2015
series containing 2 videos and 2 photos
HD
30:40 min, no sound, colour
6:40 min, sound, colour
Expositionen
Autor: admin
stare / room
2015
Julie Flohr, Michael Starmayr, Katharina Zanon
live-performance
Käse- Festival, Linz
30 min
Spare / room standing staring shift the attention from „outside“, a street scene to „inside“, an event space. Separating the starers and the beer-drinking festival visitors inside the event space from each other are the huge shop windows that offer no protection from piercing gazes.
proper
2016
Lina Suenaert, Katharina Zanon
live-performance
Guangzhou
4 h
„Is there a problem, are you okay?“
„Beautiful!“
„The foreigners know how to play (in the meaning of to hang out)!“
In big cities, Chinese people use the pyjama like Europeans use their sportswear. It is common especially for young people to go outside in their best pyjamas for shopping or even to have lunch and dinner in restaurants. Buying extra warm pyjamas for the approaching winter, Suenaert and Zanon are showing their hangover faces without losing them.
photos by Nicolas Contreras
Lost Highway To Hellight, video
2016
Nicolas Contreras, Katharina Zanon
live-performance
video HD
16:44 min, sound, colour
Guangzhou
Two alien artists are construction workers on a half- finished highway.
The highway, facing the village Hong`Anwei was built up to the middle of the Zhujiang river four years ago and has for financial reasons not been finished until now.
Two streets on the bridge look clean and empty. They seem to be perfectly prepared for cars. The artist`s expeditions lead them inside the two underground tunnels that run parallel to the streets. The tunnel entrances are visible for both the workers inside the tunnels and the people outside living in the village. The villagers work as fishermen in the Zhujiang river or as construction workers, who were also involved in building the highway.
Inside the construction tunnels the artists find tools, objects and working clothes that show past working activities. They collect and store them in the area close to the tunnel entrances. Two borders are being raised during the early morning hours, while fishermen are preparing their boats for work and are attentively watching the activities going on in the abandoned highway. The artists wear the worker´s clothes and use the objects they found inside. Only the silhouettes of their with dust masks hidden faces are visible, in the focus is the nebulous village that faces the tunnel exit. One piece after the other, the artists are using metal sticks, wooden panels, cans, brooms and wires to cover the entrances.
The barriers are being raised without concept, the artists have no idea what the outcome might be or if their work is ever gonna be finished. In the same area where workers would continue to build the highway, Contreras and Zanon are marking the area as not legally accessible.
The two Chinese characters forming the word „bridge” are modified and connected. Seen as an image they resemble the half-constructed highway. Contreras and Zanon see themselves as alien, arriving from a different solar system and bumping into the dystopian remains of a policy that is not connected to the needs of planetary inhabitants.
Z
2015
Michael Starmayr, Katharina Zanon
live-performance
Käse- Zentrale, Linz
70 min
Next to a busy street in the center of Linz Starmayr and Zanon take a nap in a bed which they carried from the opposite side of the city. The noise of the honking cars and the hurry of approaching passengers are more intense for the artists, as visual inputs are missing. Still pretending to be asleep, Starmayr and Zanon are being painted, kissed and photographed by viewers. The provoking element of the stubborn non-reacting is shown vividly when two policemen arrive and try to force the artists to wake up by shaking them and opening their eyelids. No reaction makes them try to search for information about the person in charge of this situation in the surroundings of the sleepers.
ZZ
2015
Michael Starmayr, Katharina Zanon
live-performance
Temporäre Halle für Kunst, Linz
3 h
Starmayr and Zanon pretend to be asleep during the opening of the student’s exhibition in the temporary artspace in Linz. The bed is put between entrance and artspace and used as a border. Two legs are outside, the other two are inside the exhibition space. Will the staff put the sleepers aside to ease the exit and entrance for the visitors? If yes, are they gonna be transported inside the exhibition space next to the unbreathing artworks or are they gonna be put outside on the patio?
During the opening speech which is held inside the artspace, Starmayr and Zanon transport the bed to the entrance without being spotted by most of the visitors and go to sleep immediately. There is no way to escape the exhibition without crossing the bed. Either the visitors step over the legs of the sleepers, carefully trying to not disturb them, or they roll over them, jump over the bed using the wooden construction or even find a way crawling through the small gap under the bed. Over and over the visitors try to provoke reactions of the two artists without being successful. Three hours later when the opening is finished, the bed is being transported into the exhibition space when the stuff is cleaning the area and closing the doors.
(u), video
2015/16
live-performances
Tiyu Xilu Station, Guangzhou
Xiaozhou Village, Guangzhou
duration depending on the mood of the Chinese police
Zanon performs (u) unannounced and without inviting audience in public spaces all around China. Some of these places are tourist hotspots, others are streets, parks, metro stations, shopping malls or universities. People surrounding the artist are both locals and tourists. They are either working in the streets, passing by or riding their cars or motorcycles.
In urban summer, the umbrella is a very important object for Chinese women. It protects its owner from heavy rainfalls but is more often used as a protection from sunbeams. Fair skin is a beauty symbol that signalises wealth in the upper class and even leads to better job opportunities. The artist´s outside view of cultural characteristics and habits is made visible for locals by multiplication of a striking element.
A radius of about one meter surrounding a person is in the United States as well as in northern and central European regions defined and most of the time also accepted as the personal space. In the urban areas of China this space is much smaller. Deriving from the need to make that loss visible, the umbrellas are used not only as a symbol for that personal space but also as a physical border.
As a foreigner coming from a European country, Zanon attracts attention on the streets of Guangzhou. In China staring at other people is not seen as impolite and therefore a common habit. The face is the part of the body that´s mainly used to identify the human ethnicity. The umbrellas make the categorization of a foreign appearance possible only for the most courageous persons. A huge amount of curiosity is required from the passer-by to come closer and take a look into the small open parts between the umbrellas.