Ana Hoffner ex-Prvulovic* - kunst halle wien - Kunsthalle Wien

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Ana Hoffner ex-Prvulovic* - kunst halle wien - Kunsthalle Wien
Ana Hoffner
        ex-Prvulovic*

kunst
halle
wien
Ana Hoffner ex-Prvulovic* - kunst halle wien - Kunsthalle Wien
Ana Hoffner ex-Prvulovic*   Freud Film (video still), 2017/2021
Ana Hoffner ex-Prvulovic* - kunst halle wien - Kunsthalle Wien
2   Ana Hoffner ex-Prvulovic*   Speech Object #3, 2018, photo: WEST. Fotostudio

                                                                                  4    INTRODUCTION

                                                                                       ARTWORK DESCRIPTIONS
                                                                                  6    After the Transformation
                                                                                  8    Future Anterior – Illustrations of War
                                                                                  10   Fifty-One Pieces – Believing in Art
                                                                                  12   Freud Film

                                                                                  14   PRIVATE VIEW (series)
                                                                                  15   Private View – Blue Blood
                                                                                  16   Private View – Modern Members
                                                                                  17   Private View – Big Safari
                                                                                  22   Private View – Special Gift
                                                                                  23   Private View – Silent Weapon

                                                                                  24   NON-ALIGNED RELATIVES (series)
                                                                                  25   Non-aligned Relatives
                                                                                  26   Simultaneous Contrast
                                                                                  27   The Queer Family Album – Non-aligned Relatives
                                                                                  30   Disavowals or Cancelled Confessions
                                                                                  34   Double Still Lives & Speech Objects #1, #2, #3, #4

                                                                                  36   Духовна Деколонизација (Spiritual Decolonization) – Part I
                                                                                  37   The Bacha Posh Project
                                                                                  44   Active Intolerance

                                                                                  32   FLOOR PLAN

                                                                                  48   INTERVIEW:
                                                                                       ANA HOFFNER EX-PRVULOVIC*
                                                                                       IN CONVERSATION WITH ANNE FAUCHERET

                                                                                  56   BIOGRAPHY

                                                                                  58   PUBLIC & EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMS
Ana Hoffner ex-Prvulovic* - kunst halle wien - Kunsthalle Wien
4     Ana Hoffner ex-Prvulovic*      Introduction                          5     Ana Hoffner ex-Prvulovic*       Introduction

Introduction                                                               and of family as a space for chosen kinship. She* stages moments
                                                                           of subversion, crisis, and resistance, and in this way attempts to
                                                                           figure out how a contemporary subject can dig up and appropriate
                                                                           hidden histories in order to escape cultural, social, and psycho-
Kunsthalle Wien dedicates to Vienna-based artists* Ana Hoffner             logical assignations. In a self-reflexive movement, the artist* also
ex-Prvulovic* and Belinda Kazeem-Kamiński two solo shows, which            questions the capacity of the art field itself to welcome, support,
take place simultaneously in the upper hall of Kunsthalle Wien Mu-         and stand for minoritari­an alternatives and non-aligned thought, in
seumsquartier from October 22, 2021, to February 6, 2022.                  an intensive investigation of the involvement of dirty capital in the
                                                                           financing of art institutions.
Our invitation to Ana Hoffner ex-Prvulovic* and Belinda Kazeem-
Kamiński follows Kunsthalle Wien’s commitment to showing                   In her works, be they photographic series, films, or installations,
artists* who question the legacies of imperialism, colonialism, and        Belinda Kazeem-Kamiński creates spaces for encounter, conver-
slavery and whose practices politically reframe racism and hetero­         sation, and sometimes confrontation between herself and the
normativity as political tools that were historically developed (and       viewer, but first and foremost between herself and the people who
are used still today) to subjugate and exploit certain territories and     populate her pieces, her memories, and her imagination: those who
certain bodies.                                                            have been disappeared and who are gone, those who are here, and
                                                                           those who are to come. Intertwining critical Black feminist theory,
While the two solo shows take place simultaneously in the upper            conceptual visual strategies, and (science-)fictional narration, the
hall, they are accessible through two different entrances and sepa-        artist explores diverse methods to communicate across time and
rated by a divider wall. The location, architecture, and dramaturgy        space. While she critically investigates regimes of looking and de-
were developed to place full attention on each artistic practice           codes the racist cultural apparatus underlying the ongoing system
while still offering the audience the ability to cross between these       of subjugation and exploitation of Black lives, she outreaches at the
two universes, enabling chosen moments of encounter.                       same time the violence contained in archives, in museums, and in
                                                                           books by opening pathways for exchanging, caring, and imagining.
The invitation to both artists* to have solo shows at Kunsthalle           Belinda Kazeem-Kamiński’s artworks always choose minimalism
Wien dates back to 2019, and the exhibitions were originally               over opulence, dispersion over monumentality, evanescence over
planned for the spring of 2020. But during the Covid-19 pandem-            fixation, and openness over closure, and welcome blank spaces and
ic, the exhibitions were twice postponed. On the one hand, this            voids. They are continuously in process, in self-reflection, “in the
long preparation time has allowed for new developments; on the             wake” (Christina Sharpe), seriously embracing their political task to
other hand, the artists* were forced to cope with an unpredictable         set the conditions and to create spaces—real and imagined—for the
rhythm and (constant) recalibrating of the project. The final exhibi-      processing of the past, invention of the future, and disintegration of
tions are the outcome of an intensive dialogue, ongoing self-reflec-       the present as it is.
tion, and, in some cases, compromise. They include existing works
reimagined and adapted for Kunsthalle Wien’s exhibition space as           Being located in a country where (scientific) colonialism is rarely
well as new works produced for the occasion.                               discussed, where “white innocence” (Gloria Wekker) is an unchal-
                                                                           lenged social paradigm, and where historical migration and cultural
Ana Hoffner ex-Prvulovic*’s works take the shape of multimedia             creolization are still disregarded in favor of a vision of a unique, sole
installations mixing film, photography, objects, and text. She*            anchorage in the West, we felt it was important to feature these two
looks closely at the fabrication of history, memory, and subjectivi-       artists* who are both based in Vienna and work internationally. Each
ty—insisting on the unconscious at work in these processes.                tirelessly investigates racist scopic regimes and practices of Other-
Along which lines of domination and exclusion do these processes           ing and deploys aesthetic strategies of resistance. At the same time,
occur? Which stories and practices are swept away and erased?              each artist speaks from a differently situated perspective that hinges
How might we disarm the misogynist and racist prejudices em-               on dissimilar experiences, resulting in two distinct practices.
bedded in (Western) official histories and representations? In the
exhibition, the artist* (re)tells the stories of queerness as a survival   — Anne Faucheret
strategy, of non-alignment as ethics (and not only as geopolitics),          Curator
Ana Hoffner ex-Prvulovic* - kunst halle wien - Kunsthalle Wien
6      Ana Hoffner ex-Prvulovic*         Artwork descriptions                7      Ana Hoffner ex-Prvulovic*        Artwork descriptions

AFTER THE TRANSFORMATION, 2013
Video installation, color and sound, 16:9, 15 min 52 sec

