wienerblut

Herbert Kuhner
from Violence Under the Guise of Art
or Third Reich Recycling

The Mission

“The mission of VALIE EXPORT Center Linz is to study and reappraise as well as to mediate and contextualize the renowned artist’s premature legacy. International in its focus, this Research Centre for Media and Performance Arts also strives to promote the artistic and scientific examination of these very areas.[1]

 In 1977 Valie Export was brought to trial for having engaged in cruelty to animals and found guilty of having tied a canary to a perch. However the scalding of the birds with boiling wax, which had been filmed, came under the statute of limitations.^[2] This “art object” was on view as part of the Export Exhibition, introduced by Elfriede Jelinek, in the Museum of the Twentieth Century in Vienna in March of 1997.

 On March 17, 1997, in Treffpunkt Kultur, a program devoted to culture on ORF, Austrian State TV, films by Export were broadcast. In one scene Export uses a bloody kitchen knife to slice the neck of a turtle, a mouse and a parrot, but the actual decapitations are deleted by film cutting.^[3]

Wishful Thinking

Art critic Kristian Sotriffer refutes: “The birds were of course not ‘preserved’ in wax while they were alive .…The report in the yellow press was fictitious and was designed to cause an uproar among petit bourgeois readers.”^[4]

Valie Export “herself”: “A bird is tied to a pedestal with a thin cord. I kneel in front of the bird on the pedestal and then I pour scalding wax over it. When I knock the pot of wax over with my head, the bird’s head is inundated and my right hand is doused. Then I pour wax on my feet and my left hand. I free my hands by cutting the cord with a knife that I have picked up from the pedestal with my mouth. The pedestal is encircled by nails scattered around the plateau of the pedestal on which the drama of mankind is depicted.”^[5]

Inspiraton

Yes, there are people in this world who are “inspired” when they hear a bird’s song – that sweet music inspires them to torture and kill animals and humans.

Days Gone By

During the Third Reich children were taught to kill birds with their own hands in a camp called Kinderland, which translates as “Children’s Land.”^[6] The purpose of this procedure was to purge the children of compassion, so that they would become malleable and grow up to serve the regime as torturers and assassins.

“We wanted to kill!”

I quote from an article in News magazine of August, 30, 2007 titled “Yes, we wanted to kill!” Three Styrian youths planned to murder a woman. They wanted to hear death cries, so they set bird chicks on fire. Nineteen-year-old Karlheinz recalls that Daniel told him how “terrific” it is to kill animals. “We got right down to it.” says Daniel, “I took a cigarette lighter and tried to set the animals alight, but they didn’t burn very well. So I went to a garbage bin and took some newspaper.” The fifteen-year-old placed it under the nest and set it alight. “There was a small firework. Three chicks burned to ash, but two were still alive. “We tossed one up and kicked it with our feet. We took the other and placed it on the sidewalk.” Then Daniel and Karlheinz took sharp stones and alternated in hitting the bird until its head was severed. “After that, we took photos of the dead bird with our cell phones.” ^[7]

Liberation Through Degradation

From an article in the Standard newspaper about an exhibit called: Parisian Insights Into Split-Open Bodies: “Gina Pane and Valie Export injure themselves with razor blades.”^[8] And a brilliant exegesis! “Export’s poetic-sharp installation of compulsive performances is among the reflexive anomalies in part two in which the fascination for bodily orifices obsessively-provocatively evolves into the focal point.”

Actionist feminism means denigration of women by women. Thus, women are liberated by being publicly degraded and humiliated. That is the aim of all pornographers.

In Wien: Bildkompendium Wiener Aktionismus und Film, a scurrilous compendium of cruelty violence, degradation, and dehumanization, edited and compiled by Peter Weibel and Valie Export, documenting and glorifying Actionist violence and degradation, Gunter Brus is depicted doing just that.^[9] (Yes, the Austrian Cultural-Cult-Stars occasionally do a bit of fibbing.)

This book is a veritable treasure trove of inhumanity. The Austrian cultural cult stars can be admired therein in flagranti amid blood, urine and feces. .^[10]

Featured in this volume is the depiction of an event in Cologne organized by Weibel and Export in which bullwhips, coils of barbed wire, beer bottles and ether were used to injure Actionists and members of the audience.^[11]

Actionist public and private sado-masochistic events are geared for public participation. In the “private” events, there are no holds barred.

