Autoperforationsartisten

Dionysos, installation/performance 1985, still from the S8-film


Autoperforationsartisten, an art group founded by Micha Brendel (b 1959), Else Gabriel (b 1962), Volker (Via) Lewandowsky (b 1963), Rainer Görß (b 1960) at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste, Dresden (GDR).
Slightly inclined towards the animal, they attracted attention above all by their opposition to the curriculum and methods of GDR art world. The group broke up in 1991 as a result of increasing individual work by the artists and decreasing pressure from the country's political system.

In 1987 Via Lewandowsky produced a film version of the performance «Heart Horn Skin Shrine», staged by the autoperforation artists as their concluding work in the Stage Set Section at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste (College of Visual Arts) in Dresden.

The film is a documentary sampler of a few scenes from the absurdist play. The interest of sympathizers was so great that, between October 1987 and March 1988, the group toured the cities of Leipzig, Halle, Dresden, and Berlin with it. The artists accompanied the film by producing moronic sounds that worked even connoisseurs into a sweat.
small pictures from malMal, 1986 & Panem et Circenses, 1988

Christoph Tannert wrote: «Certainly no [other] film in the country of the
‹little white dove of peace› was ever fiddled together with so much morbid maximalism, imagined violence, and paranoid mood background.»




Dionysos, installation/performance 1985, still from the S8-film

Many other filmworks from this area had never been shown in public.
Directors Lounge will screen 5 pieces in world premiere as part of our saturday-screening "In Bewegung" during Figures of motion at the Plueschow Lounge.