History in Between – Anderwald+Grond

With its documentary approach, the work of Ruth Anderwald and Leonhard Grond—who collaborate as Anderwald+Grond[JW1] —was concerned with documenting processes, with transformation processes and, here in particular, with the emergence of spaces. For the duo, a particular thrill came from working on a site like the Neue Burg where an entirely new institution was being created. At the same time, the construction site they were documenting was ‘working on its own abolition’, as Ruth Anderwald explains. ‘After its completion, it’s gone forever. There’s no memory of it because often, this process is not felt to be something worth remembering.’ hdgö director Monika Sommer adds: ‘The opening of the House of Austrian History came after decades of struggle. I wanted to document and preserve every facet of the fact that the museum is now finally opening. Anderwald+Grond have approached and undertaken this task with the utmost responsibility and thoughtfulness.’

While the photographs depict the very slow, cumulative process and the changes to the site, which are often easy to miss in passing, the videos take the construction site as a starting point, setting it against historical and art historical references. In the case of the House of Austrian History, the video works play with historical references. For example they quote post-1945 lyrics or ask questions about Austria’s complicity in the crimes of Nazism. ‘For us, the building site in the hdgö rooms was exceptionally exciting because unexpected things kept emerging from these old walls.’ For example, ‘walls behind walls’ kept being found during the construction work which, due to the special situation in the Neue Burg, was carried out using very traditional tools and few machines. Virtually inexhaustible motifs for the two photo and video artists.

The videos can be viewed on the YouTube page of the hdgö and the photographic works were acquired for the museum collection.

Ruth Anderwald + Leonhard Grond

Ruth Anderwald + Leonhard Grund have been working together since 1999 in the fields of visual art and artistic research. Their works have been exhibited internationally, including at mumok Wien; Ecole cantonale d’art de Lausanne; Whitechapel Gallery, London, Centre Pompidou, Paris; museum in progress, Vienna; Himalayas Art Museum, Shanghai; and Tate Modern, London.

Since 2014 Anderwald+Grond have been directors of the interdisciplinary artistic research project Dizziness – A Resource, in which the creative potential of dizziness is explored with regards to artistic, philosophical and scientific aspects. In collaboration with the curator Katrin Bucher Trantow, in 2017 they developed the exhibitions Dizziness. Navigations in the Unknown for the Kunsthaus Graz, and Utrata równowagi for U-jazdowski Castle, Centre for Contemporary Art, Warsaw. A further exhibition is planned for the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Bucharest for 2019.

Since 2012 Anderwald+Grond have been curators of the nomadic film and discussion series HASENHERZ or the Pleasures of the Moving Image and Word using the methods of Arnold Schönberg’s Society for Private Musical Performance, including at the Whitechapel Gallery London, Kulturzentrum bei den Minoriten Graz, Videonale Bonn, European Forum Alpbach, Center for Contemporary Art Tel Aviv, and Kunsthalle Wien. In 2007 they published the book Notes on a Coast (with Klaus Zeyringer and Giora Rosen), which included a photo series of the same name and the first anthology of contemporary Hebrew poetry in German translation.

Since 2007 they have been providing artistic documentation for largescale construction sites, including: History in Between for the House of Austrian History, The Construction Site of Remembrance for the Austrian exhibition at the Memorial and Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau; The Frame of the FutureTM (with Anna Kim) for the Viennese district of Seestadt Aspern; Construction Site As Far As The Eye Can See for the Joanneum Quarter in Graz; and Hope and Glory for the new south wing of the Upper Austrian State Museum.

The publication of the art project is available in German only at the hdgö cash desk — or order online now.

www.on-dizziness.org    I    www.anderwald-grond.at