Saturday afternoon the students of the stone sculpture class and their teachers Susanne Tunn, Knut Wold and David Svoboda welcomed the members of the Society of Friends as well as students and teachers of the Summer Academy in their artist's community on the Kiefer quarry in Fürstenbrunn.

Clemens Oliver Deisl, managing director of the Marmor-Industrie Kiefer GmbH, guided the visitors up to the top of the quarry and explained the geomorphic development of marble and how the quarry developed since the 17th century, when already the Untersberg marble has been quarried. Yet the visitors had the chance to see the first works of the students in a charming exhibition and discuss with them about their works and the their daily life in the quarry in the very special atmosphere of this site.

 

As Elfie Semotan couldn’t hold her artist talk at the Museum of Modernity Rupertinum due to an overflow of appointments, the curator of her exhibition spontaneously decided to stand in for the artist and give a tour. Having worked closely together with the artist in the preparation of the exhibit, Margit Zuckriegl proves to possess a wealth of information about the works featured as well as about the artist herself.

Walking through the rooms lined with portraits of performing artists, she brings out background stories about how they came into being, like the one of Louise Bourgeois that the artist allowed Elfie Semotan to take if she brought a certain coat by Helmut Lang Louise fancied wearing. Martin Kippenberger spontaneously donned a colourful dress Elfie had with her, posing confidently against a white background. „You can’t draw a line between her fashion and her art photography“ says Margit Zuckriegl. Sometimes hung in groups or rows, at other times alone on a strip of wall, the A 4 sized portraits are interspersed with what looks like blown-up black and white Polaroids of anonymous studios.

The audience, their questions answered, left satisfied but a bit disappointed that they had not been able to see the artist herself, as they were curious to see what the person behind the camera looks like. They still have a chance this coming Thursday from 6pm to 9pm at the vernissage in the Alte Saline in Hallein, and again on Friday for the Open Door, from 10 am to 6pm, at the same location. Hopefully, their curiosity will then be satisfied.

 

This Friday, Susanne Tunn and Knut Wold, together with their assistant David Svoboda, forsook the sanctuary of their quarry to come and tell us about their work. Knut Wold made the start, presenting different projects like putting huge stones sculptures into old houses without leaving any traces of how they got there, enticing the viewer to wonder about it. He also talked about the project he is consultant for. Sculptures made by artists and architects he can pick, are placed next to famous long-distance roads in Norway, sometimes in midst of snow or steep slopes. One he talked about in more detail featured a work about witch trials by Louise Bourgeois, consisting of a burning chair surrounded by mirrors reflecting the fire, encased in a hut made of black glass.

Knut Wold met her during his stay in New York around the year 2000, where he caught the eye of an associate of hers while working on a sculpture made from turf in a sculpture park in Queens that was placed in the Hudson river and gradually washed away with the tides. One day, he was told Louise Bourgeois was interested in his work and wanted to meet him. Susanne Tunn, who has been with the stone sculptor symposium in Fürstenbrunn since the year 1992 and decided to invite Knut Wold this year to teach the class with her, talks about her relationship with the stone, but how she also likes to use different materials that “ are temporary.

I like materials that return to the circle to be reused, or are reused by me.” She always approaches a project via the material. For example, her contribution to an exhibition about the Varus battle was melted tin spilled all over the floor of a barn. This started from the thought that the most-found remains of the battle are rests of bronze weaponry, which is partly made of tin. She also likes to drag the viewers into unusual places with her sculptures. With this, she succeeds, seeing the number of people that came to visit their quarry the next day.

 

Organised together with the Initiative Architektur(initiative architecture), Véronique Faucheur and Marc Pouzol presented an exhibiton titled Wild and Oblique – The Gardens of Atelier le Balto. Jumping between two key projects, "le jardin sauvage"(the wild garden), a garden they created for the Palais de Tokyo in Paris' 16th district, and "bois de biais"(the slant garden), made as part of the international garden festival "Jardins de Métis" held every year in the Quebec region of Canada. Together with Marc Vatinel Atelier le Balto began designing gardens and landscapes, often in or close to cultural centers, like the garden in Paris which was one of their first projects. The very first one, though, was done in the Kunstwerke (art center) in Berlin, where they planted 600 pots of hops that over a couple of months completely changed the place. They transformed it with their smell and by turning brown and then transparent in the fall. This was very inspiring for their further work. Funnily enough, the first steps for their project in the Palais de Tokyo was laid as the head of the Palais de Tokyo, Jerome Sans heard them speaking french and quickly got into a conversation with them, soon proposing the project. When they got to the location in Paris, at first they were a bit dispirited in the face of the gaping black hole between buildings. At first, they had to recover the soil, as it was buried under a meter of trash.

Then, as Marc says, "we made some scetches, ordered the plants, and then everything happens on location." This is the way they like to work, not planning a garden on the computer and then handing over the actual gardening, or importing readily grown trees that get implanted in the landscape, but getting close to the soil, planting everything themselves and then letting it grow, returning every now and then to cut, to add, but also to take out plants.

This can also be seen in their other featured project, "bois de biais" (the slant garden). They arrived in Métis, in Quebec province, in the spring of 2004, after only having seen pictures of the old gardenscape. When they found out they had to design a square space, not at all connected to the spaces being done by other participants, they didn’t want to do it any more. Then they thought of a trick, and tilted the square. Another problem was that the garden was supposed to be only for a year, which goes against their wanting to let it grow and develop over a longer period. This they circumvented by planting small willows and poplars in rows, intersected by wooden footbridges that remind you of a beach, as Véronique says. Those bands of wood are only 50 centimeters wide, forcing the people to actually rub up to the green around them, not just to take a picture and move on. Due to this, their garden in Métis has become a permanent one they return to every two years.

They also expanded the slant character of it by cutting the now grown poplar trees so that the first row was very small, the next one a bit taller, and so on. Due to more and more long-term garden projects they already have, and wanting to do more of them, they are now faced with the difficult decision of finding a dedicated gardener in whose care they can leave their green jewells in. As for them, the plants are not a material to use like any other, but a living one they always love to be surprised by. The exhibition "Wild und Schraeg" (wild and oblique) documenting these two gardens can be seen at the Kuenstlerhaus Salzburg until the 17th of September.

 

Chosen from 5 winners of a contest held in cooperation with the magazine Camera Austria and the Photo Market Workshop in Johannesburg, South Africa, Thandile Zwelibanzi came to Austria to document the summer academy the way he sees it. Yesterday, our photograper in residence presented some of his previous photographic series, starting with one about hands. He is fascinated by them as we "can create with them, make our lives move, but also wreak havoc. They contain so many possible things." All the pictures were taken in the streets of Johannesburg, as are those in the next series he presents, called "Traders".

As he shows the images of those people next to their little stands, stuck in these situations while everybody else moves, always worried about the police and the dangers the night holds, it becomes apparent how connected Thandile Zwelibanzi is with the environment he is in. As he himself says: "They are always there, fixed in one place. I got interested and began wondering how they got there in the first place." It often took him a week just to get a single photo, as the traders saw him as an outsider and he needed to gain their trust through conversations before he could even show up with a camera in his hand.

The last series he shows was a lot easier to take. In stark black and white, he photographed young men training in a township gym. Proudly showing their bulk as they lift weights and do pushups, they one day intend to be as big as mountains. Asked about how he will show the summer academy, he laughs. So far, he is taking in everything, not wanting to limit himself to any specific topic. Whatever will come out in the end, it will be fascinating for sure.