FEMALE OBSESSION
“Clap your
hands
![]()
and
say yeah:
(...) to produce
new workable strategies.”
#ACTIVISM #LANGUAGE #GENDER #PERFORMANCE #BODY
BIO.
Ursula Maria Probst, a.k.a.Female Obsession lives and works in Vienna. Realisation of projects at Myanmar, Vietnam, China, Cuba, Argentinia, Panama, Brazil, Israel, Palestine, Turkey, Bulgaria. Artistic director for Fluc Vienna. Curatorial projects: Kulturdrogerie, Mz* Baltazar's Laboratory, vesch, KÖR, Public Art lower austria, freiraum Q21 MQ, fluca Austrian Cultural Pavilion Plovdiv/Bulgaria, Vienna Artweek, Galerie Krinzinger, K/haus, KulturKontakt Austria. Curator of the Austrian contributions to the Havana Biennale 2015. Lecturer at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, visiting professor at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, art and film critic for Kunstforum International, Spike, Modern Painters, dérive, artmagazine, Umelec, Springerin), art historian (worked with Louise Bourgeois).
BREATH IN. BREATH OUT. YOU CAN DO THIS (2020)
Interventionist Photgraphy
A body under tension. Existing is like drinking without thirst. How can we reflect on the consequences, find new interpretations through a reordering? A liberation or the short history of an attunement to the spirited attack and unhindered view of lustfully committed blunders. Instead of an achivology, today there is a queryology, a science of query systems. Anyone who enters personal data into social networks like Facebook knows neither at the time of entry nor later exactly who is using the data. Data from social networks is passed on en masse, encrypted connections are cracked. This is a phenomenon that researchers call the privacy paradox. Although the protection of privacy is perceived as very important, little is done about it. In other words, a loss of control meets an effect of counter-control.
FEMINISMUS ODER SCHLÄGEREI (2020)
Interventionist Photography
Instead of remaining in the limited realm of micro-political intervention or languishing in simplistic fantasies of a return to an idealized "natural authenticity", xenofeminism understands alienation as a generating impulse. We are all alienated. Was it ever different? It is because of - and not in spite of - our alienated situation that we can free ourselves from the shodder of immediacy. Freedom is not a given and certainly not a "natural" given. Alienation is an effect and function of the possibility to build freedom. The "given" is mobile. Nothing is rigid. Everything is susceptible to radical change - material conditions as well as social forms. Laughter begins when language dries up. Its definition also slips away from the definite. Like contemporary art, laughter tries to free itself from the social laws and conventions on which it is based. The act of laughter occurs in borderline situations. It arises from them and generates them at the same time.
Photos: © Ursula Maria Probst
SIAMO PARTIGIANO VIVIAMO (2020)
Interventionist Photgraphy
How can the way we eat, learn, dress, love, live and talk be a way to renew ourselves and our society from the ground? Art is the place that produces a specific sociability, promotes ecological balance and conserves biodiversity. Performance is an option to reflect the multi-tasking ethos of our times, the possibilities to incorporate new technologies, its potential for reaching a broader audience through an interactive engagement. Participatory art in general has always prioritized experiential immediacy, and its more activist variants have rarely considered how and why one might also consider the transmission of these works to a secondary audience; demonstrable impact in the here and now is invariably seen as more important.