Information sheet for the

Press conference concerning the exhibition HAUS-RUCKER-CO LIVE again 16 November 2007 – 16 March 2008 Wednesday, 14 November 2007, 10 am Dialougue partners: Stella Rollig, Director Lentos Kunstmuseum Linz

Mag. Andrea Bina, Curator of the exhibition

Günter Zamp Kelp und Klaus Pinter, Founding members HAUS-RUCKER-CO Press Contact: Mag. Nina Kirsch presse@lentos.at, 0732/7070/3603 www.lentos.at

HAUS-RUCKER-CO LIVE again 16 November 2007 – 16 March 2008 Press date: Wednesday 14 November 2007, 10 am Opening: Thursday 15 November 2007, 7 pm List of exhibited works

Riesenbillard / Giant Billard, 2007 PVC, Nylon, Metall / PVC, nylon, metal 1,50 x 15 x 15 m courtesy: Laurids Ortner, Günter Zamp Kelp, Klaus Pinter Oxer, 1970/2007 Holzkonstruktion, Stoff / Timbers, drapery 4 x 6 x 5 m courtesy: Laurids Ortner, Günter Zamp Kelp, Klaus Pinter

Foto: Norbert Artner

The Planet of Vienna and his Constellations, 1971 (PINTER) Collage, Mischtechnik auf Papier/ Collage, mixed materials on paper courtesy: Galerie Curtze, Wien

Mind-Expander Schalensitz / Mind-Expander Shell Chair, 1969 Polyesterschalensitz für 2 Personen / Body-contoured seat fort wo people 80 x120 x 120 cm courtesy: Lentos Kunstmuseum Foto: maschekS

HRC Studio 491 Broadway, 1971 (ZAMP, PINTER) Siebdruck / Silkscreen on paper (5/300) 74 x 57,5 cm (65 x 46 cm) courtesy: Lentos Kunstmuseum

Four Seasons Hotel, Time Square, 1971 (ZAMP) Siebdruck / Silkscreen on paper (5/300) 74 x 57,5 cm (61 x 50 cm) courtesy: Lentos Kunstmuseum

Fresh Air Reservation, Broadwaybridge, 1971 (ZAMP) Siebdruck auf Papier / Silkscreen on paper 57,5 x 74 cm (48 x 63 cm) courtesy: Lentos Kunstmuseum

Downtown Broadway View Joes Bar, 1971 (PINTER) Siebdruck auf Papier / Silkscreen on paper (5/300) 74 x 57,5 cm (60 x 50 cm) courtesy: Lentos Kunstmuseum

72nd Street and Broadway , The Cocoon 1971 (PINTER) Siebdruck auf Papier / Silkscreen on paper 57,5 x 74 cm (52 x 64 cm) Signatur rechts unten: Pinter 1971 courtesy: Lentos Kunstmuseum

a-e Environment-Transformer, 1968 s/w Fotografie, Farbfotografie courtesy: Archiv Günter Zamp Kelp f+g Environment-Transformer, 1968 Farbfotografie courtesy: Archiv Klaus Pinter

Gelbes Herz / Yellow Heart (Modell / Model), 1968 Plexiglas, Metall, Schaumgummi / Acrylic glass, metal, foam plastic 38 x 42 x 32 cm courtesy: Museum Moderner Kunst Sammlung Ludwig, Wien / Leihgabe der Artothek-BKA, Sektion Kunst

Mind Expander 2, 1968/69 Plexiglas, Aluminium, Polyester / Acrylic glass, aluminium, polyester Sitzschale: 75 x 110 x 110 cm Helm: Durchmesser 100 cm, H: 40 cm Gesamt: H: ca. 150 cm, 25 kg courtesy: Archiv Günter Zamp Kelp

Room-Scraper, 1969 PVC, Siebdruck / PVC, screenprint 47 x 71,5 cm Durchmesser, H: 240 cm Foto: maschekS

Pneumacosm, 1967/2007 (ZAMP) Collage / Collage 80 x 130 cm courtesy: Archiv Günter Zamp Kelp Foto: maschekS.

Pneumacosm (Modell / Model), 1967 (ZAMP) Plexiglas, PVC, Papier / Acrylic glass, PVC, paper 80 x 130 x 20 cm courtesy: Archiv Günter Zamp Kelp Foto: maschekS

Instant Situation, 1970 Collage / Collage 47 x 71,5 cm courtesy: Archiv Günter Zamp Kelp Foto: maschekS

Riesenbillard / Giant Billard (Modell / Model), 1970 Spanplatte, Kunststoff, Metallfedern, Schnur, inkl. angeschraubte Haube / Plastics, chipboard, metal, string acrylic glass 20,5 x 28,5 x 40,5 cm courtesy: Deutsches Architekturmuseum Frankfurt a. M.

Foto: maschekS

Oxer 25° (Modell/ Model), 1970 Karton, Papier, Plexiglas / Paper, cardboard, acrylic glass 30 x 22,5 x 13,6 cm courtesy: Archiv Günter Zamp Kelp Foto: maschekS

LIVE Collage M20, 1970 Collage / Collage 50 x 70 cm courtesy: Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig, Wien

Oxer / Instant Situation 25°, 1970 (LAURIDS) Graphit, Farbstift auf Transparentpapier / Graphite, coloured crayon on transparent paper 50 x 65 cm courtesy: Archiv Günter Zamp Kelp

LIVE, 1970 Plakat / Poster Siebdruck / Silkscreen 59 x 84 cm courtesy: Archiv Günter Zamp Kelp

HAUS-RUCKER-CO LIVE again 16 November 2007 – 16 March 2008 Press Date: Wednesday 14 November 2007, 10 am Opening: Thursday 15 November 2007, 19 pm Stella Rollig Put to the Test of R e-Iteration From 2007 to 1970, there and back again (abstract out of the foreword fort he catalouge) LIVE again is not a retrospective of HAUS-RUCKER-CO. It is a partial reenactment

of the exhibition LIVE that was shown in 1970 at the Vienna Museum of the 20th

Century. It centers around the giant billiard ball, a 225 square meter, inflated mattress

with three plastic balls that entices museum visitors to become physically –

athletically, playfully – active. The way that the white mega-object also works as an

immaculate sculpture can naturally also be tested in the large hall of the Lentos Art

Museum. What is unavoidable is the physical challenge of walking through the Oxer,

a channel into the exhibition space.

