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Artists Talking DVDs

DVD 1: "Pop Art" presents three exceptional artists, who speak about their work and discuss topics such as identity, the art market, politics and readymades. With Thomas Bayrle and Konstantin Adamopoulos (29 min, English subtitles), James Rosenquist and Max Hollein (35 min), Haim Steinbach and Jan Avgikos (59 min). ISBN: 978-3-96098-243-2. Price: € 19.80 (incl. VAT)

DVD 2: "Art and Language" presents eight exceptional artists, who speak about their work and discuss topics such as texts and language in art, minimalism, tattoos and memorials. With Art & Language: Michael Baldwin, Charles Harrison, Mel Ramsden and Paul Wood (30 min), Heinz Gappmayr and Wolfgang Fetz (36 min, English subtitles), Jenny Holzer and Allan Schwartzman (40 min), Lawrence Weiner and Vitus Weh (32 min, English subtitles), Christopher Wool and Martin Prinzhorn (25 min). ISBN: 978-3-96098-244-9. Price: € 19.80 (incl. VAT)

DVD 3: "Conceptual Art" presents five exceptional artists, who speak about their work and discuss topics such as art school, spaces, conceptual art and the hierarchy of looking. With John Baldessari and Stella Rollig (36 min), Robert Barry and Vitus Weh (41 min), Pavel Büchler and Hans-Ulrich Obrist (71 min), Jeremy Deller and Hilary Lloyd (14 min), Joseph Kosuth and Martin Prinzhorn (40 min). ISBN: 978-3-96098-245-6. Price: € 19.80 (incl. VAT)

DVD 4: "Performance Art" presents six exceptional artists, who speak about their work and discuss topics such as sculptures, performances, relationships, television and museums. With Chris Burden and Christopher Knight (29 min), Andrea Fraser and Christian Philipp Müller (14 min), Gilbert & George and Wolf Jahn (16 min), Paul McCarthy and Timothy Martin (10 min), Rirkrit Tiravanjia and Ami Barak (18 min). Bonus material: Andrea Fraser, Section of "Museum Highlights: A Gallery Talk". ISBN: 978-3-96098-246-3. Price: € 19.80 (incl. VAT) Published by Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, Köln. Kindly supported by Bildrecht. Further DVDs are in preparation.


Artists Talking presented by museum in progress is a series of high-calibre interviews with over one hundred international artists who have exerted a major influence on contemporary art. The interviews are part of a series of videos started in 1992 entitled Artist Portraits on Video. Most of the interviews were conducted in Vienna in the context of exhibitions or symposiums. They did not have any predefined content or length and therefore genuinely reflect the artistic discourse of their time. The artists also provide fascinating insights into their artistic strategies and methods of working.

Based on a concept by Peter Kogler and museum in progress, the recordings have an interesting aesthetic design. The artists are shown face-on as “talking heads”, while the interviewer is heard but not seen. Thanks to the use of the blue-box recording technique, the artists were then able to determine the background colouring themselves. The single colours in most cases reference Pop Art and Andy Warhol in particular. This visual concept was originally designed by Peter Kogler for an unrealised series of interviews with former Factory members and was shown for the first time in the late 1980s in the experimental video Mavo Tape.

This edition presents the interviews compiled for distribution in small groups of four to seven recordings per DVD with titles like Art and Language or Performance Art, based on the artists' work and the interview content. The titles are not intended to compartmentalise the participants and cannot fully reflect the diversity of the artists' work. Most of the artists would fit into several groups without necessarily feeling as if they belong to any group at all. At the same time, this grouping sheds light both on the artists as individuals and on the common features in their points of view and methods of working.

The video interviews were produced in cooperation with various institutions and collaborators. The Studio for New Media founded by Kogler at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna has collaborated for many years in recording and editing of videos, with the cinematic expertise of Elisabeth Fiege making an important contribution. The photographer Christian Schoppe was involved in the video recordings from 1992 to 1994 and took twenty-six portrait photos of the artists. From 1992 to 1996, the interviews were funded as part of the Curator Programme of the Austrian Federal Ministry of Education and Art, later Science, Research and Art, under the direction of Robert Fleck and Stella Rollig. This permitted an extension of the project to the media space in the daily newspaper Der Standard. In 1997, Kunsthaus Bregenz presented the interviews in an exhibition entitled Artists: 50 Positions of Contemporary International Art – Video Portraits and Works, which included new interviews recorded specially for the event. Thereafter, museum in progress published the interviews on VHS and has shown them regularly since then at international exhibitions. This DVD edition remasters the outdated VHS edition and adds over fifty hitherto unpublished interviews. The DVD project was made possible by Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, Köln.

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