Among the highlights of this scholarly work are photographs of co-editors Export and Weibel engaging in fellatio with Export. Here’s a quote from the horse’s mouth: “When Valie Export sucks my cock, you can see it.”^[12]

Weibel exposed: “Take your cock out! Exhibitionists to the fore!

…We will beat citizens until they become human beings.”^[13]

A key statement by Weibel: “If we don’t prosper, the world will be blown up.”^[14]

One of the most revolting aspects of Wien book is the juxtaposing of documentary photos of murdered children with photos of Hermann Nitsch actions with innards.^[15] Thus, infanticide too is part of Show Biz. Nitsch: “Killing was and is beyond all moral judgments.”^[16]

Thus we have the ideological basis for “snuffing” as a component of art.

This is a description by Peter Weibel, who participated in the “Action” at the University of Vienna on June 7, 1968: “Brus began taking his clothes off, then he climbed onto the podium naked and sang the National Anthem while defecating and masturbating….Then a genuine masochist, whose identity was known to us but not the public, appeared wearing a mask and a bathrobe. He was subsequently whipped (bloody) by Mühl.”^[17] The “masochist” of this event is reputed to be the journalist Malte Olschewski.”^[18]

An analysis by Weibel: “We wanted to present life in a concentration camp as kind of comic-strip.”

Brus was awarded the Grand Austrian State Prize for Art in 1997; his graphic specialties include a women pierced by wires^[19] and a smiling child being penetrated by a horse. The latter is included in a Dorotheum Auction House catalogue.^[20] (Figures 1&2)

In 1993 the prize-winner-to-be stated in an interview in the Kurier with Karin Kathrein: “I never ate excrement!”^[21]

This is a description by Peter Weibel, who participated in the “Action” at the University of Vienna on June 7, 1968: “Brus began taking his clothes off, then he climbed onto the podium naked and sang the National Anthem while defecating and masturbating….Then a genuine masochist, whose identity was known to us but not the public, appeared wearing a mask and a bathrobe. He was subsequently whipped (bloody) by Mühl.”^[22] The “masochist” of this event is reputed to be the journalist Malte Olschewski.”^[23]

An analysis by Peter Weibel: “We wanted to present life in a concentration camp as kind of comic-strip.”

Weibel: “…there was Günter Brus who defecated and masturbated in the university. Valie Export and I initiated the “Tapp and Tast” movie theater (strapped to her chest in which the “viewer” could reach in with his hands). These were shocking. We were really pioneers…. We felt that each of us was a patient. “

Concerning these events: “We were anti–art. The return to the painting later by actionists, and thus to the art was a contradiction as far as I am concerned. This shows in retrospect that Oswald Wiener and I were the most adamant anti-art agents of the movement.

I gave a speech assailing the Minister of Finance (Stephan Koren), the attack against art, the educational system, the financial policy, is certainly relevant today.” [24] This spoke Peter Weibel, “Commissar for Culture”

Samir H. Köck: “How is evil manifested today?”
Weibel: “In the low level of entertainment….TV has become a medium for simple entertainment – far below the level in the Nazi-era. All you can see are people being degraded.”[25] (As told by a top degrader.)

Peter Weibel on Stephan Koren, who happened to have been a man of integrity:

“I knew a university professor named Stephan Koren. He was cripple and wanted to convince me that he was a man like me. In order to prove this he pressed on in politics to the rank of minister with just one arm…when Koran the cripple raises his left arm during his speeches, it becomes a ghastly monument of his dissipated and mutilated humanity. This scum of the nation fills every healthy Austrian with such dread that the pupils of his eyes would burst at the sight.”[26]  (Weibel „from the Lecture on Art and Revolution, June 7, 1968 concerning Minister of Finance Dr. Koren“)

The following criminal event took place concurrent to the Actionist performance at the University of Vienna.

“There was an incredible witch hunt (After the University Action of 1968). Imagine, in a democracy! Think of what it must have been like for Jews in the past under the fascist system, when in a democracy, people refuse to associate with you and to shake your hand.” ^[27]
– Peter Weibel, Culture Commissar.

“I’m a Jew, spiritually.”^[28]
– Otto Mühl.

 “We, the Freedom Party, are treated the way Jews were previously treated. We are the Palestinians of Austria.” ^[29]
– Dr. Jörg Haider, then Freedom Party chief.

