Kasseler KunstVereinsHeim - Program September - Julia Kissina
Friday, September 14, 2007, 8 p.m.
Julia Kissina (D)
"Der Ernste-Kunst-Workshop"
Performance, Happening
In all her works, be they photographs, videos, or happenings, Kissina questions the notion of reality and the principles behind it which we have come to take for granted. She confronts her audience with fictitious stories and outrageous performances. On the occasion of the happening “Pure Pedigree” (2005) in a gallery in Berlin the artist's mother prepared a dinner according to an especially fine recipe the main ingredient of which was dog food. Since 2006 Kissina has carried out happenings entitled “Club der toten Künstler” in which she uses unusual methods of communication to counter the scientific analysis of works of art: famous artists are invoked during a séance and are asked their opinions on questions such as the meaning of life and art. For the Kunstvereinsheim she has conceived a brand new happening: The "Ernste-Kunst-Workshop". Young artists invite the audience to participate in a do-it-yourself art workshop. The audience is asked to be creative. The results of their creative work, objects made of chestnuts and acorns, are then presented in a subsequent exhibition. Artists and art theoreticians put them into the context of contemporary art, accentuating their social and political relevance. This way, an idiotic and less than serious act is given an outstanding and decisive meaning of great symbolic value. In correspondence with Kassel, these “works of art” will be made of the fruits of the oak trees planted by Joseph Beuys in 1982.
Julia Kissina, born in Kiev/Ukraine in 1966, studied art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich and was master student of Prof. Pia Stadtbäumer. Julia Kissina lives and works in Berlin.
Curator: Susanne Jakubczyk
