Anna Spanlang
Baby better have my menstruation. I ain’t no museum
23.03.-30.04.2023
In cooperation with Diagonale'23.
Curated by: Katrin Bucher Trantow
Assistant curator: Michaela Humpel
Anna Spanlang is the author of the trailer of the Diagonale'23
About the exhibition
A giant tampon on the forecourt. The writing "Baby better have my menstruation ..." on the facade. Films and a trailer by and with accomplices. Film portraits and a live feed as a tribute to collaboration itself. Anna Spanlang's light-footed and hip exhibition intervention is laid out as a fragmented montage in the Kunsthaus. Over it all hovers a great democratic task: the instruction for empathy.
It is strange that the word "menstruation" is still a difficult one. Not only in advertising, where until now mostly blue water flowed on pads. Recently, due to a hiccup while translating, a female athlete's "monthly cycle" became a cycling event. Reason enough to talk about it. That's what G-Udit/Judith Kratz and Anna Spanlang think, too, when they contemplate using an entire car as a (suction)strong tampon for their latest Green Scream episode. The Green Screams, which where a reaction to the Lockdowns, deal with the absurdity of the mediated self as much as male dominated connotations of the world. What takes form as a satirical show with invited guests, examines general values ruthlessly and mercilessly.
In the Kunsthaus, Anna Spanlang as last year's Diagonale winner in the category "Best Innovative Film" shows her collaborative work in film interspersed with props (the giant tampon stands in the forecourt) and films that overlay the existing setting. She directly addresses and involves the audience: From a live interaction with the Diagonale team featuring a cap by artist Jojo Gronostay, to a final Green Scream episode with G-Udit, to loops of highly regarded short films such as a film by Ukrainian Alisa Sizykh and a film portrait of a chimney sweep by Emma Braun. Spanlang builds a polyphonic whole. Immersion takes a sense of connectedness.
Katrina Daschner comments that Spanlang's "obsessive, fast, experimental style of montage rapidly (...) draws into a world that is not one's own at first, but in the course of watching quickly allows us (...) to participate."
Anna Spanlang's film practice is that of whimsical, feminist, and empathetically racy montage. Her works are witty, often essayistic, and peculiarly personal. Often shot with cell phone camera, they chronicle a current form of authenticity. Stories in which the communal does not come across as staid, but as a genuine alternative.
For her thesis film CEREAL / Soy Claudia, soy Esther y soy Teresa. Soy Ingrid, soy Fabiola y soy Valeria (2021), Anna Spanlang received the Kunsthalle Wien Award in 2021, followed by the Diagonale Award for "Best Innovative Film" in 2022. In addition to her own directorial and performance works, Anna Spanlang has been making a name for herself in the art world for over ten years in various collaborations with Kurdwin Ayub, Katrina Daschner, KLITCLIQUE or Jojo Gronostay, among others. She studied at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna with Dorit Margreiter and Constanze Ruhm.
A cooperation of Kunsthaus Graz and Diagonale'23 involving the artists Emma Braun, Judith Kratz/G-Udit, Jojo Gronostay and Alisa Sizykh as well as the Diagonale'23 team.
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