Thievery and Songs

Thievery and Songs (Excerpt of 4:30 min)

For watching the video in full length please contact Gernot Wieland:

gewieland@gmail.com

 

Thievery and Songs

2016

22:40 min, Super 8 Film/HD Video

In Thievery and Songs Gernot Wieland has made an exceptionally beautiful, tragicomic and humorous work, framed by the story of a dancer, Hilde Holger, who had to flee from Austria into exile in Bombay in 1938 because she was Jewish.
This collage of moving images is composed of Super 8 film, video, watercolours, drawings, Claymation and his father´s photos. Each frame carries the distinctive atmosphere of its medium. The work includes stories of animals and psychotherapists, memories of Wieland´s catholic education, the religious-like indoctrination of the Viennese actionists in Austrian culture, a transformation into a snail, which by the turns of narrative, bears a relationship to landscapes, the notion of memory and hierarchy and a therapeutic session.
In the therapist’s office, Wieland narrates a dream about the ‘Bremer Stadtmusikanten’ or the ‘Town Musicians of Bremen’, a Brothers Grimm fairytale, of outcast animals who leave for Bremen to become musicians. In drawing on this story, and the motif of the four animals, Wieland adds to its long cultural legacy. In the story the animals chase away robbers, and are able to occupy a house. In Wieland’s work it appears the revolution fails. This work present a critique of capitalism, hierarchical structures and the ghosts of WW2. 
‘I tell the story about my grand-aunt, the ugly part so to speak, about that she was sold, poverty, a family who was imprisoned and killed by Nazis and how my grand aunt narrated and what I imagined to see in her images. We filmed dance movements in a government building, which was important to me. You can tell it is a government building, in German it is called ‘Rathaus’, where you apply for a new passport, you can get married, there is a tax office, the official life, so to speak. I wanted that setting, as a ‘quote’ for Austria’s past, since there were so many people who were responsible, who decided.’  Zasha Colah, 2016

Thievery and Songs has been shown at BIENALSUR, 3rd Bienal Internacional de Arte Contemporáneo de America del Sur, Buenos Aires, Argentinia, 2021/2022; Salzburger Kunstverein (solo), Salzburg, Austria, 2022; Diebstahl und Gesänge, Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen, Switzerland, 2020 (solo); Videoart at Midnight, Berlin, Germany, 2020; Zoo Cosmos, Casa Conti /Ange Leccia Art Center, Oletta, France, 2020; ANIMA – Taiwan International Video Art Exhibition, Hong-Gah Museum, Taipei, Taiwan, 2020; Vdrome, London, UK, 2019; Survival Kit 9, LCCA – Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art, Riga, Latvia, 2017; MOSTYN Open 20, Llandudno, Wales, 2017; Kasseler Dokumentar, Film und Videofest, Kassel, Germany, 2017; 33rd International Short Film Festival, Hamburg, Germany, 2017 and Body Luggage – Migration of Gestures, Kunsthaus Graz, festival steirischer herbst, Austria, 2016.

Thievery and Songs was awarded with the MOSTYN Open 20 Award in 2017. A statement by the jury: “Gernot Wieland’s accomplished and complex work stood out for the panel, specifically for the way in which it creates a narrative around the human condition and how it examines the place of the individual in society.”