Zum Thema Debt schrieb ich: „Schuld als Gefühl. Eines wogegen ich mich ebenso unwillkürlich aber doch willentlich soviel wehre, meistens in Form von Erklärung, Herleitung, Drang nach Kausalität und Ergebnis. So weit dann, dass die Schuld an sich für mich etwas Abstraktes wird. Mir eigentlich weder durch Erinnerung, noch durch Erzählung anschaulich, spürbar werden will. […]“

Begleittext, geschrieben von Hana Ostan-Ožbolt-Haas:
Die auf zwei Fensterbänken im Gang des Salzburger Kunstvereins ausgestellte Arbeit Fragments (Stored Together) (2024) umfasst acht kleine Skulpturen aus Kupfer und Stahl, die den Blick der Betrachter:innen nach außen lenken. Ursprünglich im Rahmen einer früheren Ausstellung entstanden und ausgestellt, durchliefen die Stücke während der Lagerung einen transformativen Prozess: galvanische Korrosion. Formal bezieht sich das Werk auf eine fiktive Bahnhofsszene. Für Schernthaner-Lourdesamy symbolisiert das Bahngleis in Bezug auf Debt einen möglichen Ort der Auseinandersetzung mit dem Begriff der Schuld. Ein solcher Ort, an dem man wartet, stellt das Individuum immer wieder vor die Wahl: Vorbeiziehen lassen oder einsteigen. Er verbindet diesen Moment mit einem Gefühl der Freiheit, da Handlungen in diesem Kontext scheinbar folgenlos sind – der Zug fährt ab, unabhängig davon, ob man einsteigt oder nicht. Die Szene suggeriert eine Einladung, Schuldgefühle auszuhalten und in der Gegenwart zu verweilen, die Mehrdeutigkeit des Untätigseins begrüßend. Während die Arbeit zur Reflexion über persönliche Handlungsfähigkeit und Schuld einlädt, lässt sie auch die belasteten historischen Konnotationen der österreichischen Vergangenheit unausgesprochen. Schernthaner-Lourdesamy weiß um die groteske Ironie, die darin liegt, das Einsteigen in einen Zug dabei als freiwilligen Akt zu beschreiben. Harbour Story (2024), ausgestellt beim Hintereingang des Salzburger Kunstvereins, in der Nähe eines Fensters, konzentriert sich ebenfalls auf einen Transitraum.
Im Ausstellungsraum zeigt Corner Gesture (2024) Überbleibsel einer größeren Arbeit, die ursprünglich im brut Wien gezeigt wurde. Absichtlich in einer Ecke platziert, verbrauchen diese Objekte weiterhin Strom und geben Geräusche ab, obwohl sie ihren eigentlichen Zweck nicht mehr erfüllen, zu einem voll funktionsfähigen Kunstwerk beizutragen. Schernthaner-Lourdesamy macht auf die Banalität dieses Akts aufmerksam: Die künstlerische Produktion ist auf Material und Energie angewiesen, der Schaffensprozess verbraucht von Natur aus Ressourcen.


Reflecting on the theme of Debt, I wrote: “Guilt as a feeling. Something I resist—instinctively yet deliberately—mostly through explanation, derivation, the urge for causality and results. To the point where guilt itself becomes something abstract to me. Something that I neither want to make tangible nor perceptible, whether through memory or narrative. […]”

Accompanying text, written by Hana Ostan-Ožbolt-Haas:
Displayed on two windowsills in the hallway of the Salzburger Kunstverein, Fragments (stored together) (2024) comprises eight small sculptures made of copper and steel, directing the viewer's gaze outward. Originally created and exhibited as part of a previous exhibition, the pieces underwent a transformative process during storage: galvanic corrosion. Formally, the work evokes a fictional train station scene. For Schernthaner-Lourdesamy, in relation to Debt, the railway track symbolizes a potential site for grappling with the concept of guilt. Such a place, where one waits, confronts individuals with a recurring choice: to let it pass or to board. He associates this moment with a sense of freedom, as actions in this context are seemingly freed from consequence—the train departs regardless of whether one boards or not. The scene suggests an invitation to endure guilt and to remain in the present, embracing the ambiguity of inaction. While the work invites reflection on personal agency and guilt, it also leaves unspoken the fraught historical connotations of Austria's past. Schernthaner-Lourdesamy acknowledges the grotesque irony of describing boarding a train as an act of free will. Harbour Story (2024) exhibited in the Salzburger Kunstverein cellar, near to a window, also focuses on a space of transition.
In the exhibition space, Corner Gesture (2024) features remnants from a larger work originally shown at brut Wien. Deliberately placed in a corner, these objects continue to consume electricity and emit noise, despite no longer fulfilling their intended purpose, contributing to a fully-functioning artwork entity. Schernthaner-Lourdesamy draws attention to the banality of this act: artistic production is dependent on material and energy, the process of creation inherently consumes resources.

