Günter Brus

A portrait of the Austrian avant-garde artist Otto Mühl/Muehl (1925-2013), whose work combined sex, violence, gastronomy and bodily effluence with unbridled abandon.

About a group of graduates from Cambridge University who go back to their college to visit a friend who has stayed on there. Otto Muehl founded a community of artists in Vienna in 1970 with the aim of exploring a completely free life practice. Since 1972, this society experiment at the Friedrichshof in Burgenland, 60 kilometers from Vienna, further developed. From the mid-1970s, other municipalities were founded in 30 European cities. At Friedrichshof itself lived at times up to 240 members and visitors.

"The Manopsychotic Ballet" was the last important action by Otto Muehl before he retired from the art world after a decade of painting and performance and focused on his commune as an alternative way of living. It marked the end of a very prolific phase of actions that followed the legendary Art and Revolution action by the Viennese Actionists in Vienna in 1968. As a result of this performance, Muehl and Günter Brus were prosecuted and could no longer exhibit publicly in Austria.

He ended the period of creating works exclusively using the body as a medium with the “Zerreissprobe” (Breaking Test) in 1970. His 43rd Aktion was the last and at the same time the most radical of his analyses of self-painting and self-mutilation. In it, Günter Brus actually carried out the injury that had previously often only been intimated by cutting along the back of his head with the razor blade in front of the public. Physical pain was thus not only suggested or acted out by the artist but actually experienced.

A subversive and experimental film from Otmar Bauer and Günter Brus.

In “Körperanalyse” (Body Analysis) in 1968, the artist (Günter Brus) urinated in front of an audience, cut his skin with a razor blade, and masturbated to the accompaniment of the Austrian national anthem.

Four men, one woman and a cat in a room. The men drink and discuss. Things get a bit violent. The masochist acts out his desires by himself. Random fuss and sex occurs. Suddenly the woman gets her baby to change diapers. Odd things around the child. The cat gets abused. This is Otto Muehl going Fassbinder.

Four men, one woman and a cat in a room. The men drink and discuss. Things get a bit violent. The masochist acts out his desires by himself. Random fuss and sex occurs. Suddenly the woman gets her baby to change diapers. Odd things around the child. The cat gets abused. This is Otto Muehl going Fassbinder.

‘Kunst & Revolution is a documentation on the famous action known as the “filthy uni mess”, which led to a jury court trial. I only had a few metres of film with me and they were quickly spent, but still the film gives one a rough impression of the events. As a whole mythology quickly arose around the event, I altered the material to counteract this effect (through repetition, and adding other material, for instance from a film about keeping dogs, and my own leftover footage from the Muehl action number 54 ‘Im Freudenauer Wasser’).’ In film 16 of his anthology Ernst Schmidt Jr. documented the actions of Günter Brus, Otto Muehl, Peter Weibel and Oswald Wiener.

An experimental, bizarre and a very different shooting of an association between the sexes.

An experimental, bizarre and a very different shooting of an association between the sexes.

Four young men affected by psychological motorcar reactions and effluents that get more excited, crazy and freaked out as times passes.

A collage of many visuals. A man urinates; a man has a drink. A man defecates; someone eats a meal. 16/67 September 20: ‘The Eating Drinking Shitting Pissing Film'.

Kren’s 10/65 Selfmutilation is developed from a Gunter Brus “action”. What the film emphasizes is the surrealistic drama of symbolic self-destruction that Kren drew out of Brus’ action, pacing out each gesture so that one gets a tense, iconoclastic revelation of a man covered in white plaster lying surrounded by razor blades and a range of instruments looking as if they have been taken from an operating theatre. The blades, scissors and scalpels are gradually inserted into him in a ritualistic self-operation. (Stephen Dwoskin)

A kind of home movie made in Brus' apartment. Brus' Christmas wishes can be seen on a poster which he painted and which he holds for a short time in front of the camera.

"Action" by Günter Brus. At first Kren did not want to show the film, because the image is underexposed. A copy of the negative material turned out to be better than the original material and so Kren did show the film. The film's title relates to Brus' use of silver paper for his action.

This three-minute film was far more akin to the American-style "happening" in that the content was not particularly extreme. It was built up from items such as broken bicycle parts, a nude model, pieces of furniture, and these elements were then obscured or transformed by having a layer of paint thrown on them.