THE PARENTS’ BEDROOM SHOW
opening 08.05.2019
dates 09.05.2019 – 31.07.2019 | EXTENDED 01.09.2016 – 30.10.2019
The project THE PARENTS’ BEDROOM SHOW by Elisabeth von Samsonow and Juergen Teller, curated by Christian Bauer, Artistic Director of the State Gallery of Lower Austria, deals with the architecture of time involved in the practice of the performing art. The exhibition is presented by Zuecca Projects and the PhotoPhore.
The show is based on Samsonow’s performance “The Parents’ Bedroom Show“, realized in Munich in a public space, that deals with the tension between the public and the intimate, and gravitates around the Freudian fantasy of the Urszene, “primal scene”. The parents’ bedroom appears as a crossroad for individual and collective histories/ biographies. It is supposed to be the origin of the Will to Knowledge.
As the performance is a time-based event cutting the edge of time and projecting it into a non-ritual space of density and meaningfulness, photography produces singularities of an absolute past that becomes perennial.
From the Elisabeth von Samsonow series, Munich 2018. Courtesy of Juergen Teller. All rights reserved
Juergen Teller takes part in the project, not as the photographer who just archives the performance, but as a partner in crime who permits us to experience the performance even after the end of its live-acting, re-proposing that act in a different time, manipulating and inverting the ordinary time’s life-death-vector through the medium of photography.
As there is a constitutive link between performance and modes of archiving it, like photography and video, the show makes explicit how this link has to do with manipulations/recreations/artistic resettings of time.
Courtesy of Elisabeth von Samsonow
THE PSYCHOPOLITICAL SOUVENIR SHOP
Elisabeth von Samsonow (action), Ida-Marie Corell (sound) and Ebadur Rahman (camera)
In cooperation with THE DISSIDENT GODDESSES’ NETWORK / Contemporary Prehistories, Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna
The performance for the opening of “The Parents’ Bedroom Show” deals with the affective-commercial dimensions of everyday-life things and artifacts (such as tiny goddesses’ statues, copies of the Venus of Willendorf).
Laying out decks of these objects and reading their meaningfulness like through an ikebana liturgy, the performer proceeds interacting with the public to which these objects are explained, offered or sold. The action alternates moments of presentation, explanation, interrogation and destruction. The things are designed to tie together history, memory, affection, as a play of gain and loss. The performer (Elisabeth von Samsonow) is densely decorated with different stuff, giving her the appearance of a slow-motion souvenir shop – or an archaeological archive. Things and words merge and mismatch, pointing out fate and freedom in the process of (de)archiving.
Elisabeth Von Samsonow, The Parents’ Bedroom Show, 2018. Video still. Courtesy of the artist
First picture: Elisabeth Von Samsonow, The Parents’ Bedroom Show, 2018. Video still. Courtesy of the artist
Elisabeth von Samsonow & Juergen Teller
THE PARENTS’ BEDROOM SHOW
Curated by Christian Bauer, Artistic Director of the State Gallery of Lower Austria
Under the auspices of the Governor of Lower Austria, Johanna Mikl-Leitner,
and the German Ambassador to Austria H.E. Dr. Johannes Haindl
Presented by Zuecca Projects and the PhotoPhore
With the kind support of Federal Chancellery, Vienna; Bavarian State Ministry for Science and Arts, Munich; Kultur Niederösterreich; State Gallery of Lower Austria, Krems; Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Vienna; TAXISPALAIS Kunsthalle Tirol, Innsbruck; THE DISSIDENT GODDESSES’ NETWORK, Vienna.
Special thanks to Galerie Andrea Jünger, Vienna; Christine König Galerie, Vienna; Galerie nächst St. Stephan, Rosemarie Schwarzwälder, Vienna; Hausbrandt Trieste 1892 S.p.A, Trieste.
Location: Spazio Ridotto, Calle del Ridotto 1388, San Marco, 30124 Venice
Public Opening: May 8, 2019 | h. 6.00 pm with live performance THE PSYCHOPOLITICAL SOUVENIR SHOP
Dates: May 9 – July 31, 2019 | h. 10.00 am – 6.00 pm | Free entry | EXTENDED 01.09.2016 – 30.10.2019
Press kit and pictures: drive.google.com