In den Sechzigerjahren wurden solche Aktionen wie die Katzenschlachtung von Otmar Bauer 1970 in seiner Anti-Vietnam-Performance-Film „Katzi “, oft mit einem gewaltigen theoretischen Überbau gerechtfertigt. Der 2005 gestorbene Wiener Aktionist erwürgte darin eine Katze, anschließend pinkelte der Künstler auf das Tier und fraß sein eigenes Erbrochenes.
Ein Mann, der später zu einem mächtigen Kulturträger avancierte, zeigte seine Verachtung für die Menschheit während des Vietnamkrieges: Er masturbierte gemeinsam mit seinen Kumpeln bei einer Photoausstellung verletzter vietnamesischer Kinder in Graz.
Diese Taten werden immer interpretiert, für mich ist keine Interpretation notwendig.
– Harry Kuhner
„The-infamous-avant-garde-art-gang“ special offer (!) only $29,95 FAR superior to other crudely . . .
Anti-Vietnam War Protests
In the 1960s, such actions as Otmar Bauer’s anti-Vietnam War cat slaughter performance film „Katzi“ of 1970. Anti-Vietnam actions were presented with a great theoretical superstructure. This Viennese Actionist, who died in 2005, strangled a cat in this film, then urinated on the animal, puked on it and then devoured his own vomit.
A man who was to become one of Austria’s foremost cultural luminaries showed his disdain for humanity during the war in Vietnam. He and his cohorts publicly masturbated at an exhibition of photos in Graz showing injured Vietnamese children.
These events are always interpreted, but they do not need an interpretation as far as I am concerned.
Padhi Frieberger: „Die Nazis haben versucht, die Kunst von außen zu zerstören. Die jetzigen Zerstörer haben sich alles unter den Nagel gerissen und zerstören die Kunst von innen.“
A genius is at work here – and nobody takes notice!
This is just the beginning. Now people have taken and will take notice. Padhi is here!
Padhi has been on the periphery of “the scene” for years – no for decades, but he is anything but a peripheral figure. He was always an innovator, always ahead of his time, continuing to work under conditions far from ideal, not letting lack of opportunities or recognition hold him back, not compromising or ingratiating himself to the powers-that-be, speaking and writing his mind regardless of the repercussions.
Padhi is impossible to avoid in post-war Austrian art. He turns up everywhere like Zelig, the Woody Allen character. Zelig, was someone, or rather a nobody who just showed up, that is, he saw to it that he showed up. But although Padhi is omnipresent, he is definitely not a Zelig.
Padhi is referred to as “Padhi doesn’t show up.” I’ve heard this, and my answer is: he showed up in the beginning and he showed up after that, but perhaps now he doesn’t always show up. He doesn’t want to be promoted by a purveyor of junk and he doesn’t want his work to be part of a junk show.
That’s why Padhi has been kept on that siding.
Certainly, Padhi has contributed to being on the periphery. Padhi the artist has stood in the way of Padhi the businessman. That is badly put. There is no Padhi the businessman. There’s just Padhi the artist.
Padhi doesn’t want to be promoted by a purveyor of junk and he doesn’t want his work to be part of a junk show.
He may have cancelled out many of his chances, but he didn’t cancel himself out. There is a price for integrity, and when you pay that price, you often can’t pay the bills. There were times Padhi lived from hand to mouth. But he survived. Yes, Padhi is here!
Young Padhi was buried in the basement of a bombed building in the last phase of the war, before being dug out. And in post-war Austria the cultural powers-that-be did its best to bury him spiritually.
Padhi goes his way no matter how hard and painful it may be. Not that Padhi wouldn’t like to reap financial fruits! But he has never stooped to pick them up – if attaining them meant stooping. Producing art is more important to him than the monetary aspect. And he produces as well as he can without the benefits and accouterments that money brings. When Padhi works, he has art in mind, not the marketing or the dough or bread that comes from the marketing. For him, art takes precedence over the marketing, since his art is created as art, and not merely as commodity to be sold.
Padhi shines in the midst of mediocrity and trend!
Padhi on the game: “Do state-award recipients think that they are being truthful? Can a state-award recipient be an artist? He receives a prize, which is payment for playing the game, and everyone knows what the game is.”
We live in a society in which art is a commodity, and the selling of the product takes precedence over its intrinsic value.
Needless to say, Padhi does not mass produce. There is no assembly line. Padhi’s works are not commercial products.
