Rirkrit Tiravanija / Holy. Energy. Masters. ars viva 2023

“MY BODY IS FILLED WITH WAITING.” —Rirkrit Tiravanija

Rirkrit Tiravanija
The work of Rirkrit Tiravanija (b. 1961, Buenos Aires) is presented at various sites within Haus der Kunst throughout the month of May, forming a de-centralised exhibition. In a first collaboration between the museum and the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich, the exhibition takes place at the same time as Toshio Hosokawa’s opera Hanjo, which is being performed in the Westgalerie of Haus der Kunst and for which Tiravanija is creating the scenography.

Tiravanija is known for ignoring the division between art and life, intertwining these worlds to form an artistic production of social engagements. His works always bring people together—through cooking, eating, drinking, and playing—often inviting viewers to inhabit, participate and activate the work. Inside and outside the Haus der Kunst, Tiravanija is forming connections between his own work and Hosokawa’s opera Hanjo. At the entrance of the museum, visitors are welcomed by newly commissioned banners with slogans chosen by the artist from Yukio Mishima’s play Hanjo that reference a main theme of the opera: waiting. Japanese artist Mai Ueda performs an intimate tea ceremony activating the stage for Hanjo, while in other public spaces visitors can participate in a T-Shirt printing workshop with Tiravanija’s slogans and play on the artist’s ping pong tables. The work revives Ping Pong Society, a brainchild of Slovak artist Július Koller (1939-2007) first showcased in Bratislava in 1970. Tiravanija’s ping pong tables bear the phrase “TOMORROW IS THE QUESTION,” welcoming visitors to shed their passive roles and actively participate by playing or encouraging others to play. At the same site, sits a familiar bar. In 2017, Tiravanija created a shot-by-shot remake of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s seminal 1974 film, Angst essen Seele auf. The film, in part, takes place in a Munich bar, where the viewers meet the bartender Barbara. Tiravanija’s remake is playing on a television, alongside a bar which will be tended to by “Barbara” from the artist’s remake, played by Austrian actor Florian Troebinger. A survey of the artist’s film works will also be screened.

Curated by Emma Enderby and Hanns Lennart Wiesner.

Holy. Energy. Masters. ars viva 2023
For the exhibition Holy. Energy. Masters. ars viva 2023, this year’s recipients of the renowned ars viva prize for emerging artists—Paul Kolling, Shaun Motsi, and Leyla Yenirce—are developing new, large-scale productions at Haus der Kunst. All three artists address current political, ecological, and social issues in their work, questioning Eurocentric knowledge, values, and systems, so to enable intelligent, poetic, and geographical shifts in perspective. With this exhibition, Haus der Kunst continues its commitment to a younger generation of artists. The cooperation with the Kulturkreis der deutschen Wirtschaft im BDI takes place on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the prestigious prize.

Holy
In Leyla Yenirce’s sound installation Holy Water, a spherical crescendo unfolds, reaching consciousness through the body. The work is based on a BBC interview recorded in Lalish, the holy temple of the Yazidi in northern Iraq. Here, the guardian of the sacred Kanîya Sipî spring rebaptises women and girls who have survived the genocide carried out by the so-called Islamic State since 2014. Yenirce approaches this ritual from a tonal perspective. With this transcendental experience, she questions both the overcoming of trauma and its limits.

Energy
Paul Kolling’s multi-part work Energy is devoted to the opaque pricing of energy and the emotional public debate about it. The work refers to the European Energy Exchange (EEX) and the process of defining energy prices, which are hardly known to the broader public. Its role is hotly contested by the business world, as well as by journalists, experts, and activists. It reveals absurd contradictions through the juxtaposition of perspectives of various stakeholders and formulates fundamental questions of economic ethics about the current struggle for resources.

Masters
With Masters, Shaun Motsi continues his investigation into contemporary visual culture, looking specifically at the production and distribution of moving-image content in an increasingly digitized post-pandemic world. The video work appropriates the didactic talking head format and explores the emergent “edutainment” genre. One day, Mr Clarke, a retired Black independent filmmaker, receives an invitation from “Masters,” a controversial online learning platform. The collaboration goes off the rails when the start-up’s uncompromising agenda is revealed as determined to destabilise and radically redefine education.

Curated by Jana Baumann.
An exhibition of Haus der Kunst Munich in cooperation with the Kulturkreis der deutschen Wirtschaft im BDI e.V.
With the kind support of the Canadian Embassy.