Jakob Lena Knebl and Markus Pires Mata

The Style Council (2019)
Performance

Jakob Lena Knebl and Markus Pires Mata’s collaborative work is a tableau vivant of muscular bodies juxtaposed with modernist objects and accompanied by a layer of seductive, uncanny sound. Reacting to the Historicist architecture of the Blauer Salon, this mash-up of references is inspired by Jorge Luis Borges’s short story There Are More Things, in which modernist furniture comes alive in a mysterious house. Based on this strange and incongruous scene, Knebl and Pires Mata create a disconcerting scenography of bodybuilders’ limbs becoming sculptures and sculptures coming alive. Together they create a living image of hedonism in all its ambivalence, thus revealing the mechanisms of seduction and paradoxes of desire that drive the rise and fall of many a subcultural style or identity. The desire to break taboos creates radical elements that ossify as clichés once they hit the mainstream.

19.9.19, 19:00–21:00

Opening Extravaganza

Duration: ongoing

Congress Graz
Albrechtgasse 1
8010 Graz
♿ Venue accessible for wheelchairs
http://www.mcg.at/messegraz.at/de/locations/congress-graz/

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Free admission with Festival Pass
No single tickets, exit and reentry anytime, admission limited to fifty persons at once

Commissioned and produced by steirischer herbst ’19

Performance: Rudolf Stübler, Kevin Stütz, Lara Tasharofi, Jekaterina Übelacker, and Stefan Wottawa
Bodypainting: Denise Kottlett, Jolanda Resch

Jakob Lena Knebl (1970, Baden, Austria) is an artist working in installation, textile, sculpture, performance, film, and photography. Her practice often has a curatorial aspect, entangling her own work with that of others. She is interested in the construction and gendering of identity in art and design, and in the exploration of its transformative potential. Knebl lives in Vienna and Berlin.

Markus Pires Mata (1969, Linz, Austria) is a DJ and fashion designer. He is the founder of a fashion label that fuses classic European menswear with global street style to create looks for all sexes. As DJ das_em, he hosts queer microclubbing nights that mix together radically different music genres. Pires Mata lives in Linz and Vienna.