just look at the colours in nature and you will see that it is so.’ Therefore looking does not teach us anything about the concepts of the colours.”
Ludwig Wittgenstein: Remarks on Colour

MANDARINA BRAUSEWETTER ABBONDANZA, 2018

Photography

The love of detail Wittgenstein is the starting point of the photographic work of Mandarina Brausewetter. On the one hand, the work is a reference to the ubiquitous design of the house Wittgenstein, on the other hand, the photo is an allusion to the social predicament in Bulgaria. Many people have removed their radiators in recent years because they could not afford the costs anymore. A one-rib heating bill has the illusion of warmth without total impoverishment. Abandonment played a major role in Wittgenstein‘s life and a challenge for a bourgeois heir. Ludwig Wittgenstein preferred the simplicity of burgundy life. Nevertheless, it was important for him throughout his life to have a financial reason for securing emergencies. Mandarina Brausewetter was one of the first female sprayers in Vienna to spread stencil graffiti in public spaces. After training in classical painting and industrial design, the Sofia-born artist worked primarily as an illustrator for various magazines, record covers, posters and flyers, as well as in various artistic media, including video, performance, painting, ceramics and stage design. Stylistically, her works were often compared or confused with the British artist Banksy, with whom she exhibited together in Vienna in 2005 and 2006. In the first years, she reacted to the perceived suffering and the powerlessness of individuals in war situations such as in ex-Yugoslavia or in the Iraq war with political-social statements. She often works with ambiguous images and text messages, which she combines in a cynical and critical way. For this exhibition she is changing the genre, but not the social critical and political impact, a melange with a high standard of beauty and design.

OSCAR CUETO Wittgenstein meets Perez 2018

Videoinstallation

It will be a two personage performance. Wittgenstein is calling Perez, a man with Tourette Syndrom. The talk without any sense is related to the conflict between center and periphery. The performance will be a collaboration between Vienna Wittgenstein Haus and Bikini Wax, an artist run space in Mexico. Conversations with Wittgenstein is an installation consisting of a short film, poster, T-Shirts and Music Cassettes that work as promotional items. The film is an Aria in 5 acts. Each act is a telephone conversation between Wittgenstein (the Austrian philosopher) and Perez (a man with Tourette Syndrome).What is interesting about a self-denying artist? Who actively refuses to play a certain game, or does so with a naïve burst here and there? Cueto ́s artwork is a part of the current debate regarding artists who are attempting to address a larger issue of how money and the value of the art commodity is driving the art world, but I am not sure that any artist has been able to address critically and simply this issue as Cueto has, especially an artist from Mexico. He has been able to develop a body of work that is extremely self-critical with critiques of the art world and market that do critique his own role as an artist. Cueto is able to involve the public, in a way dumb it down, to comically and interestedly open this international phenomenon of a money-driven art market and the resulting fame and fortune. Cueto is still a young artist who has the potential to hone his craft and to grow, but will fame escape him? Perhaps, never the less, this is a refreshingly honest body of work that does not lose its self in scholarly pursuits but is inviting, entertaining and pointedly questions a status quo. Cueto‘s vision challenges his audience to distance themselves from the seriousness within the confines of history, knowledge and art practice thus becoming aware of their dependency on traditional ways of perception.

FORGÁCS PéTER WITTGENSTEIN TRACTATUS, 1992

7 video etűd / 7 video paragraph
, 35 perc / 35 minutes
Zene / Music: SZEMZŐ Tibor
Vágó / Editor: RÉVÉSZ Márta

How hard I find it to see what is right in front of my eyes!
Ludwig Wittgenstein

Seven short video essays that refer to Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico- Philosophicus with each essay relating to one of Wittgenstein’s philosophical propositions. Home movies from early 20th century Europe are accompanied by voiceovers and written texts from Tractatus, and a somber, lyrical score. Scenes of bourgeois life are haunted by foreboding of the future. Drawing up the disjunction between language and image, Hungarian filmmaker Péter Forgács created a symbolic approach of Wittgenstein’s theories of logic, language, reality and representation.

