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Catalogue note by Kolja
Reichert for the exhibition catalogue
Was draußen wartet/What Is Waiting
Out There, 6th Berlin Bienniale for Contemporary
Art, 2010, pp. 205 (D), 216 (E); handbook pp. 79 (D), 80 (E). A link in
the text opens the relevant documentation
in a new window.
 German original
Marlene Haring
For her diploma examination,
Marlene Haring, in a full-body,
blond-haired suit made of
plumber’s hemp, crawled
through the Vienna Prater
with her examiners and a
crowd of curious spectators
in tow. She made her way
from the amusement park to
the red light Stuwerviertel
district, where she had a
group photo taken in front
of an alpine panorama in
an vacant store and finally
lured her audience to her
apartment where she disappeared
into the bathroom, leaving
a sign on the door: “If
you want to talk with me,
you have to bathe with me.” (Marlene
Hairy, or In My Bathtub I
am the Captain, 2005)
This action united central
elements of Haring’s
art: transgressing customary
frames of experience through
surprising situations, examining
the probabilities of action
in social structures, problematizing
normality, the critique of
body images and forms of
conditioning the body, and,
last but not least, a title
that shatters earnest debates.
Haring’s material
is reality. She uses everyday
stuff in irritating ways.
She makes visible the boundaries
and norms that regulate social
praxis in a supposedly liberal
society. She often works
directly via the body. At
Scope Miami she gave hickeys
(love bites) to visitors
for ten dollars (Sucking
Marks $10, 2006)—radically
compressing the terms of
the artist-collector relationship.
When Haring applies Nivea
Creme on mirrors she confronts
both the male-dominated tradition
of monochrome painting and
female body-care rituals,
while the familiar smell
of the product provokes ambivalent
associations. Her use of
hemp
fiber and spaghetti mocks the clichés
of feminist body art—“Although
I mean it seriously,” says
Haring. Her aim is not so
much to reclaim latitude
for identity as to overcome
identity altogether. Cordially,
her art hints that one can
always be many things at
once.
Haring’s installations
work through consistent excess.
With that, she gets the better
of self-institutionalizing
institutional critique. So,
in 2009, when Haring was
supposed to lecture on the
freedom of art at the Vienna
Secession, the building was
Closed
Because of Pubic Hair.
She had blocked the monumental
stairway and entrance portal
with blond plumber’s
hemp and invited the guests
for a conversation in a beer
garden. Rather than occupying
positions, Haring opens situations.
In her work Living
in Hope for the Festival of Regions
in Linz, 2009, Haring tested
the limits of performance
as a permanent regular for
a month in a pub on the outskirts
of Linz, thus introducing
a small difference in a defined
social space.
In recent weeks Haring has
been in Berlin to develop
an installation and a performance
for the Bienniale. At the
time of going to press, only
the titles were available:
Title
Holder and Title
Fight on Orange Square. Haring: “A
biennial is a title fight
too.”
Kolja
Reichert, 2010
The German text will be posted shortly
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