Ausstellungstext:
Wir freuen uns, diese Duo Show zu präsentieren. Oberflächlichkeit soll synonym zu Inhaltslosigkeit, Flachheit, Geistlosigkeit stehen. Doch sind es eben unsere Oberflächen, die das Abgrenzen unseres Selbst zu umliegenden Entropien, fremden Subjekten (meschlich & nicht-menschlich) möglich machen. Wir lassen uns von ihnen anleiten — patina partitur. Ich sehe eine Szene, Gleise liegen von der Sonne zur Glut erhitzt im Steinbett, Moose und Gräser sprießen wie verrückt, ein Reiher liegt zufrieden verunglückt da — pathos. Die Null- Flächen, die die verschiedenen Akteur:innen gleichzeitig abgrenzen und doch untrennbar miteinander verbinden, fangen an zu singen und wir treten näher.
So möchten wir die These aufstellen, Oberflächlichkeit darf mensch sich leisten, doofer Materialfetisch, pathos, patina, der Titel schaufelt uns Freiheit.

Exhibition Text:
We happily present this duo show.
Oberflächlichkeit (surfaceness, superficiality) is supposed to be synonymous to a lack of content, shallowness, mindlessness. But it is precisely our surfaces that make it possible to differentiate ourselves from the surrounding entropies, foreign subjects (human & non-human). We allow them to guide us - patina scores. I see a scene, tracks lying in the stone bed, heated to a glow by the sun, mosses and grasses sprouting like mad, a heron lying contentedly passed away - pathos. The null-areas, which simultaneously distinguish and yet inseparably connect the various protagonists, begin to cry out and we close in.
So, we would like to put forward the thesis that we can afford superficiality, silly material fetish, pathos, patina, the title provides the freedom.

My solo contribution consisted of DIY motor modules mounted to the window blinds, making them twitch, breathe and dance.
Together with Gala Alica Ostan Ožbolt we developed and were responsible for the spatial concept/intervention of this Exhibition.

Official Exhibition Text:
Exactly As Imagined emerges from an ongoing process shaped not by a fixed curation but by the collaborative efforts of a temporary collective of art students, artists, and cultural workers. The collective challenges and transforms the concept of the traditional ‘art exhibition’ shifting the space into a zone of shared expression and inquiry. Through the constant articulation of difference(s) and resistance(s), Exactly As Imagined acts as a platform for unearthing hidden narratives and creating new ones, fostering a sense of interconnectedness and interdependence. How do we address a site in constant flux, caught between invisibility and hypervisibility? How do we take care of it and how do we take care of each other? How do we imagine its pasts and futures?
As a transitory collective, we intervene both collectively and individually in the innerspace of the exhibition location – brut’s working dance studios – as well as in its outer space – the area of the former station. Hereby, we investigate its historicity and its materiality, its occupation and its abandonment, its structure and its surfaces. We dig out physically and metaphorically some historical layers, we populate it with works and stories, we expand its boundaries and shape.
Located within the industrial site of the former Vienna Northwest Railway Station, the building once housed a clothing company, later a beverage dealer's storage, and is today the temporary home for contemporary performative arts. Its imminent demolition will pave the way for a new district development. The collective spatial concept design of the exhibition delves into the building’s rich histories. Embracing impermanence, we engage with it minimally but radically. We work with what we found on the site that we shortly inhabit. Instead of adding things and through a process akin to archaeological excavation, we dismantle and peel away the layers of the space's infrastructure. A subtle vitality emerges, inviting us to explore the architecture’s inner anatomy. From pulsing wires to buzzing blinds and flickering lights, the building reveals itself in unexpected ways, luring us in for deeper exploration. By committing to each other and our delirious explorations we take over continuous care work, we challenge conventional boundaries and invite the public to walk into an unfinished conversation.
As part of the exhibition, a performative procession will take place on two dates:
We go for a walk through the Nordwestbahn area. Today an industrial wasteland, a site of remembrance and an urban borderzone, it will soon be a new urban district. A procession. Mourning what is gone, what left traces or a ghostly presence. Celebrating what grew in the shadows of abandonment. We carry found objects, craft fragile forms of attention, reactivate unseen sights, excavate hidden tracks. And, inevitably, we linger on the ridge between genuine symbolic investment and ruin porn.

Teil A: Vortrag und Präsentation des Objekts: Trauer-Kit
Teil B: Darbietung der Komposition
Teil C: Darbietung der Choreographie

Part A: Talk and presentation on the object: bag of grief
Part B: Rendition of the composition
Part C: Rendition of the choreography

Eine persönliche Auseinandersetzung mit Fähigkeiten; Denen, die man erarbeitet hat, erlangen will, pflegen muss und für die es vielleicht in diesem Leben schon zu spät ist.
Eine Sprossenwand in der Peripherie des Bühnenraums stellt den Bezug zu institutionellen Strukturen her.
Bilder außerhalb der Fluchtlinien des Publikums werden mittels live-Video projiziert.
1. Akt: Kontrabass Improvisation
2. Akt: Körper auf Bühne
3. Akt: Nostalgisches Bild mit Sprossenwand

A personal exploration of skills; those that one has acquired, wants to acquire, must cultivate and those for which it may already be too late in this life.
Wallbars placed at the periphery of the stage creates a link to institutional structures.
Images outside the audience's sight lines are projected via live video.
1. Act: Contrabass improvisation
2. Act: Body on stage
3. Act: Nostalgic image with wallbars

Die eigenartige Konstellation der Leuchtstoffröhren im innenraum der Galerie wird verdoppelt an der anderen Seite des Daches installiert.
Zur Verringerung der Lichtverschmutzung wird diese Installation nie über die nautische Dämmerung hinaus leuchten.

