Say something to the audience

Matti Blind, Heike Bollig, Barak Reiser, Andrea Schneemeier at the Gallery of the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich, subway station Universitaet, northern exit

08 July - 18 July 2002

" Modern societies are metaphorically like airport departure lounges where passengers are encouraged to be cool & distant, orderly & regulated."
Bryan S. Turner

"It is easy to see how much the very principle of the spectacle -non-intervention -is linked to the alienation of the old world."
Guy Debord

Say something to the audience is a project in process.
In the ten days between the 8th - 18th of July, the artists will work in the gallery and in it`s surroundings. The project will open with a "first sight" , at that time the only object placed in the gallery will be a time-table, inviting the public to some of the coming activities.

What follows is a short excerpt of interactions from the full programme:
The performance "Tableaux Vivant", which the artists will stage in the urban surroundings of Munich. In this performance the artists occupy a location, i.e. a restaurant, a hotel lobby, a side walk or even a public toilet, take up their poses and "freeze" for an unspecified period of time. It refers to the figure and the pose in an art historical context, and poses exemplarily as resisting subjects/objects in consumerist culture.

Working in a site-specific context, the artists will elaborate an architectural sculpture: the general contour of the Geschwister-Scholl-Platz ( which happens to be above the gallery ) will be built in a three dimensional way, one of its aims is to reflect on the connections between a neo-classical square and the story of the resistance group "Die Weisse Rose".

The gallery space itself, will be turned into a "Wild Zone", the term draws on a text by Gilles Deleuze, describing a space that functions outside regulated urban space, away from the routinised world, where anything could happen. It is important that the space does not function in only one proposed way, but serves in various aspects, as exhibition space for the documentation of the interactions, discussion forum, music video production center and possibly even as a space to inhabit. The constant reinterpretation of the space is a crucial part of the project, as it reflects visually the ongoing process of action.
Blind, Bollig, Reiser, Schneemeier are working on a provocative and radical subversion of a controlled and sanitised western society. Individually, their work explores notions of alienation, community, site-specificity and identity, employing video, photography, performance, puplic interventions and sculpture.

Besides the materialisation of various ideas, one of the main concerns of the artists is to keep up an ongoing discussion between themselves and the audience as a key element of the project. Over a period of 6 month the artists communicated via internet, establishing various scenarios. The show will be governed by a self imposed time table, leading them from one activity to the next ( see time table ).

Since the artists own bodies play such a defining role in the Say something to the audience project, the work echoes perhaps the concerns of seventies neo-avantgarde art and its "negative strategies" via which its members actively tried to transgress the boundaries of art. One cannot help thinking of the radical stances and strategies of body artists who in the late sixties and early seventies used their own bodies as artistic materials in highly controversial performance art works.

First sight: monday 08.07. 19:00
Second sight: saturday, sunday 13./14.07. 14:00 - 19:30
Last sight: thursday 18.07. until 21:00

The gallery will be open everyday from 17:30 - 19:30 and during the presences of the artists
Talk of the day 18:00 every day ( but monday 15.07. )

www.to-the-audience.de
contact say_something_audience@hotmail.com

Matti Blind born 1975 Pusan/ South Korea; BA ( Hons.) Fine Art, Chelsea College of Art, London 2002
Heike Bollig born 1974 Karlsruhe/ Germany; Since 1997 study of sculpture at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts; 2001-2002 guest student at the Hochschule fuer Gestaltung, Karlsruhe (department media arts)
Barak Reiser born 1973 in Haifa, Israel; 1994-1998 studied Fine Arts at the ÔBezalelakademieÕ Jerusalem degree BFA; Since 2000 Staedelschule, Staatliche Hochschule fuer Bildende Kunst, Frankfurt a. M. (Klasse Prof. Tobias Rehberger)
Andrea Schneemeier born 1969 in Hungary; 1990-1995 Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts ( painting department ) 1992-96 Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts (intermedia department); 1992 Glasgow School of Art


The exhibition is supported by the sponsors of the Academy Gallery: Kulturreferat of the City of Munich and BMW Group

link to the programm