Hermann Nitsch
Acting
Biography
Hermann Nitsch was an Austrian avant-garde artist, known for his controversial performances and paintings. He was a founding member of the Viennese Actionism movement, which sought to challenge traditional art forms through provocative actions. Nitsch's Orgies Mysteries Theatre involved ritualistic performances that often included the use of animal blood and carcasses, aiming to evoke a primal response from the audience. His work has been both celebrated and criticized for its bold exploration of human instincts and societal taboos.
Born: August 29, 1938
Place of Birth: Wien, Austria
Known For
365 Day Project
This exhibition focuses on Jonas Mekas’ 365 Day Project, a succession of films and videos in calendar form. Every day as of January 1st, 2007 and for an entire year, as indicated in the title, a large public (the artist's friends, as well as unknowns) were invited to view a diary of short films of various lengths (from one to twenty minutes) on the Internet. A movie was posted each day, adding to the previously posted pieces, resulting altogether in nearly thirty-eight hours of moving images.
Das Aktionstheater Des Hermann Nitsch Zwischen Herkunft Und Zukunft
A retrospective on Hermann Nitsch, Actionist and painter, composer and stage designer. He is one of the most renowned Austrian artists of today and nevertheless still divides the art world as before. Nitsch belongs beside Günter Brus, Otto Mühl and Rudolf Schwawrzkogler to the most important main actors of Vienese Actionism. At the beginning of the sixties he carried out his first 'Actions' in Vienna, which involved several trials and three terms of imprisonment. His main work, the "Orgy Mystery Theatre", inspired by Greek mythology, as well as by Antonin Artaud or Sigmund Freud, has been introducing, building up and carrying on all art forms since this time. The documentary includes a 4-hour overview of his Actions from 1962-2003, as well as an interview from 2005.
He Stands in a Desert Counting the Seconds of His Life
A film collage tracing the story of the lives, loves, and deaths within the artistic community surrounding Jonas Mekas.
As I Was Moving Ahead, Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty
A compilation of over 30 years of private home movie footage shot by Lithuanian-American avant-garde director Jonas Mekas, assembled by Mekas "purely by chance", without concern for chronological order.
Birth of a Nation
Jonas Mekas assembles 160 portraits, appearances, and fleeting sketches of underground and independent filmmakers captured between 1955 and 1996. Fast-paced and archival in spirit, the film celebrates the avant-garde as its own “nation of cinema,” a vital community existing outside the dominance of commercial film.
Kulturplatz
Documentazione Della Settimana Internazionale Della Performance
“Before the eyes of all, at least of those present, the naked and direct exhibitions of the body take place with all its extensions; but the naked eye of the spectators who circle is promptly doubled by the many mechanical or electronic eyes of the photographic equipment and of the 'cameras' which, with their clicks and their tenacious buzzing, form the background” Renato Barilli
Frauenmuskel
"Frauenmuskel is a jarring and sexually explicit film. Yet, the film holds an important dual sense of mystery that haunts long and after the film is over. Filmed during the Hermann Nitsch action of 1998, the film covers a stroll through the countryside as well as nightly impressions of the stars and clouds above Hermann Nitsch, himself" -Christopher May
Becoming Otto
A portrait of the Austrian avant-garde artist Otto Mühl/Muehl (1925-2013), whose work combined sex, violence, gastronomy and bodily effluence with unbridled abandon.
Nitsch
A short film by Maria Lassnig, shot in 1970.
Filmography
as Self
as Self
as Self - Archival Footage
as Self
as Self (archive footage)
as Himself