The exhibition LIVE from 1970 was a radical formulation that is certainly worth

recalling today. At the time it was a signpost along the manifold tracks that the

“creatives and doers driving in the fast lane” were laying out; it was a time of

upheaval and new departures, of theories and daring practices, of pop and fun, of

political agitation – and of the great hope in art as a motor of change. Now, nearly

forty years later, Lentos restages this exhibition under fundamentally different

conditions. Perhaps the most crucial change relates to the almost complete

obliteration of what once existed as a euphoria for visions. In 2007: no euphoria, no

visions to be found.

It would be naïve to present LIVE again in the museum at the beginning of the 21st

century as a setting or perhaps even a model of new and alternative forms of action.

“Art” and “life” have moved terribly far apart – art is art and everything else is

everything else, as the American painter Ad Reinhardt postulated decades ago,

believing that art must or could be protected from being appropriated by the

consumer industry. Appropriation proved to be inevitable. Yet it is more complicated

than that: art and its institutions exist today in the confusing, unresolvable paradox of

having to comply with the rules of a market of entertainment, luxury and fashions, but

simultaneously having to constantly elude its logic of utilization. LIVE again in Lentos

show a historical work, recalls the period of its creation with numerous documents,

films and supplementary artefacts – and raises topical questions. These questions

pertain more urgently to the status of the museum than to the broad field of a

diagnosis of our times and society. The distance to the feeling of life in 1970 is

glaringly evident in light of the original documents. Yet LIVE was also a confrontation

with the museum, and this reflection is shared, in the here and now, with the

audience in LIVE again. Contact for additional information and picture material: Mag. Nina Kirsch, presse@lentos.at oder +43(0)732/7070/3603

HAUS-RUCKER-CO LIVE again 16 November 2007 – 16 March 2008 Press Date: Wednesday 14 November 2007, 10 am Opening: Thursday 15 November 2007, 19 pm Andrea Bina Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth? … “Now there is one outstandingly important fact regarding Spaceship Earth, and that is

that no instruction book came with it. I think it's very significant that there is no

instruction book for successfully operating our ship. In view of the infinite attention to

all other details displayed by our ship, it must be taken as deliberate and purposeful

that an instruction book was omitted.”1

In every respect the year 1945 can be regarded as a cultural, social and intellectual

zero hour in Austria’s life. The achievements of Modernism and its avant-garde were

criticized with old prejudices and pushed into subculture by conservative cultural

policies. Every protest against conventional forms was a scandal in the 1950s,

because the concept of a “gray climate” marked not only the image of the city, but

also characteristically described the mental situation of the post-war and

reconstruction period: gray was equated with oppressive, standardized, repressed.

A transformation occurred in the 1960s: young architects and artists left their studios

aspiring to change society. “The previously more or less separate circles of friends

and working groups of painters, architects, writers, filmmakers, sculptors, actionists,

etc. mixed and became interwoven into the ‘Viennese Underground Society’, whose

art, as in New York, formed a parallel of multiple currents.”2 With the first moon

landing, technical progress seemed boundless. The development brought about a

1Buckminster Fuller, Richard: Bedienungsanleitung für das Raumschiff Erde und andere Schriften. Ed. Krausse, Joachim. Verlag der Kunst, Amsterdam/Dresden, 1988. p. 48. Available in English online: http://reactor-core.org/operating-manual-for-spaceship-earth.html 2Fleck, Robert: Avantgarde in Wien. Die Geschichte der Galerie nächst St. Stephan. Wien 1954-1982. Kunst und Kulturbetrieb in Österreich. Löcker Verlag. Vienna, 1982. p. 230.

mood of change, loudly attracting attention, evincing pleasure in experimentation and

an interest in new materials, and calling forth a broad and transregional media echo.

Three manifestos on architecture were written and published in 1958: Friedrich

Hundertwasser’s Mould Manifesto Against Rationalism in Architecture, Günther

Feuerstein’s Theses on Incidental Architecture, and the manifesto jointly written by

Arnulf Rainer and Markus Prachensky, Architecture by Hand.

“Vienna, mid-60s. In the academic hothouse at Karlsplatz, the Technical University,

something is emerging that will later be a tribute to its origins under the name

‘Experimental Architecture from Vienna’. Outside, Pichler and Hollein had already

started separating from the unimaginative and somewhat lazy gridded thinking of

school architecture. In Schwanzer’s department Günther Feuerstein was firing up the

students with multimedia shows. The Beatles were rehearsing ‘Sergeant Pepper’, the

mayor was named Marek, and the Rolling Stones had to move out of the Hotel

Imperial. Kennedy was dead, Johnson was navigating dauntlessly through the

Vietnam War, Hollywood lost its audience to Andy Warhol. HAUS-RUCKER-CO hung

their Balloon for Two out the window in the Apollogasse, ‘Coop Himmelblau’ filled the

auditorium of the Technical University with indiskin, bazookas and insiders. ‘Zünd up’

extended an invitation to play car pin-ball in the underground garage and rocked

Professor Schwanzer on a Norton Commander. Designers, architects, artists,

creatives, doers were driving in the fast lane. The times were young. You accelerated

on straight roads and cut in front of the one ahead in the curves. Actions,

provocations, coffeehouse feuds were the order of the day. Everyone threw away

their old records because there was new music: the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Bob

