MANUFACTURING TODAY
Austellunsbeteiligung
Studierende der Abteilung Bildhauerei & transmedialer Raum nehmen unter der Leitung von Eva Grubinger an der Ausstellung MANUFACTURING TODAY in Trondheim teil. beteiligte Studierende:Sarah Decristoforo, Christian Öhlinger und Richard Nikl Projektbeschreibung:
’Five Serbs’ (2010)
Eva Grubinger in collaboration with Sarah Decristoforo, Jakob Neulinger, Richard Nikl, and Christian Öhlinger.
The exhibition project ’Manufacturing Today’ instigated by Trondheim Art Academy aims to initiate a critical debate on the interrelations between contemporary art, art education and society at large. International artists were chosen, most of whom are, at the same time, working as teachers. Some of them were invited to contribute individual works, while the contribution of Eva Grubinger is a group work achieved with some of her students.
The sculpture ’Five Serbs’ reflects the stance of the department of Sculpture-Transmedial Space, in opposing a reduction of the mediation of artistic practices to a neutral preoccupation with form, material and space, rather to incorporate its economical, ideological and communicative implications. The decision to work with the history of the exhibition venue – a submarine bunker from the National Socialist period – is also linked with this year's topic of the department – ’Closed Society’.
Dora 1 and Dora 2 are two major submarine bunkers which were built during World War II as part of the so called `Atlantic Wall` by the German occupying forces. The building works were executed by Organisation Todt Einsatzgruppe Wiking and the Munich based building company Sager & Wörner using huge numbers of forced labourers from all over Europe.
Anthony Vidler quotes Sigmund Freud in his book The Architectural Uncanny: “The uncanny is something which should have stayed in secrecy, but stepped forward“. Urban legend claims that hundreds of dead bodies - forced labourers who fell off the scaffolding due to exhaustion, or who were drowned by the guards - are buried in the walls of the bunker. What seems proven is that five Serbian forced labourers died in the wet concrete.
The wall-like, minimalistic work consists of a wooden underconstruction (ca. 800 x 230 x 45 cm), which is covered by a black, stretchable textile skin. From inside the elastic skin, three cyrillic letters пет – forming the Serbian word for five – step out into the elastic slick surface. Despite their abstraction they evoke associations of the hidden tragedies in the walls of the bunker.
’Five Serbs’ is a site-specific installation: a temporary memorial and an uncanny, frightening glimpse of time from within the momentous events of history inscribed forever in this indestructible building. Text.pdf Ausstellungsankündigung
