Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Actionism: Shocking the Republic
Art has always enjoyed a good scandal. The expressionist Egon Schiele and the architect
Adolf Loos were - rightly or wrongly - embroiled in moral charges that resulted in par-
tial convictions. Kokoschka and Klimt explored in their paintings themes of eroticism,
homoeroticism, and adolescence and youth. One day in 1968, however, the stakes were
raised significantly higher when a group of artists burst into a packed lecture hall of Vi-
enna's university and began an action that became known as the Uni-Ferkelei (University
Obscenity). According to reports, at least one member of the group began masturbating,
smearing themselves with excrement, flagellating and vomiting. Lovely, but was it art?
One member was probably singing the Austrian national anthem, another seemed to be
rambling on about computers. Court cases followed, and so too did a couple of convic-
tions and a few months in prison for two of those involved. It was all about breaking
down the taboos of society.
If some of the art of the 1960s, like the Fluxus style of happenings (picked up from a
similar movement in the US), was theatrical and more like performance on an impromptu
stage, Actionism took a more extreme form and covered a broad spectrum. Some of it
was masochistic, self-abasing or employed blood rituals. At the hard-core end of the
spectrum a picture might be produced in an orgy of dramatics with colour and materials
being splashed and smeared collectively from various bodily cavities while the artists as-
cended into ever-higher states of frenzied ecstasy. At the more harmless end, a few
people might get together and squirt some paint.
Actionism doesn't lend itself to the formal gallery environment. Some of it has been
caught on video - salad-smeared bodies, close-ups of urinating penises, that sort of thing
- and is often presented in Vienna's MUMOK (Museum Moderner Kunst). The Uni-
Ferkelei action survives only in a few photographs and a couple of minutes of film foot-
age. Günter Brus (b 1938), one of the participants, was convicted of 'denigrating an Aus-
trian symbol of state'. His colleague of the day, Oswald Wiener (b 1935), is now an au-
thor and respected academic who went on to win one of the country's most prestigious
literary prizes. Meanwhile, Hermann Nisch (b 1938), who staged theatrical events in the
early 1960s based on music and painting and leaned heavily on sacrificial or religious
rituals, has advanced to become Austria's best-known contemporary Viennese Actionist.
His work can be found in Vienna's MUMOK, the Lentos Museum in Linz and in St Pöl-
ten's Landesmuseum.