Dylan and Jimi Hendrix. People wore their hair long, colorful rags from Carnaby

Street and blue levi pants. And no one was over 30. Young architects and designers

appeared in groups. They called themselves the Superstudio and Archigram in Milan

and London. HAUS-RUCKER-CO and ‘Himmelblau’ in Vienna.”3

The group HAUS-RUCKER-CO was founded in 1967 in Vienna by the two architects

Laurids Ortner and Günter Zamp Kelp and the artist Klaus Pinter. The name was

intended to refer to the home region of all three (Hausruck is a region in Upper

Austria) and to describe their activity metaphorically as shifting old houses out of the

way to make room for new creative possibilities.4 Officially the names of the members

of the team were LAURIDS, ZAMP and PINTER. The names were chosen to be 3Coop Himmelblau: Flashback. Sie leben in Wien. Ed.: Peter Weiermair, Galerie im Taxispalais, Innsbruck 1975, no page. 4Working report of HAUS-RUCKER-CO, 1968.

striking, and a humorous way of dealing with the material is also evident in this

approach. The following years were characterized by a multitude of activities that

received enormous media and international attention and were an elementary

contribution to redefining architecture and art. The group was active in the space of

the museum and in public space: their theme was the Mind-Expanding-Program

(“drug-free mind expansion”) and visionary urban design. Prototypes for new ideas of

living and proposals for redesigning the human habitat were developed under the

influence of new building materials.

Their first success resulted from taking part in the competition “Interdesign Furniture

for Living and Working in the Year 2000” of the company Christian Holzäpfel KG in

Germany (1967), in which new ideas for living and working were called for. HAUS-

RUCKER-CO entered the Mind-Expander 1, chair for two people, and

Pneumakosm5, a pneumatic dwelling unit in the shape of a lightbulb. This dwelling

unit was delivered as a finished installation and inserted into the provided holder for a

vertical urban structure. “The moment the Pneumakosm is plugged in, the light

works, you can turn on the taps or use the telephone.”6 In November 1967 the team

presented their first collaborative work: before an audience, the PVC Balloon for Two,

painted in bright pop colors, glided freely floating on a steel construction out the

window of the building in Apollogasse3 in Vienna’s 7th district. The interior of the

balloon offered space for two people, and Stoff Superhuber, bass player for Jack’s

Angels, and Maria Ebner became engaged inside it. In January 1968, Connexion-

Skin was created, a pneumatic living space as a swimming pool accessory or a

prototype for an intimate, inflatable spherical house.

In 1968 the model of the Yellow Heart (first called “Intim-Room”) was purchased for

the collection of the Vienna Museum of the 20th Century by the director at that time,

Werner Hofmann. In early summer the realized object Yellow Heart (easily

transportable home for nomads or for the weekend) began to beat in the building pit

of the police headquarters on the Vienna Ring – a sociopolitical social critique: a

pulsating space for two people or a cell for lovers situated exactly where one

presumes there are cells for those deprived of their freedom. What is also interesting

is the close proximity in time and space to the action “Art and Revolution” that took 5The work was carried out by two teams: Helmut Grasberger, Manfred Ortner and Zamp Kelp produced the Pneumacosm. Angela Hareiter, Edith Ortner and Herbert Schweiger produced the Mind-Expander with Laurids Ortner. Laurids Ortner invited Klaus Pinter to design the helmet of this object. 6Text by the artists.

place in Auditorium 1 of the new institute building of the University of Vienna, which

Otto Mühl had organized together with the writer Oswald Wiener and the Socialist

Student Association (June 1968). This action entered into Austrian art history as the

“Uni Pigs” action. “Viennese Actionism celebrated such notoriety that the boulevard

press was able to bathe in the theme for weeks. For us, though, stench didn’t fit in

the yellow-colored ‘vanilla future’ that we believed in with unbroken optimism. We

distanced ourselves at the time from the feces-enriched action hectographically in

DIN A4 format in several places in the city center.”7

The series Environment Transformer was created: Flyhead, Viewatomizer and

Drizzler. Facet-like round helmets and visors equipped with stereo headphones and

colored glasses resulted in intensifying optical-acoustic sensory impressions (cf.

accordion-folded brochure). In addition to these projects, the Electric Skins were also

developed: transparent clothing made of soft sheets of PVC with luminous elements

attached.

In 1968 the team took part in exhibitions in New York (“Plastics as Plastics”8 at the

Museum of Contemporary Crafts) and Vienna (“New Objects” at the Museum of the

20th Century). In May 1969 they presented Vanilla Future (also “Playroom for Erika

