SENSING THE NIGHT

exhibition Kulturpreise des Landes NÖ, Dokumentationszentrum für bildende Kunst, St.Pölten, 2022

performance and exhibition at Villa Tugendhat, Brünn 2021, https://www.tugendhat.eu/en/vila-online/interpretace/interpretace-2/

For her project "Sensing the night," Anne Glassner invited scientists, artists, architects, and curators from Vienna and Brno to spend a night with her at Villa Tugendhat: a communal meal, a mattress camp, no mobile devices, no watches, but a notebook for each person and everyone in white sleeping clothes - these are not necessarily the ingredients for a hip art event or a scientific meeting, but rather for a pajama party. Yet it is precisely in this contradiction that space opens up for those aspects that characterize Glassner's work: Reduction, meditation, mindfulness, supposed passivity and waste of time, consumption- and art market-denying idleness. And all this in Mies van der Rohe's monument to modern architecture. In a legendary building like the Villa Tugendhat, one almost inevitably asks oneself: Do the atmosphere, the architecture, the history, the iconic nature of the building have an effect on the perception, the thought processes and the sleep of the participants? On their dreams? Can one, indeed may one, "simply" sleep here, in this work of art? Not only is sleeping in such a place in itself an act of negation, there is possibly an appropriation of space with the help of people in a state of rest, who come to "do nothing" in an architecture that embodies functionality and elegance, to a kind of non-functionality. In any case, there is a transfer of the private into a public space, which was originally a private one; in a way, a return to the intended purpose of the residential building. Collective being and doing is an essential component of Anne Glassner's artistic practice. Her collaborative intervention "SENSING THE NIGHT" is the first ever nocturnal one at Villa Tugendhat; it lasts for a single night, documented through video and photographs. (Text: Anna Reisenbichler/ Fotos Villa: Roman Franc)

Contributors: Sonya Darrow, Kristian Faschingeder, Anne Glassner, Neli Hejkalová, Mizuki Nakeshu, Irene Nierhaus, Anna Reisenbichler, Tana Sedova, Karolína Vojáčková, Elfi Wintersteiger

Photos: Roman Franc/ Mizuki Nakeshu

Sound piano: Elfi Wintersteiger, https://soundcloud.com/villa-tugendhat/elfi-wintersteiger-evening

Dinner: Ondrej Pilat

Photos: NÖ Dokumentationszentrum für bildende Kunst: Sonja Dürnberger