What is left behind when                 brings together several scales
transformation means erasing             and different histories, from the
memories and streamlining be-            personal body to the political
haviors? How might memory be             body, in a subtle and seamless
queered in an act of resistance          manner. The image editing,
against the linearity of history         as well as the work on sound
writing? In After the Transfor-          and rhythm, create effects of
mation (2013), Ana Hoffner               dispersion and diffraction about
ex-Prvulovic* investigates these         who is the narrator and what is
issues through reflection upon           narrated, blurring the distance
her* own bodily transformation,          between “I” and “they”, be-
namely voice modifications,              tween individual and collective,
which have occurred after                between personal and political.
taking testosterone. The film
is based on a vocal-training
session between the trainer and
the trainee (the artist* herself*),
shot tight to both bodies and
faces. With less emphasis on
the materialization of a gender
transformation through voice,
the exchange enhances instead
the materiality of sound, the in-
carnation of voice, and the tech-
nical performance behind the
effects and variation it produc-
es. In between filmed sequenc-
es, black frames feature a white
text that reverses the position
of the narrator: to be read is a
descriptive monologue from the
perspective of the trainer. The
more the film goes on, the more
the subject of the exchange
seems to shift: from technical
considerations linked to the
mastery of the voice and its ef-
fects, the conversation, through
the texts used to pose the voice,
seems to move toward broader
political shifts that happened in
Europe after 1989. The artist*                                               Ana Hoffner ex-Prvulovic*, After the Transformation (video stills), 2013
Ana Hoffner ex-Prvulovic* - kunst halle wien - Kunsthalle Wien
8      Ana Hoffner ex-Prvulovic*        Artwork descriptions                  9      Ana Hoffner ex-Prvulovic*         Artwork descriptions

FUTURE ANTERIOR – ILLUSTRATIONS OF WAR, 2013
Photo collage, 14 inkjet prints on handmade paper, each 21 x 29.7 cm;
7 wooden plates, each 48 x 33.8 cm

The photo installation Future           dry analytical and theoretical
Anterior – Illustrations of War         tone of the short texts, tackling
(2013) features a series of black-      the inextricable connection
and-white photographic prints           between sexuality, violence,
mounted on wooden boards. The           and gender as a basis for the
photos are appropriated from a          systemic exploitation of female
series by fashion photographer          bodies in a heteropatriarchal
Steven Meisel, which was pub-           system. Supposedly opposed
lished in Vogue between 2000            regimes suddenly begin to col-
and 2016 and depicts futuristic         lide. When it comes to gendered
scenes of gendered (and seem-           violence, fashion and news re-
ingly institutional) violence. Ana      porting, reality and representa-
Hoffner ex-Prvulovic* recon-            tion, memory and fantasy, past
textualizes the pictures in a           and present, and even peace and
minimalist layout that includes         war seem to overlap. Addressing
large blank spaces, punctuated          the use of sexualized violence
with a text she* wrote and that         and its eroticization in visual
reframes, fictionally and cultur-       culture, as well as the position
ally, gendered violence between         of women, on the one hand, and
crime and weapon, between               employing a subtle interplay
representation and reality. As          between photography and text
the artist* describes it: “A new        on the other, the series places
web journal illustrates the future      itself in the tradition of artist
anterior of the war. It transfers       Sanja Iveković’s conceptual
institutionalized violence to a         feminist practice. The tempo-
stage setting, where the event          rality of the “future anterior”, as
of war has not yet taken place,         referenced in the work’s title,       Ana Hoffner ex-Prvulovic*, Future Anterior – Illustrations of War (detail), 2013
but where it might happen in a          refers to something that will
similar way in the future. At that      have happened or will have been
point, peacetime injury becomes         completed at some point in the
a damage of war, and the scenar-        future, and which is put in cor-
io shows how it could have been         relation with an event that will
while the image depicts neither         come after it. It is a verb tense
war nor peace.”                         that emphasizes the porosity
                                        between temporalities. Locating
The (over)staged scenes of              her* series in this “past of the
violence toward female fashion          future”, Ana Hoffner ex-Prvu-
models by male police officers          lovic* reconnects past and fu-
and soldiers in uniforms stand          ture in the act of looking, imbu-
in sharp contrast to the installa-      ing the latter with the potential
tion’s minimalist layout and the        for (reflective) transformation.
Ana Hoffner ex-Prvulovic* - kunst halle wien - Kunsthalle Wien
10     Ana Hoffner ex-Prvulovic*        Artwork descriptions                  11     Ana Hoffner ex-Prvulovic*        Artwork descriptions

FIFTY-ONE PIECES – BELIEVING IN ART, 2016
Greenbox paint, wall text, dimensions variable

The mysterious disappearance            emphasizes the redundancy of
of fifty-one artworks from the          the story it tells: artworks are
National Gallery of Bosnia and          constantly destroyed, stolen,
Herzegovina (B&H) in Saraje-            and co-opted for political and
vo during the Yugoslav Wars             economic reasons, often with
is the point of departure for           the participation of cultural
this conceptual intervention            institutions. The wall is painted
interrogating the entanglement          in the exact same green used
between art and politics, the           on film sets to capture green-
refusal of cultural amnesia,            screen scenes—as if the magic
and the magic of art. “During           of the cinema could bring back
the war (1992–1995) fifty-one           the vanished artworks, as if art
art works disappeared, under            could bring things, whether the
unexplained circumstances,              actual objects or their memo-
from the collection of the art          ries, back. Every institution shall
gallery of Bosnia and Herzego-          have its green wall, to remind us
vina. This probably happened at         of all those artworks reduced to
the beginning of the aggression,        commodities in any ideological,
but it was confirmed in 1993 by         geopolitical, or economic game.
the extraordinary control of [the
gallery’s] inventory of art works.
Interpol was informed. The art
works are still missing” (B&H
website).

Since 2016, Ana Hoffner ex-                                                   Ana Hoffner ex-Prvulovic*, Speech Object #1 (installation view), 2018,
Prvulovic* has been staging this                                              exhibition The Bacha Posh Project, curated by Karolina Radenkovic,
work at many of the institutions                                              Galerie 5020, Salzburg, 2018. Photo: WEST. Fotostudio
she* has shown at, following a
specific set of instructions that
are adapted to each exhibi-
tion space: one wall is covered
with green paint, and a text is
displayed on an adjacent wall
that contextualizes the color-
ful intervention. The fifty-one
absent (stolen) works are thus
given presence, as the pres-
entation wall becomes at once
a space for fantasy and for
representation. The variation
of the work’s setting sadly
Ana Hoffner ex-Prvulovic* - kunst halle wien - Kunsthalle Wien
12     Ana Hoffner ex-Prvulovic*         Artwork descriptions                13     Ana Hoffner ex-Prvulovic*        Artwork descriptions

FREUD FILM, 2017/2021
Video, color and sound, 16:9, 15 min 23 sec; cement tiles; 3 vitrines with
a selection of Zenit issues, reprint edition by Ranko Horetsky, 2008