MARIA GRÜN Mollusk 2020

Photography

The process of alienation and dealing with the abject is inscribed in my works: „Neither subject nor object. There looms within abjection, one of those violent, dark revolts of being, directed against a threat that seems to emanate from an exorbitant outside or inside, ejected beyond the scope of the possible, the tolerable, the thinkable. It lies there quite close, but it cannot be assimilated…“ „The philosopher and psychoanalyst Julia Kristeva defined the abject as something“ rejected, which one can not escape, from which you can not immediately protect an object …The rejection is something abstract and indefinable.“
In my work, the abjection is found in the representation of the fragmented body and in the interior of the body transferred to the outside. The objects speak of their own inner being, which at the same time could also be called the Other, because on the one hand it is in absolute close relation to ourselves and yet remains entirely abstract. It is an unconscious part of our self that becomes „real“ and perceptible only through dyfunctional processes – pain, physical failures, malfunctions … The abject is found in the dysfunctional of the body, which wants to be ignored because it is connected with the ominous. Because blood, body fluids, body exudates, … and their presence outside the body speak of impurity, danger, threat, death.

Photocredit Max Berner, 2019

ÀGNES HAMVAS & HUBERT HASLER 2020

Interactive Communication

“What can be shown cannot be said” to this quote from Wittgenstein, the new collaboration between Àgnes Hamvas and Hubert Hasler reacts and raises the question of whether Wittgenstein’s attitude to language and image would change like the present society with images and Bypassed text, does a 100 percent visualization also enable better communication?
Hamvas’s and Hasler’s work is based on a nightly digital exchange of ideas. The two artists visualize a continuous communication, this is thought through as a performance at the opening and the duration of the exhibition and revealed to the viewer by means of a fax machine. This fax machine will be linked to the mobile phones of the two artists, and will print them out immediately with each transmission of a message. Passive participation of this bilingual language is made possible for the viewer and also raises questions about uncontrolled social surveillance. The content-based cultivation of what is written, thoughts, everyday banality, jostling of nothingness, emotional additions of the imagined being and picture messages are summarized content-related clues, take up the communication of our society or represents the change of the language and the written by short messages.

„was gezeigt werden kann, kann nicht gesagt werden“ auf dieses Zitat von Wittgenstein reagiert die neue Zusammenarbeit von Àgnes Hamvas und Hubert Hasler und wirft die Frage auf, ob sich die Einstellung von Wittgenstein zu Sprache und Bild ändern würde wie die gegenwärtige Gesellschaft mit Bildern und Text umgeht, ermöglicht eine 100 prozentige Visualisierung auch eine bessere Kommunikation?
Hamvas und Haslers Arbeit basiert auf einen nächtlichen digitalen Gedankenaustausch. Die beiden Künstler Visualisieren eine fortlaufende Kommunikation, diese wird als Performance bei der Eröffnung und der Dauer der Ausstellung weitergedacht und mittels eines Faxgerätes dem Betrachter offenbart. Dieses Faxgerät wird mit den Mobiltelefonen der beiden Künstler verknüpft sein, und bei jeder Übertragung einer Nachricht sogleich diese ausdrucken, eine passive Beteiligung dieser Zweisprache wird dem Betrachter ermöglicht und stellt auch die Fragen einer unkontrollierten Gesellschaftsüberwachung in den Raum.
Die inhaltliche Kultivierung des Geschriebenen, Gedankenzunamis, alltägliche Banalität, Gefasel von Nichtigkeiten, emotionale Draufgaben des gedachten Seins und Bildnachrichten sind zusammengefasst inhaltliche Anhaltspunkte, greifen die Kommunikation unserer Gesellschaft auf bzw. stellt die Veränderung der Sprache und des Geschriebenen durch Kurznachrichten dar.

HALÁSZ PéTER TAMÀS INFINITE POWER, 2012

Playstation 3 made of black granite

In ancient times, the awakening conscience set up geometrically designed pyramids in order to ascertain about the reality of its own thoughts. With its unmatched skill, the lonely human being could only believe in his own unique ability after he could gaze at his own materialized thoughts that were similar to mountains.” (Miklós Erdély: Montage)
After accepting the fact that he is able to form his surroundings with his thoughts, the human being did so, and transformed it completely. This transformation was so successful that this new artificial environment not only supplanted the original one, but was able to pile up garbage in measures so vast that it challenges the greatest monuments of civilization. However, these mountains of waste are not pleasant sights: we would rather ignore them. In our effort to get rid of their presence, we turn to virtual reality instead of conceiving ways to deal with them. The possibilities within this virtual reality are indeed infinite.

