PLAY ADMONT

3rd June to 7th November 2010 - special exhibition:

An exhibition under the aegis of regionale10. curators: Michael Braunsteiner (Austria) and Christine Peters (Germany)


catalogue PLAY ADMONT
editor: Admont monastery, Michael Braunsteiner, Christine Peters
64-pages
concept: Werner Reiterer
Publishing house: Bibliothek der Provinz
available at the museum shop of the Admont monastery.
price: € 7,90
Download catalogue (only a part)



Opening hours:
3 June to 7 November 2010:
Open daily from 9.00 am to 5.00 pm
July and August 2010:
Extended opening to 8.00 pm every Friday


Download MAP


Service:
Special guided tour PLAY ADMONT daily at 2 pm (min 8 pers.), supplement: € 3,00



The exhibition PLAY ADMONT currently being staged at Admont Benedictine Monastery in Austria places visitors firmly at the centre of attention and encourages them to play the role of discoverer, game partner and explorer. Active participation and interaction with the artworks on display and other procedures enable them to enter into a dialogue with an extended, socially-anchored sculptural milieu and gain admittance to a user-orientated environment that provides for a wide diversity of different transactions and forms of expression thanks to the incorporation of digital technologies. Choreographic objects, location-specific acoustic installations, situationally related spatial installations, interactive machines, performance activity participation, ephemeral experimental designs and developing archives assimilate visitors into the creative artistic process itself – it is only through the complementary elements of interaction and participation that the exhibits reveal their full potential.

Your are more than welcome to ask here for further information about PLAY ADMONT!



Participants:
Download biografies of the artists



1│Thomas Baumann
Rope, 2010

Rope is derived from the model of Chinese and Japanese rock gardens, also known as Zen gardens, in which pebbles embedded in the ground provide for reflexology, but Rope represents a westernised and industrialised version of this concept. A combination of various special knots, such as the weaver‘s knot and the fisherman‘s knot, are used to stimulate the foot reflex zones.


2│Thomas Baumann
Mothernaturemade, 2003

How is it possible to talk to a blind person about colours? Using an acoustic and textual concept, two panels made of glass (“Black Rectangle” and “Pink Flesh”) are converted into sound sculptures. These are operated from a control centre in the form of a case on which an egg-shaped object is mounted. Single words and/or electronic sounds are emitted when visitors manipulate this object. When the panels are touched, frequencies are produced that express the colours in terms of synaesthesia, i.e. in the form of both sounds and palpable vibrations. In analogy with the way that specific light waves are associated with each individual colour and the eye, as principal organ, detects light and colour, the ears and body react to music. The Black Rectangle represents the most radical concept in painting; skin can be pink, but as far as blind people are concerned, there are no skin or flesh tones. Mothernaturemade is complemented by a text on colour which contains a citation by the Austrian poet Georg Trakl. (Printed in Braille, relief, English and German.)


3│Johannes Deutsch
The invisible garden, 2007

This garden is not simply a garden for blind people but rather one in which blind people can give the sighted new insight into sensory perceptions and where blind and sighted people can exchange experiences. For this purpose, every visitor must put on a blindfold before entering the garden and being led through it under the expert guidance of a blind person.
The garden represents a model of the virtual world, and like the virtual world, interaction and immersion in it are possible, but this only becomes apparent to the visitor when being navigated through it. It is both visually and hermetically sealed from the outside world by a thicket-like hedge of pines. Within it the non-visual senses (touch, smell etc.) are exposed - along a predetermined route - to various young trees from the region which have been chosen for their tactile, olfactory and acoustic potential.


4│Julius Deutschbauer
Bibliothek ungelesener Bücher, 1997 fortlaufend
Live Interviews (Nomadisch) und Hörstation

The Bibliothek ungelesener Bücher (Library of Unread Books) was founded by Julius Deutschbauer in 1997 and contains approximately 600 books and volumes which stand side by side on shelves, duly archived and labeled with the names of the non-readers, who have been questioned about their unread books by the artist. For Play Admont Julius Deutschbauer will interview visitors during the opening weekend. The interviews will afterwards be displayed in an audio installation.