In Freud Film (2017/2021),               collection, the superimposed
sequences filmed by the artist*          shots—almost obliterating the
during a walk through the for-           images behind them—seem to
mer Sigmund Freud Museum in              contradict this story and bring
Vienna serve as a background             to the fore the unconscious of
for various archival film and            psychoanalysis itself: racial and
textual materials in superim-            patriarchal biases. The third
position. Dating back to the             layer in Freud Film consists
beginning of the twentieth               of excerpts from Man Ray’s
century and mainly drawn from            Surrealist film Les Mystères du
the Filmarchiv Austria [Austrian         Château de Dé [The Mysteries
Film Archive], the found footage         of the Château of Dice] (1929)
depicts busy streets in Sara-            as well as overlays taken from
jevo, the march of an infantry           the avant-garde magazine Zenit,
regiment, the announcement of            a Yugoslav journal published
the assassination of the Arch-           in the 1920s—some spreads of
duke of Austria, and portraits of        which are also displayed in three
individuals such as a “Turkish           vitrines nearby. Through these
beggar” and a group of “Jew-             references, this section of the
ish tinsmiths”—all from the              film examines the implemen-
perspective of the monarchy.             tation of the unconscious in
These scenes insert the political        various historical avant-garde
history of World War I into the          movements.
inner space of psychoanaly-
sis, uncovering the repressed
role of ethnographic explora-
tion, such as these prejudiced
representations of Bosnia, in
the creation and development
of the “collective unconscious”
according to psychoanalytic
theory. Subtly arranged by the
artist*, the montage of film clips
seems to outline the contours
of the construction of a (West-
ern) European identity versus
an exoticized “Oriental” one.
While the work’s wider frame
follows the official representa-
tion of Freud’s universe, linger-
ing on ancient objects from his                                              Ana Hoffner ex-Prvulovic*, Freud Film (video stills), 2017/2021
Ana Hoffner ex-Prvulovic* - kunst halle wien - Kunsthalle Wien
14    Ana Hoffner ex-Prvulovic*      Artwork descriptions                 15      Ana Hoffner ex-Prvulovic*        Artwork descriptions

PRIVATE VIEW, 2018–2021                                                   PRIVATE VIEW – BLUE BLOOD, 2021
Work series                                                               2 prints, framed, each 40 x 60 cm; 4 prints, acrylic glass, each ­30 x 40 cm;
                                                                          2 prints, framed, each 21 x 29 cm; Horten tiles, earrings
Ana Hoffner ex-Prvulovic*’s series Private View tackles shady in-
vestment in art institutions from the weapons industry, hedgefund         The artistic research Private             regime as entartete Kunst—and
companies, and investors of Nazi heritage. Each work in the series        View – Blue Blood (2021) con-             is currently planning to open her
discloses and displays information and objects available on the in-       fronts two Viennese figures.              own private museum in Vienna.
ternet, and thus accessible to everybody. The installation’s starting     Heidi Goëss-Horten is a billion-          Alongside her, the work features
point resembles Hans Haacke’s The Chocolate Master (1982). In             aire, modern and contemporary             Agnes Husslein­-Arco, former
seven diptychs combining found images and text and confronting            art collector, and the widow              head of the Sotheby’s auction
portraits of the boss and pictures of his employees at work, the          of Helmut Horten, from whom               house branch in Austria and East-
artist disclosed how the business activities of the German collector      she inherited her entire fortune.         ern Europe and former head of
in his chocolate conglomerate intersected with his art-collecting         Helmut Horten was a German                the Vienna Belvedere. Husslein-­
activities (e.g., tax avoidance through art donations) and how he         department store tycoon who got           Arco—who is well-known for her
treated the workers in his factories. Each item from Ana Hoffner          rich in the 1930s, buying Jewish          proximity to (extreme) right-
ex-Prvulovic* series is a case study of one specific and situated         businesses at low prices as part          wing politicians, as well as for
example of entanglement between capital and art. All items share          of the NS-Aryanization process.           the court proceedings around
a similar structure: two (cheap) shiny frames in the middle offer a       Heidi Goëss-Horten showed her             her disputed breaches of duty
comparative chronology of the two subjects (persons, companies,           private collection some years ago         as head of the Belvedere—is a
or institutions); acrylic plates feature quotes by the people in-         at the Leopold Museum—mainly              longtime friend of Heidi Goëss-­
volved; and finally, a selection of loosely related images and objects    consisting of artworks by prom-           Horten, whom she advised in the
hang around the central items.                                            inent artists, from Marc Chagall          1990s. She is also the presumed
                                                                          to Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, which           new director of the Heidi Horten
Private View – Special Gift (2019) and Private View – Silent Weap-        were stigmatized by the Nazi              museum to come.
on (2018) respectively focus on the relationship between weapons
industrialist Karl Diehl and the Diehl Foundation, and the parallel
evolution between TBA21 and ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems
through the figure of Francesca Habsburg, tackling how industrial
capital is entangled in art investment.

Private View – Modern Members (2021) and Private View – Big
Safari (2021), two newly created works in the series, respectively
focus on the relationship between the Museum of Modern Art in
New York and Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock, and the Whitney Mu-
seum of American Art, also in New York, and Warren Kanders, CEO
of Safariland. With these two new works, the artist* draws links
between industrial capital and neoliberal economic empires, as well
as the opaque structures of European and American arts funding.

The last work in the series, and the first to be seen in the exhibition
space, Private View – Blue Blood (2021), showcases some results
of the artist*’s research about the local history of entanglement
between nationalist politics and art business through the relation
between billionaire Heidi Goëss-Horten and art manager Agnes              Ana Hoffner ex-Prvulovic*, Private View – Silent Weapon (installation view),
Husslein-Arco.                                                            2018, photo: Georg Oberlechner
Ana Hoffner ex-Prvulovic* - kunst halle wien - Kunsthalle Wien
16     Ana Hoffner ex-Prvulovic*      Artwork descriptions                 17     Ana Hoffner ex-Prvulovic*        Artwork descriptions

PRIVATE VIEW – MODERN MEMBERS, 2021                                        PRIVATE VIEW – BIG SAFARI, 2021
2 prints, framed, each 40 x 60 cm; 4 prints, acrylic glass,                2 prints, framed, each 40 x 60 cm; 4 prints, acrylic glass,
each 30 x 40 cm; 2 prints, framed, each 29 x 21 cm; MoMA shop products,    each 30 x 40 cm; 2 reprints, framed, each 21 x 29 cm; green plastic gloves,
engraved acrylic blocks                                                    protection gear

