May 30 to July 4
Josef Dabernig/Deimantas Narkevičius
Rules of the Game
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The nice thing about football is the way it lets us legitimately enjoy forgetting. Germany, a Summer Fairytale, reminded us of this fact in 2006. “We are European champions” was the headline already chosen months in advance of the Euro 2008 cup by an economically faltering Austrian state that is nonetheless in love with itself. This June, while several teams vie for the title in a stadium that’s just as impressive as its financing is uncertain, located just a few meters from the Kunstraum, we will be showing “Wisla” by Josef Dabernig, a football film devoted to those phantasms peculiar to the ideologically inflated sporting event. In the prelude to the WM 2006, however, a darker side of this kind of event was discussed intensively and campaigned against – forced prostitution and trafficking in women, a parallel economy to the populace-uniting spectacle of sport. With the film “Matrioskos” by Deimantas Narkevičius, we present an
artistic reflection not only on this shadow economy, but also on the way the mass media relish these realities accompanying football. What unites the two films is an artistic contemplation on the relationship of “authentic” to “staged” images and on the irresistible desire to repeat the same images again and again.
Josef Dabernig
Wisla
A 1996 | 16mm auf on DVD | 8min
Two performers, in the roles of coach and assistant coach of a football team, follow the progress of a fictitious “crucial” match. They are in an empty stadium, the only figures captured by the camera, which records the significant gestures of the protagonists. As a naked visual atmosphere, the empty Wisla Stadium in Krakow contrasts with original sound recordings from two Series A football matches played at the Stadio Friuli in Udine. Proceeding from this contrast, a complex principle of duality expands into several different levels: from the differences apparent in the two character studies to the dialectic of scenic apathy and an aggressive-dynamic correlative in sound, from the gaping emptiness of the stadium, as a document of a rundown socialist facade and its ironic reversal into a quasi representational stage. The sparing yet effective gestures of the actors serve as a catalyst for patterns of action, which take on meaning within the framing context of a football match. As such, they become a metaphor for social behaviour, an ambivalent expression of power and powerlessness. (Josef Dabernig)
Director, Script and Production: Josef Dabernig | Camera: Thomas Baumann | Editing and Sound: Josef Dabernig, Martin Kaltner | Cast: Josef Dabernig, Martin Kaltner – Emil Brix, Jerzy Fedorowicz, Ludwik Mietta-Mikolajewicz, Rembert Schleicher
Josef Dabernig, born 1956 in Kötschach-Mauthen, is a visual artist and a filmmaker based in Vienna. His films such as “Wars”, “Jogging” or “Lancia Thema” are shown regularly at film festivals. In 2003 Dabernig showed his work at the 50th Biennial of Venice. Solo shows (selection): Galerie im Taxispalais, Innsbruck (2006) Bunkier Sztuki, Krakow; Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst, Leipzig (2005); Grazer Kunstverein (2004); BAK – basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht (2003); Contemporary Art Center, Vilnius (2002); Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin (1997); Secession, Vienna (1992)
Deimantas Narkevičius
Matrioskos
2005 | Video | 24min
“Matrioskos” is a documentary style video that is in effect a re-enactment of a fictional story. Three professional actresses, who took part in a commercial TV project “Matriojskas” produced by VTM in Belgium, are re-telling the scenario of that film, as if it was biographical. The fictional story, “based on a true story,” is presented as a documentary following the experience of three individuals. The project questions the imbalance between fictional narrative and documentary practice in contemporary popular media.
Deimantas Narkevičius, born 1964 in Vilnius, lives and works in Vilnius.
Solo Shows (Selection): Index, Stockholm; Mücsarnok Kunsthalle, Budapest (2007); Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst, Leipzig; GB Agency, Paris; Bunkier Sztuki, Kraków (2006); Akademie der Künste, Berlin (2005); Gallery Foksal, Warsaw (2004); Münchner Kunstverein, Munich (2002). Group Shows (Selection): Skulptur Projekte Münster 07, Münster; 52nd Venice Biennial; 53rd International Short Film Festival Oberhausen (2007); Prospectif cinéma, Centre Pompidou, Paris; The 6th Gwangju Biennale 2006; “We all laughed at Christopher Columbus”, Platform, Istambul (2006); “Time and Again”, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; “Europa”, Film and Video from the centre of Europe, Tate Modern, London (2005).