5│Tim Etchells
G.O., 2010
Neonwork

Alongside the audio tour Unnatural History: A Reading of Spaces, Etchells‘ new work for Play Admont also includes a neon text-sculpture (G.O.) in the form of a playful ill-mannered instruction to gallery visitors.


6│Tim Etchells
Unnatural History: A Reading of Spaces, 2010

Responding to the Natural History Museum at Admont, reestablished after the devastating fire of 1865, Tim Etchells has created a new work in the form of an audio guide to the collection. Drawing the visitors’ attention to selected displays and to specific taxidermied or preserved creatures featured in them, Etchells playfully eschews a complete account in favour of a highly selective, partisan and idiosyncratic approach to the museum and its contents. Unnatural History: A Reading of Spaces reads the institution as an alien landscape – interpreting its displays and arrangements of wildlife for their significance and possible meaning in unexpected ways.


7│William Forsythe
Monster Partitur, 2006
dance: Alessio Silvestrin
Live Electronic: Hubert Machnik
Sound Concept: Dietrich Krüger/Niels Lanz
Production: Marion Rossi
Voice treatment/dsp Programmierung: Andreas Breitscheid/Manuel Poletti, in cooperation with Forum Neues Musiktheater, Staatsoper Stuttgart.
Producer: Julian Gabriel Richter

Sculptural configurations – corresponding and contrasting, static and dynamic, object-like and organic – form the creative tension of Monster Partitur. Grotesquely ascending filigree paper shapes serve as a score for the constantly renewed experimental dialogue between a dancer and a musician. Improvisation, association and synaesthesia (the interplay of different sensual impressions) provide an open-ended performance structure. The title suggests a complex relationship and ultimately uncontrollable process of transformation.


8│William Forsythe
City of Abstracts, 2001
Choreographic Objekt
Video Software concept: Philip Bußmann
Producer: Julian Gabriel Richter

As visitors approach the interactive video installation City of Abstracts, their images are projected onto a screen, inviting interaction as their bodies are melded into a dance of stretched and spiralled forms.


9│William Forsythe
Solo, 1997
Performance: William Forsythe
music: Thom Willems, in cooperation with Maxime Franke
director: Thomas Lovell Balogh
camera: Jess Hall
production: RD-Studio Productions, France 2, BBC TV, 1997

Solo is a performance for the camera by choreographer William Forsythe. Close-ups and rapid cuts of Forsythe‘s twisting body contrast with overhead shots that capture his movements across a starkly-lit stage.


10│Peter Hanappe & Armin Linke
Phenotypes/Limited Forms, 2007
Architectural Installation: Samuel Korn, Gabriel Sierra
Grafik design: Alex Rich

Phenotypes/Limited Forms enables visitors to make use of Linke’s online archive of photographs. This includes images of locations in Nigeria, China and Cyprus, of the G summit in Genoa, a NASA base in California and of the documenta exhibition. Phenotypes/Limited Forms eschews the usual “Please do not touch” approach of the museum and the authoritative stance adopted by artist and curator when they stipulate that an artwork is the completed and conclusive form in which it is to be presented. Because the visitor can make their own personal selection from the archive, they become, as it were, a temporary “curator”. Linke does not allow visitors to simply react to his work, but encourages these to actively and consciously make their own decisions.


11│Hubert Machnik
Knitter Work, 2010

The garden pavilion completed in 1659 and described by the then Abbot of Admont, Raimund, as “a bower built in the convent garden, and at a cost they suppose at this present time to be some…7000 florins” is the setting for Hubert Machnik’s sound installation Knitter Work. A combination of wooden panels and loudspeakers have been erected against the background of the trompe l’oeil Apollo and the Four Seasons, painted on walls and ceiling by Johann Lederwasch towards the end of the 18th century. The concrete and restrained sounds produced by this system enable the visitor to appreciate the specific acoustic environment of the pavilion. In addition to the wooden panels that emit tones when electromechanically struck, there are electronic sounds and recordings of noises made by the wood processing industry taped on-site around Admont. A computer controls this ensemble.