Larry Fink, a board member            or with basic ethics; and so, it     Private View – Big Safari (2021)        sculptor and patron Gertrude
of the Museum of Modern Art           has become less clear whether        focuses on Warren Kanders, for-         Vanderbilt Whitney, from whom
(MoMA) in New York, is the            institutions are really for the      mer vice-chairman of the Whit-          the Metropolitan Museum of Art
object of inquiry of Private          “public”. Alongside the two cen-     ney Museum of American Art              in New York had turned down
View – Modern Members.                tral chronologies and the heavily    in New York and CEO of Safari-          a proposal to donate American
CEO of BlackRock, an Ameri-           neoliberal quotes by Larry Fink,     land, a company manufacturing           art she had collected in previ-
can multinational investment          the artist* chose to engrave into    military and police equipment.          ous years, the Whitney is bound
management corporation,               thick, heavy plexiglass plates       Warren Kanders stepped down             to a foundational nationalistic
Larry Fink has also practiced         the charts of some shares relat-     as vice-chairman of the Whitney         aspiration and to figures of
investment consulting for sever-      ed to BlackRock—showing their        in 2019 after protests (and an          (right-wing) neoliberalism, to
al governments, relentlessly          extreme rentability (and volatil-    occupation of the Whitney’s lob-        which Warren Kanders perfectly
working toward the privatization      ity). Also, MoMA merchandise,        by) over his company’s sale of          belongs. The Whitney is part of
and transformation of pension         based on the appropriation and       tear gas—tear gas used against          a larger group of art institutions
systems in investment funds.          repetition ad infinitum of Piet      protesters after the murders            targeted for accepting “dirty
The artist* draws a parallel          Mondrian’s abstract geometric        of Freddie Gray in Baltimore,           money”.
between the creation, exhibition      patterns, complete the selection     Maryland, and Michael Brown in
politics, and extension of the        of market products, materi-          Ferguson, Missouri. The pro-
MoMA and the expansion and            al and immaterial, funny and         testers focused their attention
diversification of the business       dreadful, all financing one of the   on the trusteeship of patrons
activities of Larry Fink. The         most famous museums in the           with political positions differing
MoMA was established in 1929          world.                               drastically from the institutions
by Abby Aldrich Rockefeller,                                               they contribute funding to, as
wife of John D. Rockefeller Jr., in                                        well as on the necessity to cede
a wave of American institutions                                            board positions to artists within
(including New York’s Whitney                                              the communities in which the
Museum of American Art) that                                               museum exists. The controversy
owed their creation to wealthy                                             surrounding Warren Kanders
patrons, even if supported by                                              reveals the separation between
city and federal governments.                                              public interests and the struc-
The creation of such institutions                                          ture of the institution. Ana
marked a shift from reliance on                                            Hoffner ex-Prvulovic*, with her*
government funding to reliance                                             installation—again, based on
on funding from ticket and                                                 the same structure as the other
membership sales, corporate                                                items of the series: comparative
sponsorships, and private do-                                              chronologies framed in silver,
nors. As institutions increasingly                                         quotes in capital letters on
rely upon private funders, they                                            colored paper and underneath a
also begin to accept significant                                           plexiglass plate, anti-riot police
funding from donors who do not                                             protectors fixed on the wall—
align with the interests of artists                                        visualizes it. Founded in 1931 by
18   Ana Hoffner ex-Prvulovic*   Private View – Big Safari (details), 2021
20   Ana Hoffner ex-Prvulovic*   Private View – Big Safari (details), 2021
22     Ana Hoffner ex-Prvulovic*        Artwork descriptions                23     Ana Hoffner ex-Prvulovic*       Artwork descriptions

PRIVATE VIEW – SPECIAL GIFT, 2019                                           PRIVATE VIEW – SILENT WEAPON, 2018
2 prints, framed, each 40 x 60 cm; 1 print, framed, 40 x 57 cm;             2 prints, framed, each 40 x 60 cm; 4 prints, acrylic glass, each 30 x 40 cm;
4 prints, acrylic glass, each 30 x 40 cm; found images, framed,             found images, framed, each 21 x 29 cm; book page, plastic submarine, straws
each 21 x 29 cm; wall clock, angle meter, 2 coins
                                                                            Private View – Silent Weapon           military expos. Quotes from
Private View – Special Gift             households while simultane-         (2018) recounts and juxtaposes         Francesca Habsburg about
(2019) focuses on Karl Diehl and        ously investing in new military     the rise of contemporary art           the newly established Ocean
the Diehl Foundation. The weap-         technology, especially ammu-        foundation and art collection          Space in Venice, as well as the
ons producer was a collector of         nition and aircraft defense. Be-    TBA21 (Thyssen-Bornemisza              foundation’s engagement in
Albrecht Dürer’s etchings. After        cause they delivered weapons        Art Contemporary) with the             climate issues, are also part
Diehl’s death, his collection,          directly to the German state,       simultaneous production of             of the installation, along with
worth several million, was given        the Diehl Foundation has been       submarines by the German               two found images from a home
to the city of Nuremberg as a           in close contact with politicians   company ThyssenKrupp                   interior magazine, in which
present. The history of the com-        such as Franz Josef Strauss.        Marine Systems. The foun-              Habsburg presents works from
pany, especially its involvement        The installation also consists of   dation emerged in 2002 and             her art collection. Crucially, the
in World War II as a German             quotes from a report about the      is a financial side project of a       installation includes the first
Nazi weapons manufacturer, is           company’s tax fraud in which        holding owned by Francesca             page of Elfriede Jelinek’s play
juxtaposed with the history of          the Bavarian state was involved.    Habsburg (born Thyssen-Borne-          Rechnitz (Der Würgeengel)
the original art gifts given to the     Artifacts such as a commem-         misza), who inherited the              [Rechnitz (The Exterminating
collections in Nuremberg. The           oration coin of Karl Diehl, a       fortune built up by the Thyssen        Angel)]. The play is based on
Diehl Foundation was founded            Diehl wall clock, and a found       family through Thyssen AG, the         the massacre of Jewish forced
in 1902 and has remained a              image of a calculating machine      parent company of Thyssen-             laborers in the Rechnitz Castle,
patriarchal family business until       are placed next to a copy of        Krupp Marine Systems. Full             in which Margit von Batthyány
today. The company started to           Albrecht Dürer’s Draughtsman        financial transparency about           (born Thyssen-Bornemisza), the
produce watches and calcu-              Making a Perspective Drawing        the holding or the foundation          aunt of Francesca Habsburg,
lating machines in the postwar          of a Reclining Woman.               is not available to the general        took part.
period, thus infiltrating private                                           public, but traces of the opaque
                                                                            financial channels between
                                                                            TBA21 and ThyssenKrupp
                                                                            suggest a deep entanglement
                                                                            of war, wealth, and contempo-
                                                                            rary art. Private View – Silent
                                                                            Weapon decodes the signs of
                                                                            this entanglement: the foun-
                                                                            dation’s institutional collab-
                                                                            orations are confronted with
                                                                            business data about the Type
                                                                            214 Submarine, built by Thys-
                                                                            senKrupp and sold to Turkey,
                                                                            Greece, Portugal, and South
                                                                            Korea. Advertising slogans
                                                                            promoting the undetectability
                                                                            of the submarine accompany a
                                                                            list of exhibitions organized by
                                                                            ThyssenKrupp at international
24     Ana Hoffner ex-Prvulovic*    Artwork descriptions                 25     Ana Hoffner ex-Prvulovic*            Artwork descriptions

NON-ALIGNED RELATIVES, 2016–2021                                         NON-ALIGNED RELATIVES, 2021
Work series                                                              Video installation, color and sound, 16:9

