MMP: Markus Schinwald

Seven people find themselves at an anonymous hotel. Their remarkable behaviour makes one think of idiosyncratic and for outsiders, incomprehensible rituals and unsatisfied (erotic) desires. Faces and movemnets seem to have stuck in frozen positions. The middle-aged – and older – men and women meet without actually meeting and the atmosphere is loaded with restrained, possibly bored, ecstasy that is almost pathetic. The voice of the male speaker changes after a while, gradually, into a woman’s.

This year’s first Moderna Museet Projekt comes from Markus Schinwald, whose work overlaps art, fashion, film, advertising and theatre scenography. His new work, called Dictio pii (roughly, “the speech of the blessed”), is a 16 minute long film without a beginning and an end. The designer, René Lezard’s clothes have been manipulated by the artist, who has also made the remarkable “accessories” that appear in the film. In addition to references to film-makers such as Jean-Luc Godard and David Lynch, Dictio pii contains influences from the poets EM Cioran and Pierre Klossowski.

Markus Schinwald is interested in human relations and how temptation and desire are created and disturbed in staged situations in which the glance and fetishes are important. To achieve his ends he uses clothes and performance – the people in Dictio pii are all actors and dancers. At the Berlin Biennale in 1998 he showed mutated shoes on their shoe boxes and a simulated advertisement for them every five minutes for three months on a video advertisement space at Alexanderplatz. Another example of his work is Jubelhemd, a man’s white shirt sewn so that the wearer must continually keep his arms aloft. This has been shown both as a garment and as a documentary on advertising spaces. Schinwald has also made music videos and sets and costumes for theatre groups. In conjunction with the performance festival “I’ll never let you go” in Stockholm in March this year, Markus Schinwald, together with a Russian dancer, contributed a “work in progress” at the Café Panorama in Kulturhuset and in Moderna Museet’s Auditorium.

Dicto pii – or “the speech of the blessed” – is the name of the film that the Austrian artist Markus Schinwald (b 1973) has made for Moderna Museet Projekt.

Dicto Pii is set in a Viennese hotel, though the film doesn’t reveal which hotel, or which era. The surroundings are meant to be timeless, as are the persons inhabiting these environments. One of the inspirations for Dicto pii is “Tears and Saints”, a book by Rumanian philosopher E. M. Cioran in which it is said, among other things, that “saints are insane in an odd way”. The characters in Markus Schinwald’s film can be seen as insane, perhaps even as saints. In a focused and serious way, they set about their bizarre, enigmatic chores. Some of them appear to represent allegories, while others give the impression of forming part of a fetishistic game.

The film, which lacks both a beginning and an ending, is in actual fact comprised of five different films representing both various parts of the hotel and different men and women. One of these people – whose identity remains unknown to the viewer – narrates the history shared by the characters. During the course of the film, the voice of the narrator changes from male to female. According to Markus Schinwald, the story can be interpreted as a collective version of Nietzsche’s “Ecce homo”.

Markus Schinwald takes an interest in fashion, set design, human relations and philosophy, among other things. On several occasions he’s elected to display his works in public places. The clothes worn by the actors in Dicto pii form part of the latest collection by fashion designer René Lezard, although they’ve undergone manipulations by Markus Schinwald. The clothes play a crucial role in the film; they could even be said to form a textile representation within the work of art. In addition, Markus Schinwald has also constructed the “tools” used in the film. That way, Dicto pii reflects Markus Schinwald’s fascination for the rapid cycles of the fashion world as well as for philosophical and religious matters of considerable durability.

Dictio pii is a 35 mm film and shown on DVD. Using a remote control, the viewer can move between the five different, yet parallel, scenes and in this way, influence the course of events. The presentation at Moderna Museet relates to scenes in the film from the public passages in the hotel and other connecting spaces by being shown in the museum’s lobby in an austere, unadorned suite of furniture designed by the artist. To underline the theatrical in the work, it is simultaneously presented at the Royal Opera from 30 May to 2 June; 9 June to 14 June and th 20th, 23rd, 25th, 30th and 31st August at 6.30 – 7.30 PM and in the pause, and finally on the 1st of September, between 2 and 3 PM and pause.

Markus Schinwald was born in 1973 in Salzburg. He lives and works in Vienna.

Markus Schinwald’s Moderna Museet Projekt has been supported by the Siemen’s Kulturprogramm. Special thanks are also extended to the Royal Opera.

Curator: Maria Lind