12│Hans Pollhammer
Kist’n Nr. 1, 2003

Hans Pollhammer has created a broken-down shack made of boards and plastic film within the otherwise neutral museum environment, where it has an effect not unlike that of a cuckoo’s egg. On entering (actually it is necessary to creep in, as into a cave), the visitor becomes aware in the poor light of ragged pictures of film stars on the walls. There is a roughly carpentered crate with peepholes over which the visitor may stumble. Inside this crate, model ships move against a background of blue light and a song sung by Brigitte Bardot can be heard when the strings and levers are operated. Nothing else happens. This work of art represents an antidote to the dazzle and glitter of the international movie scene, to the stylised entertainment industry and all too often assumed concept of the ”beautiful“ within art. It is possible to retreat here and those who are willing to surrender themselves to the magic of this work will be able to forget the stresses of daily life and drift off into a new awareness.


13│reactable (Marcos Alonso, Günter Geiger, Sergi Jordà, Martin Kaltenbrunner)
reactable, 2005

reactable is an electronic musical instrument with a revolutionary interface that turns music into a tangible and visual experience. Several people can play the instrument simultaneously by moving different acrylic objects on its surface, turning them and combining them with each other. While the instrument is being played, these objects light up and the synthesized music becomes visible on the surface. The state-of-the-art technology combined with a simple and intuitive design enables the user to experiment with sound, change its structure, control its parameters and be creative in a very natural and direct way.


14│Werner Reiterer
Studie über Fliegenpilz, 2003

When a visitor approaches the sculpture, the mushroom begins to discharge ping-pong balls into the air like spores. The intention is to confuse the visitor visually – it is almost impossible to distinguish between the white spots attached to the surface of the sculpture and the airborne balls. The psychedelic properties of the fly agaric have here been translated into an interactive, sculptural situation. Now and again a ball will fall from the sculpture to the ground, from which the visitor can pick it up to throw it back into the cap of the mushroom, thus replicating the actions of someone gathering mushrooms in a forest.


15│Werner Reiterer
Without title, 2010
Participative installation

A simple wooden sign located on the bank of the old fire protection pond in the monastery grounds plays with the concept of the wishing well. Visitors are instructed to make a wish and throw a coin over their shoulder. But the sign has been deliberately turned through 180° so that the coin does not land in the water as expected, but on the grass.


16│Werner Reiterer
With al Little Help from My Friends, 2010

“Please put me somewhere else!” insists the text on a small suitcase. And assuming that visitors comply with this request, this will result not only in a blurring of the normal spatial (is one allowed to take the case home?) and moral (and what point does this become theft?) boundaries,  but also in a breakdown of the conventional presentational context. Where is the artwork currently? Who saw it last? And, more importantly, where?


17│robotlab (Matthias Gommel, Martina Haitz, Jan Zappe)
bios [bible], 2007

The installation bios [bible] consists of an industrial robot, which writes down the bible on rolls of paper. The machine draws the calligraphic lines with high precision. Like a monk in the scriptorium it creates step by step the text. bios [bible] is focussing on the questions of faith and technical progress. The installation correlates two cultural systems which are fundamental for societies today – religion and scientific rationalism. In this context scripture has all times an elementary function, as holy scripture or as formal writing of knowledge. bios [bible] produces within five months the New Testament.


18│Constanze Ruhm
blindstorey, 2003
In cooperation with: Fareed Armaly and Otto Kränzler
text: Claire Bartoli
virtuell Modells: Franz Schubert

blindstorey is a project that explores distinctive forms of perception and representation. It draws on Baroque and Modernist concepts of architecture and their notions of ornamentation; it tells of cinema, silence, chronicles and of blindness. Dealing with visual versus aural forms of perception, sound versus silence in relationship with the musical concepts of theme and variation, it employs the techniques of digital audio sampling and 3D modelling programmes.