“Non-aligned” refers simultaneously to the political Non-Aligned         Non-aligned Relatives is a new              and poems that she* meticu-
 Movement and to a political and cultural refusal to align to norma-     version of a performance by the             lously chants, she* pays extreme
 tive models and behaviors. Founded in 1961 at the Belgrade Confer-      artist*, shot in the actual exhi-           attention to the materiality and
 ence in the spirit and continuity of the Bandung Conference of 1955,    bition space during setup, with             the physicality of the processes
 the Non-Aligned Movement brought together countries that did not        the same props but in a slightly            of remembering, of assembling,
 wish to partake in the East-West confrontation but, on the contrary,    different setting. Appropriating            and of collecting. It is through
 wanted to promote the effective independence of countries in the        stories, reenacting scenes, re-             materiality and embodiment that
 Global South within the framework of decolonization. Twenty-five        producing images, and reconfig-             she* reassembles memories of
 countries from Asia, Africa, and the Middle East participated in the    uring objects from collective and           the family and that she* estab-
 movement’s creation, along with Yugoslavia. As of 2016, there are       personal memories, the artist*              lishes connections between her*
 120 member countries, and while the group’s political influence         performs sequences where she*               imagined relatives and historical
 declined after the end of the Cold War, it continues to play an im-     embodies the personae of her*               artists across space and time.
 portant role by, for example, rejecting the standard measures for re-   queer family album, her* chosen             In doing so, she* creates a lively
 solving public debt advocated by the Washington Consensus. New          non-aligned relatives, and acti-            archive of queer familiarity, a
 movements that have emerged in the wake of the anti-globalization       vates her* collection of chosen             collection beyond heteronorma-
 movement are taking inspiration from the Non-Aligned Movement’s         avant-garde artists. Through                tivity and linearity, asking, finally,
 principles and the struggles it embodies, as they continue to advo-     her* manipulation of symbolic               what constitutes a familial as-
 cate for a form of globalization that pays greater consideration to     objects and through the songs               semblage beyond reproduction.
 the interests of Global South countries.

In the series Non-aligned Relatives Ana Hoffner ex-Prvulovic* ques-
tions the legacy of cultural politics of non-aligned countries, how-
ever not in a historical manner but rather to extend the notion of
non-alignment to the politics of collections and collecting as a prac-
tice. What kind of artistic practice can arise from non-alignment if
non-alignment is understood as a questioning of property relations,
ownership, and inheritance? What kind of kinship formations arise
out of non-alignment if non-alignment also means disentangling
the heteronormative family from its constitutive rights to private
property?

                                                                         Ana Hoffner ex-Prvulovic*, Non-aligned Relatives (performance
                                                                         documentation), 2019, exhibition Queer Stories, curated by Christiane
                                                                         Erharter, tranzit.sk, Bratislava, 2018. Photo: Judith Stehlik
26     Ana Hoffner ex-Prvulovic*        Artwork descriptions             27     Ana Hoffner ex-Prvulovic*         Artwork descriptions

SIMULTANEOUS CONTRAST, 2018                                              THE QUEER FAMILY ALBUM
Various textiles, 160 x 220 cm                                           – NON-ALIGNED RELATIVES, 2018
                                                                         C-print and silver gelatin prints in 2 boxes, each 29.7 x 21 cm
Simultaneous Contrast is a          “simultaneity”, understanding
fragile textile patchwork piece      colors as having independent        Two black rectangular frames              during a drive from Geneva to
sewn by hand by the artist*          lives acquired when liberated       lined with black mats. Arranged           Kabul in 1939. On the far-left
herself* from recuperated            from subject matter or com-         in the middle, three pictures in          side of the diptych is a portrait
garment linings (made out of         bined with other colors and         each frame. This is the formal            of the artist*’s grandmother, in
silk, velvet, or chiffon) and hung   inventing spaces where form,        structure of The Queer Fam-               her house in Southern Ser-
on the wall. The textiles, orig-     color, and rhythm communicate.      ily Album (2018), an ongoing              bia, which she built herself in
inally sewn inside clothes to        Sonia Delaunay explored the         photographic series that brings           the 1960s. Born in 1927, she
soften their touch or to struc-      possibilities of simultaneous       together portraits from various           survived World War II and the
ture their shape, are delicately     contrast in a range of media,       contexts and puts them in a               wars in the 1990s, experiencing
brought together as a blanket        from painting, to costumes and      queer and deliberately chosen             various political systems, from
that presents itself as a painting, fashion design, to bookbinding,      familial relation. The work em-           a monarchy to socialism, as well
merging abstraction and applied domestic objects, and posters,           phasizes kinship over genealogy,          as the governments of the first
arts. The pattern, the colors,       creating a work that was simul-     multipolar families over a het-           and second Yugoslavia. Mixing
and the title evoke the work of      taneously aesthetically engag-      erosexual-couple nucleus, and             familial lineage and chosen
Ukranian French painter and          ing and philosophically utopian.    self-determination over fili­ation.       kinship, merging individual
fashion designer Sonia Delaunay Ana ­Hoffner ex-Prvulovic* pays          The Queer Family Album –                  psyches and collective mem-
(1885–1979), a representative        tribute to this major female art-   Non-aligned Relatives roots               ories, and interlinking inher-
of geometric abstraction and         ist and at the same time interro-   Ana Hoffner ex-Prvulovic*’s               ited structures and tactics of
a key figure of the European         gates the place of women artists    practice in a queer and politi-           flight, Ana Hoffner ex-Prvulovic*
avant-garde. Her approach            in the dominant narratives of       cally engaged artistic tradition,         makes inquiries into her* own
was based on the notion of           the Western avant-garde.            one critical of all hegemonic             self, as both a product of, and
                                                                         models forged by the West and             a person in constant resistance
                                                                         expanded throughout the world,            to, heteropatriarchal regimes.
                                                                         whether they be social, cultural,         Additionally, conceiving of all
                                                                         or economic.                              the pictured people as her*
                                                                                                                  “non-aligned relatives” is a way
                                                                         The first image one might                 to reactivate cultural proximi-
                                                                         identify is the iconic portrait of        ties and historical attachments
                                                                         the Afghan refugee girl, Sharbat          that were born as part of a
                                                                         Gula, who made the cover of               utopian vision for an alternative
                                                                         National Geographic in 1985,              geopolitical scenario for the
                                                                         and then the cover of Deborah             world (albeit one that failed in
                                                                         Ellis’s best-seller book, The             the face of the hegemonic force
                                                                         Breadwinner (2000). The other             of international capitalism) and
                                                                         images are portraits of people            to refuse the mystification of a
                                                                         performing diverse forms of               Western-conceived, monolithic
                                                                         gender identity: a bacha posh (a          Europe.
                                                                         young Afghan woman who lives
                                                                         as a boy, mainly to escape pa-
                                                                         triarchal oppression) and Swiss
Ana Hoffner ex-Prvulovic*, Non-aligned Relatives (performance            writer Annemarie Schwarzen-
documentation), 2019, exhibition Queer Stories. Photo: Judith Stehlik    bach, who passed as a man
28   Ana Hoffner ex-Prvulovic*   The Queer Family Album – Non-aligned Relatives, 2018
30     Ana Hoffner ex-Prvulovic*        Artwork descriptions                31     Ana Hoffner ex-Prvulovic*        Artwork descriptions

DISAVOWALS OR CANCELLED CONFESSIONS, 2016
5 frames with silver gelatin prints on Baryta paper, each 60 x 40 cm

