LUST:Wandeln


Installation, 2015
kunstGarten Graz

LUST:Wandeln deals with the interaction of cultural (back-)grounds and the human, female body shifting human embodiments to cultural embodiments, shifting nature to culture. It shows the process of cultivating nature and makes the remaining gap – between nature and culture – to be experienced, especially for the female body. Following a bourgeois culture of “enlightment” as a political instrument to cultivate the nature of the body is made to be felt by the expressive communication of the body and it’s sound: The Waltz. The origin of the waltz is a game of lust, done by two bodies, as a folkdance at the “Wiesnfest” waltzing themselves, waltzing round and round and round… Cultivating those impropriety it was transferred to the parquet of the “salon” by this way the hedonic body was restricted. It was argued by the uncultivated lust of the female body. Text: Doris Jauk-Hinz / Irmi Horn

Photo: Julian Jauk Photo: kunstGarten

The garden is a constantly changing scene of nature and culture, a cultural ground between natural design and artificial feasibility. The soil itself functions as a carrier of cultural footprints and bears the traces of civilising forms of design - both in the exterior of the designed garden and in the interior of buildings. The significance of soil for the human body is evident in our everyday language, but also in its physical use. Metaphorically speaking, idioms refer to the relationship of the human being to the physical as well as cultural soil and thus denote social trapping. Statements such as "stay on the ground / lose the ground under your feet / sink into the ground" or "venture onto smooth parquet / slip on smooth parquet" address deviations from coded behaviour. Often in the conflict between nature and culture, however, the floor is also a terrain of desire, for example in the form of dancing. For example, the waltz, which originally originated in folk culture and was also danced in the open air on the meadow, exploded social conventions. Closeness to the body and ecstatic, wildly rolling rotary movements were frowned upon and forbidden on the dance floor of high culture ballroom dancing. At the end of the 18th century, Marianne Ehrmann* railed in southern Germany against a dance that was immoral and so dangerous to health:„giebt es wohl einen scheußlichren unvortheilhaftren Anblik, als den eines vom Tanz erhizten, von Sinnlichkeit glühenden weiblichen Gesichts? Die Augen ragen aus ihm hervor, sie bekommen violette Ringe, oder glänzen grell und fürchterlich, ein Schweißtropfen jagt den anderen über die verzerrten in Unordnung gebrachten Gesichtszüge hinab. Der weibliche zur Sanftmuth geschaffene Blik bekömmt etwas wildes, lüsternes, sinnliches, der Stimme fehlts am Athem, dem Ton an süsser Harmonie, den Gliedern an Kräften“. …“Was nicht oft für eitle eroberungssüchtige Grimassen, für unsittliche Bewegungen und Blikke, besonders bei dem häßlichen Schwäbischen Walzer, was für lächerliche Geberden und Drehungen, die der schönen, einfachen Natur Hohn sprechen, erblikt man nicht oft bei den Tanzenden?“ *Marianne Ehrmann (1755-1795), actress, authoress, journalist, publisher of Amaliens Erholungsstunden Schwäbischer Walzer, an early form of the Waltz.

Opening, September 2015 Photo: kunstGarten, Julian Jauk, Helga Ibekwe-Schatzig

Thanks to: kunstGarten, Graz / Tischlerei Niegelhell, Graz / Meyer Parkett, Kalsdorf