#robertjelinek

PETER GREENAWAY  - I'm always accused of disagreeing with what I said last week - Robert Jelinek (Ed.)

In our lives we usually only ever recognize truth through veils, shrouds, and shadows, as Plato described in his allegory of the cave. More than two millennia later, Martin Heidegger also postulated, “At first, truth is that which is wrested from concealment”. For Peter Greenaway as well, the process of finding truth aims not least at getting to the bottom of a hidden matter by clearing it from the detritus and silt of the torrential current of life. Viewed from this perspective, truth is never a static (e)state, but rather an occurrence of disclosure, an event of liberation – just as how art also remembers, reveals, liberates, and helps us to recognize the essential. Peter Greenaway is neither a film-maker, nor a painter, but rather a conceptual artist who feels obliged to painting and pushes his chosen medium to its limits, thereby permitting us new means of perception and insight. He remains consistently true to this obligation in his films, exhibitions, operas, books, and interviews. His deep and continuous exploration of the filmic medium has led to the creation of incredibly rich images, strongly influenced by Renaissance and Flemish painting and architecture, images which probe the boundaries of provocative eroticism, sexual lust, murder, and death. In Greenaway's oeuvre the limits of the artwork are dissolved in, as it were, a mesh of quotations. He invariably emphasises that it is not the plot of the film that is important, but the semiotic putting-into-the-work of a taxonomic structure. He follows the aesthetic insight that art should not be confused with art, but rather that art is an artificial play with symbolic functions that time and again refer back to art. With Greenaway everything is out in the open. There is a riddle, but no secret. Because this is Greenaway's particular passion, he condenses the film score to a high degree as impetus and organiser in time, and the music of Michael Nyman has served not as emotive commentary, but as an integral structural element in their joint works. Thence results a kind of rule of media history according to which a medium can achieve aesthetically and intellectually relevant application precisely because, and perhaps only when, its “natural” functioning is interrupted by and intersects with the forms of its own pre-history. And that which pertains to the medium and its applications also applies to Greenaway's own life-current along with his artistic consistency. According to his account, he plans to thwart his “natural” functioning through his voluntary death at the age of eighty years old and thereby place himself within the cycle of his own topics and principles. This personal announcement sets Greenaway's oeuvre in yet another light and provides an artistic fuse for new riddles which were elicited from him in the present volume.

DER KONTERFEI 048 / Paperback / English / 60 pages / Limited Edition of 300 / ISBN 978-3-903043-37-4 / April 2019

GOTTFRIED HELNWEIN - Die Macht der Bilder - Robert Jelinek (Hrsg.)    

Fragt man nach einem verlässlichen Seismografen und obsessiven Forensiker unserer tiefsten menschlichen Abgründe, so führt an Gottfried Helnwein kein Weg vorbei. Wie kein Zweiter führt er uns in seinen Bildern seit mittlerweile fünf Jahrzehnten medienwirksam die Auswüchse menschlicher Gewalt vor Augen und konfrontiert uns mit unseren Trieben und Ängsten. Von Beginn seiner Karriere an war Helnwein kontroversiell und provozierte verschiedenste Reaktionen auf seine Werke, die immer an die eigene Realität des jeweiligen Betrachters anschließbar waren und bis heute wahlweise Anziehung oder Ablehnung erzeugen. Er versucht den ein- und ausschließenden Rahmen seiner Bilder lesbar zu machen, um so jene Momente zu kreieren, in denen die Repräsentation von Gewalt in eine Gewalt der Repräsentation umschlägt. Die Einbettung in die Massenmedien als Vierte Gewalt unterstreicht nur seine Praxis. Dabei geht es ihm immer auch um grundsätzliche Fragen: nach der Kunst und ihrer Entstehung, ihrer Lesbarkeit, ihrer Wirkung, ihren Wurzeln und ihren Grenzen. Er sieht sich zwar weder als Schmerzensmann noch als Maler, dennoch benutzt er ohne viel Hang zur Idyllik das klassische Tafelbild und erzeugt ein oppositionell romantisches Lebensgefühl. Durch die immerzu wiederholte Darstellung von Gewalt werden die Opfer nicht verinnerlicht oder mystifiziert, sie fordern vielmehr Kommunikation. Helnwein, dessen ganze Empathie den Kindern gilt, schöpft wie ein scharfer Analytiker aus den Tiefen des Unbewussten. Er verfügt über das visuelle Instrumentarium, eben das zum Ausdruck zu bringen, was einer jeden menschlichen Existenz innewohnt.