Disavowals or Cancelled Con-            members of the artist*’s chosen
fessions (original title Aveux          family who inspired
non avenus, 1930) is the English        her* personally and politically
translation of a book by artist,        —Claude Cahun’s continuous
poet, performer, photographer,          radical leftist political com-
and resistance fighter Claude           mitment, which ended in her
Cahun (1894–1954, born Lucy             imprisonment in 1944, always
Schwob). The book is an anti-           had an explicitly feminist
realist autobiography, a sort           queer subtext—Ana Hoffner
of antimémoire consisting of            ex-­Prvulovic*’s Disavowals or
a collection of poems, apho-            Cancelled Confessions (2016)
ristic philosophical fragments,         also brings up another layer,
and recollected dreams. It              through the omnipresent figure
is illustrated with Surrealist          of the double: duality and am-
photomontages—self-por-                 bivalence. In the genius force
traits, bodily displacements            deployed to resist any aesthetic,
and rearrangements, object              social, or moral assignations,
assemblages—made by Claude              Claude ­Cahun—for whom the
Cahun (often together with her          figure of the double, through
lifelong partner and collaborator       the mirror, the splitting of the
Marcel Moore, born Suzanne              body, and the repetition in time
Malherbe). In the pictures, as in       were crucial—forgot her own
the texts, Claude Cahun tackles         double, Marcel Moore. Never
common representations of               having been credited as co-au-
identity, gender, and subjectiv-        thor, even though Claude Cahun
ity and presents the self as an         and Marcel Moore both created
accumulation of selves or as a          major parts of Claude Cahun’s
shifting set of social relations        Surrealist self-portraits, Marcel
to be played with. “Shuffle the         Moore remained unremem-
cards. Masculine? Feminine?             bered, Claude Cahun’s forgotten
It depends on the situation.            double.
Neuter is the only gender that
suits me.” The five items of Ana
Hoffner ex-Prvulovic*’s series,
bearing the same title as Claude
Cahun’s book, recreate with
two models some of the most
famous photographic portraits
of/by Claude Cahun, where gen-
der appears as contingent and
mutable and where playfulness,
irony, and camp merge. An hom-                                              Ana Hoffner ex-Prvulovic*, Disavowals or Cancelled Confessions (details),
age to Claude Cahun, one of the                                             2016, photo: WEST. Fotostudio
32     Ana Hoffner ex-Prvulovic*               Floor plan

                                                                                                                                                                             Ana Hoffner ex-Prvulovic*
                                                                                                                                                                             ENTRANCE

                                                                                                                                                                             ENTRANCE
                                                                                                                                                                             Belinda Kazeem-Kamiński

Belinda Kazeem-Kamiński         (Further information on these works: see exhibition guide “Belinda Kazeem-Kamiński”)   Ana Hoffner ex-Prvulovic*

1    In Search of Red, Black,           7   In Remembrance to the                 Outside the exhibition space:         1   After the Transformation,     7    Private View – Big Safari,   12 Speech Objects #1, #2,
     and Green, 2021                        Man Who Became Known                                                            2013, pp. 6–7                      2021, pp. 17–21                 #3, and #4, 2018–2021,
                                            as Angelo Soliman,                    Ashantee, edited,                                                                                            pp. 34–35
2    To let them know what                  (Ante Mortem) I &                     2017–2021                            2    Future Anterior –             8    Private View – Special
     we think about them,                   (Post Mortem) II, 2015                (Kunsthalle Wien Shop)                    Illustrations of War, 2013,        Gift, 2019, p. 22            13 Духовна
     2021                                                                                                                   pp. 8–9                                                            Деколонизација
                                        8   You are awaited, but                  Yaarborley Domeïs Brief, 2021                                           9    Private View – Silent           (Spiritual Decolonization)
3    Schebestas Schatten,                   never as equals, 2021                 (in the newspaper Der                3    Fifty-One Pieces                   Weapon, 2018, p. 23             – Part I, 2021, p. 36
     2017/2021                                                                    Standard)                                 – Believing in Art, 2016,
                                        9   Ashantee, edited &                                                              p. 10                         10 Non-aligned Relatives,         14 The Bacha Posh Project,
4    Fleshbacks, 2021                       annotated, 2021                                                                                                  2021, p. 25                       2016/2021, pp. 37–43
                                                                                                                       4    Freud Film, 2017/2021,
5    The Letter, 2019                  10 Strike a Pose, 2017–2021                                                          pp. 12–13                     11   (from left to right)         15 Active Intolerance
                                          & In Remembrance to                                                                                                  Simultaneous Contrast,          – Part II, 2021, pp. 44–47
6    In Remembrance to                    Ella Williams, 2021                                                          5    Private View                       2018, p. 26
     the Man Who Became                                                                                                     – Blue Blood, 2021,                The Queer Family Album,      Outside the exhibition space:
     Etched into History as            11   Unearthing. In                                                                  p. 15                              2018, pp. 27–29
     “Der Aschanti an der                   Conversation, 2017                                                                                                 Disavowals or Cancelled      Active Intolerance – Part I,
     Akademie”, 2021                                                                                                   6    Private View                       Confessions, 2016,           2021, pp. 44–45
                                                                                                                            – Modern Members,                  pp. 30–31                    (Museumsquartier,
                                                                                                                            2021, p. 16                        Double Still Lives, 2016,    entrance Halle E+G)
                                                                                                                                                               pp. 34–35
34     Ana Hoffner ex-Prvulovic*          Artwork descriptions                   35     Ana Hoffner ex-Prvulovic*         Artwork descriptions

DOUBLE STILL LIVES, 2016
3 frames with silver gelatin prints on Baryta paper, each 50 x 40 cm

SPEECH OBJECT #1, 2018
Feathers, pen nibs, branches, dimensions variable

SPEECH OBJECT #2, 2018
Bell jars, reception bells, dimensions variable

SPEECH OBJECT #3, 2018
Magnifying lens, convex mirror, wire, dimensions variable

SPEECH OBJECT #4, 2021
2 urinals, dimensions variable

In Ana Hoffner ex-Prvulovic*’s            artists like Elsa von Freytag-­
work, the double is omnipresent.          Loringhoven, who made the first
A crucial figure in the psychoan-         readymade, which was wrongly
alytical and artistic exploration         assigned to Marcel Duchamp.
of the unconscious in avant-­             Speech Object #2 is composed
garde movements like Surreal-             of six bell jars covering six silver
ism and Dada, the double ques-            reception bells and plays with         Ana Hoffner ex-Prvulovic*, Double Still Lives (detail), 2016,
tions not only the split between          homonymies. So does Speech             photo: WEST. Fotostudio.
conscious and unconscious but             Object #1, with its pen nibs
also the relationship between             attached to branches anchored
being and speech, between                 or planted in little feather hills.
being and thought, between                But the wordplay works only
projection and recognition—               in German (Daunenfedern and
and also between creation and             Schreibfedern). Speech Object
recreation. And so, in the three          #3, made of two convex ob-
frames of Double Still Lives              jects—one round mirror and one
(2016), as well as in the four            magnifying lens—questions the
Speech Objects (2018/2021),               relationship between reflection
the double is the central figure          and absorption. Speech Objects
on a compositional and sym-               decline some figures or avatars
bolic level. The black-and-white          of the double (complementary
Double Still Lives series sub-            double, dialectical double, bipo-
tly evokes the aesthetics of              lar double . . .) to fuel questions
avant-garde object photogra-              about alterity and identity,
phy and plays with repetition,            language and performativity.
variation, indexation, and scale.         Finally, Speech Object #4 con-
The Speech Objects function               sists of two pissoirs.
on similar binary composition.
They subtly quote, again, some
assemblages by Claude Cahun                                                      Ana Hoffner ex-Prvulovic*, Speech Object #2 (installation view), 2018,
but also by other avant-garde                                                    photo: WEST. Fotostudio
36     Ana Hoffner ex-Prvulovic*        Artwork descriptions                37     Ana Hoffner ex-Prvulovic*        Artwork descriptions