Here’s more Padhi: “I feel that I am a descendent of modernism. Most of what came after van Gogh, Kandinski or Max Ernst had little to do with the ideas and the attitudes of those trailblazers. Wherever I look, all I see is pseudo development by copycats who are behind the times. They paint and draw, and draw and paint, and sculpt – but artists, that’s not what they are.”
Padhi’s life has been anything but a smooth ride, with a little help from his “friends.”
Here’s an example:
There’s a play by a notable dramatist in which a notable writer decides to build an artist up, and when he’s on the way to the top, the writer pulls the rug out from under the artist, bringing him all the way down and causing him to commit suicide.
Such delightful behavior is not untypical in the Austrian art scene, and the dramatist had the situation served to him on a silver tray.
The dramatist was Wolfgang Bauer, the writer was Konrad Bayer and the artist is Padhi Frieberger. But things didn’t quite work out the way the way they do in Change. Bayer committed suicide decades ago and Padhi is still very much among us.
Padhi puts it this way: The story is true. Konrad was my friend. But he turned on me in his pitch-black paranoia because he felt that my ability exceeded his. Things took their course, but his malice backfired, and he’s the one who is dead.
Padhi has persevered and survived.
Regretfully Padhi does not keep an index and much of his work has been lost.
Years ago, Padhi filled three thick blank thick books with watercolors. Each page is painted on both sides. I paged through one in Gallery Macura in Vienna, which regrettably is no longer extant. I don’t want to throw the word “great” around, but let me say they are magnificent.
The second cannot be located.
The owner of the third tore pages out and had them auctioned at the Dorotheum, which is Austria’s combination of Christies and Sothebys.
We live in a society where art is a commodity, and the selling of the product takes precedence over its intrinsic value.
The paintings of van Gogh, who sold one painting in his lifetime, now sell for millions. But the work of this great artist, whose bitter life ended with suicide, is not bought and sold for its value as art. Van Gogh too, like the products of the charlatans who would not be worthy of licking his boots, is merely bought and sold as a commodity for the sake of speculation.
Padhi, who loves van Gogh, does not fit into the setup.
Padhi on the master: “If I had met van Gogh somewhere in the woods, I would have gone right up to him, for I would have recognized his genius – as well as what he can impart to others.”
“You have to have the genius and the aptitude of an artist in order to comprehend the genius and aptitude of an artist.”
“Genius is an expression of the right thing at the right time.”
“Technical perfection without the total integration of content and unique conception can never result in a work of art.”
Padhi makes comparisons: “The Nazis attempted to destroy art from the outside. Those who practice destruction today have taken over on the inside and destroy art from within.”
Excerpt from Fritz Kleibels Filmportrait (Biopix) „Enroute with Herbert Kuhner“ 52 min. 2013
After the publication of Da-Da Ga-Ga Ca-Ca in 1972, I was no longer anonymous in Austria. I had slaughtered the sacred cows of culture in a literary sense and exposed myself as the “reactionary and fascist” that I was. Helmut Butterweck, cultural editor of Die Furche, told me: “You have just committed literary suicide.” But I was already dead in the literary scene before this publication. So I died twice. (A man who is dead in this sense cannot do himself in, but he can prolong his death, which I probably did.)
Nach der Veröffentlichung von Da-Da Ga-Ga Ka-Ka in 1972 war ich in Österreich kein Unbekannter mehr. Da ich die heiligen Kühe der österreichischen Kulturszene literarisch abgeschlachtet hatte, war ich als „Reaktionär und Faschist“ entlarvt. „Sie haben gerade Selbstmord begangen“, erklärte mir Helmut Butterweck, Kulturredakteur von der Zeitschrift Die Furche. Aber ich war schon vor dieser Veröffentlichung in der literarischen Szene tot. Also bin ich zweimal gestorben.
In the film The Master Game, directed by Lutz Dammbeck, he and Helmut Kohlenberger draw parallels between two quotations. One stems from a letter by the anonymous self-proclaimed perpetrator who alleged to have painted over the painted-over paintings of Arnulf Rainer: “I decided to become an Actionist.” The other is a phrase from Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf : “I decided to become a politician.”
Helmut Kohlenberger, philosopher: “The cultural scene in which one makes a decision to become an Actionist is the structural successor to that erstwhile regime. It is the only dictatorship that is presently allowed in this country.
Lutz Dammbeck: “In other words, in the cultural scene one can give vent to Nazi-type barbarity under a Leftist banner.”
