"The Legend of the artist"
A break from the creative process – leaning back in the chair, work and sandwich must be digested together. A little distance spreading quickly in a quiet moment:
“What am I doing here?” “Who am I in this context?” “I”, the “artistic I”, the “creative individual”with the exclamation mark and lots of question marks, the artist.
“The Legend of the Artist” is a discursive project whose subjects are the images and imaginations of being an artist. In “The Legend of the Artist” we use artistic and scientific means and methods. In dialogue interventions, conversations, interviews, collections of material, performances, videos, installations and texts we ask for the individual images of the artist and try to put them in their social and conceptual context.
The name for the project comes from the study by Ernst Kris and Otto Kurz published in 1934, which analysis how typical biographical characteristics are combined with the image of the artist. Together with other participants we try to find space for new understandings of the role of the artist. We discover new understandings which escape the excessive individualism and the thinly veiled continuing acceptance of the idea of the partriarchal genius.
In this regard the project “The Legend of the Artist” strives for a practical political effect.
“The Legend of the Artist”, in its various phases, has been occupying us since 2000 in various steps. It accompanys our other work as a possibility to question the artistic acting and its potentials.
Photos: Elisabeth Wörndl