“We are the new Jews. This was like the Night of Broken Glass.”^[30]
– Heinz-Christian Strache, Freedom Party Chief, at the Corporation Ball of 2011

“The true heroes of freedom are those who commit crimes run amuck and assassinate. It is only possible for man to realize himself by running amuck, by murder and by assassination….I would be glad if I had the strength to act like the assassins and those who run amuck. These are exceptional human achievements for me.”^[31]
– Peter Weibel, Cultural Commissar

A key statement by Weibel: “If we don’t prosper, the world will be blown up.”^[32]

In the spring of 1995, an official Austrian exhibit commemorating prominent Austrians who were forced to emigrate was shown at 565 Fifth Avenue in New York. The organizer of the exhibit and co-editor of the accompanying book, The Cultural Exodus from Vienna ^[33] is Peter Weibel, who is also co-editor of the previously-mentioned Wien book. Among the highlights of the latter scholarly work are photos of co-editor Export engaging in fellatio with Weibel. Here’s a quote from the horse’s mouth: “When Valie Export sucks my cock, you can see it.”^[34]

In my view, the good work of the scholars who contributed to the book and exhibit has been deprecated and the exiled notables have been compromised rather than commemorated by the participation of “Culture Commissar” Weibel. My inclusion occurred without my knowledge.

Those who have been victims of barbarism can only be honored by the foes of barbarism. Moral force is the requisite for fighting inhumanity.

After Valie Export was invited to submit a design for the monument on Judenplatz some years ago, she had thoughts about the Holocaust. “Not directly or for a specific reason, as happened when I was invited to participate in the competition.”^[35] She didn’t win that one, but on August 28, 1999, her anti-fascistic monument in Allentsteig, Lower Austria, was unveiled. She may be able to contribute a valid analysis since violence plays a primary role in her work. And of course tormenting and killing birds are the proper requisites for commemorating the victims of National Socialism.

 A Disciple Expounds

“To be a performance artist, you have to hate theatre,“ she replied. „Theatre is fake… The knife is not real, the blood is not real, and the emotions are not real. Performance is just the opposite: the knife is real, the blood is real, and the emotions are real.“^[36]

Tomas Zierhofer-Kin Comments: “Marina Abramovic put it this way: In the theater someone comes onstage with a fake knife, and when he stabs with it, nothing but theater blood flows. When she as a performance artist takes a knife in her hand, it is real – and real blood flows.”^[37]

In her 40 years as a performance artist, Abramović has dealt in what she calls „true reality“, often at great physical and psychological cost. She has stabbed her hand with knives and sliced her skin with razor blades. She has lain naked on a cross of ice for hours. She has allowed the public to prod, probe and abuse her prone body. Once she almost died when a performance, in which she lay inside a huge flaming star made of petrol-soaked sawdust, went horribly wrong. (The fire sucked the oxygen from around her, causing her to pass out. An audience member intervened and she was rushed to hospital with burns to her head and body.)^[38]

Valie Export’s Genital Panic Goes Guggenheim

 

(26.07.2009 – uploaded by mEma Smemory)  Guggenheim Museum, New York (Are you there, Frank Lloyd Wright?) Fine show for the kids sitting on the floor. Pardon me, folks, I’ve got to go out and barf!

The original photo of Valie Export, titled Gentital Panic by taken Peter Hassman in 1969 which  bear Export’s signature was auctioned off in the Foto Museum Westlicht was auctioned off for a “record price” of  54,000 Euro. The photo bears Export’s signature, which was placed on the back of the photo in the nineteen-eighties. (Der Standard, June 13, 2015.)

 

The Grman translation of this text is downloadable (click) : EXPORT-CENTER-DEUTSCH_v1

“The Nitsch debate has been truncated long… The Valie Export debate… Viennese Actionism can no longer be the basis for dispute in a civilized state; it has been canonized for quite some time and has found its place in museums. Today anyone who opposes Actionism simply disqualifies himself.”  [39]
– Sigrid Löffler, Kritikerin