Pluhar and André Miriflor” alias André Heller) in the “strength training hall”, the gym of

a school in the Schleifmühlegasse 4 of Vienna’s 4th district. These were objects for

the newly emerging leisure society. It was a conscious choice not to use a

conventional space for the presentation, but rather to create a neutral situation: the

sports equipment was moved to the side – mental training took its place for a brief

period of time.9 Irritation was to effect relaxation: “Our objects are developed for a

leisure society that has forgotten how to see and hear, which only reacts weakly to

stimuli, because it is flooded by stimuli, … simple mental and physical experiences

become conscious and intensified again, physical capabilities are activated. Toys for

adults simulating contact, contact between two people, a man and a woman, who

experience their environment and themselves in a completely new way.”10 People

operate like the material that is used for the objects, because the lightness of the 7Kelp, Günter Zamp: Journal. In: Haus-Rucker-Co. 1967 bis 1983. Deutsches Architekturmuseum. Frankfurt am Main. Verlag Friedrich Vieweg & Sohn. Braunschweig, Wiesbaden, 1984, page 42. 8The first TU student excursion to the USA (1964, New York, New Haven, Philadelphia, Chicago and Detroit) already resulted in new perspectives. The second trip to the USA in 1968 led to insights relating to new uses for the objects and contacts that were not insignificant for the later founding of HAUS-RUCKER-CO. 9Hollein, Hans: The complexity of human life and behavior should be found again in the designed and planned environment. Architecture deals not only with physical, but also with mental aspects. Ambivalence is a characteristic of architecture. Architecture is both a carrier of meaning and a device. In a sense, architecture is applied schizophrenia. EVERYTHING IS ARCHITECTURE! Transcription from the single: Also wenn Sie mich fragen …wir danken für das Gespräch, Herr Architekt, Ed.: Transparent, Manuskripte für Architektur, Theorie, Kritik, Polemik, Umraum, Vienna, 1972. © Peter Noever, 1972. 10HAUS-RUCKER-CO: Text by the artists on Vanilla Future. Vienna, 1968.

pneu is “religion”: flexible, easily transportable, movable and spontaneous. Vanilla

Future was also shown in the same year at the artist association MAERZ at

Taubenmarkt in Linz.11 Objects were shown that were less intended to be artworks,

but rather utility objects with specific functions, such as the Battle-Ship (canopied

bed), Room-Scraper (pneumatic lights), Schalensitz (shell chair for two), Environment

Transformer (helmets and visors), Shakebelt (dance device for two people).

The invitation to a solo exhibition at the Galerie Zwirner (Cologne) in autumn 1969

was the occasion for the artists to take an important step: the moved their work

location from Vienna to Düsseldorf, because they thought they would find better

production and sales conditions in Germany. Their declared aim was to produce the

objects of the “Mind-Expanding-Program” in series and put them on the market. At

the Cologne Art Market Zwirner showed the objects Yellow Heart, Room-Scraper and

Battle-Ship; there the artists became acquainted with Alfred Schmeller, the newly

appointed director of the Vienna Museum of the 20th Century, and they were

commissioned to start the opening exhibition of his period as director with a solo

exhibition: LIVE – Living in the Museum. Just this title by itself heralded the end of the

classical, largely passive museum visit.

…a possible operating manual for the microcosm: the HAUS-RUCKER-CO panorama In the exhibition “HAUS-RUCKER-CO LIVE again”, the Lentos Art Museum shows

the main piece Giant Billiard and Oxer (cf. Pinter article), an obstacle in the form of a

slanted room. This work from the exhibition staging LIVE (1970)12 triggers irritations

as soon as visitors enter the exhibition space. The Giant Billiard, a hybrid of a giant

billiard ball and a boxing ring, is a white pneumatic mattress 15 x 15 meters large and

one meter high, on which there are three white, inflated balls made of PVC. The

mattress can function as a stage, on which the people virtually become actors in the

scene. The intention at the time was to break open the view immanent to the

museum and playfully question the status of the recipients with this intervention. The 11HAUS-RUCKER-CO presents Vanilla Future. Artists Association Maerz. Taubenmarkt, 4020 Linz. 5-20 June 1969. 12LIVE, Museum of the 20th Century, Vienna, 7 February – 15 March 1970. The museum building (the 20er House, part of Belvedere today) was designed by Prof. Karl Schwanzer for the World Expo in Brussels in 1958. After it was then transferred to Vienna, for a long time it remained the only place where contemporary and modern art was presented. Schwanzer was a professor at the Technical University at Karlsplatz, Laurids Ortner and Günter Zamp Kelp were among his many students. Contrary to Roland Rainer and Ernst Hiesmayr, who stood for moderate architecture, Schwanzer took a modern direction. His first assistant was Günther Feuerstein, who gave a “green light” for a visionary and unconventional approach in the gray area between architecture and art with the founding of the Club Seminars (held in the Galerie nächst St. Stephen in Vienna’s first district).

museum as playground? Nearly forty years later, the expectations of the museum

visitors have been raised: in addition to its basic tasks (collection, preservation and

research), a museum today offers high quality entertainment. With the presentation

then, the “alteration of function in the museum”, the group achieved their first major

breakthrough with a widespread impact: the show was seen by 18,200 people and

generated an enormous media echo. In 1970 the artists brought their “built utopia”,

their possible operating manual into the museum in the form of their objects in

existence to date. They set up their own world: “Live – Living in the Museum” was an

exhibition that HAUS-RUCKER-CO staged in Vienna and New York. “We moved into

the museum13 for the duration of the exhibition to reside in the exhibition spaces

publicly. Residing meant for us at the time living with the result from three years of

work. Translated to the reality of the exhibition, this resulted in a mixture of everyday

furniture and usable objects along with devices from our own production.”14 Joseph

Beuys’ “expanded art concept” suggests itself, with which the seemingly

insurmountable division of art, life and society was to be canceled out.

The accordion-folded brochure that was published for this exhibition reflects the

HAUS-RUCKER-CO panorama: the size and appearance of a record cover was

chosen as the format, indicating an affinity to the music of the beat generation. The

cover photo shows the three artists standing self-confidently in the Oxer. When the

fold-out is opened up, it shows the real living and working situation of the three artists

in the Vienna period. If it is unfolded again, the utopia of the HAUS-RUCKER-CO

world is revealed: located in a desert-like world there are three astronauts (Rocket-

Belt Men) frolicking in between ZAMP’s Architekturtrainer (1965) and the 47th City by

LAURIDS15. The artists present themselves with Environment Transformers:

LAURIDS wears the Flyhead, ZAMP the Viewatomizer, and PINTER the Drizzler. To

the far right, inserted like a collage, there is a photograph of the studio building in

Düsseldorf, Inselstraße 32, where a Pneumakosm is docking onto the window. Filled

with helium and equipped with drive units, a Roomscraper and two pneumatically

driven moving signposts zero in on the city model starting from the studio.

