Bae and me at the job interview

Viktoria’s artworks enchanted me upon first sight. Like drawn into space her works become alive in space. Sensitive and gentle but powerful at the same time, they find their way into your heart. 

For the following I asked Viktoria if she wants to do an interview with me:

Luna Maluna Gri: Tell me a bit about yourself and your work.

Viktoria Morgenstern: I’m born in Vienna and I’m a queer artist. My main material was always drawing and it developed from drawing in a classical sense to photography, because I was really impatient, so I started to do a lot of work in photography and then went back from photographs to drawing again. From there it became three-dimensional and now the main mediums I use in my work are steel and brass and the work developed into what I call three-dimensional drawing in space. Some of the work is participatory or engaging also with other senses than only the visual, like touch or sound.

LMG: How and why did you start creating art?

VM: As far back as I remember I was always drawing. The earliest memory that I have of it is when I was two or three years old, which was also the age when my mother gave me an old camera, that was working with film. So thats when I started drawing and taking pictures. She still has some prints that I signed on the back at age three, in which I made my mother and my grandmother pose. Making pictures or being involved in this process, was always there and has never left me. Just the way how the work develops in a technical and conceptual sense, the research and all of this things has changed of course, but it was always a part of me.

LMG: What role does creating art play for you?

VM: For me it’s a way to deal with and also express what I’m experiencing, like on a basic human level. This is actually the first impetus I have and the need I have to do that in order to get along with things or understand the world around me. Working is actually a necessity for me. The part then where I share the work comes after that. This is more like “okay, this is here and now I want to share that, so maybe we can have a connection” or someone else can also relate to whatever topic lies in that work. It’s a way of getting in touch with myself and with everything that surrounds me – being connected.

Your heart, my heart

The imprint of the world is not a perfect circle

The last Habitat

LMG: What does your creating process look like?

VM: Mostly very messy, maybe a bit chaotic and a lot of times it’s very intense because also the work itself is intense and it’s very physical. Especially when I’m in the workshop – I need to be in a certain strength in order to be able to pull that off to work with the steel. But I’m not only working when I’m in the studio, I’m also working when I’m on the train, when I do research, when I draw (on paper), when I collect pictures and other materials.. so my art practice is actually not only happening when I’m in the workshop but it’s also happening on the road, doing interviews and collecting all those informations. My work is also based in scientific research and that can reach from geology to neuroscience or sociology. I barely ever stop working, maybe when I’m at the dentist or sleeping, but that’s it (laughs). I think it’s hard to say where to draw the line.

The earths core, I am heavy metal

EDEN

LMG: What inspires you?

VM: Most inspiration I draw from human interactions. I love to observe people, how they connect and how they exchange and share with each other, or don’t, or disconnect. So I’m mostly interested in other humans and I would say after that I have that really strong connection to earthy materials I call it, if it’s animals or stones or bones. I have a huge collection of material and from then it goes on into geology, archeology, vulcanology, sociology and all these other science departments and I would argue that these are the three columns of my work. 

LMG: What is your experience with the art world?

VM: I’ve met amazing people in the art world, not only fellow artists but a lot of people that are deeply engaged in making opportunities for art and artists to exist, to develop and to connect. I’m really happy that I met those people that are so engaged with enabling, also young artists, to make projects. On the same hand I feel like after graduating from the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna it was really hard to navigate all those non-written rules when it comes to commercial deals or “how -to-behave rules” that are not really spoken about but if you fail at them you will know. I did not really feel prepared to navigate that and I’m still questioning a lot of things after the Academy and I feel it’s a very difficult topic or let’s say a very difficult situation, when it comes to art and artists and commercial relations. I think we still have a lot to do when it comes to equality, when it comes to fair payments and transparency. I think that we are able to change it for the better, if we work together. There is enough money in there and it should be for all of us.

LMG: Is there something you want to change about the art world? If yes, what and why?