ULAY – Don´t read this - Robert Jelinek / Sašo Kalan (Eds.)

Ulay is one of the pioneers of performance art. His practice is not about human alienation, but rather the kind of alienation that captures art and then forms its own identity. Its experience cannot be captured by Ulay -- yet when immanence is grasped, the inner drive, uncontrollable urge, or the "must" become artistically visible as a necessary consequence. The must is Ulay's lifeblood; a driving force and principled approach to draw from himself and his own creativity; something he learned during the course of his life, often involuntarily as a chance to survive. His investigations are directed towards what one could generalize as Conditio Humana, of which there can be expanded and extreme forms, but never a cathartic purification. In fact, the inexorability of most of his performances, in combination with the openness into which the audience is disbanded indicates that Ulay makes a point of denying catharthis in the sense of controlled emotional release. With his work, he mainly sought to find his own identity, which he continues to do today. Second edition.

DER KONTERFEI 042 / Paperback / English / 50 pages / 9,90 € / Limited edition of 300 / ISBN 978-3-903043-31-2 / Release Date: March 2018

ALAIN ROBERT - Defying Conventional Wisdom - Robert Jelinek (Ed.)

Known as “the French Spider-Man,” Alain Robert is famous for his free solo climbing, scaling skyscrapers using no equipment except for a small bag of chalk and a pair of climbing shoes. Robert, who has suffered from epileptic vertigo since his first climbing accident in 1982, is considered to be one of the world's best urban climbers. In the last 25 years he has scaled over 150 of the tallest buildings in the world. Even if the mostly illegal and unsecured free climbing of Alain Robert is an extreme example, his biography shows us that his will and drive are closely connected to the flow effect. This effect naturally demands repetition and intensification. To the actor as thrill-seeker or skill-seeker, this can be permanently formative, and can sometimes cause unease or restlessness. Whether as a cocky risk-taker or responsible-minded daredevil, Robert is still constantly driven to achieving the flow effect and to surpassing it. Robert resembles an unregenerate boy, a dropout who follows only his own rules, but at the same time, he is similar to a top athlete who serves as a role model. Every building climb is a new overcoming, a crossing to himself. Like Friedrich Nietzsche's tightrope walker in Zarathustra, Robert seeks and draws the crowd around himself – he wants to inspire them, to motivate them. Even if Robert is often characterized as an outlaw by the media, his obsessive passion reveals a great deal to us about an already mentally-crippled society that forfeits much of its intuition, its instincts, its courage, and its will on a daily basis, and continues to stagnate. Alain Robert is drawn to the heights by his struggle against nihilism, to free his thinking from resentments, and to surpass himself.

DER KONTERFEI 040 / Paperback / English / 50 pages / ISBN 978-3-903043-29-9 / Release Date: February 2018

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HERBERT NITSCH - Breathing is overrated - Robert Jelinek (Ed.)

The history of humans under the sea has little connection to their history above it. Apnea diving or freediving is the oldest and most primal form of human underwater activity. Thucydides (460-395 BCE) writes of frogmen and combat divers who did battle in the Peloponnesian War. The divers of antiquity, who discovered the absurd secret of a fascinating and otherworldly realm of creation in which reason could no longer triumph over nature's dangerous caprices, were in fact the very first space explorers. Menacing stillness, darkness, and the unbearable pressure of water received them in the depths. Compared to scuba diving, freediving is now a small, specialized scene. In competitive freediving, ever-longer apnea or breath-holding times, and greater depths and distances, are sought through targeted training, which requires disciplined mental and physical practice. What exactly happens to humans under such extreme conditions often remains unexplained by science and medicine. And after the almost-complete exploitation of the earth's oceans, this lack of knowledge seems to be the last remnant of our erstwhile dread of the underwater world. It is the fascination and simultaneous contagiousness of temporarily surrendering oneself to the deep blue sea through personal passion that leads to new mental and physical human accomplishments both underwater and in general. This fully applies to Austrian freediver, Herbert Nitsch, “the deepest man on earth.” Though he never acquired a diver's license, he has set 33 world records in all nine apnea disciplines. He can fill his lungs with 15 liters of air and hold his breath for over nine minutes. In 2012, Nitsch broke his own world record by descending to 253 meters (830 ft), a depth at which even diving watches break. His record remains unbroken, but it led to severe personal consequences. Nitsch suffered multiple strokes, was paralyzed and briefly in a coma, and then had to gradually regain his memory and painstakingly relearn to write, speak, and walk. Yet his will to survive brought this Vienna native back from all that, for he had learned one thing: to never give up.

