Tag Archives: installation

“17 Sekunden Kunst” to be screened in NYC

For those who happen to be in New York on March 5: My “17 Sekunden Kunst” (“17 Seconds Of Art”) series is part of The Art Film Festival at the Hunter College!

Swiss curator, critic and art historian Paolo Bianchi, who commissioned the series a while ago for Upper Austria’s OK Centrum, wrote about the piece in the catalogue: “For years, Lena Lapschina has been filming everyday situations while traveling, which oscillate from the absurd to the banal. She uses this to make short videos that present in only 17 seconds art. The films all are dealing with art, but most of all with the perception of art. In the video ‘Once around the block’ a man leaves a party in Vienna City to get some fresh air, takes off his clothes, runs once around the block and puts his clothes calmly back on. A quicker answer to the question ‘What is art?’ is hardly imaginable.”

“17 Sekunden Kunst” for some years had tagged itself an “ongoing series” and comprises two dozens or so stand-alone films and mini-series. At Park Avenue, I’m going to show five pieces: 1. “Artist in residence”: Lena Lapschina’s artist trilogy. 2. “Once around the block” (original title: “Einmal um den Häuserblock”): Vienna, the city of actionism, revisited. 3. “Making friends”: About creation and subjective awareness of a friend. 4. “Bowing takes practice” (original title: “Verbeugungsübung”): Facing the authorities should be well practised. 5. “Eugen’s Appartment”: A mini-soap in 7 episodes.

The Art Film Festival: Saturday, March 5, 2016, 1:00-8:00 PM, Ida K. Lang Recital Hall at Hunter College, 695 Park Ave, New York, NY 10065. “17 Sekunden Kunst” is scheduled at 5:30, followed by a brief Q&A session.

“17 Sekunden Kunst” by Lena Lapschina is available as a limited pizza box edition.

Of battery-powered chainsaws, Franz Kafka, curating, and the Art-Free Territory

I’ve sent an image scientist through my latest exhib in Austria, “Home Alone”. Here is what she brought back from the tour:

“Home Alone” is a fifty meter wide media installation, staged at the “Ausstellungsbrücke” (english: “Exhibition Bridge”) in Sankt Pölten, Lower Austria. It involves a “fitness zone”, a “living room”, a “museum”, and a “bar”. Each of these areas provide different levels of involvement to the visitors.

The show starts with a huge wall painting, depicting the exhibition’s intro text and a dozen company logos. Next to it resides the participatory video work “Get Fit With Dr. Lapschina”, which asks the visitors to work out. Stuff for engaging in the vigorous physical exercises is provided – as well as a bunch of museum benches, for people who prefer the lean-back mode.

The living room part of “Home Alone” has a comfy sofa suite, a large screen, several framed pictures on the walls, three lightboxes, a couple of books and catalogues on a coffee table, a hammock, and a bottle of wine to offer. The pictures don’t show anything though. They are only reminders. Also these aren’t regular lightboxes. Their role is to provide a distinct atmosphere to the place. And while the TV presents a 3′ loop version of Lena Lapschina’s video piece “Runtime”, it’s just the camo jacket for the smart home components everywhere in the room.

So, why not spend some time in the museum? Meticulously arranged vitrines give an impression of life in Lower Austria, in Manhattan or in Brooklyn, or elsewhere on this planet. It’s about dreams and nightmares, art and artists, battery-powered chainsaws and Franz Kafka, curating and the “Art-Free Territory”. It’s not immediately clear if the assemblage should be entertaining or disturbing. Like all museum stuff, in the first place it is educating, and that is what visitors find out during extended conversations in the bar and kitchen areas built into the flow of the “Home Alone” installation.

Runtime

“Runtime” is a two-channel video installation with sound. It oscillates between the topics of time and tension, energy and inner strength. The two projections, which are placed at right angles, seem to be influenced by context. Watched in the daytime or in the nighttime, tonalities vary. I’ve been installing “Runtime” for the first time in the course of a private view in Kunsthalle Kleinbasel (Switzerland). There’s also a limited photo series of “Runtime” available.

“Waymarks & Dialogues” at Mardin Bienali

“İşaretler ve Diyaloglar” (“Waymarks & Dialogues”) is a situation-specific work for the 3rd Biennial in Mardin. Here, on the verge of Turkey, in the northernmost part of Mesopotamia, I’ve met with people and listened to conversations in order to record the most contemporary words in the various languages of Mardin. These words I’ve mounted in the medieval part of the city, in the narrow 1. Cadde (1st Lane), starting at the massive walls of Mor Efrem Manastırı. Intertwined with a series of lightboxes, which hide in the tiny workshops along 1. Cadde, a mythological footpath is formed. Visitors can discover both their history – and their destination.

Some seldom shown pieces reunited for open studio show

During Vienna Art Week, I had a mini-show in a twelve-room apartment aka the Viennese studio. Old friends, like my neon sign “Girls wanted”, the pizza-boxed video series “17 Sekunden Kunst”, the Wittmann-manufactured cushions “Art-Free Territory” and the Mercedes-Benz tribute photo series “Communication”, joined forces with brand new stuff, like the installation “Curators’ Water”, the light-boxed photo series “Some things that long time do not exist” (Duratrans, light-box, crank), the xerography-inspired, Teheran-produced work “Role Models” (edition: 1), the photographed alphabet “Trees and poets, citified” (Dibond) and the post-future of painting series “Stuff”. Visitors also got a chance to preview the video series “Message to the World” while hanging out at the bar, and to engage in the participatory media installation “Get Fit With Dr. Lapschina”.
N.B.: “Thank you” to everyone who made this exhib possible, and especially to Mario Codognato for more than an hour of questions and answers.

How artists can improve your work-life balance

For my recent show in the Tyrolean capital Innsbruck I married interior design with work-life balance with art. The blend was called “Einrichtungsberatung” – essentially a system of interior design and visual arts theory and therapy.

The installation, at Schauraum für zeitgenössische Kunst und Design, assembled work related elements – like the filing cabinet “Ordnungshalber” – and stuff for having fun – like the video work “The influence of alcoholic drinks on the social intercourse of the intelligentsija” (a piano-inspired TV-rack, a 56′ film, TV and DVD) – to an out-of-this-world living room.

Although I resisted to bring some of my paintings, the mansion was fully equipped with distinctive Lapschina-isms.