ДУХОВНА ДЕКОЛОНИЗАЦИЈА                                                      THE BACHA POSH PROJECT, 2016/2021
(SPIRITUAL DECOLONIZATION) – PART I, 2021                                   12 prints on archival boxes, each 20.4 x 25.4 x 3 cm; 2 canvases,
5 drawings, 2 hanging sculptures, metallic display, dimensions variable     each 100 x 180 cm, with green-screen fabric; 2 translucent glass plates with
                                                                            photographs, each 60 x 40 cm; glass plates; dimensions variable
Духовна Деколонизација                  found archival material depict-
(Spiritual Decolonization) –            ing the works and made copies       “Bacha posh” is the English
Part I (2021) is an homage to           in her* studio, without trying to    transliteration of a Dari term
the few women from Yugoslavia           reproduce, exactly, the original     referring to a cultural practice
who took part in the non-aligned        technique, style, or format but      in Afghanistan and parts of
exhibitions and, at the same            rather putting herself* in the       Pakistan whereby some fami­
time, a more general reflection         situation of exercising or of        lies that have no sons pick a
on the position of women artists        learning from another tradition      daughter to live and behave as
in utopian artistic or political        than the one she* had been           a boy—thus enabling the child
movements of the twentieth              learning in and from in her* own     to attend school, to walk alone
century. In the non-aligned             art education. In doing so, she*     in public, and to generally live
movement, culture and art               questions the dominant West-         more freely. The custom has
played a great role, as the ac-         ern art system (including the        been documented for at least a
knowledgment of cultural equal-         art education system) and its        century, but is likely much older
ity, the struggle against cultural      ignorance toward histories and       than that and is still practiced
imperialism, and the claim of a         practices that decenter or even      today. The Bacha Posh Project
cultural heritage different from        bypass Western-centric art his-      (2016/2021) arises out of Ana
the classic Western modernity           tory. Also, she* pays homage to      Hoffner ex-Prvulovic*’s inves-
were strong principles from the         women artists, who, in art histo-    tigation into different forms of
beginning. Still, the invisibility      ries, have been marginalized or      queerness, in different times, in
of women artists in the archive         considered unimportant within        different spaces, and with dif-
shows how gender equality was           the contemporary art world.          ferent social functions attached
still looked down on, albeit the        The hanging sculptures, made         to them. With this work—an-
importance of women in the              of wire and wool thread, at once     chored in a space between
independence struggles was              delicate and fuzzy, are produced     history and the present, fiction
encouraged by the non-aligned           from recuperated material—in-        and investigation—the artist*
movement.                               dustrially produced, but linked      proposes a rethinking of the
                                        to domestic work, to reparation,     present-day status of queerness
Only seven women from                   or to maintenance, like wire or      from the perspective of social
Yugoslavia took part in the             rubber rings. Approximately re­      survival, expanded potential,
exhibitions of the non-aligned          enacting modernist shapes and        and cultural proximities beyond
organized during the whole              cultivating a DIY trashy aspect,     geopolitical separations.
period of activity of the move-         they float between assignations
ment. The drawings of Духовна           and genres.                         The following “Bacha Texts” are
Деколонизација (Spiritual                                                   experiments of such writings of
­Decolonization) – Part I are                                               history and fiction, written by
 made after the works of three                                              the artist* herself*.
 of them: Ankica Oprešnik
 (1919–2005), Zdenka Golob
 (1928–2019), and Tinca Steg-
 ovec (1927–2019). The artist*
44     Ana Hoffner ex-Prvulovic*        Artwork descriptions                  45     Ana Hoffner ex-Prvulovic*      Artwork descriptions

ACTIVE INTOLERANCE, 2021                                                      with superimpositions, trans-         construction sites, among other
Two-part installation                                                         parencies, and reflections,           illegal entanglements.
                                                                              and the intense printed colors,       Active Intolerance – Part I is
PART I
                                                                              prevent the series from falling       displayed outside the exhibi-
9 brass plates, each 90 x 60 cm, dimensions variable (outside exhibition
space, located in Museumsquartier at the entrance to Hall E+G)                into pure nostalgia. Once a           tion space, at the entrance to
                                                                              dynamic socialist city with its       Halle E+G in Museumsquartier.
PART II                                                                       four factories (for glass, textile,   The installation deals more
6 A0 posters, each 118.2 x 168 cm ; 10 Fine Art prints on Hahnemühle paper;   sugar, and cement produc-             specifically with the local
video, color, 16:9, 11 min 50 sec                                             tion) and its social and cultural     situation of prison workers in
                                                                              institutions, Paraćin now has         Austria. Many everyday prod-
In Active Intolerance (2021),           practice, military service, etc.”     only one remaining factory. The       ucts are made by inmates, who
Ana Hoffner ex-Prvulovic*’s re-         Established in 1970 by philoso-       surviving factory, the cement         receive low wages and have
search tackles diverse forms of         pher Michel Foucault in collab-       one, cooperates with Stra-            no possibility to organize in
exploitation of (cheap) labor in        oration with writer Jean-Marie        bag—an Austrian construction          trade unions. As such, they
enclosed environments, namely           Domenach and historian Pierre         company massively investing in        remain unbearably invisible. Ana
the factory and the prison, and         Vidal-Naquet (and later on            Southeast Europe and exploit-         Hoffner ex-Prvulovic* tackles
uncovers the regime of invisibil-       joined by fellow intellectuals        ing its local labor force through     this invisibility by disclosing the
ity that workers and prisoners          Gilles Deleuze, Jean Genet, and       prison labor. This is the link to     full list of Austrian companies
are subjected to. This issue is         Jean-Paul Sartre), the Prisons        the last part of the work, a video    using prison labor, as revealed
related to the artist*’s overall in-    Information Group aimed to            without sound, which merges           in a 2018 document published
vestigation of the Western cap-         disseminate information about         two types of imagery. One layer       by the Ministry of Justice.
italist and imperialist political       the conditions of French pris-        shows contemporary corporate          Just months later, the list was
project and its relentless con-         ons in order to trigger a public      sequences by Strabag, from            withdrawn from the ministry’s
struction of, on the one hand,          response against the intolerable      general communications to a           website. An outdoor installation
working, consuming, complying,          conditions in which prisoners         specific advertisement for one        consisting of nine printed brass
and reproducing bodies and,             were forced to live (and work)        of its development/gentrifica-        plates placed at the entrance to
on the other, of “Others”, both         and, ultimately, calling for          tion projects, Belgrade Water-        Kunsthalle Wien, the work can
without and within (national)           change. The group undertook           front. This imagery is interlaced     be seen as an (anti-)monument,
societies, who are to be exploit-       intensive field research by inter-    with muted video clips of EKV         in negative, reminding viewers
ed and “brought into line”.             viewing prisoners, their wives,       (for Ekatarina Velika, Catherine      of the silenced and extensive
                                        and prisons guards, and they          the Great), a famous alternative      use of prison labor.
The second part of the work,            then distributed the information      punk rock band from Belgrade.
Active Intolerance – Part II, is        they had gathered via samizdat        By interweaving these images,
made up of three components.            pamphlets.                            the artist* shows the discrepan-
A series of six posters feature, in                                           cy between the socialist model
blue text on a red background,          Alongside the six posters, a          of self-organized (art) produc-
sentences selected from the             photographic series by Ana            tion and neoliberal, imperialist
manifesto of the Prisons Infor-         Hoffner ex-Prvulovic* docu-           forms of production. Finally, a
mation Group, such as: “Let             ments the abandoned state             line of text that runs at the bot-
what is intolerable—imposed, as         of factories and institutions         tom of the screen throughout
it is, by force and by silence—         in her* hometown of Paraćin,          the video features a translated
cease to be accepted” and “Let          Serbia. The overexposed edges         and slightly shortened version
us become people intolerant of          appearing on some pictures            of an investigative article on
prisons, the legal system, the          and characteristic of analog          the illegal and inhumane use
hospital system, psychiatric            technique, as well as the play        of prison workers on highway
46   Ana Hoffner ex-Prvulovic*   Active Intolerance – Part II (details), 2021
48    Ana Hoffner ex-Prvulovic*     Interview                           49     Ana Hoffner ex-Prvulovic*         Interview

