SITUATE / 13 July to 30 August 2015
SPARE ROOM / 28 August to 8 October 2015
Fanni Futterknecht is an Austrian artist who works with video and performance as a means of exploring notions of objectness, character archetypes, artificiality and the relationships between analogue-digital and subject-object. During her Melbourne residency she will continue her research by creating arrangements of small-scaled objects of varying sizes which are unpacked and engaged through spoken narration.
Fanni Futterknecht is a Viennese artist who works with video and performance as a means of engaging the imaginary as a space. She constructs mise en scènes (or sets) in which objects and installation unfold through spoken narration—they are acted out to create points of reference to an imaginary world. Through installation of materials and use of language she investigates, constructs and deconstructs notions of surface, shape, colour and composition. These performance installations are sculptures-in-process, which are articulated and captured through video.
In her live performances Futterknecht stages an abstract space where partly artificial protagonists enumerate their constructed environment by way of a lecture-performance. Inside this setting these characters playfully create and arrange new situations and composite interactions; objects made of fabric—with different, textures, surfaces and sizes—serve as performative props to visualize concepts and alter or acknowledge the audience’s perceptions and spatial understanding. Forms are understood through one another, through the spoken text and through the interactions with the performers, a process which abstracts the relationship between the subject and object and implicates both the presence and the imagination of the audience. Through her work, Futterknecht plays with objectivity as an aesthetic experience, evoking situations, emotions and conflicts by means of association.
In more recent works, Futterknecht has departed from her use of a central ‘on screen’ protagonist so to focus on and explore materiality, form, spatialisation and performative transformation. During her Melbourne residency she will continue her research by creating arrangements of small-scaled objects of varying sizes which are unpacked and engaged through spoken narration.
Fanni Futterknecht creates installations, performances and works with video. Born in Vienna she studied visual art in Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Vienna. She participated at the Centre National de Danse Contemporaine in Angers, France, researching performance, space and the body. Her work began with video installations and has evolved from performative interventions in public space to staged performance installations. Futterknecht lives and works in Vienna.