Robert Jelinek Master Class

YOU ARE INVITED TO AN ARTIST TALK/MASTER CLASS

with renowned Sabotage Artist ROBERT JELINEK
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 11TH
5:30-7:00 PM
CFT (Centre for Film and Theatre) room 137

flag
(Artwork by Franz Graf)

“State of Sabotage”
Moderated by Jacob Korczynski

Robert Jelinek has been realizing projects in the guise of various internationally active labels since 1992. Jelinek’s first personal retrospective recently took place this July 2007 in the Linz Landesgalerie, a presentation which provided an overview of his multifaceted actions, performances and projects in the fields of art, actionism, olfaction and electronic music from 1992 to 2007. The complexity of Jelinek’s strategic activities in various political, societal, artistic and institutional contexts is apparent in his ongoing project, The State of Sabotage (SoS), which guides the creation of all artistic projects, collaborations and actions by Jelinek and those who work with him. Born in Pilsen (Czech Republic), Jelinek lives and works in Vienna (Austria) and Baldrockistan (SoS).

The formation “Sabotage” was founded by Jelinek in Documenta IX, Kassel, June 1992. “Sabotage” began operating in 1992 as a small project and collective, and later in1994 as Sabotage Communications---an art organisation and music label--then as a union of various sublabels brought together by their shared way of thinking and similar style of expression through different media. Since 1992 more than 100 international “public sabotages” have taken place in the form of performances, actions, events and exhibitions. There are a number of flexible subdivisions which emerge as the needs arise and dissolve under their own inertia. Each of the sublabels primarily works within its medium, but nevertheless their bonds are firm and fruitful.

The fields of activities of Sabotage defy definition of contents, theme and geographic concentration and therefore different projects and target groups are represented in different sublabels such as:


Art: Sabotage actions (1992-95), Alibi Service (1992-95), Sabotage projects (since 1995) or CaSH (1998).

Music: Sabotage Recordings (1994-99), Craft Records (since 1995), Sabotage Records (since 1999).

“Sabotage” in this sense means the breaking of conventions, the artistic interruption of processes of thinking and manipulational transfer. “Sabotage” is not a technique that transports meaning. Sabotage transgresses positions without presenting a new social order, provokes thinking by intervening in the official discourse. Sabotage is the experiment to break up incrustation of an organised bourgeois society that insulates itself against all changes and tries to make thinkable new possibilities.