Ana Hoffner
ex-Prvulovic*
in Conversation
with Anne
Faucheret
TRANSFORMATION AND INTERRUPTION
Your exhibition opens on a black-cube space with three artworks
on display. They provide insight into the topics that span the rest
of the show. After the Transformation (2013) is a video in which        Ana Hoffner ex-Prvulovic*, After the Transformation (video still), 2013
you investigate, in a voice-training session, the potentiality of
voice beyond binary assignations. Besides, you interlace this
personal (albeit fragmentary) narrative with the historical pro-               queer people, who are constantly accused of erasing history
cess of transition in Eastern Europe in the 1990s. Future Anterior             and not acting according to the assigned logic of gender. The
– Illustrations of War (2013) is about the continuity of gendered              claim on history without direct referentiality—in fact, with-
violence, represented or performed, in times of war and peace.                 out a recognized bodily experience—made me think further
Fifty-One Pieces – Believing in Art (2016) is a minimalist mon-                about how queerness can indeed be a tool to have a different
ument in remembrance of the disappearance of 51 artworks                       take on history and memory. I got interested in concepts that
from the National Gallery of Bosnia and Herzegovina during the                 claim memory without direct experience, memories that are
Yugoslav Wars, and hence a statement against cultural amnesia                  transferred otherwise or even created otherwise. Through
but also a call for institutional responsibility toward history. How           Future Anterior – Illustrations of War, I then explored how a
do you articulate these three stances, and how are they made                   specific temporality (the “future anterior” tense) can help to
graspable through other artworks in the show?                                  shift notions of true and false history. And Fifty-One Pieces
                                                                               was made when I started extending, or one could even say
      After the Transformation was the first work I did in 2013,               applying, the queerness of memory to institutions that seem
      when I started to explore queerness as a signifier of memo-              to preserve, but in fact govern, memory. This work is a lot
      ry. Since I was taking testosterone for about a year, I have a           about the politics of collections and collecting as a practice,
      deeper, more masculine voice, which gives the impression to              which then returns in other works in the exhibition.
      some that I grew up as a boy. The voice refers to a past that,
      from the perspective of gender development norms, I haven’t
      necessarily experienced in that way. But this reference is also   TRAUMA—AS REARTICULATION OF SUPPRESSED
      not simply wrong. It is more about the fact that I can claim a    NARRATIVES
      history of masculinity that, in the eyes of heteronormativity,    In your work, you reconsider the way in which history is written,
      does not get any recognition. This is a typical problem for       alongside the fragmented narratives of traumatic experiences.
50    Ana Hoffner ex-Prvulovic*    Interview                           51     Ana Hoffner ex-Prvulovic*        Interview

What does a traumatic experience narrate beyond the                    so important to trigger fantasy and fiction to reinvent memory
post-trauma pathology, beyond the individual psyche? Can you           culture (Erinnerungskultur)?
elaborate on how you thematize in your work the productive
effect of trauma in questioning the normalized and naturalized                There are two series in the exhibition that are highly connect-
histories of a society?                                                       ed and difficult to show, which highlights the problem you
                                                                              describe: Non-aligned Relatives (2016–2021) and The Bacha
      Trauma as a popular discourse is incredibly boring. Every-              Posh Project (2016/2021). For The Bacha Posh Project, I was
      body speaks of it, everybody is sooner or later traumatized             trying to create a fictional persona; I named her Aziza Mehran
      by something, and then takes this as a legitimizing ground              Ahmad and decided that she was a Surrealist artist from Af-
      to claim anything whatsoever. What is indeed interesting is             ghanistan, with a migration history to Europe, and a gender-
      the historical development of trauma. The concept of “trau-             queer. Only because of Aziza’s existence was I able to recre-
      ma” emerged in Sigmund Freud and Josef Breuer’s work on                 ate a collection of works by Claude Cahun, Sonia Delaunay,
      hysteria as a result of the influence of Jean-Martin ­Charcot           and Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, which I then attributed
      and his research on neuropathology at the Salpêtrière                   to Aziza. Creating this collection was a way to create kinship
      clinic in Paris. Freud and Breuer regarded the symptoms of              where I myself wished to have found it. The collection speaks
      hysteria to be a result of traumata. One can say that much              more about my longing for a past of politically engaged queer
      of Freud’s later work was influenced by his thinking about              figures to whom I could belong than of existent relations.
      trauma in terms of gender division. While female hysteria               Since I don’t have such a history, I had to find ways to fabri-
      was understood as being about repressed fantasies, male                 cate it. The Bacha Posh Project is an exploration of framing
      war neurosis was considered to be about repressed mem-                  and naming, and that’s why it consists almost only of display
      ories. There is a crucial gap between fantasy and memory                elements, whereas Non-aligned Relatives hovers in the space
      that was always gendered, and this gap is what I am trying              between physical work (photographs, sculptures, etc.) and
      to grasp through the notion of queerness. It is about reat-             its representational navigation through a performance video.
      taching “trauma” to a bodily experience (that of queer peo-             But, in fact, these two belong together.
      ple but not exclusively), but in fact also about changing the
      understanding of experience itself. It is to me a consequent
                                                                       Ana Hoffner ex-Prvulovic*, Non-aligned Relatives (performance
      next step in articulating trauma through a disentanglement       documentation), 2019, exhibition Queer Stories. Photo: Judith Stehlik
      of origin and effect, and the crucial category of belatedness.

HISTORY AND POST-MEMORY
With the term “post-memory”, literary scholar Marianne
Hirsch describes the relationship that the “generations
after” have to the personal, collective, and cultural trauma
of those who came before, whereby they bear experiences
they “remember” only by means of the stories, images, and
behaviors among which they grew up. But these experiences
are transmitted to them so deeply and affectively as to seem
to constitute memories in their own right. Post-memory’s
connection to the past is thus actually mediated not by recall
but by imaginative investment, projection, and creation. In
your work, you decidedly interlace memory and fantasy, in
order to open up a space for forgotten historical connections,
unseen cultural links, and also to decode amnesia and the
repressed. Can you give us some examples and tell us why it is
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