Kohlenberger: “Here is a text that rritatingly brings to mind that there is a continuity right in the midst of the asserted discontinuity, and right where you might least expect to find it, that is among the good old leftist and anti-fascistic artists.”[3]
* * *
Das Meisterspiel & Parallele
Aus dem Film Das Meisterspiel von Lutz Dammbeck, in welchem der 1994 erfolgte und bis heute nicht geklärte Anschlag auf einige Bilder Arnulf Rainers thematisiert wird. Im Bekennerbrief kommt der Satz vor, „Ich habe mich entschlossen, Aktionist zu werden.“
Diese Worte erinnern an ein Zitat aus Mein Kampf von Adolf Hitler: „Ich habe mich entschlossen, Politiker zu werden.“
Der Philosoph Helmut Kohlenberger: „Die Kunstszene, in der beschlossen wird, Aktionist zu sein, ist ein struktureller Nachfolger (zur damalige Regierung) … Und ich glaube tatsächlich, daß in der gesamten Kunstszene eine Nachfolge dieses Regimes gegeben ist, denn sie ist die einzige erlaubte Diktatur in diesem Land.“[1]
Lutz Dammbeck: „Das heißt also, in der Kunstszene kann man unter linken Etiketten mal so richtig die Nazi-Sau ʼrauslassen.“
Kohlenberger: „Insofern ist hier ein Text entstanden, der unangenehm erinnert, daß es eine Kontinuität gibt, mitten in der behaupteten Diskontinuität und zwar gerade dort, wo man sie nicht vermutet, nämlich bei den braven, linken und antifaschistischen Künstlern.“[2]
[1] Lutz Dammbeck, Regisseur, Der Film: Das Meisterspiel, Deutschland 1998.
[2] Interview Lutz Dammbeck mit Helmut Kohlenberger aus dem Meisterspiel.
[3] Helmut Kohlenberger interviewed by Lutz Dammbeck in his film Das Meisterspiel, Germany, 1998.
In art and literature it becomes more and more difficult to separate the sheep from the goats, in other words: valid artists from charlatans. It’s all a matter of opinion. (In my humble opinion, the goats gained the upper hand long ago, and their bleating is the dominant sound.) However, public “Actions” such as the flagellation of self and others, the drinking of blood and urine, the eating of feces, copulation to the accompaniment of fecal production, self-mutilation, self-immolation and tormenting animals to death are actions that I for one could not keep silent about. Examples: Valie Export poured scalding wax over live birds. Günter Brus slit his chest open with a razor blade and declared that the next step would be to cut a piece of himself off and eat it. Rudolf Schwarzkogler committed suicide in a ritualistic act of self-immolation. It is alleged that he cut his penis off before defenestrating himself.
Such excrescences are engaged in and supported by the Austrian cultural elite, la crème de la crème. They meet the approval of the powers-that-be, as well as those aspiring to power. The advocates are skillful and well-versed in the art of sophistry and have become an integral part of the anti-fascist scene.
It is revealing that those who have literally defecated on the State been sanctioned and sanctified by the State and are thus sacrosanct. They have achieved the highest status and have been awarded the most prestigious prizes and honors by the State. They are even depicted on postage stamps.
As things are, having a critical stance is tantamount to opposing the State. Speaking out means countering power and influence and can have dire consequences. Those who are not proponents or fellow travelers have been cowed and invariably keep mum.
In this topsy-turvy situation, criticism of Actionist violence does not come from the Left, but rather predominantly, nay almost exclusively from the hard Right. To have a critical view means being lumped together with unsavory political elements and being smeared with a brown brush.
The question is whether mendacity and calumny can serve a good purpose. I answer that in the negative. Clarification is long overdue. And I say: Let the chips fall where they may!
*from „Violence Under the Guise of Art“ or „Third Reich Recycling“ by Herbert Kuhner
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Padhi goes his way no matter how hard and painful it may be. Not that Padhi wouldn’t like to reap financial fruits! But he has never stooped to pick them up – if attaining them meant stooping. Producing art is more important to him than the monetary aspect. And he produces as well as he can without the benefits and accouterments that money brings. When Padhi works, he has art in mind, not the marketing or the dough or bread that comes from the marketing. For him, art takes precedence over the marketing, since his art is created as art, and not merely as commodity to be sold.
the writer pulls the rug out from under the artist, bringing him all the way down and causing him to commit suicide.
