The gallery as fascist disco?

I want to see →Fuckhead, a band that drives out demons. "But what happens with other people's demons after they are driven out? Don't they come and possess you?" Bärbel Hartje asks. "I guess so. Fuckhead's music makes you exchange your demons."

Instead of coming to the gallery of a former DJ where Fuckhead play, Bärbel clears out shit of a horse stall on her friends' farm. Could be that she had the better time.

When I reach the former DJ's gallery in the house of the Salzburg salt shop the atmosphere in there is mildly exhilarated. The 4 Fuckheads crawl on the floor behind a 44 year old painter who is considered an "enfant terrible". It starts to get quite strange when the painter gives his speech. "It is time to set things on fire again! It is time to burn down villages again!" The painter squeezes the furious speech out of himself in a strained voice and ornaments it with a lot of four letter words. He hates everything "alternative", uses strong language against women, then he hates everything that is supported by the state or supports the state, his "reasoning" has resemblance with that of Jonathan Meese if not with →that of Anders Behring Breivik, but this comparison is probably to harsh.

How bizarre: Didi Bruckmayr from Fuckhead, one of Austria's most intelligent people, lies on the floor while the angry painter gives his speech. Didi said that he had fits of laughter during the speech that he himself does not endorse. When the speech ends lights are switched off, a stroboskope massacre and extreme noise music start, a fog machine turns the gallery into a disco, Fuckhead get crazy and do their thing.

While Fuckhead do the exorcism, art critic Jennifer Allen has a talk with George, the angry painter's lawyer friend in the next room. They talk about image rights and Bismarck's corpse.

I really don't know what to make of all this. The angry painter's paintings are sold for 39.000 Euros, he grumbles:"Just go to Basel! Look around there! Scum, all of it! There is no art!" (The last time I was in Basel everything looked very much like what the angry painter does: average satanist kitsch.)

"If I pick a fight with you now, I just beat you up. The papers will write about it and my paintings will rise in price even the more." the angry painter says when I question him about his speech.

The artist T. says:"The speech was shit, but I enjoyed Fuckhead."

24/08/14 23:55 Summer Academy 2014