Jessica Hausner
Toast
Jan 25-Feb 19, 2006
Curators: Peter Pakesch, Adam Budak
Kunsthaus Graz am Landesmuseum Joanneum
Lendkai 1, A-8020 Graz
T 43-316/8017-9200
info [at] kunsthausgraz.at www.kunsthausgraz.at
Kunsthaus Graz is proud to present Toast, a new filmic essay by Jessica Hausner, 2005 winner of the Big DIAGONALE Prize for the movie Hotel, also selected for the official programme Un Certain Regard in Cannes.
Toast or a Short Film about Eating
The setting and a scene are more than ordinary and simple, the essence of domestic life, reduced and minimal in its filmic rendering: the ascetic kitchen caught within the camera frame – the counter, the water heater, and the toaster (the main prop and the rhythm-maker). In a close up: a woman, ordinary girl-next-door, dressed up in primary colours, rendered with pastel hues and yoghurt-like softness, imprisoned in her traditional cultural and social role and task.
In her own filmic version of a Grande Bouffe, Jessica Hausner is not interested in haute cuisine. Her (quite ambiguous) female character, not really a house-wife type, neither glamorous teen-ager, is passionately engaged (not to say devoted) in preparing the most ordinary piece of food: a (morning) toast-sandwich, far from a sophisticated menu, of elementary ingredients, rapidly removed from a yellow plastic container; made in rush, but solidly, a fast-food, but rich in calories, bulimic, with an abundance of creamy pate and butter an apparent object of (instantaneously available) desire; two slices of white bred, squeezed desperately with some parts sneaking under pressure, immediately devoured by an apparently hungry woman in an emotionless gesture. Unfulfilled desire, an urge for a rapid satisfaction and a search for freeing herself of once established and imposed frames are fore-grounded in this ritual of everyday life.
Each films sequence begins with the slices of toast bread jumping out of a toaster, hot, crispy and brownish, of elemental taste; the background music dynamizes the scene; there is an overall sense of suspense as if the real story is still yet to come; yes, soon, a woman takes up a shiny knife
Repetitiveness structures Hausners film which turns into a rhythmic study of an automatic simple task. As such, it emphasizes an excess and a certain masquerade as significant signs of femininity here demonstrated by performing the most ordinary activity: eating and preparing food, both appearing as an ambiguous ceremony, devoid of pleasure, between greed and routine, boredom and a monotony of a re-enacted task, with a metaphoric potential. Absurd in its ordinariness, almost Dadaistic in its slapstick-like stylistic, Hausners film is amusing and provocative and as such it does carry with itself a statement of aesthetic and political nature. Echoing post-feministic discourse by questioning too obvious female stereotype of rage and frustration, it functions as both, a parodic portrait of a singular desire, crushed by a hysteria of a moment and a despair of an everyday but also as a satire of a society immersed in hyper-consumerism, discontinuity and superficiality. As such, it oscillates between a moralistic micro-tale on greed and conceit and a social critique of a dominant lifestyle and a patriarchal culture.
Strangely enough, Hausners filmic essay recalls Martha Roslers cult video performance Semiotics of the Kitchen (1975), one of the pioneeric and strongest voices in feministic practice and theory. Its (almost) static camera, typical kitchen environment, central position of a female character engaged in everyday task, a mixture of anger and irony, and an emotional shrapness are common for those both works that question and redefine a myth of female iconography in the western society. (Adam Budak)
Toast by Jessica Hausner is this years DIAGONALE trailer. DIAGONALE, the Festival of Austrian Film takes place from March 21 to 26, 2006. www.diagonale.at
In cooperation with Radio Helsinki, on February 1st and 2nd Kunsthaus Graz shows 4 movies by Jessica Hausner. More information: www.spacemovie.mur.at
Jessica Hausner was born in Vienna in 1972. She studied filmmaking at the department for film and television of the University of Music and Visual Arts in Vienna. There she made the short-film Flora, which won prizes in several festivals. Inter-View (1999), her 48-minute diploma film was awarded at the Cinéfondation in Cannes. Her first long feature film Lovely Rita had its world premiere in the official programme “Un Certain Regard” in Cannes in 2001. As in her first three films, also in this one she worked with amateur actors. Her second long feature film Hotel, a thriller, was presented in the official programme Un Certain Regard in Cannes and awarded with the Big DIAGONALE-Price in 2005.
Curators:
Peter Pakesch, Adam Budak
Opening:
January 24th, 2006, 7 p.m.
Opening hours:
Jan 25 Feb 19, 2006
Tue Sun 10 a.m. 6 p.m., Thu 10 a.m. 8 p.m.
Location:
Kunsthaus Graz am
Landesmuseum Joanneum
Lendkai 1, A-8020 Graz
Info:
info@kunsthausgraz.at www.kunsthausgraz.at
T 43-316/8017-9200
