Performance

DIE VILLA is an art collective that occupies and transforms spaces – and in doing so also transforms the people in those spaces, the audience as well as themselves as artists.

DIE VILLA is an open organism – within itself and towards the outside. Within itself, because the Villa has no fixed structures. Every artist may play any role, try any genre and realise any idea that moves her and the collective forward. Towards the outside, because the Villa is interested in working with other artists from all disciplines and genres, who are invited depending on the action to take over a space together with the Villa.

DIE VILLA itself is a space for experiments beyond any commercial obligation, a free space for the artists to try things out, to explore their limits and, in a protected space, to venture to places they might not have entered alone.

DIE VILLA is political. Because of its structure and organisation as well as through the content it works on. Nevertheless, it constantly questions itself, its structures, views and patterns.

DIE VILLA is meant to be fun, to inspire, to stimulate. It is a symbol of the unbridled power and joy of expression and exchange and the materialised security of community.

Manifest written by Sabine Magnet.

Exhibition at Kunsthalle P3 Ingolstadt as part of fem*festival 2023, Peisserstraße 3, Ingolstadt, 3 – 25 March 2023.

The performance ORO is a work ritual and was performed at the opening of fem*festival 2023. The artists ritually poured wax over textiles and messages dealing with performance, money, value and women, creating a 15-square-metre tableau.

Architekturgalerie München im BUNKER, Blumenstraße 22, 80331 Munich, 14 – 24 July 2022.

The installation “Power Candy” was freshly loaded with cotton candy for the Glockenbach Biennale and shown in the group exhibition “different = normal”.

Munich Art Gallery, Marienplatz 8, Munich, Exhibition No. 17, 13 – 23 January 2022.

The Munich Art Gallery showed an exhibition of works from “Emotional Power”.

Two-part performative installation as part of Denkraum Deutschland (curated by Miro Craemer), 2 – 10 October 2021, Pinakothek der Moderne Munich.

The theme of the group exhibition was “Feminine – the social and political power of the feminine in art and society”. Die Villa showed a two-part work.

Part I: Power Candy
2 October 2021 (performance), 2 – 10 October 2021 (installation)

“Power” alone already triggers gender-stereotypical associations. But does power have a sex, does power have a gender? Female power is caricatured in the “weapons of a woman”, the “Mutti” or the image of the “power woman”. All these attributions are based on a blueprint of a male understanding of power. Power itself, however, is not static. It is built up, expanded, shaped. Power is as oppressive as it is fragile, as attractive as it is repellent.

POWER CANDY is a performative installation: in the exhibition space of the Pinakothek der Moderne, the artists used cotton candy machines to produce strawberry-scented cotton candy and stuck it onto a scaffold spelling the word “Power”. The cotton candy first wrapped itself fluffily around the metal, became sticky in the crystallisation process, then fleshy like modelling clay and finally hard as candy. Layer by layer they built up the “Power”, always at risk of it crumbling and breaking. The artists gave it a form of its own, knowing that this form would never last.

Part II: Emotional Shift
2 – 10 October 2021 (installation), 10 October 2021 (performance)

“Emotional” is a term that directly evokes a connection to the feminine. The emotional capacity expected of women becomes both a privilege and a burden: holding supposed sovereignty over feelings confers power. But having to do the emotional work is a heavy burden. The ambivalence is reinforced by the fact that some feelings are devalued and rejected by society while others are favoured and idealised – and by the fact that different criteria of evaluation apply depending on the perceived gender.

EMOTIONAL POWER is a performative installation: steel letters stood seemingly jumbled at the landing of the stairs to the first floor of the Pinakothek. The artists took one letter after another and carefully carried the heavy sculptures with their sharp edges out of the building. Outside, they arranged the letters until the word “Emotional” emerged, which they worked on with hammers in ritual manner, a balance between suppressing feelings and the uncontrolled primacy of emotion. The aim was not the destruction of the emotional; it was the living out of non-stereotypical aspects of the self and the clear experience – and acceptance – of one’s own emotions. Only this creates change.

Fraunberg Ateliers, Fraunbergstraße 4, 81379 Munich, exhibition of works, 6 – 15 March 2020.

In their performance EMOTIONAL LABOR in November 2019, DIE VILLA produced a 50-metre-long monotype poetry scroll: on translucent continuous paper they wrote poems and thoughts on a typewriter, over which the artists drew in the monotype process.

This work was shown at the Fraunberg Ateliers and sold by the centimetre.

Alte Utting, Lagerhausstraße 15, 81371 Munich, performance in the engine room, 16 November 2019, 2 – 8 pm.

Emotional labor is many things: controlling one’s own feelings at work, the emotional work that is not part of the job profile, the investment of mind and heart within the family, the commitment to deepening or maintaining a relationship… Women do the majority of this emotional work. It is essential for all social relationships and thus for society, but it is not recognised as work, not paid or rewarded in any other way, and often not even noticed.

DIE VILLA makes emotional labor visible and transforms it symbolically. In the engine room of the Alte Utting, where the ship’s drive used to be, the group installs an artistic production line in which the artists labor for hours.

It is a performance in which artworks are created – and the audience is right there.

Villa Zierer München, Weiherweg 5, 82194 Gröbenzell, group exhibition “Hausarbeiten. On the Relationship between Femininity and Power”, 22 and 23 September 2018.

The theme of power in relation to the relationship between the sexes has been intensively discussed in recent years. But power has many dimensions in the female sphere. For one weekend, six artists show their positions on the theme at the Villa Zierer in Gröbenzell.

The building from the 1950s is the perfect setting: the Lynchian atmosphere of the house lends the group exhibition a surreal moment. Salon, dining room, staircase, cellar, library and arcade become exhibition spaces for works that interact with the rooms and influence the energy of the house.

Participating artists: Leonie von Carnap (photography), Sheila Furlan (object art, photography), Tanja Hirschfeld (oil paintings, monotypes), Sabine Magnet (object art, performance), Samantha Mariuzzi (object art), Cendra Polsner (audiovisual installations, graphics)

With performances by Masako Ohta (pianist) and Katja Brenner (actress)