The peculiar constellation of fluorescent tubes inside the gallery is duplicated on the other side of the roof.
To reduce light pollution, this installation will never be illuminated beyond nautical twilight.

Ein Fluchtstiegenhaus als Konzerthalle, verschweißter Stahl als Notenständer, eine Komposition, ein Kontrabass, und das Spiel des Musikers ergeben dieses Konzert.

An emergency staircase as a concert hall, welded steel as a music stand, a composition, a double bass and the musician's playing make up this concert.

Columbusplatz, named after Christopher Columbus, is a square located between a busy road and a pedestran zone, framed by some historical buildings, with a fountain, cafes and flower beds. Traces of consume oriented city development are undermining this place.
A big entrance to an underground car park is cut into the middle of the square, leading to the Columbus Center, a modestly functional shopping mall with an aggressive postmodernist mirror glass facade, with an abstracted egg-shaped bay window integrated.

In the context of this urban environment, several meetings took place, in which the group used a loose set of “body exercises” to get in an open and experimental dialog within the group, the public space and people around.
Starting point for these experiments was a given platform in the center of the square.
Body exercises like falling, standing, or balancing weight, reach from singular exposure of a vulnerable body, to group acts of symbiotic movements of a collective force, to symbolic gestures resolving in absurdity.
The performers experiment with dependencies, gravity and the breaking point of a group.
Body-configurations and group dynamics influence each other mutually und create an inner narrative.
In other exercises, the idea of self-control or external power and activeness or passiveness played an important role.

The exercises followed a loose structure, where a set of ideas was fixed but the specific enactment was largely improvised. A group with defined rules, but without allocation of roles, communicating bodily and intuitively about the next step to take.
There were moments of discomfort and disorientation, which were accepted as the necessary side effect of being open and accessible to the unforeseen and incidental.

Main element of all exercises was the experience through the body and how it reacts as a group. All actions were experimental and improvised. In certain moments, even a child-like flow of playing occurred.

Columbusplatz is a very lively Plaza, maybe atypical of Vienna.
Our performance took place in coexistence to other activities there. We did not grasp for special attention, nor was anybody disturbed by our presence.

We were just doing our own thing, at times joining into the playfulness which was there already. This motivated a certain intimacy within our group, being able to concentrate but also lean back into the surrounding noise.

An interaction with passersby was not forced, nor avoided. It could happen at any time.

The performances were minimal and abstract in a way, to give space for connection between different personal ideas and layers of meaning inherent at the place itself.

In this Work I dealt with materiality, texture, trust. Its content lies somewhere between experienced here and now, my personal working process and exploration, properties of Material and on-site situation.

https://artur.at/youre-not-alone/
online video installation. The Video, showing Sheep in late October of 2020, plays in sync with other devices when viewed through the website.

https://w-b-d.at
Ein Katalog und eine Website.

Flora Fee Mayerhofer: Fotografie, Scouting
Leyla Awad: Grafische Gestaltung
Artur Schernthaner-Lourdesamy: Webdesign/development, Ton
Das ganze Projekt entstand in enger Zusammenarbeit.

Bei Interesse einen Katalog zu sehen: artur@artur.at

This installation addresses interaction in public spaces on an auditory and visual level. In a video installation, an objective view of an encounter is created. The spectator watches separate worlds collide, merge and avoid each other. In contrast to the visual representation, the auditory material is reproduced subjectively. In an interplay of confused everyday noises and musical improvisation on the double bass and piano, a carpet of sound is created in reflection of the visual depiction.

Diese Installation thematisiert die Interaktion im öffentlichen Raum auf auditiver und visueller Ebene. In einer Videoinstallation entsteht eine objektive Sicht auf eine Begegnung. Die Zuschauer beobachten, wie getrennte Welten aufeinander prallen, verschmelzen und sich gegenseitig ausweichen. Im Gegensatz zur visuellen Darstellung wird das auditive Material subjektiv reproduziert. In einem Wechselspiel von verwirrenden Alltagsgeräuschen und musikalischer Improvisation auf Kontrabass und Klavier entsteht ein Klangteppich, der die visuelle Darstellung reflektiert

some of my earliest html-experiments.
swimmer.html
alphabet.html
lllrrr.html
spinningcircle

https://adakarlbauer.xyz 11.2023
http://simon-kubik.at 01.2020
/archive/outflats-at 06.2019
https://juliuspristauz.eu 11.2017
http://timrudle.at 08.2017