13The artists’ plan of living in the museum – for which they set up some of their furnishings in the exhibition – was limited to the opening hours of the museum for insurance reasons. 14Kelp, Zamp Günter: Journal. P. 58-59 15The Architekturtrainer and the 47th City were presented at the following exhibition in the Galerie nächst St. Stephen: “Urban Fiction – Leitbilder für die Stadt der Zukunft”. Action and exhibition. Organized by the Catholic Association of Academics of the Archdiocese of Vienna. 30 and 31 January 1967. Designed by the Club Seminar of Architecture Students. In addition to Laurids Ortner and Günter Kelp, other participants included Hans Hollein, Walter Pichler, Wolf D. Prix and Carl Pruscha. Cf. Bau 1/1967, p. 23.

Today nearly all the objects by the artist group HAUS-RUCKER-CO are in the

possession of museums: the Yellow Heart belongs to the collection of the Centre

Georges Pompidou in Paris, the Flyhead to the Museum of Modern Art in New York,

Battleship, a Mind-Expander 2 and the model of the Yellow Heart belong to the

Museum of Modern Art Ludwig Foundation Vienna, and the Lentos has a Shell Chair

and a Room Scraper.

“I have never known, or else I have forgotten again what architecture is. What I see

are conglomerations of blocks standing around. Blocks are buildings, and everything

together, all around, inside and outside, is called architecture. Well then, all I can the

highest principle of architecture in the future is clearing away. Architecture is only

evaluated now on the basis of how quickly and easily it can be cleared away. Instead

of surroundings, clearing institutes are created. Architects are obligated to shift their

buildings into a large garbage recycler. Just push it in. And all these architects that

shift buildings [Häuser rücken] would be building-shifters [Hausrucker]. Yes,

Hausrucker!”16

16Ortner, Laurids: Transcription from the single: Also wenn Sie mich fragen …wir danken für das Gespräch, Herr Architekt; Ed.: Transparent, Manuskripte für Architektur, Theorie, Kritik, Polemik, Umraum, Vienna, 1972. © Peter Noever, 1972.

HAUS-RUCKER-CO LIVE again 16 November 2007 – 16 March 2008 Press Date: Wednesday 14 November 2007, 10 am Opening: Thursday 15 November 2007, 19 pm Laurids Ortner On New Space The sixties were focused on daily events. "Everyone should be famous for a day,"

demanded Warhol. And the day offered a colorful unit here, positively connected

forward to the next day. On the whole, the world seemed to be moving toward better

times, and we felt at one with our own times as never before. Suddenly everyday life

was something that did not have to be gray. The mass media had covered daily life to

a complete extent. The broadcasts from the moon landing became historical events

that took place for the first time in front of a majority of human beings. Historicity

converged here with the time of the event.

Technical development showed itself to be largely unlimited, in any case without

worrying side effects. Cheerful confidence, long developed through advertising,

formed a shiny bubble, in which there seemed to be enough room for the whole of

life. Changes gripped even one's own plain area. Something was moving that began

to take the place of twenty years of dour rebuilding and the necessity of hard work. It

was a time that obviously found itself, pushing aside coming problems like a child for

the sheer joy of today. What this phase has been reproached for as being uncritical

and unreflected was part of the sensuousness that was so fundamentally lost in the

years thereafter.

POP was the magic word. With new colors and new sounds it brought a joy in life that

had long been missing. What was stagnant finally started to flow, and youthfulness

turned out to be a crucial criterion that was not limited to any age group, despite the

sayings of "don't trust anyone over 30". Decorating yourself, surrounding yourself

with garish trivialities, proved to be a form of surplus in which everyone could

participate, which covered over all differences with a bright layer of color. Criticism of

insufficiencies was expressed playfully, if at all, because the world felt right and it

even offered dissenters a future – as future was altogether a concept of intact

possibilities, no matter which way one turned. The image of a "better" world seemed

to be within reach: setting out together for new, unknown possibilities. The conquest

of the moon was just an external sign for this.

Our earlier projects were marked by technical innovations. We regarded the situation

of the astronauts, who were able to experience new space with the help of

technology, as a model case of "consciousness expanding" architecture. The dream

of being able to tangibly steer consciousness through architectonic devices seemed

to have been shifted into the realm of the feasible by the demonstrated experience of

space travel and hallucinogenic drugs. Architecture as a benevolent transformer

capable of directly influencing the consciousness of its users.

The principle considerations for the devices developed and the compressed spaces

always started at the same point: the re-fragmentation of perception into single

sensations with a simultaneous reinforcement and alienation was to lead to a lasting

intensification of visual experience. The goal we saw before us was to directly

squeeze the juice out of images from the environment for the rapid and total

expansion of our own consciousness, in a coldly mechanical way unlike the hot

chemistry of drugs. This consequently resulted in a series of projects that were to

implement these ideas, on a small scale as portable equipment, on a large scale as

furniture-like apparatuses and minimal spaces. We were especially interested in

attempts to find new spatial conditions that could not only effect stronger sensations,

but also reduced the building material needed for this. Spherical membranes,

supported in their form by air pumped in, seemed to offer the best preconditions for

this. A small power unit transformed air in a building material, which could be

enriched as needed with chemical additions, to influence the physical and mental

functions of the users. Architecture made of air: a technical return to the roots of

building. In this way, it could also be possible to meet the demands for mobility and

mutability with soft, flexible building forms. The right angle as a principle of all rigid

structures could be overcome without formal arbitrariness, simply through the

characteristics of the new materials. What possibilities! Changing a society just by the

fact that it now finds itself in a softly flowing environment: gliding into a different way

of thinking on gentle wings.