VM: I would install a basic income for artists, not only for an artist but also writers, musicians, etc., because that’s really an incredible necessity. It can not be that workers of the culture scene have to fear for getting their basic needs met month after month. The whole society is profiting from these cultural workers when they consume that art and I feel like that must be acknowledged, at least in some sort of basic income. And from then on we can talk and get into a deeper conversation but I feel like that is the first thing that has to change. The situation like it is now makes artists more vulnerable for exploitation and for signing deals or offers that they are actually not really okay with, cause they are depending on the money.

LMG: What do you think is/are the role/-s of artists and art in our society?

VM: I think there is not a single answer to what the exact role is for artists or art in our society at the moment because it’s not only one role anymore. I think it got more complex over the last centuries and when I talk about art I also mean pop art, music, literature, etc. and for example when it comes to music and pop art stars are like our new gods, it’s like a new religion and therefor there are a lot of roles and a lot of projections that are happening on art and on the artists. I feel like every century, every time gets their art and their artists and vice versa. It’s not a one sided situation but a situation of exchange and one is mutually dependent on the other.

Before I forget
Link to the sound work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQJI-64QORQ

Being with you is like riding a horse freehand

LMG: What artist/-s would you like to meet (dead or alive), and if you had one question what would you like to ask them?


VM: I would meet an artist that has already passed, Yves Klein. He was the first artist from whom I have experienced a work in flesh when I was a child, I think I was twelve, so it was my first, if you can say so, real experience with art and it really profoundly changed the idea or perception I had about art. I also think his work and the reduction in his work, reducing to the bear minimum, is something that has stuck with me until this day, more then twenty years later. I would like to ask him “How does it feel?”, “How does it feel when you do your work?”, because he is considering a lot how the observers experience and feel his work but there is not much text or information about him expressing how his own work made him feel and how he experienced it while he was doing it, I would love to ask him that.

LMG: Is there something you want to achieve in your art life? Dreams? Future plans or projects you would like to do?

VM: I have so much I wanna do and I’m just hoping that one lifespan is enough to do everything (laughs). I would have one other goal that my practice and my work will be on some sort of level one day where I can also provide opportunities for other artists or young people to be able to experience art or find tools for themselves through art, may be painting, photography or whatever we come up with in the next years, that I would really love.

LMG: Do you think there is something you can bring to this world through your work as an artist which you couldn’t in any other field of work?

VM: Yes I do think so, I can talk through my work about something without obeying to any rules. If I look at my other opportunities, I would have either become a scientist or I would have worked in a social field, like sociology or maybe therapy, but in both of these fields you have rules and it is also really important that they are there and the guidelines that are installed. It’s important to follow them but for me in order to express all these diverse layers I wanna talk about in my work I can not work in a predefined frame, so I need to be out of this context and this is where the art comes in.

Deep Touch Pressure

Credits:

3^rd photo: ©Christina Schmidl

8^th photo: ©https://www.kunst-dokumentation.com/

All other photos and all artworks: ©Viktoria Morgenstern

Website: https://www.viktoriamorgenstern.studio/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/viktoria_morgenstern/

Author’s Note: I’m trying something a bit different today

I first came in contact with Pipilotti’s works through my father who had a CD of her band ‘Les Reines Prochaines’. Now years later her work (especially her video works) still fascinates me. For that reason I picked out three video works by Pipilotti which I want to talk about more in detail, what I think about them and why in my opinion Pipilotti’s work is still very relevant today. 

1.)  Ever is over all 

The video work shows a woman (Pipilotti herself) which happily smiling walks down the sidewalk, with a big red flower in her hands. The speed of the video is slowed down, which causes an enjoyable calm and conveys the feeling of moving around in a dream. Accompanying the video is the humming of a woman and the chirping of birds. Suddenly, out of an inexplainable impulse, the woman smashes the window of a car parking beside the sidewalk with her flower. In that moment the humming changes into the sound of a distorted piano mixed with electronic beats. After that she continues her walk on the sidewalk and smashes more car windows of cars parking along the sidewalk. From behind her a policewoman comes into the frame and while passing her, smiles at her and (almost approving) nods to her and salutes. Also the other people passing by don’t seem impressed by the woman’s behaviour in any way. The woman proceeds on her way and carries on smashing car windows, of which every shattering window disrupts the beat with a loud crack. The whole video is kept in saturated colours.

