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shut up and listen! 2021

 

Transdisziplinäres Festival für Musik und Klangkunst

 


 

   
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Freitag, 10. Dezember 2021, ~20:40

Katarina Balunova

Habsburger | House of Culture | Periphery Of The History / History On The Periphery — Videos

Artist Talk + Video Presentation


[Katarina Balunova: Habsburger | photo: artist]

[Katarina Balunova: Habsburger]

 

Habsburger

video performance, 2020, 3.25 min

The work reflects consumer behaviour in tourism. Consumer behaviour involves certain decisions, activities and ideas that are supported by tourism marketing. In Vienna, the legend of Empress Elisabeth, called Sisi, is largely supported by tourist offices. Elisabeth has gone down in history as an empress of eternal youthfulness and beauty. On the other hand, she has made no other major contribution to Europe and hardly expressed any political opinions in the final decades of her life. Habsburger is a link between the burger as a symbol of consumption and the popular portrait of Sisi, the Empress of the Habsburg monarchy. The performance creates a new relationship between the monument, and the visitor. It was execute at the famous statue of Elisabeth in the Volksgarten park with the unsolicited participation of several groups of Asian tourists. The transfer of body weight to burgers under the shoe of the statue of the Empress expresses submission to tourist consumption.

House of Culture

video performance, 2020, 2.49 min

The video captures a performance of the (amateur) yoga exercise Greeting to the Sun in front of the former House of Culture in the small city of East Slovakia, Spisska Nova Ves. The building, built in 1987 by architects Ivan Slameň and Branislav Somor, is an important architectural monument of late modernism. Built as a place for the "cultural" promotion of the communist regime, is now falling into disrepair and is becoming a mosaic of disparate business activities, from a Chinese supermarket to Cubano Café. The performance responds to the situation of general globalization and asks when the sun will rise for the culture of Slovakia and, more specifically, for the Spis region, where I come from.


Periphery Of The History / History On The Periphery

video, 2019, 2.47 min

The video is a record of discarded statues from the period of socialism, which were moved from the centre to the periphery - from Kosice city to the outskirts of Saca. The statues express the transformation of the political situation and as a symbol of power become a symbol of helplessness against historical development. The video captures nature's indifference to political significance, the everyday ordinary day in the countryside. The sounds of the bells symbolically end the epoch of one dystopia.


Katarina Balunova

Katarina Balunova (1981) is a cosmopolitan human-animal contemporary artist dealing with the theme of utopia, habitat, personal mythology, oscillation between the past and future. She works in a wide range of mediums such as painting, installations, performance, video and poetry. In 2015 she was selected to participate in the 6th Beijing International Art Biennale (National Art Museum of China). In 2015 and 2017, she was nominated for the Bloom Award by Warsteiner, Cologne, Germany. In 2017 she was selected to attend the symposium Mark Rothko 2017 (Mark Rothko Art Centre, Daugavpils, Latvia). In 2019 she received the National Martin Benka Prize for Fine Arts. In 2020 she was selected for the 2nd Dafen International Oil Painting Biennale, Shenzhen, China. Lives in Bratislava, Slovakia.

https://www.katarinabalunova.com