'Bohemian Lobotomy'
K2 Aufbau Organisation (k2ao and Stephan Dillemuth)
Artists Cinema, Frieze Art Fair
Curated by Ian White
Sunday 15th October, 2006
In the Frieze Art Fair Artists Cinema this year curator Ian White invited a strong thread of artists and film-makers who could be considered to be experimenting with expanded cinema. K2 Aufbau Organisation -an artists' collective based in Munich- used both video and performance in their presentation - including pre-shot footage of themselves in a performative scenario, interviews they had conducted, historic footage and live action. 'Bohemian Lobotomy' is a critical examination of "the impact of 'lifestyle' as the new ideology of self-fulfilment", investigated through the prism of the early 20th century Munich Bohemia (artists, writers, and disenchanted people who wished to live outside of conventional mores) which brought on a short-lived revolutionary government - the Munich Soviet Republic. They explain:
"At the turn of the 19th century, Munich had the most vigorously booming art market and was in competition with Paris for the coolest place to be a bohemian. Art Nouveau, the Cosmic Circle, Aesthetic Fundamentalism and a lively cabaret scene were the pus-filled pimples on the face of the empire of the day (the Wilhelminian Reich). Some of these activities were perhaps no more than cosmetic irritations, whilst others, purposely or otherwise, contributed to the venomous flow that poisoned most of the brains in Europe. And then, after the common man realised that carnage was no fun and militarism and nationalism went out of fashion in the autumn/winter season of 1918 – then it happened: a group of artists and intellectuals succeeded in introducing a homemade soviet republic -peacefully. So anarchy ruled for a few months – but eventually the bloodbath resumed and the rotting corpses of workers and artists, this time involuntarily, made Munich a fertile ground for more disasters to come."
The motion-image and performative investigations of both histortical and contemporary conditions are bookended by interviews they conducted at both the Frieze Art fair and the famous Munich Oktoberfest beer festival which occurs the month before. An abridged version here follows:
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Credits
Image capture and editing: Marcus Werner Hed and Jeremy Valander
Editorial assistance: Jenny Campbell-Colquhoun
Thanks to: Ian White, Stephan Dillemuth, k2ao, Polly Staple
