Video and performance

LOU SALOME

Lou Salomé, photo: Marianne Greber

LOU SALOME

Video and performance

2005

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TECHNICAL DETAILS

 

Single channel projection (colour), loop, 4:3 PAL, audio:

Appearance as Lou Salomé: 3’30”, language: German

Lou Salomé A Roma Teatro di Cani: 5’22”.

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DEMO

 

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DESCRIPTION

Lilliana Cavani’s film “Beyond Good and Evil” and photos of Lou Salomé – the friends of artists and femme fatale – driving a cart drawn by Nietzsche and Paul Rée with whom she’d lived in a relationship for a while, became the starting point for the video performance and a series of photographs using the Schwarzenberg garden and palace in Vienna as a background. In Kozyra’s interpretation the characters undergoing the dressage are Nietzsche and Rilke (whom Salomé also knew), or rather actors–dancers in dog masks, but with distinctive and recognisable facial features of the philosopher and the poet. The Lou Salomé project was prepared at the time when Kozyra was also working on “In Art Dreams Come True”, therefore we can see mutual influence of the two projects. However, while in “In Art…” Kozyra is the material – a doll – a toy in the hands of Gloria, Viagra and Maestro who shape her, in the “Appearance…” she plays the role of a dominatrix completely in control of the men – dogs. Final credits are accompanied by Kozyra humming the Queen of the Night aria from Mozart’s “The Magic Flute”.

 

The same year Kozyra organized a special performance with dogs in Italy. At Kozyra’s performance of “Lou Salomé a Roma” in Teatro Universale at the Romaeuropa theatre festival, audience members with dogs were especially warmly invited; as guests of honour they didn’t have to pay for their tickets and could take the best seats in front of the stage.First, the audience could see the Viennese film “Appearance as Lou Salomé”, with added sequences of Lou, Rilke and Nietzsche visiting main tourist attractions in Rome. The following part was live – there was a kind of Rilke’s and Nietzsche’s dressage performance on stage, conducted by Lou Salomé, in which the commands were given in Italian. The performance was interrupted by waiters circling among the crowd and handing out dog treats on silver platters, by cameramen recording the action on stage and in the audience as well as the dogs nervous and anxious due to the noise and a mixture of scents. Dogs’ irritation was enhanced by their owners’ apprehension: their attention was divided between watching the performance and calming their pupils down. Therefore, the performance took place on stage and off.

 

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ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

  • Kozyra’s original idea included the role of Nietzsche-dog and Rilke-dog played by Gloria Viagra and Maestro known from the cycle “In Art Dreams Come True”.

  • “Appearance as Lou Salomé” was prepared for the “Impossible Theatre” exhibition in Kunsthalle Vienna.

  • “Appearance as Lou Salomé” is housed in the collection of the National Museum in Warsaw and The ING Polish Art Foundation.

  • In 2019, the work “The Appearance of Lou Salome”, along with the work of Natalia LL, was censored and removed from the exhibition at the National Museum in Warsaw on the recommendation of the Polish Ministry of Culture.

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SEE MORE

 

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The Artist would like to thank all her collaborators and people who helped in the realisation of the project, in particular:

Roberto Carotenuto, Marianne Greber, Radek Hewelt, Alian Lepore, Giovanni Magnarelli, Andrea De Paolis, Frans Poelstra, Bernhard Riff, Mirek Szewczyk, Rafał Wawrzeniecki.

 

Production:

Kunsthalle Wien, Romaeuropa Festival, Schwarzenberg Palace and Gardens, Wien, Polish Institute in Rome, Teatro Palladium, Università Roma Tre.