19│Richard Siegal / The Bakery
If/Then Installed, 2009
Concept: Richard Siegal, in cooperation with: Frédéric Bevilacqua, Florent Bérenger,
Jean-Philippe Lambert and Hillary Goidell

If/Then Installed is an interactive media art installation that invites spectators to physically imitate and virtually control a video projection of dancer-choreographer Richard Siegal performing gestures derived from Yvonne Rainer‘s Trio A. Trio A was first performed in 1966 by Rainer, Steve Paxton, and David Gordon at Judson Memorial Church in New York City; in 1968 it was presented as the first section of Rainer‘s The Mind Is a Muscle. The installation expands upon the If/then methodology developed by Siegal for his performances since 2005. The spectator’s image is captured in real time and analyzed, replacing that of the model and thereby enriching an ever-evolving gestural database.


20│Christa Sommerer & Laurent Mignonneau
Life Writer, 2006

Life Writer is an old-fashioned typewriter that was transformed into a computer interface upon which users can interact using the normal functions of the machine. When a user writes text on this typewriter, the text transforms into artificial life forms that appear on the paper of the typewriter as if directly emerging from the machine. The creation and manipulation of fascinating visual images in an interactive environment where participants also engage in the act of creation raises fundamental questions about human interaction with increasingly “intelligent” machines and possible levels of human-machine symbiosis.


21│Martin Walde
The Web (Spider), 2006

Seen from a distance, The Web (Spider) may appear to be a stable construction. But it is actually made up of a tangle of slender threads that enmesh and interconnect with a supportive framework that is reminiscent of a spider with its extremely fragile anatomy. The lightweight hollow carbon poles (actually fishing rods) are connected by means of compression springs that resist all attempts to stabilise the structure. The artist leaves the resultant basic structure, together with a supply of spools of colourful thread, to the whims and caprices of the public. The Web (Spider) thus grows over time and only gradually comes to assume its specific and individual form. The longer The Web (Spider) is left at one location, the more complex and distinctive the resultant latticework of threads becomes.


22│Hans Winkler
Im Gesäuse. Handbuch für Wilderer, 2004
production: Steirischer Herbst 2004, in cooperation with MADE FOR ADMONT

In his audio installation, Hans Winkler explores the stories and myths of poaching, specifically those surrounding the legendary Schwarzer Peter or Black Peter. Even today in the Haindlkarhütte, an alpine refuge in the mountainous Gesäuse region, tales of his deeds still circulate. Over the period 1870 – 1880, Black Peter repeatedly managed to evade all who attempted to pursue him by climbing apparently insurmountable rock faces, locating a secret escape route that is still named after him – the Peternsteig. Black Peter was never caught and his identity remains shrouded in mystery. Winkler interviewed local farmers and shepherds to collect the traditional oral lore that has been handed down over generations – a kind of Handbook for Poachers.


23│Erwin Wurm
Adorno was wrong with his ideas about art, 2005

Instability and mutability are the underlying constants in Wurm‘s artistic oeuvre. Adorno was wrong with his ideas about art extends these concepts into the world of philosophy. After the Second World War, Theodor W. Adorno‘s expounded new definitions of the sublime character and essentially permanent nature of artworks in his theory of aesthetics. Erwin Wurm counters these hypotheses with a scepticism and humour that is all his own by dismantling a ‚theoretical system‘ into separate plates and inviting visitors to use these individual elements: „Nothing is true for ever; everything is subject to change“. The nine large pink panels that together form the artwork are designed to be used by museum visitors as a form of accessible sculpture. There are instructional illustrations on the panels in order to provide these with guidance on how they can actually employ these objects. The result is transient interaction between artwork and visitors.