MICHAEL KOCH WITTGENSTEIN ́S LADDER 2018

Installation

Michael Koch‘s intervention „Wittgensteins ́s Ladder“ is the Sliding Door, the entrance into a different dimension. The visitor is given the opportunity to slide into another dimension. The staircase leads into the (apparent) infinity. As an analogy to the light tunnel, which symbolizes the transition of life to death, the artist shows us eternity. The reference to Wittgensteins Metapher of climbing up a ladder is comparable with reading Tractatus Logico Philosophicus is obvious. The absurdity of life is presented in an endless loop. The podium into another world does not conceal either reality or ideal, but shows human in his permanent endeavor to master life, to rise up the ladder of Jacob (sullām, ladder in Hebrew, also means stair).

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SVETLANA MIRCHEVA 2018

Banner

Svetlana Mircheva’s works are based upon chance meetings with things and words. Between rebus and cosmic constellations, she twists slogans and computer explorations. Her main interest is in the grey zones between reality and imagination. Imaginary narratives play an important role throughout Mircheva’s work. She uses often randomness, serendipity and blind date as a beginning in her works. Mircheva questions our trust in the accuracy, clarity, and reality of our perceptions of the world that are formed by contemporary digital culture.Vienna soundscapes, recorded with a microphone, translated in images, composed back in music. Vienna seen and heard as grass near water, bird at the city end, hippo roaring, train departing. Translated first into light objects in the space, sounds go back to the earphones, put in rythm. Facing the shining parallels, the viewer is free to imagine the city with his eyes and ears open. How does a sound look like? There arises the idea that the sound may take shape, be translated into the language of images, and speak back to us. What sound can shake me up? There comes the thought of the emotion of sound, sound can send imagination far away, carry it away, dissolve it. Can form be translated into music? Simple shapes can create rhythm, pulsation, and bright colors give a sensation of tone. And where else would sound form be located, if not in the air? What are the actions in art? What do we do as we make art or talk about art? Linguistic research developed into poetic compositions-objects. Linking visual art with poetry, music and action. Built by „naked“ verbs, the 7 compositions embody art-related actions words in the space. Movement is continuous, from text to image, from image to text, from sound to letter, from art to action, from action to art.

VIRGILIUS MOLDOVAN

Sculpture

Exif_JPEG_420

Paragraph 293 of “Philosophical Investigations” assuming everyone had a box, there would be something we call beetles. Nobody can ever look into each other’s box, and everyone says that they only know what kind of beetle is in the box from the sight of their beetle. The thing in the box is not part of the language game at all, because the box could be empty.
“The word language game is intended to emphasize that speaking a language is part of an activity or way of life” (paragraph 23).
Although one might think that the artist’s activity would be to enable the “beetle” to emerge from its box. If the representation of a supposed “something” contributes to the approximation and limitation of its conceptuality of the same, at least as an outline. It means giving the concept a body. Or, in Wittgenstein’s sense, to integrate them into the language game. If only in the form of a friction tree. In order to try Wittgenstein’s metaphor, the objects come to their length by comparing them with the original meter, even though it has no length itself. “(It is the length!)
As he says in the Tractatus; “What can be said at all can be said clearly, and what you cannot talk about must be kept silent”. For him, all terms are explained by showing their context of use. Sentences that do not refer to the connection of things or to reality but to themselves, according to Wittgenstein, result in nonsense. Therefore, “a value cannot be pronounced but at most kept silent” (Tractatus). If one is not committed to the “thing connection”, there seems to be the possibility of an evaluative action.

