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Slought Foundation, a non-profit organization re-thinking contemporary art, is pleased to announce a special film premier and lecture on the work of Günter Brus on Wednesday, September 27, 2006 from 7:00-9:00pm at Slought Foundation. Cecilia Novero will explore the historical and cultural context that informed the work of Viennese Actionist Günter Brus, who was active in Austria and Germany in the 1960s. She will speak for 30 minutes about the confluences and contrasts between this neo-avant-garde enfant maudit’s performances and contemporaneous international art (e.g., informel, happenings). She will also address the post-war Austrian context within which Günter Brus developed his controversial body- and self- analyses. In collaboration with the audience, Novero will then analyze a series of individual actions by Günter Brus.
In conjunction with Cecilia Novero's lecture, Slought Foundation is also pleased to announce the United States premier of BODYANALYSIS, a documentary about the work of Günter Brus realized by Peter Kasparak (a Cosmos Factory GMBH Filmproduktion / Günter Brus Studio; 1:14 minutes). The documentary features rare photo and video documentation by Kurt Kren, Otto Mühl, Hans Christof Stenzel, as well as the private film collection of Günter and Anni Brus.
“This loose movement of artists–-among whom the most prominent were Otto Muehl, Hermann Nitsch, Günter Brus, and Rudolf Schwarzkogler—disdained the repressive sexual and political culture in which they were immersed. Their actions functioned as a rebellion against both bourgeois repression and internalized forms of violence. Their exhibitionist and 'pornographic' art thus used and abused the human body, including the artists’ own, as well as other non-canonical art materials such as bodily discharge and food… The Actionists should not be read as solely an example of either post-war International neo-avant-garde or Austrian modernism. Rather, the Actionists brought these two into a creative–if disturbing and ultimately unresolved–tension and did so, moreover, within the context of the culture of the 'new' Austria after world war two.”
-- Cecilia Novero, Painful Painting and Brutal Ecstasy: Günter Brus and Otto Muehl’s Actions
This evening event is part of an ongoing series of programs at Slought Foundation exploring the historic and contemporary avant-gardes, with an emphasis on extreme performances and practices. Cecilia Novero's lecture and the film premier of BODYANALYSIS takes place in the charged setting of “Primal Sections: A Günter Brus Retrospective,” an exhibition featuring original photographs and video documentation of past performances by Günter Brus in which the artist pushes himself to physical and mental extremes to analyze his own body and its functions. This exhibition has been curated by Osvaldo Romberg, a Senior Curator at Slought Foundation, and is on display in the main galleries from September 23, 2006-December 23, 2006.
(Here for more information)
Cecilia Novero is Assistant Professor of German and Slavic, Comparative Literature and Women’s Studies at the Pennsylvania State University in University Park (State College). Publications include articles on Avant-garde and Neo-Avant-garde art, on film, literature and on the history and culture of nutrition. She has published in catalogs for the Jeu de Paume in Paris and for the Aktionsforum Praterinsel in Munich. Her book From Futurist Fast Food to Eat Art: the Anti-Diets of the Avant-Garde is forthcoming from University of Minnesota Press. Her presentation at Slought Foundation is based upon work to be published in 2007 in a Special Issue of the journal Seminar entitled "Image, Body, Text."
Media files on the Slought.org website are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License. You are free to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work under the following conditions: a) Attribution. You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor; b) Noncommercial. You may not use this work for commercial purposes; c) No Derivative Works. You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work. For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work. Any of these conditions can be waived if you get permission from the copyright holder.
To Cite this Page using MLA Style:
Cecilia Novero. "BODYANALYSIS / Violence as Vulnerability: Günter Brus’s Surgical Art." Slought Foundation Online Content.
[27 September 2006;
Accessed 23 July 2008]. <http://slought.org/content/11337/>.
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