This open exposition was designed by Elisabeth Schäfer, Paul-Julien Robert, and Ida Clay as members of the PPC FWF PEEK project to critically examine the history of the Mühl "commune"/sect at Friedrichshof/Burgenland Austria. The project took place from 2020-2023. Of course, it is not finished. Reappraisal processes are launched, continue, must continue and will continue being accompanied by the actors of the project. Because it is a work in progress, we have also given the open exposition a fragmentary, provisional, unfinished character.
Founded by the Viennese Actionist artist Otto Mühl in 1972 and dissolved by the Communards in 1990, the "AA Commune" was initially dedicated to raising awareness of habitualization through domination in everyday socio-cultural life practice and to liberating people from the sphere of influence of powerful social institutions. Their declared goal was to overcome authoritarian institutions such as the state, the church, the bourgeois family, capitalism, and patriarchy with the help of science, art, and liberated sexuality. The social experiment ended in a highly authoritarian system within a controlled community. Mühl was sentenced to seven years in prison for multiple sexual abuse.
Together with contemporary witnesses, the project strives for a re-examination and reappraisal of the commune and its effects through "research in and through the arts" by building a research space collaboratively designed by artists, contemporary witnesses and scholars as a reservoir for the joint exploration of individual and collective historical aspects of the AAO: (Re)writing of Reality Through Discourse.
This open exposition is one share of this (re-)writing through discourse. It presents an overview and excerpt from the three-year artistic research project in the form of a research landscape in which various formats can be visited as stages of research. In the form of a mapping we have embedded audio, video and text products into the research landscape of our project. Central locations of this landscape are the Friedrichshof in Burgenland, Austria, site of the former "commune"/sect & the Volkskunde Museum Vienna as national cooperation partner of the project.
Title of the project: PPC - Performing Primal Communism. (Re)writing of Reality Through Discourse
Principal investigator: Paul-Julien Robert
Project Team: Ida Clay, Thomas Marschall, Elisabeth Schäfer
Research location: Academy of Fine Arts Vienna (Institute of Fine Arts | IBK) | Karl-Schweighofergasse 3 | 1070 Vienna
Cooperation partner: Volkskundemuseum Wien
Funding: PPC is an FWF PEEK project [AR568] Project duration: 2020-2023
[Listen to the entire text of introduction in opening the audiofile here ...]
... The starting point is that one can see the provisional nature of the drawing: once it has been thrown onto the paper, it is not merely a finished draft. The drawing is the visualization of the fact that the design is not completed with the drawing, but continues to unfold in it ...
Performing Primal Communism (PPC) has been an artistic research project (2020-2023) based at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna working on the critical reappraisal of the Aktionsanalytische Organisation, AA-"Kommune" at Friedrichshof / Burgenland (AT), founded by Otto Mühl and dissolved by the Communards.
See project website: [link]