Paragraph 293 aus “Philsophische Untersuchungen”,Angenommen es hätte jeder einen Schachtel, darin wäre etwas, was wir Käfer nennen. Niemand kann je in die Schachtel des Anderen schauen, und jeder sagt, er wisse nur vom Anblick seines Käfers, was ein Käfer ist. Das Ding in der Schachtel gehört überhaupt nicht zum Sprachspiel auch nicht einmal als ein Etwas, denn die Schachtel könnte leer sei.
“Das Wort Sprachspiel soll hier hervorheben, dass das sprechen einer Sprache ein Teil ist einer Tätigkeit oder einer Lebensform“ (Paragraph 23).
Wobei man meinen könne, dass die Tätigkeit des Künstlers eben das Ermöglichen der Fähigkeit des “Käfers” aus seiner Schachtel hervorzukriechen, wäre. Wenn die Darstellung eines vermeintlichen “Etwas” zur Annäherung und Eingrenzung in seiner Begrifflichkeit des Selbigen wenigstens als Umriss beiträgt. Es heißt, dem Begriffe einen Körper geben. Oder ,in Sinne Wittgensteins, sie in das Sprachspiel zu integrieren. Wenn auch nur in der Form eines Reibbaums. Um Wittgensteins Metapher zu bemühen, die Gegenstände kommen zu ihrer Länge durch den Vergleich mit dem Urmeter obwohl er selber keine Länge hat.” (Er ist die Länge!)
Wie er im Tractatus sagt; “Was sich Überhaupt sagen läßt, läßt sich klar sagen, und wovon man nicht reden kann darüber muss man schweigen”. Bei ihm erfolgt die Erklärung aller Begriffe durch die Darstellung ihres Verwendungszusammenhangs. Sätze die sich nicht auf Dingverbindung oder auf Wirklichkeit beziehen sondern auf sich selbst, laut Wittgenstein, ergeben Unsinn. Daher,” ein Wert lässt sich nicht aussprechen sondern höchstens erschweigen”.(Tractatus). So man sich der ” Dingverbindung nicht verpflichtet ist, scheint die Möglichkeit einer wertenden Handlung gegeben zu sein. Sofern wäre der Kunst eine stille Wertstiftende Funktion zuzutrauen.

Virgilius Moldovan

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LAURA RAMBELLI Retreat 2020

Performance

I was immediately struck by the seventh statement of his Tractatus :
“On what cannot be spoken, one must be silent”

Deciding to keep quiet is a very wise and noble act in my opinion. Like Wittgenstein, who for a very long time decided to retire and keep quiet about philosophical topics, and then he return in a mature time to speak again with a new consciousness.

This act is interesting for me because it speaks of a stasis and of the courage to stop to internalize the past.
The frantic tendency of our society and the illusion that technology reduces working time in favor of our passions, have led people to stay more connected to the phone than to themselves.
Increasingly, there are also trends in holistic and oriental techniques that are often full of false promises, risking to fall into the hands of crumbling Gurus, to whom it is more comfortable to believe instead of having the courage to be alone, truly in contact with oneself.

In this performance I want to talk about the silence, those magical moments of emptiness between one period and another and the cyclical process that nature incessantly requires from the human being. Therefore I start from what I have experienced, and which I continue to seek, avid for myself and for my interiority, which needs more and more moments of solitude, to then manifest that inner fire that constantly needs to be heard. Many times it happens that it is precisely the silence that is the greatest of the noises, so intrusive as to be annoying, in these moments it happens that I would like to create quickly but everything is in chaos and the only thing to do is seems stop to do everything.
In fact, working together and not against this noise, suddenly we become aware of the wonder of the world, “of which language cannot speak”, as Wittgenstein declares.

Clean the mind, listen, become aware, breathe and then throw the seeds of the new creation, but is not easy to do.
Then, feeling the first traces, wild, like a rebirth: the body moves in a new way, the voice changes, there is a new awareness.

ROBERT RESZNER

EVA MARIA SCHARTMÜLLER  SHELL SHOCK 2016

Video Installation

shell shock was a term used to describe military psychiatric syndromes of male hysteria, mobility disorders such as persistent tremor, walking, sitting and standing disorders, tics, symptoms of paralysis, but also disturbances of speech. The symptoms occurred either soon after the experiences in the field, or without directly visible temporal and spatial references to them. At the time of WW1 there was no consensus about the knowledge to warconditioned traumas. The war-hysterical symptoms were understood as a serious sign for male and soldierly weakness. The “shell shock sufferer” formed a counter model to the typical rationality and masculinity figures of the army; he seemed to undermine their efficiency and order.

