Jakob Lena Knebl und Markus Pires Mata - Wir sind Henkel

Body builders – these are Austria’s strongest – with lurid body paint will occupy the same space as 1970s Space Age Design vases and lamps. A bizarre tableau vivant that will channel utopian imagery. Jakob Lena Knebl and Markus Pires Mata have created a chamber of fetish that will make it impossible to discern any difference between art and design, object and body, culture and nature. Inspired by Georg Simmel’s essay The Handle (Der Henkel, 1909), this installation and its surface structures will deflect any essentialist identity concepts. In Simmel’s essay, the handle of a cup symbolises the link between art and functionality. But, in the end, the handle is also being regarded as an instruction – the animated object, its materiality and structure permeating reality, because it is “the principle of the handle to mediate between the work of art and the world”.

Wir sind Henkel is based on the previous performance The Style Council, presented at steirischer herbst 2019.