10 October 2020, h. 4 pm
OGR Tech | Speakers’ Corner
Bodies beyond straight composition…
The Society of Friends of Lorenza Böttner with Viktor Neumann

Live appointment in English, attendable in person or by online streaming on the OGR Facebook channel
Access is allowed from 3:30 pm

Lorenza Böttner, who painted with her feet and mouth and who used photography, drawing, dance, installation and performance as means of aesthetic expression, defies processes of ‘desubjectivation’ and desexualisation, internment and ‘invisibilisation’ to which transgender and functionally diverse bodies are subjected. Born as Ernst Lorenz Böttner in 1959 into a German family living in Chile, he suffered an accident when he was eight years old, which resulted in the loss of both arms. Considered disabled by the medical regime, he was institutionalised with the ‘Contergan children’ in Germany, where he moved with his mother after the accident. In 1978, he became a student at the Gesamthochschule (today the Kunsthochschule) in Kassel. She changed her name to Lorenza Böttner and further developed her artistic practice of drawing and painting through the incorporation of dance, performance, photography and fashion design. In 1994, Lorenza Böttner died of HIV related causes after 16 years of intense art production. A small selection of Lorenza Böttner’s artwork was on show in 2017 at documenta 14 in Kassel. In 2018 and 2019, La Virreina Centre de la Imatge in Barcelona and Württembergischer Kunstverein in Stuttgart co-produced the first comprehensive solo show of the artist, curated by Paul B. Preciado. From January 2020 on, the exhibition is presented at the Art Museum of the University of Toronto. 

Curator Viktor Neumann, a member of The Society of Friends of Lorenza Böttner (part of the transnational project Parliament of Bodies), takes Böttner's work as a starting point to present practices that are opposed to the categories of normalised and skilful bodies, to compose instead disruptive, inappropriate bodies that go beyond "straightness".

The evening begins with Neumann's lecture on the work by the Chilean painter, who painted with her mouth and feet, whose transdisciplinary practices and aesthetics have joyfully destroyed any binarism dictated by the Enabling and heteronormative regime, to the point of implosion. The conference includes the presentation of paintings, drawings, photographs, as well as moving images and performance documentation that will introduce Böttner's practice, defined by constant destabilisation and transformation.

The presentation also focuses on some contributions from the latest issue of the project by artist and activist Eva Egermann, Crip Magazine (2019), produced for Bergen Assembly and on the need for artistic practices and "(Queer)-crip perspectives beyond plain linear composition" (McRuer). A black and white photograph on the cover of Crip Magazine shows Lorenza Böttner posing as Venus de Milo: a witty and astonishing image and, in a way, a criticism of the visual arts canon. The normalised images that we see around us every day limit our ability to conceive a beyond. Crip Magazine aims to expand these limits, bringing together cultural artefacts from a (sub) transistoric crip culture, in a sort of visual activism of which Lorenza Böttner was one of the pioneers and main protagonists.

The evening will conclude with the presentation of Romily Alice Walden’s Notes From The Underlands (2019), a performative text from the depths of queer disability culture that demands the Abled-bodied regime to collapse in the now and imagines a futureshaped by “Hybrid, Techno-Reinforced, Ism-Resistant SUPER-CREATURES”.

Lorenza Böttner (Punta Arenas, Chile, 1959 – Munich, Germany, 1994) was an artist who painted with her feet and mouth and used photography, drawing, dance, installation and performance as a means of aesthetic expression, challenging the processes of "de-subjectification" and de-sexualisation, internment and invisibilisation to which transgender and functionally diverse bodies are exposed. Born Ernst Lorenz Böttner in 1959 to a German family living in Chile, at the age of eight he lost both arms in an accident. Considered disabled by the medical regime, he was interned with the "Contergan children" in Germany, where he had moved with his mother after the accident. In 1978 he enrolled at the Gesamthochschule (nowadays Kunsthochschule) in Kassel. There, he changed his name to Lorenza Böttner and developed an artistic practice based on drawing and painting, later expanding it to include the languages of dance, performance, photography and fashion design. In 1994 she died of HIV-related complications after 16 years of intense artistic production. A small selection of her works was shown in 2017 at documenta 14, in Kassel. In 2018 and 2019 the Virreina Centre de la Imatge in Barcelona and the Württembergischer Kunstverein in Stuttgart co-produced the artist's first solo exhibition, curated by Paul B. Preciado. Since January 2020, the exhibition has been on display at the Art Museum of the University of Toronto.

Viktor Neumann is an art historian and curator who lives between Berlin and Zurich. He has curated exhibitions and projects for institutions such as the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, Bildmuseet Umeå, Kunstmuseum Bonn, National Centre for Contemporary Arts in Ekaterinburg, The Kitchen in New York, Künstlerhaus Stuttgart. He was Curatorial Assistant for documenta 14 Public Programmes (2017), Assistant Curator for the 3rd Moscow International Biennale for Young Art (2012) and a Helena Rubinstein Curatorial Fellow at the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program (2015-2016). Recently, he was co-curator of the Bergen Assembly 2019, directed by Hans D. Christ and Iris Dressler, and, together with Paul Preciado, co-curator of the transnational project Parliament of Bodies. Together with Fanny Hauser, he received a bursary from the Gebert Stiftung für Kultur for 2019/20 and is co-curator for a three-parted exhibition series at Württembergischer Kunstverein in Stuttgart. He is currently Guest Professor for Curatorial Studies at the Staatliche Hochschule für Gestaltung in Karlsruhe.