What I feel when watching this video is empowerment. The empowerment to show rage and anger as a woman, since women societally are expected to always be nice, sweet, polite, caring and not show any anger or dissatisfaction. Which is what could be expressed by Pipilotti with her attitude in the video. Her acting being joyous while also smashing the windows and everyone of the pedestrians not caring that she does so (and the policewoman even greeting her happily), is pointing to the fact that female rage often is not taken seriously, since anything “female” is seen as weaker.

With every hit and breaking window it feels like breaking these barriers/restrictions/expectations society has put up for women. It feels freeing in a way. To really take up space which is us too often not granted and show all your feelings raw and honest. 

2.) Sip my Ocean

This video work offers the view of an idyllic underwater world. Different objects are slowly sinking one after the other, through the water down to the sea bed. The sequences of the sinking objects switch back and forth with sequences of a close-up of a woman floating, diving and swimming underwater. The pace of this work is again slowed down and gives you the feeling of floating in a dream. The colours are very intense and it is accompanied by the cover of the song ‘Wicked Game’ by Chris Isaak, sung by Pipilotti.

This work really touches me. The almost dreamlike video in combination with the cover of the song ‘Wicked Game’ has something very nostalgic and a bit melancholic to it. It’s like watching a recording of a memories you made, memories of a good time which you are looking back upon now. It has something very soft and fragile to it, like if you were dreaming and open your eyes now, the bubble would burst and the memories are gone. At the same time it is very powerful. The power that lies in the total vulnerability of opening up completely and letting people in and in the passages in ‘Wicked Game’ which she screamed, also tackling through that again the topic of female empowerment. 

3.) I’m not the girl who misses much 

This video shows a woman (again Pipilotti herself) in a black dress in an empty room, starting with her in front of one of the room’s white walls. She then starts dancing around in the room manically while singing repeatedly ‘I’m not the girl who misses much’ (an adapted line from the song ‘Happiness is a Warm Gun’ by the Beatles). Her voice is manipulated, same as the speed of the video, causing the voice to change between being high-pitched (almost child-like) and deep and a bit darker and the video changing between being speed up and slowed down. The colour balance of the video is also modified, so some parts of the video seem more reddish others more bluish. After some time the video becomes distorted with freeze frames creating the image of a cadence of a heart monitor. This video gives of a somehow creepy feeling but at the same time really fascinates me. Although it’s just the same sentence over and over again, it draws you in, further and further, which has an almost hypnotic quality to it. In the unsettling and mysterious though lies its power. The deconstructing of a traditional gender role, what a woman is expected to be like (kind of like a witch which is also not fitting in the traditional role of a woman, powerful and nowadays often used as a figure for empowerment in feminist movements). 

Pipilotti’s work has a timeless quality to it. The effects used to alter the video still are very effective today. The topics and problems she addresses in her videos are still issues which we have to deal with today. Women’s rights issues are still as important today as ever, reaching their extremes in issues like the new abortion regulations in the US last year or the women led revolution in Iran at the moment. But it’s also important in day to day experiences like gender roles, catcalling, sexual harassment and abuse, etc. 
Pipilotti’s work makes you think, to scrutinize your beliefs, calls attention to important topics but with a lot of feeling, at times even humor and through bright and colourful worlds. 
It is honest, powerful but vulnerable at the same time. It touches you straight to the heart. And most importantly, it empowers. It empowers to stand up for yourself, to break out of the roles and expectations others (or society) imposed on you and to live your life how you want to. 

Links to the video works:

1) Ever is over all: https://youtu.be/-gd06ukX-rU

2) Sip my Ocean: https://youtu.be/eLPPJsQliD4 (there only is a view from an installation she did at the Museum of Contemporary art Chicago available in which she used the video work and not only of the video work itself, but I think this works well too to get an insight into the work).
Cover ‘Wicked Game’: https://youtu.be/7daW5KQZ8LE

3) I’m not the girl who misses much: https://youtu.be/hjvWXiUp1hI