Brus

I must say, I really did not know what to expect with this book. I came across it while searching the Atlas Press website (I often use them for their willingness to publish marginal writings and writers which unfortunately don't get translated into English very often) and dear god it was a trip. These men really did some spectacular things for the realm of art, however controversial their actions may be. Like the groups name suggests, one is not going to find their actual art in this anthology. Rather, it is a (in my opinion) very well crafted montage of public reviews, police reports, court transcripts, aritsts reflection, action scripts, still photos and minor theoretical considertions of the artists themselves. The construction is reminiscent of Levy's Wisconsin Death Trip and the eiditors at Atlas Press really did a spectacular job that stands on its own as worth the experience whether you agree with the aesthetic of these artists or not.

What I found the most poignant within their work itself was their attempt at dissolving the barrier between the artist and the work of art. To have the artwork be not an end product, something that went beyong the abstract expressionists of the time and transcended aesthetics into an ascetic, tactile experience. The eccentric, sado-masochistic social assaults of Brus, the excesses of Meuhl and his commune, the mysticism and depravity of Nitsch. It really is incredible how they expressed their art through negative actions to create something as undeniable as the air you breath. Schwarzkogler though is the one I think who is the most worthy of aesthetic consideration (who unfortunatley has the smallest section given his short life). Whereas the previous three focused more on the Dionysian, psychological, expatiating aspect of their actions, they offen lost themselves and thus their work within the desensitised crowds. Schwarzkogler on the other hand aimed to aestheticize life in a way I find magical, through mastery of the Apollonian and form for the sake of harnessing an expression that exploded the necessities of representation in the work for the work would be the thing to be represented and thus make manifest a little creation that existed not as something to contemplate but as something that physically assaulted the spectator and was a tactile, transformative, transgressive expression.

I could probably ramble on here for much longer but the best thing I could say is to read this book. I would be the first to agree that some of it loses sight with the idea that it is creating art, even if it is art as life, and gets cuaght up in pseudo-metaphysical ideas that, although progressive at the time, are simply no longer able to be entertained (at least not if one is interested in moving foreward from HERE rather than bastardising the achievements of these artists by trying to move back THERE).

One last thing: if you have read this book you are probably left wanting to see an actual performance. Well, you can. Every now and again a person uploads a video from one of these men that hopefully you can catch before its pulled down. The only videos I have been able to find are by Nitsch. There are clips of an action he recently did in 2009 which are decent enough, but I think lose touch with his original ideas. There is though a 1969 clip of his "Maria Conception" on YouTube that is, quite frankly, the most intense 7 minutes I have ever watched. I have always had a love of gore and horror movies, but wow, there is such a world of a difference between entertaining the idea of horror in entertainment and watching this piece. Its incredible and terrifying. Im still not quite alright since I've watched that video (which I had to do several times in a row just to be satisfied)… (mais)

[Originally published in The Wire magazine, January 2000. This version is as written prior to editing and therefore may not exactly match the published version]

It was half a century before the advent of "Viennese Aktionism" that an art movement inspired the following press comment: "They are men possessed, outcasts, maniacs, and all for love of their work. They turn to the public as if asking its help, placing before it the materials to diagnose their sickness". That was Zurich Dada, although the activities of the Aktionists in the mid-60s merit much the same summary.

It's unlikely, however, that the Dadas could have even imagined the excesses that the Aktionists would get up to. The four artists documented here have achieved extensive notoriety outside the German-speaking world, although they were only some of the Austrian artists engaged in an unprecedented expansion of art beyond painting through performance into a radical confrontation with the body.

Günter Brus had left behind action painting for a more dramatic art painting his own body. His quest for an analytical mono-drama led to one performance where he cut his skin with a razor blade, urinated, shat, vomited and masturbated. His close ally Otto Muehl's group performances were more consciously concerned with the breaking of social taboos rather than self-exploration, leading Muehl ultimately to quit art and form a commune dedicated to constant creativity and free love.

Hermann Nitsch is perhaps the best known of the four, having conscientiously developed his Orgies Mystery Theatre for over than three decades. Nitsch's public spectacles employ noise music, communal feasting and re-invented Dionysian blood rituals. Rudolph Schwarzkogler has on many occasions been the most misunderstood. His photos of himself and colleagues bloodied, bound and bandaged have a sense of staged detachment that the others only rarely sought.

Malcolm Green's translation of their original writings (combined with a thought-provoking introduction, and many photos and reproductions of original documentation) provides the opportunity to view Aktionism with far less of the myth, half-truth and bias that usually accompanies reportage of the work. Schwarzkogler's recipes offer insight into his fastidious perfectionism, his search for objectivity in ritual. In some of the most insightful material in the book, Nitsch's writings provide an antidote to the reductionist summaries of his performances that often appear elsewhere. His own descriptions of their relationship to Christian symbolism, Jungian and Freudian psycho-analysis, sexual imagery, alchemy, Greek myth and much more, emphasis the complexity and openness to reinterpretation of all the Aktionist work.

Psychiatric and police reports show that despite their occasional claims Muehl and Brus were greatly interested in the public reaction to their work, and remind us of its political dimension. Muehl's conviction for whipping a consenting masochist rehearsed some of the issues of Britain's more recent Spanner case, but its context as art begs the question of whether the Aktionist assault on propriety and authority was more or less effective because of its aesthetic framing.

It's easy in many of Muehl's pieces to discern the sexual arrogance that, decades afterwards, would see him take an increasingly authoritarian role within his commune (he was convicted for rape of minors in 1990). Despite this, he was always the most humorous and satirical of the four. His Rules For Selecting Art College Professors seek to replace favouritism by meritocracy: candidates would be awarded points for the weight of their penis and beauty of their turds.

The journey made by the Aktionists in the mid-60s offered a blueprint for many other performers and artists to come. Coum Transmissions, the group who later formed Throbbing Gristle, owed a conscious debt to all the Aktionists, and displayed a similar rejection of Fluxus-inspired tomfoolery in favour of highly personal body art. Genesis P-Orridge's later creation of the pseudo-cult Temple Ov Psychick Youth, and his exile from Britain amidst (hysterical) accusations of child abuse mirrored Muehl's uneasy history.

Nonetheless, the desire to achieve self-determination through the transgression of social norms has rarely been pursued with the conviction that the Aktionists brought to the task. They touched a raw nerve in Austrian society, receiving hate mail that frequently contained responses far more obscene and violent than anything in their own art. Their importance to a contemporary tradition long concerned with dissolving the boundaries between art and life is enormous, and this compendium of their own views ensures that the ambiguity, humour and diversity of their work comes to the fore.… (mais)