LAURENT GOLDRING

Volk and Roses and World Between Onions and Solitude
Exhibition of  works by Laurent Goldring at vorAnker and
Performance by Laurent Goldring and Saskia Hölbling in the Expedithalle
Dec 2013

Volk and Roses is a filming process devoted to the Volksgarten’s rosebushes – hessian covered, like a meditation on the discrepancy between official places of memory and the insistent survival of a rejected past, what Warburg calls Nachleben.
Volk and Roses is also the title of a film about the relationship between official and hidden monuments in the city of Vienna. It is also the name of this exhibition that will present a choice of loops, films, and photographies from the filming process.
Volksgarten is a peaceful garden that people enjoy to stroll around, and, at the same time, a brutally striking representation, a monumental ready-made allegory of the inferno.
Looking around the sight, one inevitably bumps into the symbols of imperial power surrounding Helden Platz. When faced with these shrouded rosebushes, they change immediately their meaning. Which proves, indeed, that Volksgarten’s rosebushes are a monument, and play the role of one.
Laurent Goldring, philosopher and artist, works since 1995 on the status of representation in general and of the body in particular. He questions the actual domination of analogical image (photo, movies, video) by insisting on its great indigence. His work demonstrates that the body has very scarcely been shown and seen apart from very specific codes. He goes on with the same principles and the same effects by working on portrait, landscapes, drapery and self-representation in everyday life.
Laurent Goldring, philosopher and artist, has worked on representation in general and on the body in particular, since 1995. He questions the current dominance of the analogue image (photos, movies, video) by insisting on its utter feebleness. His work demonstrates that the body has scarcely been presented or regarded as apart of very specific codes. Goldring’s main idea is that the image is not a representation but an organ, just like other organs.He applies the same principles and effects in his works on portraits and on the representation of everyday life.
There are many choreographers who share his interest in these subjects, and their collaboration has resulted in the emergence of a new body in the field of dance.
In connection to the exhibition, Laurent Goldring has invited Saskia Hölbling with whom he is actually choreographing a new piece, Body in tubes (Première October 2014, Tanzquartier Wien, Halle G,) within the framework of the Squatting projects.
He proposed her a two minutes solo for a unique spectator in the immense space of Expedithalle using their common experience in connection with the rosebushes of Volksgarten.
Saskia Hölbling, choreographer and dancer, has concerned herself since 2002 intensively with the forms of presentations of bodies evading linear interpretation – in group formations as well as in solo performances. Which led a critic to the following lines: “This anti-Barbie-Doll calls for a reinvention of the viewpoint . . . breaks with all conventions, with a cold, beautiful powerful of silent intelligence as well as aggressive physicality.”