As in the previous year, the Semmelweis Clinic in Vienna-Währing is once once more the scene of the Parallel Vienna art fair. Over 600 Austrian and international artists will be performing in the two houses and 170 rooms of the former maternity clinic and hospital school until Sunday.
“The pop-up idea is very popular right now”
The concept of Parallel Vienna includes a mixture of presentations, interventions and statements by galleries, off-spaces and individual artists. There is also a performance stage and numerous cooperations, for example with museums. As usual, the alternative art fair takes place parallel to the “big” viennacontemporary, which can be seen this year from September 8th to 11th in the Kursalon in Vienna.
The Parallel Vienna, on the other hand, has already been in the old commercial building near the city park, in an old office building in Vienna-Leopoldstadt or in the old post office on the Dominikanerbastei. “The pop-up idea is very popular right now. We had it ten years ago,” said Stefan Bidner, the artistic director of the fair, in an interview with APA.
Special Show with Paul and Damon McCarthy
Through a collaboration with the Volkstheater Wien, the American performance artist Paul McCarthy and his son Damon McCarthy are also presenting their work at Parallel Vienna. Paul McCarthy is one of the most important contemporary artists, his art is socially critical and often sexually provocative. “CSSC – Trailer” is shown in a small room.
Ronald and Nancy “Raygun”, Mary Magdalene, Jesus Christ, Adam and Eve are watched on a screen in 10 episodes as they get drunk on a journey in a carriage and insult each other. The insulting and absurd language, which wants to criticize authorities and tyrants, eventually turns into sexual abuse.
event notice
PARALLEL VIENNA, Semmelweis Clinic, from 7.9. to 9.9., 1 p.m. to 8 p.m., from 10.9. to 11.9., 12.00 p.m. to 7.00 p.m
For the first time a sculpture park
With Martin Grandits, a student of the artist Brigitte Kowanz is also represented in the sculpture park. According to the website, with a golden meat loaf (“Size does matter”), he invites you to perceive “the aesthetics of everyday life” and shows “The white sock” on a meadow. Other sculptures are by Hans Weigand (“Breakwater”), by the Georgian-Austrian artist “Begi Guggenheim” (an untitled human-robotic figure) and Bruno Gironcoli (untitled pram).
past of the Semmelweis Clinic
Some of the rooms deal with the past of the Semmelweis Clinic. Corinna Helenelund creates a shelter in the clinic with a blue tent entitled “The Backyard On the Seventh Floor”. “Such maternity wards were often associated with a great deal of insensitivity and brutality,” explains Frederike Sperling, program director of “das weisse haus”, which uses the space.
The history of the house can also be felt everywhere else: A remaining water tap protrudes from the light green tiles on the wall, the plaster is crumbling at one point in the corridor and reveals a brown-red brick wall.
Current art discourses
Some installations even pave their way to freedom, such as the black “Parallel Tubes” by Moritz M. Polansky, which – as an allusion to our society – according to the description “force themselves into the light”, “block each other’s space” and “react to the pressure of the other tubes”. In addition, one of the corridors of the clinic leads to the center of one of the current art discourses: a braided hair sculpture by the American artist Adrian Hall reminds us that hairstyles are no longer a purely private matter.
