Philipp Gufler &
The two-channel video installation by Philipp Gufler initially exhibits a binary situation: light blue and pink, flexibly assigned to two genders historically. This binarity liquefies in a lovely, obscuring initial development, androgynous bodies from various times appear with a text by Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, a pioneer of the ›third sex‹ theory. In the 19th century, he called for the public visibility of sexual diversity, as an imperative addressed to the »Uranians«: Expose yourselves, carry societal contempt onto the political stage, demonstrate solidarity with other oppressed people! An imperative of identification, a beginning of the history of queer emancipation. The circular form of the planet Uranus, for Ulrichs a utopian place of self-empowerment, is juxtaposed with the rectangular form of a tile trapezium. In it, the nude artist surrenders to a jet of water aimed at his heart. A ›naked body shot‹ that comments on the investigative, fixating gaze of society on the ›actual‹ gender of human beings. Here, Gufler cites a performance of Ben d’Armagnac from 1978, but is, in contrast with him, nude. The heart region symbolically hit by the jet of water becomes the erogenous zone of passivity. The second movement of the work leads to the end of the emancipation narrative. On the right side of the screen appear the right-wing positions of the ‘bad gays’ of our time (Pim Fortuyn, Alice Weidel, a neo-Nazi), in the historical footsteps of Ernst Röhm; self-confident gays and lesbians who have rejected solidarity, aim their toxic water at everything weak and at all sexual intermediaries and work to reconstruct binary conditions that allow for no third sex. The artist leaves the frame. (Jan Künemund)
Produced with the kind support of: City of Munich, Launch Pad LaB, Mondriaan Fonds and Sound & Vision
