G.R.A.M.

With their performance on the opening days of the festival, G.R.A.M. attempts a first step up and away from a crowded, cluttered, and generally crisis-ridden public space, presenting an emblematic machine ballet and a memento mori in the neoliberal world order.

As a “friendly UFO,” the Graz Kunsthaus is the perfect setting to rehearse and perform this departure. Elements of its science fiction architecture blend with other moments of the here and now and the visual dross of consumer society. Tube men are kept in motion by a constant supply of air and move according to the song “Radieschen” by Rainer Binder-Krieglstein, turning the building into a stage. Radishes, many children’s favorite vegetable, become the vehicle of an absurd-poetic idea: “Oh you dirty radish, I love you.” “To look at the radishes from below” is the German equivalent of “pushing up daisies,” that is, to die. Are radishes a longed-for panacea? Or do they represent an immense danger, as they rise up into the sky as foam shapes at the end? Even the tube men are left breathless …

Bio
G.R.A.M. (founded 1987) is an Austrian artist group consisting of Günther Holler-Schuster, Ronald Walter, Armin Ranner, and Martin Behr. The group’s work spans multiple media, including photography, film, video, installation, performance, and DJing. G.R.A.M.’s chief concern is with the clichéd, suggestive world of images and signs from everyday life and advertising. The members of G.R.A.M. are based in Graz.