DER KONTERFEI 039 / Paperback / English / 50 pages / 300 copies / ISBN 978-3-903043-28-2 / Release Date: December 2017

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ARISTIDE ANTONAS – Testing the Ordinary - Robert Jelinek (Ed.) The questions and answers that Aristide Antonas deals with as an greek urban planner and philosopher for his native city will soon have to be tackled throughout Europe as a whole. His meticulous observations in Athens could provide an opportunity to find a way out of our dilemma. Although a modicum of his findings are immediately utilized, implemented, or even built, while being simultaneously questioned, archived, and put up for discussion, his primary mission is the revaluation of precarious locations in public space and their asymmetries, faults, and asynchronicity. He thins out history and its contextuality to shed a particular light on possible future urban processes and settings, exclude the destructive, and to repair the existent, in order to (re-)create value. Within this interplay architecture arises: architecture with ready-made character, based on the participation of the local population, architecture that sets an example for engaging with the city, especially in light of the economic and financial crisis that has plagued it since 2009. From that year, at the very latest, architects around the world have been forced to rethink and reevaluate their professional roles and to expand architecture to include a social dimension. In response to Antonas’s artistic proposition to reconsider the social conditions of living amidst the constraints of the global system, we should not only view it from the proper perspective, but thankfully accept it as our duty.

DER KONTERFEI 038 / Paperback / English / 50 pages / 300 copies / ISBN 978-3-903043-27-5 / Release Date: November 2017

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MEIN BESTSELLER Teil 1 – Elke Silvia Krystufek Im neuen Buch von Elke Silvia Krystufek MEIN BESTSELLER, Teil 1 geht es ums Verkaufen. Was alles wie verkauft wird, wie Menschen sich selbst verkaufen, Seelen verkauft werden und wie schön es ist, das alles literarisch zu beschreiben. Der globale Markt hat gewonnen und verloren zugleich. Ein kleines Buch ganz groß. Die New York Times titelt: Die Ramallah Times hat uns das Papier geklaut. Der Spiegel winselt: Oje, so wollten wir das nie gesehen haben. Die Presse presst heraus: Press your button, baby. Der Kurier nimmt alles mit und gibt nix wieder. Und Die Krone setzt dem Ganzen die Krone auf. Nur Heute druckt ein kleines Foto für die neuen Analphabeten.

Elke Silvia Krystufek’s new book, MY BESTSELLER, Part 1, deals with selling: what is sold in which way, how humans sell themselves, how souls are sold, and how beautiful it is to write about all this in a literary manner. The global market has won and lost at the same time. The New York Times titles a story, “The Ramallah Times has stolen our paper.” The Mirror whines, “Oh no, we didn’t want to see it this way.” The Press presses under pressure: Press your button, baby. The Courier takes everything away and delivers nothing. And the Crown crowns everything. Only Today prints a little image of the illiterates.

DER KONTERFEI 035 / Paperback / Deutsch – English / 60 pages / 300 copies / ISBN 978-3-903043-24-4 / Release Date: September 2017

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CZERNOWITZ – Erinnerungen eines Ertrunkenen - Igor Pomerantsev Der russisch/ukrainische Schriftsteller Igor Pomerantsev wuchs und studierte an der Universität in Czernowitz (1953-1971) während des totalitären Kommunismus der Sowjetunion. Sein Buch „CZERNOWITZ – Erinnerungen eines Ertrunkenen“ besteht aus Essays, realen und fiktionalen Erzählungen aus seiner Heimatstadt. In lyrisch dichten Assoziationen wird das Leben eines Heranwachsenden in den 50er und 60er Jahren des letzten Jahrhunderts geschildert. Dem Außenstehenden, speziell aus dem deutschsprachigen Raum, legt es Zeugnis davon ab, dass trotz Holocaust und dem totalitären Kommunismus der Sowjetunion die Tradition einer intensiven literarischen und intellektuellen Auseinandersetzung auch nach 1945 - nun vorwiegend in russischer und ukrainischer und teils rumänischer Sprache fortgesetzt wurde, - somit für den Rest der Welt im Verborgenen blieb. Seine Schriften sind ein Beweis für den Fakt, dass die Vorkriegs- und literarischen Traditionen von Czernowitz sowjetische Repressionen und Zensur überlebten und dass Kultur stärker ist als jede ideologische Doktrin.

DER KONTERFEI 036 / Paperback / Deutsch / 90 pages / ISBN 978-3-903043-25-1 / Release Date: Oktober 2017