VARIOUS FUNCTIONS / VARIOUS MONUMENTS

 

Films by:

Simona Obholzer

Kamen Stoyanov

Miae Son

 

Curated by:

Boris Kostadinov

 

The dynamic phenomenology of life changes our social behavior, but at the same time changes the functions and purpose of public institutions, places, urban objects and buildings which until recently seemed to have unambiguous and indisputable functions in our mind. They become ‘monuments’ to an unusual historical moment. The COVID-19 pandemic is an illustrative example. Sport halls were filled with hospital beds, supermarkets and pharmacies have become the only place allowed for minimal social contact, airports and railway stations look more like huge monuments of the impossible desire to move.

In the case of our exhibition - it takes place in a place whose main function until recently was to be a music club and art space but now it looks something closer to a gallery because of the nightlife restrictions.

Kamen Stoyanov's film Up and Trough is based on the absurd story of an unfinished hotel on the Black Sea coast. Instead of tourists, the hotel has become an utopian contemporary art gallery. A bucket scoops water directly from the sea and carries it through the hotel to fill its empty, unfinished pool. The mystical hotel with its changed function became a monument to an unfinished entrepreneurial project that turned into an art project

Another pool is the subject of 2 Days Left  by Simona Obholzer.  This video has a hypnotic effect and inevitably leads to reflections on nature vs technologies. Machine-generated waves were filmed in a swimming pool located in a public place. There are no visitors to the pool, but the machine continues to persistently and rhythmically create the waves - monumentalizing the feeling of continuity of the natural cycle.

In her experimental video Lufthaus, Miae Son creates a house-shaped kite. The artist stubbornly travels around different places outside Vienna, trying to find the optimal place where the kite can fly. The concept of home is derived from a clear and simple scheme - such as in a child's drawing. The emergency blanket material used for the kite undoubtedly carries the point of the whole idea.

Text: Boris Kostadinov

 

List of the works:

 

Simona Obholzer

2 days left, 2020

video, 07:37 min.

Machine-made, stationary waves transport the trend sport surfing to urban squares. In different shots "2 days left" documents the temporary event architecture that compresses the event of action “wave” into a stationary movement and reproduces it indefinitely. The images scan details of the pool‘s edge and follow the the jagged, lambent movement of the water. Now and again, fragmented bodies appear, attempting to align their physiognomy to the machine-induced movement of the water‘s surface.

 

Kamen Stoyanov

Up and Trough, 2020

Film, 10:05 min.

A journey of a bucket filled with sea water starts and continues up a steep cliff. On the cliff a man takes the bucket and carries it through an unfinished hotel. In the hotel we see scenes recalling existing works of art and performances by contemporary artists. String quartet plays in the trench of the planned pool.

 

Miae Son

Lufthaus, 2019

Experimental video, 05:30 min.

The video , which is part of the installation “Your house did, anyway”, shows Miae Son with a kite in the shape of a house. The artist has built it from bamboo wood and a rescue blanket itself. She is looking for large undeveloped construction sites, where it winds strong. An undefined place, not locatable in Vienna. The artist manages to get the kite flying there. Finally, the house blew up.

 

 

Artists bios:

 

Miae Son (South Korea / Austria) is an artist, currently based in Vienna, who is working with time-based media and installation. She is a member of an Artist Collective 'Mai Ling' and a Filmmaker Association 'Golden Pixel Cooperative'. She studied Video and Sculpture in Seoul, Bremen and Vienna. Her work has received several awards and grants: Start-Scholarship for Media Art by Austrian Federal Chancellery, Collection of Austrian Federal Chancellery, Collection of Vienna Museum, Short Film Award of the FrauenFilmTage, ArtStart_Studio Scholarship, nomination Erste Bank MehrWERT Award -Honorable Mention. International exhibition activities,u.a. Solo exhibition “Your House did, anyway” -Xposit (AT), FrauenFilmTage Vienna Filmfestival(AT), 33rd Kassel DokFest (DE), “Enlight my Space” -Kunsthalle Bremen (DE), “Staging the Film Image ”-Fol Sinema (TR),“ random thoughts of a daily light ”das weisse haus (AT)

 

Kamen Stoyanov is a visual artist and filmmaker. He was born and grew up in Bulgaria and studied visual arts at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna and Film at the New Bulgarian University. His practice includes short film, documentary, single-channel video, performance, installation and drawing. His last short experimental film "Up and Through" was awarded as "Best Experimental" at the February-March at Dumbo Film Festival 2020 and got best experimental nominee at Long Story Shorts 2020, International Film Festival, Bukarest.

His works have been presented at exhibitions, festivals and biennials worldwide, including: Long Story Shorts 2020, International Film Festival, Bukarest (2020); NOW&AFTER’20, International Video Art Festival, Moscow, (2020); In the Palace, international short film festival, Varna, Bulgaria (2020, 2019); Alyosha and the Cat, Museum of Humour and Satire, Gabrovo, Bulgaria (with Katharina Swoboda, 2020); !, Sariev Contemporary, Plovdiv, Bulgaria (solo, 2019); Exhibiting the Exhibition, Kunsthalle Baden - Baden, Germany (2018); Suburbinal Filmfestival, Groß-Enzersdorf, Austria (2018)); WRO BIENNALE, Media Biennale Wroclaw, Poland, (2017); SPIELART Festival, Munich, Germany (2015); Transmediale Berlin (2014); 17th Biennale of Sydney, Sydney, Australia, (2010);

 Aichi Triennale, Nagoya, Japan (2010); Looking for an Art Piece, Kunstverein Salzburg (solo, 2009); At Arm‘s` Length, MUMOK, Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien (solo, 2008); MANIFESTA 7, The European Biennial of Contemporary Art, Trentino, Italy (2008).

 

Simona Obholzer is a visual artist working with graphic, text and time-based media. She studied at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna in the department of Video and Videoinstallation and at the Glasgow School of Art, Scotland. Her artistic practise is based on image and perception theoretical questions. In her installations she investigates how the view can activate the proprioceptive and somatic perception. Her art follows a precise compositional set-up and operates with conceptual cross references. Simona Obholzer received several grants, latest the graphic prize of South Tyrol (2019), the most promising award for contemporary art of the federal state of Tyrol (2016), the START-grant for Video and Media Art by the Austrian ministry for culture (2015). Her work is nationally and internationally shown in exhibitions and at film festivals, such as VideoEx Zurich, Dokfest Kassel, Diagonale Graz, Taxispalais Innsbruck, MUSA Vienna, Galerie im Traklhaus Salzburg, S.Y.P art space Tokyo, Ferdinandeum Innsbruck.

She is part of the Golden Pixel Cooperative, an association for moving images, arts and media.

 

In der Kubatur des Kabinetts, der Kunstsalon im Fluc

Mittwoch, 23. September 2020
20 Uhr
Praterstern 5, 1020 Wien
(Eingang derzeit vis à vis Riesenrad, Flucmarina)