Kunsthalle Wein to host ' PUNK. No one is innocent '

Written by Brent Gagliano Tuesday, 09 November 2010 15:00

Vienna, Austria - Punk was the last great revolution within a counterculture coded in terms of pop history: the complete overthrow of the sixties’ sign systems, stylistic gestures, and musical forms of expression. Punk has often been misunderstood as an illiterate rebellion from below against the pop aristocracy of that time. It was in fact the complete opposite: the impulse for the three-chord revolt did not come from the working class but from pop intellectuals like Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood who, aware of the 20th century avant-gardes in art, sewed a complex patchwork of visual and acoustic signifiers which spread across the entire Western world like a steppe fire. On view at KUNSTHALLE wien May 16 – September 7, 2008.

From today’s point of view, it is less the actual one-sided musical aspect of punk but rather the play with iconographies and art-immanent
relations that still brings to bear its sustainable influence. Greil Marcus has conclusively argued that the safety pin symbol so omnipresent in punk can be traced back to May 68 posters and the inflammatory visual rhetoric of Situationalism. Equally, the tongue language and hysterical stammer of Johnny Rotten or Mark E. Smith, for example, can be clearly identified as late echoes of Dadaist sound poetry. The visual characterization of punk deals with the dangerous play with totalitarian signs and the chop-chop typography of blackmail letters, as well as the adaptation of pop art traditions and the contemporary re-codification of Letterist instructions.

The exhibition Punk. No One is Innocent seeks to reveal the diverse impacts on the arts in different cultural contexts by focusing on three cities, New York, London and Berlin: while it was primarily a style and fashion phenomenon in England, which gave rise to a typical graphic form of art (Jamie Reid), a close relationship between artists and punk rockers developed in the USA and in Germany from the very beginning, and many artists and filmmakers like Jim Jarmusch, Wolfgang Müller, Nancy Arlen and Salomé were also band members themselves. The exhibition is aimed to demonstrate how punk was above all a revolution of signs that caused a productive irritation with its DIY aesthetics
in the visual sphere. The optical traces of these movements, which have become history for quite some time now, have informed artistic modes of expression to this day and have reached the mainstream of galleries and fashion through Vivienne Westwood, Laurie Anderson and other protagonists.
 
Besides fine arts, the exhibition includes further historical artifacts (flyers, record sleeves, manifestoes, photographic documentations) and characteristic style emblems which, in different variations, still have their effects today. Preliminary selection of artists: Vito Acconci, Laurie Anderson, Elvira Bach, Lynda Benglis, Leigh Bowery, Jörg Buttgereit, Die tödliche Doris, Einstürzende Neubauten, Cerith Wyn Evans, Karen Finley, Futura 2000, Genesis POrridge, Walter Gramming, Richard Hambleton, Derek Jarman, Richard Kern, Martin Kippenberger, Linder, Robert Longo, Ann Magnuson, Robert Mapplethorpe, Malaria/Mania D, Malcolm McLaren, Mark Morrisroe, Tony Oursler, Amos Poe, Richard Prince, Jamie Reid, Christy Rupp, Salomé, Arturo Vega/Ramones, Vivienne Westwood, Stephen Willats, David Wojnarowicz, Bill Woodrow
 
Curator: Thomas Mießgang.  Accompanying catalogue with texts by Christoph Gurk, Thomas Mießgang, Glenn O’Brien and Jon Savage.

KUNSTHALLE wien, office: Museumsplatz 1, A-1070 Vienna - phone: +43-1-521 89-1222 - Website : www.kunsthallewien.at

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