Exploring one of the rare or maybe the only artists run off-space in Salzburg was very inspiring. The four young artists constituting the periscope team, Stefan Heizinger, Elisabeth Schmirl, Karin Peyker and Bernhard Lochmann discussed with the visitors their strategies of selforganizing and puting up this space.

Starting in the periscope main location at Sterneckstrasse 10, the guided tour proceeded in the second temporary location in Stelzhamerstrasse. Both spaces present the actual exhibition „LINDENOW“, which is the outcome of a two-weeks art-camp of young artists from Leipzig, Germany, who are also runnig off-spaces in their town. The art-camp served for selfreflection as well as networking and capacity building for future common collaborations.

 

Katrina Daschner presented three projects focusing on genderspecific power structures, the representation of sexuality and desire from a feminist queer perspective. In her works she reflects the "stage" as permeable space of representation and transformation of power structures.

She presented her works "Dolores" (2005) which is a adaption of the Lolita story told in several "rooms" via different media forms (fotos, audio files, video... She also showed her installation "TaeterIn" (Perpetrator) (2007) which takes the subjects of female abuse and rape. Katrina Daschner was also showing extracts of "Hafenperlen" (Harbour Pearls) , "Aria de Mustang" her latest video-production. In this three-part burlesque film series Daschner is inquiring on the self-determination of looks and actions in a sexualised setting.

At the beginning and the end of each film the audience is confronted with a "lesbisch-queer" choir (a choir of homosexual women), acting as audience in the film-setting and challenging the spectator to refect on his/her own position. In Vienna she started a periodically show called "club burlesque brutal" which is presented in a three month rythem at the Vienna Brut theatre. The next show will be, according to Daschner, on the 9th of October and I expect it to be unmissable.

 

Yesterday night the art historians Roberto Ohrt and Susanne Neuburger and the artists Christina Zurfluh and Sonia Abian came together to have a discussion about painting at the Kuenstlerhaus in Salzburg. In the beginning everyone gave a short introduction about what he/she is working with and what painting or being a painter means to him/herself. Painting today is painting after the end of painting, after the last painting. Hildegund Amanshauser, the moderator, suggested in the beginning, to differenciate (according to Helmut Draxler's essay in Texte zur Kunst77, 2010) between painting as apparatus and as technique. Susanne Neuburger talked about the show "Bad Painting", which she had curated. One also discussed about the construction of figure of the famous painter etc... The subject area is enormouse it felt like it was a bit hard to discuss about, because everyone seemed to have his/her own emphases. But exactly this aspect made the discussion interesting because the audience got different point of views how to approximate to this very complex, intense and interesting issue. And I asked myself, why there are so few famous women artists?

 

Today, Martin Schmidl, who teaches drawing at the summer academy for the second year now, talked about his work with publications. important to mention here that we are hearing about artist books, a.k.a. books written by artists, as opposed to art books written about an artist. After studying drawing and painting, he realised it might not be his preferred medium, and began using his knowledge in graphic design to  get into the  more down to earth world of books. They don't have to be art, but can be about everything. This has opened the door  to many other fields for me he says.

After this initial introduction, he presented some examples, like a book about LA he compiled with a colleague during a one-year stay in the city in the mid-nineties. Interestingly, what they saw as conceptual art, others later perceived as artistic research. In the end, it was published as an alternative city guide. They imported the concept to Germany, where they did a book about the history of two  eastern German villages, told by their inhabitants. Another project studied the nature and makeup of holocaust exhibitions in Dachau, which led him to the peculiar problem of having to pay thousands of Euros of copyright fees for the images he was going to use in the book. Unwilling to do so, he gained copyright over the images by making acute copies drawn by hand. Another book series connected to this one started as he began attending lectures to get a deeper historical, sociological and cultural knowledge while he was working on the Dachau book.

Faced with lectures whose boring nature became apparent 5 minutes in, he began drawing portraits of the speakers surrounded by text capturing their key talking points. Asked if he also does drawings for arts sake, Martin Schmidl says there is absolutely no difference between drawing for the wall or drawing for a book. The image goes in to the book and comes out again, expanded by all kinds of possibilities. Once the formal part of the talk was over, students and teachers  alike followed the invitation to take closer look at the books presented and ask more questions.

 

Yesterday night students, professors and visitors with an interest in art came together to see the corporation exhibiton of nine assistants: Bernadette Anzengruber / Erik Hable / Stefan Heizinger / Sarah Horvath / Ivo Kocherscheidt / Michael Koller / Susi Krautgartner / David Svoboda and Flora Vagi, working at summeracademy 2010.

Unsurprisingly a wealth of people from the summer academy came to support their assistants and to see how they work beyond the classes. In the beginning it was so crowded that it seemed almost impossible for everyone to get inside at the same time but as usual people split up a little to sit togehter in smaller groups out- or inside the exhibition rooms and have a chat togehter. It was very impressive to have so many different workpieces and techniques in one single exhibition and maybe because of this fact also the audience was not too homogenouse this time. Which didn't dampen the mood at all. On the contrary! People mixed up, had a drink together (or two), philosophised about art and it seemed that everyone just enjoyed him-/herself in a nice and friendly atmosphere. This was due to the team of KG Freiräume for opening the doors for this event on the one side and to the assistants and their great work on the other side. The exhibition is shown till 27th of September and definitely worth to visit.