ephemeropteræ 2012/10 – Ines Doujak, Ruth Noack

– Andean sillero (seat carrier) from Eduoard André's América equinoccial, Barcelona1884. The Indian-Investigator-Machine visiting TBA21–Augarten

During the long-term and ongoing artistic research into Andean textiles and their connection to the world—Lommshuttles, Warpaths—the figure of the investigator was created, to explore and subvert conceptions of the researcher in the ethnographic and artistic world in the course of the centuries, which started with medieval phantasies. In a reversal of roles, made hypervisible by a costume that plays with notions of the alien gaze, the phantasm returned from Europe to South America, in an attempt to reformulate the image archives that have, and still define highly asymmetrical, iconographical relationships. In February 2011, a workshop around the concept of masquerade was held by the investigator in La Paz with a group of masked shoe shiners. A song was composed and a performance developed that was presented at the Museo de Etnografía y Folklore in La Paz. Starting from the museum, the researcher then travelled through Bolivia, the journey being documented on film.

In Vienna the investigator appears with part of her perverse community: the wandering and murmuring K2 mountain and an Indian automat, carried on her back. This appendix puppet whines, sings, screams, nags, complains, insults, theorizes and laughs while halluzinating a crossing of the Andes. In the face of the investigator’s silence its monologue encompasses notions of travel, strange encounters, monsters, the history of the conquered, différance, the “contact zone” and states of emergency.

The appearance is enabled by Markus Wörgötter, inventor and builder of the automat; the voice and acting of John Barker; sound engineering by Blickpunkten / Blickpunktfilm, Michael Jellasitz; sound equipment for the automat by Peter Kulev; the constructor of the mountain Vitali Lesan; Lena Hofmann who is the mountain, Evelyn Steinthaler and Fahim Amir who act as plants; Sandra Sekanina who produced the investigators outfit and as always, Helga Weber. The choreography was made by Markus Wörgötter and Ines Doujak. Translation from Spanish into English of José Maria Arguedas was done by Rosa Nogues. John Barker was proofreading the text, which was written by Ines Doujak, who also designed the figure of the investigator and is project leader of Lommshuttles, Warpaths, a research supported by the FWF Austrian Science Fund, AR 19-G21. Thanks to Pussy Obermayr, Rita Mullholand, and Claudio.

– My Mary Kelly lecture

What is clear from the outset is that Mary Kellys re-performances are closely connected to a desire for a political and personal activated present and presence. Noacks’s lecture seeks to understand her operation.

Ruth Noack is a German art theorist and historian, critic, curator, lecturer and author with roots in the feminist theories, and is engaged with film, interdisciplinarity, politics / power, gender, sensuality, etc. She was the co-curator of documenta 12 together with Roger M. Buergel and has taught at the University of Vienna, the University of Applied Arts (film theory) and the University of Lüneburg. She has published numerous texts in various media (springerin, Texte zur Kunst, EIKON, etc.).