The fact that these attempts got stuck in an early phase and that the impact aspired

to can only be suggested, at best, does not change how right the approach was. It

will not be long now, and the power currents emanating from spaces, from building

masses, from the built environment, will all be legitimately defined. That will be the

point for setting out to a new architecture.

First published: catalogue "Haus-Rucker-Co 1967 bis 1983" Braunschweig 1984, p. 70-71

HAUS-RUCKER-CO LIVE again 16 November 2007 – 16 March 2008 Press Date: Wednesday 14 November 2007, 10 am Opening: Thursday 15 November 2007, 19 pm Zamp Kelp WIND, FOAM, SENSE OF SPACE

WIND results from temperature differences in the air. Warm air rises, cold air pushes

up after it. Air starts moving, wind arises.

Wind as a source of propulsion with a horizontal impact, with which discoverers like

Magellan, Marco Polo and Christopher Columbus sailed the seas of the world to

discover unknown regions of the earth, has become a symbol of renewal and change

in our minds.

Seventy years ago Walter Benjamin wrote about the Angelus Novus, the angel of the

future, who blows away the backward-looking, persisting forces of society clinging to

what is secure with the wind from his lungs.

Wind as a synonym for adventure, change and the expansion of our spectrum of

experience was an essential component of the architectural prototypes from the

1960s that contributed, among other things, to the innovative potential of that time.

The manner of constructing these objects made it possible to curve spaces, to bend

them, and in this way to generate previously unknown perceptual phenomena from

air and plastic membranes.

The pneumatic, airborne spatial forms by HAUS-RUCKER-CO, a formation of

architects and artists founded in autumn 1967 by Laurids Ortner, Klaus Pinter and

myself, were created against this background during the period from 1967 to 1972.

FOAM

In his book about foam, Peter Sloterdijk describes the modern apartment as an

“atomic or egospherical form – consequently as a cellular world bubble, from which

individualistic foams arise due to mass repetition.”.17

He describes the current state of our western society as an accumulation of

egomaniac individuals with a limited capacity for bonding.

HAUS-RUCKER-CO’s dwelling experiments anticipated this development of our

society. We sensed the incipient beginnings of these tendencies toward individual

isolation and developed usable spaces in the “mind expanding program” in the form

of pneumatic bubbles, whose central task was to inject or foster communication

between people.

In its materialized form at the time, as a sphere the Balloon for 2 fulfilled its purpose

constructively and functionally as a place where people could linger. The emphasis

here is on the plural of the term person, in other words people, because this

pneumatic construction centered around shell chairs for two people. Because of the

exposed uniqueness of their situation in the balloon, both of these people necessarily

entered into a relationship with one another.

Sitting in the middle of the transparent, airborne round bubble, the pair observed their

external surroundings together, which could only be perceived as a blur through the

transparent PVC skin of the balloon tattooed with force lines. As was also the case

with Fly Head, Gaze Atomizer and Drizzler, in addition to the shared experience in

the balloon establishing a relationship, the concept was to enhance the senses and

perceptual capacity. The Balloon for 2 was also an Environment Transformer for 2. In

this sense it was part of the Mind Expanding Program completely related to the urban

environment. With respect to the theme of mind expansion the program focused on

relationship experiences, not on drugs.

This is contrasted by the Yellow Heart, which was presented in late 1967 to Werner

Hoffmann in the form of a model. Hoffmann was the director of the Museum of the

20th Century in Vienna at that time, and the model was presented to him to receive

his approval of state funding for its realization, which was subsequently granted.

The Yellow Heart as a pulsating space that contracts and expands in its dimensions

partly dispenses with an external relationship. It is suspended from a steel

construction, independent of urban structures, hanging apparently weightlessly

above the ground. In the center of the space there is a plane on which two people

17 Sloterdijk, Peter: Architektur des Schaums. In: Arch+ 169/70.

can lie, in order to concentrate fully on the rhythmically changing space and the other

person present. HAUS-RUCKER-CO wrote about this object at the time:

“The Yellow Heart provides an opportunity to leave the real environment for certain

periods of time, to seek out a space that is in stark contrast to the natural

environment. The time one spends inside the Yellow Heart has its own rhythm that

one must adapt to. The optical and acoustic impressions help the users to achieve a

new type of relaxation. The soft, pulsating movement of the interior of the cell effects

a general loosening of how the users feel. One returns to everyday life feeling

relaxed and calm.” (Haus-Rucker-Co, 1968)

In a certain way, HAUS-RUCKER-CO’s bubbles from the 1960s anticipate

Sloterdijk’s egospherical world view. This is expanded by the classical element of the

communicative that seeks to counter a predictable development. In Sloterdijk’s

individualistic foam of massively repeated 1-person apartments, these Bubbles

function as temporary living spaces, in which the need for regenerative intimacy is

trained. This is specifically done without the aid of technical or chemical means,

reduced to what is essential, surrounded by the aura of the exotic.

Pneumacosm, a residential unit for 10 to 13 individuals, represents a final point in the

series of prototypical living situations by the group HAUS-RUCKER-CO, even though

its development as a project was chronologically at the beginning. Conceived as a

serial product, it comprises megastructural formations that covered the urban

surfaces of the New York district of Manhattan in 1967 as architectural foan.

