hoelb / hoeb (AT) Close Link Performance Julius Deutschbauer

34% installation 32% participation 34% illness

The installation “Close Link” by hoelb / hoeb focuses on the extraordinary relationship systems and extreme situations that arise when people find themselves in isolated states of consciousness due to illness. Barbara Hoelbling and Mario Hoeber use an experimental artistic set-up to explore spaces and everyday activities that characterise close relationships to persistent vegetative state patients, to people living with a mental or physical impairment, or to dementia sufferers, demonstrating one’s own feelings rather than those of others. “Close Link” confronts visitors with their own very personal, unexplored relationships, in addition it asks pressing questions regarding the current disposition of society: what do we repress? What situations do we expose ourselves to? How did we get into this?
“Close Link” is devised to be a complex, ever-changing space in the dynamic context of art, interdisciplinary research and social practice. An artistically transformed intensive-care unit gives an insight into very specific medical equipment, questioning the limits of what is technically possible and the relationship between research, economy and public welfare. With the aid of film screenings, interviews, image sequences, objects and a personal dialogue with different experts on location – doctors, scientists, artists are relocating their workplace here for the duration of the festival – “Close Link” pans out a setting that demonstrates relationship systems between individual emotions and social perception and opens up new spaces for action.

Main themes
27/09–29/09
Thomas Macho: “Unruhe bewahren”
The cultural expert and philosopher Thomas Macho has worked with “Close Link” since 2010. He develops new, multi-perspective research methods to investigate the perception of certain painful experiences within the dynamic context occupied by disability. He will open the exhibition and will be working with the people involved on site in the installation during the first weekend.

27/09–29/09 & 04/10–06/10
Chrisdian Wittenburg: “Ute – das Model / meine Freundin”
Ute – das Model / meine Freundin
From 1994 to 1999 Chrisdian Wittenburg worked on various series of pictures with Ute Lorenz, a woman suffering from spastic paralysis.
Discussion: Fri 27/09, Sat 28/09 & Sun 29/09, 15:30

UTE e.V. – a charitable organisation
During Ute’s lifetime, Chrisdian Wittenburg founded the UTE organisation, aimed at carrying out social projects in the area of disability. UTE stages film workshops for children with disabilities and their friends and takes wheelchairs into primary schools so that children can experience them. Chrisdian Wittenburg will be trying to infect Graz with the school project.
Talk: Sat 05/10, 15:30

27/09–29/09 & 04/10–06/10
Julius Deutschbauer: “Schule abgewandten Blicks”
Julius Deutschbauer is working on site at the exhibition. For “Close Link” he will be showing the performance “Meine Schwester – ein zum Gedankenstrich flachgelegtes Ausrufungszeichen” with Ruth Głowacki. Our gazes fail to meet, falling on unknown people, the unknown world: an institute of averted eyes, an academy of misapplied arts. The exclamation mark in the mirror is the sister. Her gaze looks beyond, and not at her.
Performance: Fri 27/09, 19:00 & Sat 05/10, 21:00
“Meine Schwester – ein zum Gedankenstrich flachgelegtes Ausrufungszeichen”

04/10–06/10
Shared-Inc.: “Inklusion / Exklusion”
For a long time now, the Shared-Inc. artists’ collective (Bernd Kräftner, Judith Kröll, Isabel Warner) have focused on (political) issues and diagnostic methods. Shared-Inc. are relocating their “Research Centre for Shared Incompetence” to the exhibition. On site they will be developing their proposals for the implementation of the UN convention on human rights for the inclusion of people with disabilities.

27/09–12/10
transparadiso: “Botendienst Unplugged”
“Botendienst unplugged” focuses on the Close Link project archive together with the “Sharing Desk” situation as an artistic dispositif of hoelb/hoeb. Every weekend the collective will be producing a special edition of a pamphlet linking the content of the archive with contributions from exhibition participants and further questions.

11/10–12/10, 16.00-22.00
David Jagerhofer: “Die Pille, Hostie, in Lutsch-, Kau- oder Schluckform gebrachte Intervention”
David Jagerhofer is based in Vienna and works as an actor, cameraman and editor. During the last weekend of the exhibition, David will be acting as a fiendish pill-monger: weighing, rubbing and mixing, shaking, measuring and stirring, stuffing, wrapping and twisting – but always careful of the dose, because it is of course the dose that makes no difference.

11/10 - 12/10, 14.00-21.00
Haiko Pfost: „Calling Curator“
Performance