136:'s comment, "Vienna Actionism never was a group. A number of artists reacted to particular situations that they all encountered, within a particular time period, and with similar means and results." While the nature and content of each artist's work differed, there are distinct aesthetic and thematic threads connecting the Actions of Brus, Mühl, Nitsch, and Schwarzkogler. Use of the
189:... our assimilatory democracy maintains art as a safety valve for enemies of the state ... the consumer state drives a wave of "art" before itself; it attempts to bribe the "artist" and thus to rehabilitate his revolutionising "art" as an art that supports the state. But "art" is not art. "Art" is politics that has created new styles of communication.
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The work of the
Viennese Actionists is probably best remembered for the wilful transgressiveness of its naked bodies, destructiveness and violence. Often, brief jail terms were served by participants for violations of decency laws, and their works were targets of moral outrage. In June 1968 Günter
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participated in the documentation of
Actions as early as 1964, producing a body of Actionist related works that stand as historic avant-garde films in their own right for their use of rapid editing. As well, Otto Muehl produced a significant body of Actionist related film work that has been
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of 1963 are characterized by their efforts to re-conceive human bodies as surfaces for the production of art. The trajectories of the
Actionists' work suggests more than just a precedent to later performance art and body art, rather, a drive toward a
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as both surface and site of art-making seems to have been a common point of origin for the
Actionists in their earliest departures from conventional painting practices in the late '50s and early '60s. Brus'
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art practices. The practice of staging precisely scored "Actions" in controlled environments or before audiences bears similarities to the Fluxus concept of enacting an "event score" and is a forerunner to
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Much of the existing moving-image documentation of
Viennese Actionist work survives because of strong ties between the Actionists and art/experimental filmmaking of the 1960s. The Austrian filmmaker
165:...material action is painting that has spread beyond the picture surface. The human body, a laid table or a room becomes the picture surface. Time is added to the dimension of the body and space.
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was a short-lived art movement in the late 20th-century that spanned the 1960s into the 1970s. It is regarded as part of the independent efforts made during the 1960s to develop the issues of
173:... material action promises the direct pleasures of the table. Material action satiates. Far more important than baking bread is the urge to take dough-beating to the extreme.
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audience, Mühl became a fugitive from the West German police. Hermann Nitsch served a two-week prison term in 1965 after his participation with Rudolf
Schwarzkogler in the
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Films of and related to
Actionist performance remain available through the Vienna-based Sixpack film distributor and the U.S. distribution cooperatives
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Brus began serving a six-month prison sentence for the crime of "degrading symbols of the state" after an action in Vienna at which he simultaneously
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Contains video files of Action films by Kurt Kren, Otto Mühl and others. Also contains the complete text of a 2002 interview with Otto Mühl.
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is inherent in their refusing to be confined within conventional ideas of painting, theatre and sculpture. Mühl's 1964
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served a one-month prison term after his participation in a public event, "Art and
Revolution" in 1968. After his
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and the
Actionists. It proved to be a landmark international recognition for the work of Brus, Mühl and Nitsch.
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222:. In 2005 the Actionist films of Kurt Kren were issued on video by the Austrian publisher INDEX DVD.
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edited and translated by
Malcolm Green in collaboration with the artists. London, Atlas Press, 1999
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384:– The artist as a high priest? About the relation between art, religion, ritual and reality.
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The work of the Actionists developed concurrently with—but largely independently from—other
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movements of the era that shared an interest in rejecting object-based or otherwise
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Margarete Lamb-Faffelberger. Out From The Shadows. (Riverside: Ariadne Press, 1997
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have continued their artistic work independently of Viennese Actionism movement.
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Andrew Grossman, 2002 interview with Otto Mühl as it was originally published.
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Brus Muehl Nitsch Schwarzkogler. Writings of the Vienna Actionists
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Brus Mühl Nitsch Schwarzkogler. Writings of the Viennese Actionsts
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Atlas Press publication edited by Malcolm Green, still available.
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Out of Actions. Actionism, Body Art & Performance 1949-1979
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305:(Exhibition catalogue), Vienna-Stuttgart, MAK/Cantz, 1998.
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offers some theoretical framework for understanding this:
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Export, Valie (1989). "Aspects of Feminist Actionism".
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Degradation of a Female Body, Degradation of A Venus
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251:Oxford Dictionary of Modern and Contemporary Art
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382:Hermann Nitsch’ ‘Orgien Mysterien Theater’
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