WAS AUSGESTELLT WIRD / WHAT IS EXHIBITED (2008-12)

16 mm film, 5 min, 1,33:1, b/w, silent, loop | digital version 6 min 15 s

Keywords: museum rhetoric, intervention, Gustinus Ambrosi Museum Vienna, circus artist, hula hoop, feminism

Description

Was ausgestellt wird (What is Exhibited), shot in 2010 by Nathalie Koger at the Gustinus Ambrosi Museum in Vienna, is a film for which Koger developed a choreography for the protagonist, a hula hoop dancer. Exploring exhibition and Ambrosi's ambiguous past, the result is a performance that both describes and charts space, aiming to visually reorder the exhibition room and the museum´s rhetoric. Focusing on this situation, Koger intervenes in the representation of rigid role models and, as a contrast, positions the dancing body of a spectator who behaves completely differently from the typical museum visitor. In this way, the artist adds a new narrative layer to the history of the Ambrosi Museum, one that speaks of appropriation and empowerment.

Miriam Kathrein

Stills

Nathalie Koger, film still from “What is exhibited”, 2008-2012 @Bildrecht, Vienna 2024.

Credits

Circus artist: Annabel Carberry
Light: Mathias Windelberg and Nic Prokesch
Camera: Christoph Kolar
Postproduction: Synchro Film, Video & Audio GmbH
Film print: Nathalie Koger, Piers Erbslöh/ filmkoop Vienna

This work was made possible through a fellowship provided by the BMWF (Austria).

Artist Statement

The hula-hoop dancer is a self-authorized sculptress of her own body. She keeps retracing the negative space (the outer space) of her own body’s shape by means of a circle.