Analogous to Sloterdijk’s foaming, bubble-shaped 1-person apartments,

Pneumacosm is defined by a spherical expanse of space containing all the

necessary residential functions. Similar to an open-plan carriage of a train or an

airplane, the outer cover gives the inhabitants of the residential unit the feeling of

being left to themselves, but at the same time with the option of being able to

communicate with the others present in the open-plan space. Small cells installed in

the open-plan space provide an additional possibility to withdraw.

If we regard the environment transformer Fly Head as a usable space for the human

head as an exception, then the prototypes described here have one thing in common

in their essential construction. They seem to ignore the laws of gravity and float freely

in space borne by air. Nevertheless, they are indeed dependent on the constructive

and social framework of the existing space of society, in other words also and

especially on the structures of the immobile city that they extend and enhance. To

this extent, they are the opposite of the utopian superstructures of the New

Babylonians and Constant Nievwenhuys. Not a new beginning, but further

development, not utopia, but feasibility is the theme here.

Admittedly, the prototypes realized at the time had to be augmented with

conceptional imagination. With the current state of technology, however, they are to

be further developed to be capable of functional serial production. This also and

especially applies to the residential unit Pneumacosm. Regardless of whether the

layout is designed for one person or for thirteen people, its possible modified

implementation as an attractive scenario for the first world is more a question of when

the traditionally minded mood of society will recall the present again.

A modified further development of this dwelling concept in relation to Sloterdijk’s

understanding of the world as an individual residential bubble, furnished with the

achievements of current communication technology, thus also appears to be a

question of demand.

SENSE OF SPACE Living Live in the Museum was an exhibition that HAUS-RUCKER-CO put on in 1970

in Vienna and New York. We moved into the museum for the duration of the

exhibition to reside in the exhibition spaces publicly. Residing meant for us at the

time living with the result from three years of work. Translated to the reality of the

exhibition, this resulted in a mixture of everyday furniture and usable objects along

with devices from our own production.

The museum, which is conventionally a cemetery of art, was changed by the inserted

atmosphere of the work and privacy of the three individuals who together formed

HAUS-RUCKER-CO. The giant billiard as a playroom for the museum dwellers and

visitors drew such crowds of people that it made the museum guards nervous. The

scene of living and working conveyed to the visitors a feeling of matter-of-factness

that overlaid the created HAUS-RUCKER-CO privacy, contributing to the

secularization of the museum. One visitor’s overly ambitious leap from a balcony of

the New York Museum of Contemporary Crafts onto the Giant Billiard resulted in a

broken leg and finally a warning sign saying Don’t jump from the balcony. Thus it was

that none other than a warning sign called attention to numerous occurrences during

the exhibition that were unorthodox for museums.

At that time, the Giant Billiard was an object that, in addition to its elementary,

weighty appearance in a state of rest, confronted its actors with new, unfamiliar forms

of movement. This was a new experience in the relationship between space and

corporeality and the questioning of normality.

In his writings, Buckminster Fuller refers to a phenomenon of consciousness and

perception, according to which people, even though they know better, still see the

sun going down on the horizon and not the respective location of observation on the

surface of the earth turning away from the sun, as astronomers recognized long ago.

This is a sign of how our consciousness is delayed by habit and may also have

something to do with the way we are overwhelmed in the rapidly progressing

developments in the communicative field, which triggers tendencies toward isolation

in the currently vital generations of people.

In 1967 the Mind Expanding Program of HAUS-RUCKER-CO was a concept for

expanding the spectrum of our experience and for fostering communication in the

human micro-climate. A plan for ending bourgeois boredom. This sensation of

boredom at that time has turned into its opposite today. The experience vacuum has

become a plethora of perceptual offers that places demands on our biological

preconditions up to the limits of our capacities.

This state creates a desire for stable circumstances from the past, as expressed for

instance in the urban planning positions of New Urbanism, which should really be

called Traditional Urbanism.

At a period in time when space technology has set out to conquer the skies with

space capsules, satellites and telescopes, and astronauts assume the role of Marco

Polo, Magellan and Columbus, it is also time to think about a further development of

our sense of living space. In our consciousness, the ground, rooted in gravity, is still

the most important area of the spaces where we live and spend our time.

It is possible that the functional and emotional conquest of the upper limits of spaces,

the ceilings, in analogy to the conquest of the firmament by the astronauts, is a first

step towards the transformation of consciousness in the direction of a contemporary

sense of space, thus leading to a new view and a new way of dealing with the

phenomena of our day.

First published in “Housing is back” LWW Ebner/Springer 2006 Second extended version Zamp Kelp 2004/2005/2007

HAUS-RUCKER-CO LIVE again 16 November 2007 – 16 March 2008 Press Date: Wednesday 14 November 2007, 10 am Opening: Thursday 15 November 2007, 19 pm Klaus Pinter Out of Balance Klaus Pinter in Conversation with Marion Geier, St. Trojan, 2007

“HAUS-RUCKER-CO LIVE again” is the title of the show now taking place in

Linz, which refers to the exhibitions shown in Vienna and New York in 1970.

The central element is the Giant Billiard. Where did the idea of realizing the

object in this form actually come from?

The idea of realizing a larger sized project for the reopening of the “Museum of the

20th Century” in Vienna came about through the commitment of the director at the

time, Alfred Schmeller, who had taken over from Werner Hoffmann – who had also

supported us. Starting from the given proportions of the architecture by Karl

Schwanzer, which had a quadratic space in the lower part, similar to an atrium, we

thought about what could be realized there. Together with Schmeller, we thought

about it a lot, discussed it and drank, until the Giant Billiard assumed its form.