text sources: Behandlung im Schatten des Krieges –Militärpsychiatrie und Kinematographie Aufsatz von Dr. phil. Julia Barbara Köhne (Privatdozentin für “Zeitgeschichte und Kulturgeschichte am Institut für Kulturwissenschaft Berlin)

artistic work: impacts of ww1 were illuminated in the form of war-related trauma. sequences of an original film of 1914 are projected and acoustic documentaries of war events give insights into the process of cause and effect.

video: sequences from the movie kriegshysteriker und max none (1916) _functionally-motor irritation or paralysis of states at war participants and whose cure by suggestion in hypnosis_produced by the royal image and film-amt / bufa in berlin

sound: 1ww documentaries in english, german, french

legal notice:
Kriegshysteriker“ und Max Nonne (um 1916). Funktionell-motorische Reiz- und Lähmungs-Zustände bei Kriegsteilnehmern und deren Heilung durch Suggestion in Hypnose, um 1916, produziert vom Königlichen Bild- und Filmamt/BuFa in Berlin, der Vorläuferfirma der Universum Film AG (Ufa), aufgenommen im Allgemeinen Krankenhaus Hamburg-Eppendorf durch Dr. Max Nonne

film rights:
Bundesarchiv/Filmarchiv Berlin Transit Filmgesellschaft mbH, 80335 München, Dachauer Straße 35

with permission from:
Bundesarchiv /Filmarchiv Berlin, FA 2Fehrbelliner Platz 3,10707 Berlin Transit Filmgesellschaft mbH, 80335 München, Dachauer Straße 35

TÓTH MÀRTON EMIL INCUBUSES (series), 2019

photo, lightbox, mixed media

71 Visual space is called subjective only in the language of physical space. The essential thing is that the representation of visual space is the representation of an object and contains no suggestion of a subject.

72 How can I tell that I see the world through the pupil of my eyeball? Surely not in an essentially different way from that of my seeing it through the window.

73 In visual space there isn’t an eye belonging to me and eyes belonging to others. Only the space itself is asymmetrical.

74 The exceptional position of my body in visual space derives from other feelings, and not from something purely visual.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein: Philosophical Remarks

Àgnes Varnai Curators Bag 2020

Object

Wittgenstein was a designer and inventor, always on the cutting edge. Innovations and adaptations of existing devices and materials were a challenge for him. Agnes Varnai has developed a new material, similar to the skin of an alien crocodile, and transformed it into a classic clutch.
Innovation meets adaptation.

 Borjana Ventzislavova It isn´t healthy

Video / AT / 2013 / 13 min

The close-up of the handle and lock of an iron gate opens Borjana Ventzislavova´s video It isn´t healthy. A woman´s voice is to be heard on the soundtrack postulating philosophical assertions: “The world is all, that is the case. The world is the totality of facts, not of things. The world divides into facts.” Accordingly, the iron gate would not be a thing, rather a fact (it is locked), just like the two boys who are playing football in the next shot, on the street in front of the house to which the gate belongs. But according to the same logic the entire video would be nothing other than a collection of facts and thereby the urgency of the question implied by the opening philosophical statements would only be confirmed: Does the world now divide into facts or rather does a world result from the totality of facts?
Borjana Ventzislavova escapes this logic of language philosophy through how the facts in her video avoid referring directly to a world and rather indicate a spatial and temporal constellation. The setting is the so-called Wittgenstein House, home to the Bulgarian Cultural Institute in Vienna since 1975. Ventzislavova shows people who work at the Institute, the super-intendant, the director, the employees, the cleaning lady, all going about the rounds of their daily activities while they speak sentences taken from the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein. The asynchronous synchronicity thereby established finds its spatial counterpart in the soccer game played by the boys who not only pass a ball but exchange contemporary (Bulgarian) political slogans. The slogans may well not be their own and therefore not facts, yet they are a means of recognizing as well as mistaking the world. (Vrääth Öhner)
Translation: Eve Heller The Wittgenstein House, site of the Bulgarian Cultural Institute in Vienna, is the point of departure for an unconventional study of architecture, history and language. Through quotes from Wittgenstein, the institute is detached from its daily routine and confronted with the house’s history. In front of it, philosophy comes up against criticism of present­day Bulgarian politics: “Euro­Trash­Capitalism,” somebody remarks – and kicks a football.

FRANZ WASSERMANN # WHEN THE RHOMB TRANSFORMS INTO A FIST 2019

Frottage

CURATOR ́s TEXT