Presentation of archival materials during the exhibition Romeo's eyes

May 10 – August 17, 2025

Parallel to the exhibition Romeo's eyes, three formats are presented in the archive space that deal with the presentation of moving images in the Kunstverein. The selected archival materials give an insight into the retrospective of Yvonne Rainer in 1992, the multi-year video program It is hard to touch the real and the cinema that was located in the current archive space from 2016 to 2019.

In the spring of 1992, a retrospective of films by choreographer, dancer, and filmmaker Yvonne Rainer was presented at the Kunstverein. Hedwig Saxenhuber curated the retrospective and, for this purpose, was in contact with film dis- tributors such as Cinenova, which had been founded in 1991 as a distributor for feminist video artists and filmmakers. The project kicked off on March 26, 1992, with the lecture performance Narrative in the (Dis)Service of Identity, in which Yvonne Rainer reflected on her identity from an intersectional perspective. On the following evenings, the six films she had made since the 1970s were scree- ned in chronological order. The project also included a publication for which her screenplays were translated into German for the first time. The publication also contains contributions from theorists such as Teresa de Lauretis, as well as a bibliography and filmography.

From 2002 to 2004, a multi-part video program titled It Is Hard to Touch the Real took place at Kunstverein München. Initiated by Søren Grammel and Maria Lind, the program explored the commercial and artistic use of video technology in the early 2000s. In the curatorial statement, Grammel writes:

“With the broad dissemination of video, both in private and public realms, art‘s attempt to ‚touch the real‘ has received an entirely new impetus in terms of con- cepts of information and reality. The project shows video as an instrument for working with these concepts and as a possible means of their critique.”

In 2002 and 2003, monthly screenings were held, each presenting a single artistic position. The works were connected by their engagement with video as a technology and their artistic reflection of documentary image rhetorics, including home videos, reportage, interviews, and video surveillance. The artists whose works were featured in these monographic screenings, in turn, invited other artists and collectives to present their work at two video festivals held in February 2003 and March 2004. The VHS tapes of these works formed the basis for a video library (videotheque), which could be viewed in the Kunstverein’s exhibition space from March 2003 to March 2004. Visitors could check out VHS tapes of the works shown at the monthly screenings and at the two festivals. After the on-site presentation concluded, the videotheque went on tour, was exhibited at several European contemporary art institutions from April 2004 to April 2005 and was taken over by the Grazer Kunstverein in the end.

After the end of the on-site presentation concluded, the videotheque went on tour and was shown in contemporary art institutions throughout Europe and was taken over by the Grazer Kunstverein in the end. In 2007, Maria Lind and Søren Grammel, director of the grazer Kunstverein from 2005-2011, published a the publication It Is Hard to Touch the Real with information on the 125 videos by the 72 participating artists and an essay by Hito Steyerl.

From 2016 to 2019, the current archive space was used as a cinema. At the in- vitation of the then director, Chris Fritzpatrick, Vincent Stroep curated the first year‘s program and presented films by Arvo Leo, Kamal Aljafari Recollection, Chick Strand, Benjamin Crotty, Ane Hjort Guttu, Corneliu Porumboiu, Rosalind Nashashibi, Deborah Stratman, Maxime Rossi, Invernomuto, and Anja Dornieden and Juan David González Monroy. Every three weeks, a premiere and a discussion with the artist about the presented film took place in the evening. The films were also shown at specific start times or as a loop during opening hours. A flyer with stills and a short text was published for each of the eleven films. The collection of flyers can be viewed in km‘s archive.