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

[1] www.cityofmediaarts.at/featuring/valie-export-center-linz
[2] An der Grenze des Erlaubten: Kunst und Zensur in Österreich, a project of the University Cultural Center, Unikum, Klagenfurt, 1996, p. 63.
[3] Treffpunkt Kultur, Karin Resetarits, moderator, ORF, March 17, 1998; Valie Export: Der unsichtbare Gegner (Invisible Adversaries), 1973.
[4] Letter from Kristian Sotriffer to Herbert Kuhner, May 22, 1997.
[5] performance-art-research.de/AndereTexte.htm; Beschreibung von VALIE EXPORT in: http://www.urban-infill.com/asemie2.htm, 20.02.2004.
[6] Hitlers Kinder (Hitler’s Children), Documentation Series, No. 4, Arte TV, March 1, 2000.
[7] Martina Prewein: “Am Tatort“, News, No. 35, Aug. 30, 2007, p. 62-65.
[8] “Hors limites, Pariser Kunst-Einsichten in den klaffenden Leib,” Centre Pompidou, Der Standard, December 5, 1994,Vienna, p. 15.
[9] Peter Weibel, Valie Export, eds.: Wien: Bildkompendium Wiener Aktionismus und Film, Kohlkunst Verlag, Frankfurt, 1970, p. 72-73.
[10] Peter Weibel, Valie Export, eds.: Wien: Bildkompendium Wiener Aktionismus und Film, Kohlkunst Verlag, Frankfurt, 1970, p. 72-73.
[11] Peter Weibel, Valie Export, eds.: Wien: Bildkompendium Wiener Aktionismus und Film, Kohlkunst Verlag, Frankfurt, 1970, p.233 & 237.
[12] Axis, Interview Peter Weibel / Gerhard Petak, April 17, 1985, Vienna.
[13] Fritz Rumler: “Exhibitionisten an die Front,” Der Spiegrel, No. 17, 21, 1969. p. 194.
[14] Fritz Rumler: “Exhibitionisten an die Front,” Der Spiegel, No. 17, April 21, 1970, p. 194.
[15] Ibid., p. 97-114.
[16] Paula Devarney: “Nitsch – Art of Killing,” Caellian, 9. Oktober 1970; Hermann Nitsch: Das rote Tuch – Das Orgien Mysterien Theater – Im Spiegel der Presse 1960-1988, Freibord, Vienna, 1988, p. 106.
[17] Transparent Spezial, ORF, May 8, 1996, description by Peter Weibel.
[18] Profil, No. 23, June, 2008, p. 30.
[19] Peter Weibel, Valie Export, eds.: Wien: Bildkompendium Wiener Aktionismus und Film, Kohlkunst Verlag, Frankfurt, 1970, p. 247.
[20] Dorotheum Catalogue, May 8, 1991, Günter Brus, graphic no. 183.
[21] Karin Kathrein: “Ein ‘Irwisch’ in Paris,” Die Presse, Oct. 14, 1993, Vienna, p. 30.
[22] Transparent Spezial, ORF, May 8, 1996, description by Peter Weibel.
[23] Profil, No. 23, June, 2008, p. 30.
[24]Oliver Bentz: „Jeder kann seine Kreativität im Netz zeigen,“ Wiener Zeiting Extra, p. 6, August 22, 2009.
[25] Spectrum :Die Presse, April 21 ,2013, Samir H. Köck, Interview with Peter Weibel, , p. 42.
[26] Peter Weibel, Valie Export: Wien, Bildkompendium Wiener Aktionismus und Film, Kohlkunst Verlag, Frankfurt, 1970; Speech at the University of Vienna, June, 7, 1968.
[27] Ibid.
[28] Otto Mühl Interview, Die Zeit, Feb. 26, 2004, Nr. 10, Hamburg.
[29] Austria Presse Agentur, June 18, 1991.
[30] Der Standard,. January 29, 2011.
[31] Peter Weibel, Für Menschen verboten; Hilde Schmölzer, Das böse Wien, Nymphenberger Verlag, Munich, 1973, p. 191-192.
[32] Fritz Rumler: “Exhibitionisten an die Front,” Der Spiegel, No. 17, April 21, 1970, p. 194.
[33] Friedrich Stadler, Peter Weibel: Vertreibung der Vernunft/The Cultural Exodus from Austria, Springer Verlag, Vienna – New York, 1995.
[34] Axis, Interview Peter Weibel / Gerhard Petak, April 17, 1985, Vienna.
[35] The Jewish Museum of Vienna, Newsletter, No. 14, Summer 1997, p. 1.
[36] theguardian.com. Feb. 10, 2010.
[37] Profil, Interview: Sven Gächter. Srefan Grissemann, no. 25. June 20. 2016, p.88
[38] The Observer, Oct 3, 2010.
[39] Sigrid Löffler: „Banausie am Ballhausplatz“, Profil, Nr.39, 21.Sept. 1992, S. 11.