KUB-Project 07.02            
PAUL RENNER   Theatrum Anatomicum  06 | 07 | – 13 | 07 | 2007    
 

 
   

 

   

Paul Renner
Theatrum Anatomicum, 2006
KUB-Plaza
Photo: miro kuzmanovic/miromedia.net

Paul Renner
The Hardcore Diner | 2005
Öl auf Leinwand
200 × 300 cm
Sammlung Markus Flatz
Foto © Christian Schramm

 

  

In the “Theatrum Anatomicum” created specifically for the Kunsthaus Bregenz, both the mind and the senses will be sharpened as well as dissected. All actions within it should be experienced as synaesthetic processes that seek to find the point where all senses melt into one. As opposed to the former venues of this gesamtkunstwerk (Naples, London, New York, Vienna), the “Theatrum Anatomicum” will be entirely rebuilt from scratch this time.
Paul Renner collaborated with Squid, a young Vienna-based architecture studio led by Gundolf Leitner, that designed the twelve-meter-high skull-shaped tent. Its luxurious interior will contain themes and objects from past and newly planned stages of the journey. 133 people can relax in the atmosphere of ultimate anesthesia this uterus-like structure offers.

    
         
   
   
       
Paul Renner
Theatrum Anatomicum, 2006
KUB-Plaza
Photo: miro kuzmanovic/miromedia.net

Modell Schweinsblase von Roland Adlassnigg, 2007
Foto © Roland Adlassnigg

Computeranimation
© Squid
More Information about Architecture 		  The opening on July 6 entitled “Gas Night/Betäubung” is arranged by the historian of madness and drug-use proponent Mike Jay together with the cook Carles Abellan from Comerç 24, Barcelona, who was Ferran Adrià's right-hand man for more than ten years. Laughing gas is used both in Mike Jay's performances and in Carles Abellan's dishes. KUB's 10-year anniversary on July 7 will be a dissection party, “Nacht der Sektion,” in which Medlar Lucan and Durian Gray will cut open carcasses in their performance with a team from the restaurant “das turm,” Vienna.
On July 9, these carcasses will be displayed as edible sculptures. Erwin Kasper will be the cook, accompanied by the premiere of a work by the composer Alexander Moosbrugger. On July 10, the cook Adi Bittermann will demonstrate eccentric forms of embalmment in “Riten der Selbstauflösung” (Rites of Self-Disintegration). He will be accompanied by the Colombian singer Lucia Pulido and speaker and specialist Gerald Matt. “Dead and Gone Night” on July 12 pays homage to different killing rituals such as the Sicilian matanza and the transformation of the body into song and Japanese eating ceremonies. The evening’s head cook is Martin Real who will be assisted by Japanese sushi masters, on-stage cook is Fritz Ostermayer. The grand finale on July 13 will feature Hermann Nitsch and Paul Renner performing jointly who will bring together the anatomy of the body and food. On four evenings, a sound-film by the acrobatic troop zierKuss will be projected onto the dissecting tables of “Theatrum Anatomicum.”
   
         
   
   
       
Paul Renner
The Hell Fire Dining Club
2004
Öl auf Leinwand
210 × 465 cm
Sammlung Josef Schwienbacher
Foto © Harald Geiger 2004

Paul Renner
Logo »The Hell Fire Dining Club«,
2004

Paul Renner
The Hell Fire Touring
Club – Seaweed Cabinet | 2006
Galerie Leo Koenig Inc., New York
Foto © Martin Geier		   In 1995 and 1998, Johannes Gachnang and Paul Renner created Symposium Vakanz: their idea was to focus on the artistic experiment as performance practice and let artists create a stage for artists. Guided by the idea of designing a theater of obsessions, Lucan, Gray and Renner founded “The Hell Fire Touring Club” in London in 2000. It brought forth strange hybrid forms of traveling, eating, theater, painting, writing, sculpture and exhibition. Spurred on by visionary utopias, they worked on an atlas of the labyrinths of the hermetic Europe. They saw the continent as a colossal anesthetized corpus spread out on the operating table of history, hovering between life and death. Their journey across the continent began in Sicily and led them through eighteen other European places before they first presented their full report at the Fondazione Morra in Naples in 2002. They published a thick book in an edition of 19 copies, enclosed in a box (a cross between a cabinet of curiosities and a first-aid kit) that contained Medlar Lucan’s und Durian Gray’s texts and Paul Renner’s pictures.
In 2004, Renner created his next major work at the Kunsthalle Wien with the great spectacle “Hell Fire Dining Club,” in which he transformed the glass aquarium at Karlsplatz into a melting pot of art, food, alcohol and mystical technology. In 2006, Renner designed “The Hardcore Diner” for the gallery spaces of the New York gallery owner Leo Koenig. It was a temporary variation of the club, a compression chamber wallpapered with algae, a diner constructed out of bulky waste in which guests could wine and dine lavishly.		    
             
