Günter Brus

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.

Introduces the films ‚Körperanalysen’ (body analyses), an overview of Actionism movies from 1964-1970 (a. o. Kurt Kren, Otto Mühl, Ernst Schmid Jr.), compiled and presented in a documentary format by Peter Kasperak.

A collection of shorts by Kurt Kren. Some are based on performaces by Viennese Actionists such as Günter Brus and Otto Mühl.

A casual, personal portrait of Hermann Nitsch, made with footage I took over the many years of our friendship. Footage includes early performances in New York, images of Hermann shortly after the acquisition of the Prinzendorf monastery, which since has become his main space of activity. You also see Hermann with his Vienna, New York, and Napoli friends, Peter Kubelka, Raimund Abraham, Gunther Brus, George Maciunas, Giuseppe Morra, and others.

A short documentary on Arnulf Rainer, famous for overpainting portraiture presenting the "face farce" concept.

About a group of graduates from Cambridge University who go back to their college to visit a friend who has stayed on there. Otto Muehl founded a community of artists in Vienna in 1970 with the aim of exploring a completely free life practice. Since 1972, this society experiment at the Friedrichshof in Burgenland, 60 kilometers from Vienna, further developed. From the mid-1970s, other municipalities were founded in 30 European cities. At Friedrichshof itself lived at times up to 240 members and visitors.

He ended the period of creating works exclusively using the body as a medium with the “Zerreissprobe” (Breaking Test) in 1970. His 43rd Aktion was the last and at the same time the most radical of his analyses of self-painting and self-mutilation. In it, Günter Brus actually carried out the injury that had previously often only been intimated by cutting along the back of his head with the razor blade in front of the public. Physical pain was thus not only suggested or acted out by the artist but actually experienced.

The 2 minute artistic cut by Ed and Irm Sommer of the 10-minute material action by Günter Brus that he performed as a prelude to Hermann Nitsch’s ‘7th Abreaktionsspiel’. Günter Brus, dressed in women’s underwear, cries out, puts his feet into a bucket full of some liquid, writes on the floor with chalk and scarifies his upper legs.

Kren had composed a diary-like piece containing subtle irony with his 27/71 Auf der Pfaueninsel (On Peacock Isle). The lengthy titles which are one minute long, in which five people are ceremoniously introduced, are followed by only twenty seconds of pictures. These pictures, filmed by Kren have a wobbly quality to them, as the camera surreptitiously looks from far off at a group of people walking away. "Family movie" is the bracketed subtitle of this film.

The 7 minute archival cut by Peter Gorsen of the 10-minute material action by Günter Brus that he performed as a prelude to Hermann Nitsch’s ‘7th Abreaktionsspiel’ on February 28, 1970, in Aktionsraum 1 in Munich. Günter Brus, dressed in women’s underwear, cries out, puts his feet into a bucket full of some liquid, writes on the floor with chalk and scarifies his upper legs.

The first six images of Wiener Spaziergang (Viennese Stroll, 1965), for example, are ghoulishly amusing. Painted white, with a jagged slash painted through the middle of his body, Brus takes a walk through Vienna’s historical centre. He is documented walking past smart storefronts and tourist hotspots, is gawped at by fussy locals, and finally booked and firmly rebuked by a stern-faced police officer. The later images are much more troubling. Lying prone, corpselike, on a table surrounded by scalpels, Brus claws at his sludge-covered face and appears to stab himself in the thigh. He eventually falls and drags himself, agonized, across the floor.

A performance in which Gunter Brus writhed on a floor covered in a viscous white paint. Though Brus did not harm himself, violence and damage are everywhere suggested the black painted line dividing his body seems to split him open, sludge-like paint covers his eyes and seeps into his mouth, and a corkscrew ominously points toward his face.

In “Körperanalyse” (Body Analysis) in 1968, the artist (Günter Brus) urinated in front of an audience, cut his skin with a razor blade, and masturbated to the accompaniment of the Austrian national anthem.

‘Kunst & Revolution is a documentation on the famous action known as the “filthy uni mess”, which led to a jury court trial. I only had a few metres of film with me and they were quickly spent, but still the film gives one a rough impression of the events. As a whole mythology quickly arose around the event, I altered the material to counteract this effect (through repetition, and adding other material, for instance from a film about keeping dogs, and my own leftover footage from the Muehl action number 54 ‘Im Freudenauer Wasser’).’ In film 16 of his anthology Ernst Schmidt Jr. documented the actions of Günter Brus, Otto Muehl, Peter Weibel and Oswald Wiener.

Four men, one woman and a cat in a room. The men drink and discuss. Things get a bit violent. The masochist acts out his desires by himself. Random fuss and sex occurs. Suddenly the woman gets her baby to change diapers. Odd things around the child. The cat gets abused. This is Otto Muehl going Fassbinder.

A kind of home movie made in Brus' apartment. Brus' Christmas wishes can be seen on a poster which he painted and which he holds for a short time in front of the camera.

An experimental and bizarre shooting of an association between the sexes.

Four young men affected by psychological motorcar reactions and effluents that get more excited, crazy and freaked out as times passes.

"Action" by Günter Brus. At first Kren did not want to show the film, because the image is underexposed. A copy of the negative material turned out to be better than the original material and so Kren did show the film. The film's title relates to Brus' use of silver paper for his action.

This three-minute film was far more akin to the American-style "happening" in that the content was not particularly extreme. It was built up from items such as broken bicycle parts, a nude model, pieces of furniture, and these elements were then obscured or transformed by having a layer of paint thrown on them.

Kren’s 10/65 Selfmutilation is developed from a Gunter Brus “action”. What the film emphasizes is the surrealistic drama of symbolic self-destruction that Kren drew out of Brus’ action, pacing out each gesture so that one gets a tense, iconoclastic revelation of a man covered in white plaster lying surrounded by razor blades and a range of instruments looking as if they have been taken from an operating theatre. The blades, scissors and scalpels are gradually inserted into him in a ritualistic self-operation. (Stephen Dwoskin)

A collage of many visuals. A man urinates; a man has a drink. A man defecates; someone eats a meal. 16/67 September 20: ‘The Eating Drinking Shitting Pissing Film'.