khm

The Little Volga Sausage

Das Wolgawürstchen, video tape, actor: Andreas Kunze, 1998, 5 min

The video shows a butcher crossing a derelict backyard, from cold storage house to butcher's workshop and smoking chamber. He is lost in memories, gazes at the rooms, beats the butcher's block with his butcher’s axe, leaves through a family photo album. Suddenly the situation gets out of hand. A naked raw chicken is dangling from the ceiling. He thrashes it.

The video ends in infernal laughter. Then, from the off, the final line: Das Wolgawürstchen.

Das Wolgawürstchen within: Neue Kunst im Hagenbucher, Heilbronn

BEAUTY FARM - Zur Steigerung des Befindens (for the enhancement of the (well-)being)

Curators: Matthias Schamp, Steffen Schlichter

Applications on SATURDAY, 29. SEPTEMBER 2007

The project BEAUTY FARM assembles art work concerned with the position of man in an accelerated world. Its subject is space definition, i.e., the problem of how to assure oneself of ones position and how to achieve this by means of: car, wall, chewing gum, flat iron, excavator scoop, etc. Sometimes, these contributions are close to the skin of the surface, then again far out; they zoom into the depth, survive many a collision and zap into conditions and moods. Diverse media and techniques are utilised: video, action, interaction etc. The relation of body and space is put into focus, sometimes illuminated in a subtle light, sometimes in a glaring blaze. Analogies and contradictions flash up in the close-knit web of the works.

Since 1999, after a period during which it served as a space for performances and installation, the room inside the Hagenbucher has been used as a depot for art - however, whereas usually this deposition is invisible, here this customary, usually latent kind of art practice is open to the view of the public. Objects put into storage, and thus temporarily retired from human use, may be defined as resting: the project BEAUTY FARM is not intended to interfere with this rest, or the space as a whole. It rather co-exists, inasmuch as the happenings take place without any larger-scale interference between and around the stored works of art, which at the same time serve as partitions in the room. Thus BEAUTY FARM works on the principle of the Russian Matrioshka dolls - as an exhibition within an exhibition.