From a purely technical point of view and in terms of our history, designing a

pneumatic construction suggested itself. Zamp had a good grasp of the interior set-

up of this object, which was created then for the first time and has meanwhile been

copied thousands of times, so that large groups of people could play on it, jump

around, do somersaults, and thus become the artwork themselves, so to speak.

Similar pneumatic objects in various forms have become part of our everyday

life today. Can the ideas from that time, which were connected with the

innovativeness of this kind of mental-physical experience, even still be

transported?

Every repetition definitely has its own problems, no question about it. I well remember

the opening in the “20er Haus”. In front of me, there was Karl Schwanzer with Otto

Mauer, both of them with wide eyes observing the people in an ecstatic mood and

the wild movement. It was written in their faces that something radically new had

started in the museum and art landscape with this intervention.

Live commentaries appropriately documenting the spirit of those times are needed.

That was attempted in the Kunsthalle in Düsseldorf in 2007 with the presentation of a

conglomerate of various art products from the same period.

Wouldn’t it be more consistent then – to achieve a conscious confrontation of

the exhibition visitor today with the original reception – to exhibit the work as

something that cannot be entered into, cannot be used?

I think the idea of a puritanical exhibition solution is not a bad one, but it is also

understandable that no one wants to pass up the “treat” of movement, activity and

participation. That is primarily the platform that still has an external impact today –

even if it has already been repeated a thousand times. In 1970 it was something

completely new and for this reason it set off unusual reactions on the part of the

museum visitors.

The project has sometimes been called into question, for instance in the

newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung by the critic Georg Jappe. In

reference to “between 5” (1970) in the Düsseldorf Kunsthalle, he said it is “the

most successful exhibition ever – for kids”. With this addendum he cast doubt

on the art character in general.

Naturally we were not surprised that an article like this was published in the FAZ. It

was exactly this rigid understanding of art that we wanted to break open. The

conservative side was opposed to these kinds of developments, whereas the left

could not understand a concept aimed at a playful, joyful, pleasurable experience. In

their eyes, you would have to “set fire to the whole shack [the museum]” to change

anything. Several people from the circle of Actionists in Vienna thought similarly; at

the time they were trying to implement ultimate possibilities in their actions.

Paradoxically, it is specifically people from this side, among others, who feel quite

comfortable in museum halls today and use them for their dealings.

Which type of information exchange and discussions were there in the late

1960s between HAUS-RUCKER-CO and experimenting Austrian artists?

Especially the young architects at the Vienna Technical University particularly

distinguished themselves from their international counterparts in their manner

of operating and producing.

For a brief period, the scene in Vienna then was, in fact, marked by a very lively

exchange among writers, painters, architects, sculptors and theater people, which is

relatively rare for Vienna. They met again and again mostly in various bars and

coffee houses. What linked us together was the resistance against everything that

had to do with the establishment state and the benumbed culture society. Thanks to

Oswald Wiener, various programs and actions were discussed and realized, which

were to have an impact over a longer period of time.

The political ideas of the different groups after 1968 – naturally impelled by the

revolts in Paris and Berlin – were very similar, but the ideas about implementation

were quite different. For example, the Actionists’ “Uni-Event” was planned on short

notice for the night before the presentation of our “Yellow Heart” in the building pit of

the police headquarters on the Ring. Suddenly the atmosphere was marked by

nervousness and competitiveness, and that could be felt in the actions. As the

Actionists pressed ahead, the successive increase of long planned resistance came

to an abrupt end. For this reason, the occupation of the Burgtheater, among other

things, was no longer possible, or no longer made sense.

LAURIDS, ZAMP and I implemented our ideas three-dimensionally and at a scale of

1:1 with limited means that are unimaginable today and through great personal effort.

We were less interested in actions. The echo of baroque theater, as Günther

Feuerstein described this period, was played through at multiple levels.

You separated from the Haus-Ruckers in 1977. What was left of the ideas from

that time?

The principle of oppositionality has become very important in my work. In LIVE it first

became clear through the exhibiting of the relatively tasteless, tacky furniture from

our living quarters then vis à vis the newly invented plastic world that represented our

notions of the future.

The second largest and also walk-in object next to the Giant Billiard was the so-called

Oxer. It was given this name, by the way, by LAURIDS – I really still don’t know why.

In America we called it “Slanted Room”. This slanted room was and still is very

important to me personally, not because the suggestion came from me following

intensive visits to the Prater fairgrounds, but because in retrospect it formed a far

ranging basis for my work. This tipped, slanted space is a pragmatic, relatively

intellectual object. Unlike the soft giant billiard, it was made of hard material and

represented an extension of our “Mind Expanding Program”.

By irritating balance in this way with the Oxer, conceptionally we also pointed out that

not everything has to be and should be and is at a right angle, that you can

experience the world differently as well. In terms of form, that was an important

principle, questioning the conventional manner of building in this way with a space

that is not in balance. Then in New York in 1977, I took up the idea of conceiving “out

of balance” for the project of the opening exhibition at the Centre Georges Pompidou

and pursued it in cooperation with Helmut Richter. In the same year, in 1977, Frank

Gehry built his tipped house in California, and the group Coop Himmelblau further

developed the idea independently in Vienna. Today this style is called

deconstructivism, “slanted” became modern.

Starting from the break in the foundation of the “Centre Pompidou” project, I then built

the twisted and tipped body of “N48°53'46''E02°23'18''” in La Villette and continued to

pursue this approach all the way to “Großer Zer” in the Minorite Church in Krems.

One could say that my ephemeral installations up to the present, especially in relation

to the surrounding space, go back to insights that started with the Live exhibition in

1970 in Vienna at the “Museum of the 20th Century”.