Opening
30 January 2004, 7 pm

Opening by LR Dr. Elisabeth Zanon-zur Nedden, of the Tyrolean’s government office for cultural affairs
Hemma Schmutz, art historian, will speak about the exhibition

The three rooms with video works created between 2000 and 2002 constitute the central part of the exhibition with the title Florian Pumhösl – Growth and Development. The installations "Lac Mantasoa" (2000), "Proposal for a Space with More Than One Video Projection" (2001) and "Village, Museum" (2002) document characteristic urban planning and architectural designs from modernization projects that have been carried out in East and south-eastern Africa since the mid-19th century. The stages of modernization selected here all represent developments that most certainly took place concurrently in the western industrial nations, albeit following a very different course.

"Lac Mantasoa" depicts the state of an industrial town from the mid-19th century in Madagascar. "Proposal..." shows urban spaces in Uganda that were designed by Ernst May, the leading representative of modern German architecture, when the British were colonizing the country in the mid-20th century. "Village, Museum" examines the socialist initiatives in post-colonial Tanzania under Julius Nyerere from the 1970s on. The various stages of Pumhösl's videographic-architectural tale all share the fact that they can be understood as alternative, non-narrative notations of historical processes. Visuality and space are the central themes but at the same time the core of these narratives could also be read as the result of political processes.

What is striking about Pumhösl's works on the process and structure of different manifestations of modernization is that as documentary practice based on research they are not meant to be understood as a contrast to aesthetic production or visual grammar. The artist is interested in the structures and the ideas that have ultimately radically changed the paradigms of urban planning and of the mass media.

Bringing together works from the past four years, the exhibition "Growth and Development" sounds out those spaces that are located between the formats, forms and historizations of modernization. It illustrates the links between social and aesthetic formations as well as the irreconciliability of archives, effectivity and representation.

Florian Pumhösl, born 1971, lives and works in Vienna.

Catalogue
Florian Pumhösl
Wachstum und Entwicklung
Ed. Galerie im Taxispalais
Contributions by Silvia Eiblmayr, Florian Pumhösl, Juliane Rebentisch, Georg Schöllhammer (German/English)
Revolver – Archiv für aktuelle Kunst, Frankfurt a. Main 2004
95 p., 13 images
€ 15.-
ISBN 3-937577-18-1

Lecture and catalogue presentation
Florian Pumhösl, Growth and Development: Madagaskar 1839, Uganda 1945, Tanzania 1976 Friday, February 27, 2004, 7 p.m.