         
             

Paul Renner
Theatrum Anatomicum, 2006
KUB-Plaza
Photo: miro kuzmanovic/miromedia.net

Paul Renner
Filmcut aus: zierKuss
TonFilm-Projektion, 2007
Foto © zierKuss

Medlar Lucan, Paul Renner, Durian Gray,
2007
Foto © Paul Kilsby

  


Program Theatrum Anatomicum

       
         
 

Gas Night
Friday, July 6, 7.30 p.m.
Lecture: Mike Jay, London
Kitchen: Carles Abellan, Comerç 24, Barcelona
SoundFilm projection: zierKuss, Vienna
A gastro-philosophical entertainment with nitrous oxide, the kitchen as laboratory, dining as intoxication, chemistry as poetry and SoundFilm projection part 1 »für taube«: the film, to which the sound track will be added live, shows the fusion of animals, a culinary meal and sign language as a physical experience: the cook will be Carles Abellan, who was Ferran Adrià’s right-hand man at El Bulli’s for more than ten years.

Live Dissection
Live Dissection
Ten-Year Anniversary KUB
Saturday, July 7, 7.30 p.m.
Performance: Medlar Lucan and Durian Gray, Oxford
Kitchen: Bernie Rieder, Pablo Meier-Schomburg for “das turm” restaurant, Vienna
SoundFilm projection: zierKuss, Vienna
Lucan and Gray, connoisseurs and researchers in Decadence, will undertake a live performance/dissection, plus SoundFilm projection part 2: “der sturm” follows the traces of The Decadent Restaurant, its founder, and its historical ancestors.

Hypnerotomachia Poliphili
Monday, July 9, 7.30 p.m.
Composer: Alexander Moosbrugger, Berlin
Concert: Kammerensemble Neue Musik, Berlin
Kitchen: Erwin Kasper, Schoppernau
Premiere of a commissioned performance. Poliphilo searches. Gaspard researches. Things lost. Things past. Things visible in reverse. Eatable sculptures after pictures of the “Hypnerotomachia” – labyrinth, oracle, Cupid, satyr, the architecture of the “Theatrum Anatomicum.”

Rites of Self-Disintegration
Tuesday, July 10, 7.30 p.m.
Lecture: Gerald Matt, Vienna
Vocals: Lucia Pulido, Colombia
Kitchen: Adi Bittermann Vinarium, Göttlesbrunn
SoundFilm projection: zierKuss, Vienna
Death as a creation, suicide rituals and eccentric self-anatomy, culinary Dandyism, and SoundFilm projection part 3: “letzte worte,” a filmic collage with audio accompaniment about the death of the historical ancestor of the nebulous restaurant.

Dead and Gone
Thursday, July 12, 7.30 p.m.
Presentation Fritz Ostermayer, Vienna
Concert Quintetto Nitsch, Sicily
Kitchen: Japanese sushi masters and Martin Real, Weite
SoundFilm projection: zierKuss, Vienna
Slaughtering, dissection, and transformation. Sicilian matanza songs coupled with the culinary consumption of fish and SoundFilm projection part 4: “für paul,” a filmed story about the personalization of death and its part in the continuation of life.

Orgien Mysterien Theater and Theatrum Anatomicum
Friday, July, 7.30 p.m.
Action performance: Hermann Nitsch, Prinzendorf
Kitchen: Paul Renner, Grossdorf
Concert: Quintetto Nitsch, Sicily

An action performance by Hermann Nitsch in parallel with a culinary performance by Paul Renner centering on the anatomy of food and the body. An aesthetic ritual glorification of existence.

      
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