The Austrian writer H. C. Artmann, who would have turned 100 this year, has been described as a linguistic wizard, a comedian, a jargon juggler and a rhyming rastelli. The language and the many languages – or rather – Artmann’s plurilingualism gave rise to the conception of the exhibition ‘how lovecraft saved the world’, which is being created in collaboration with Jakob Lena Knebl, students of the Angewandte and the Germanist Alexandra Millner.

Based on H. C. Artmann’s linguistic pluriverse, the exhibition deals with thematic complexes around the figure of the dandy, black romanticism, surrealism, fluxus and pop. The concepts of intertextuality and transculturality can be claimed as common traces for Artmann’s texts. H. C. Artmann’s attitude towards life and values is reflected in his use of language and opens up a variety of aesthetic and artistic strategies, such as décollage, chance, the power of disposal, transformation and invention, and last but not least control and loss of control, which are linked to current debates. These include the overcoming of classes, the questioning of borders and nations, as well as the overriding of space and time in order to penetrate into areas that allow one thing above all: pleasurable poetry!

H. C. Artmann, Marcel Bascoulard, Günter Brus, Marei Eva Roxanna Buhmann, Beatrice Dreux, James Ensor, Valie Export, Marie Yael Fidesser, General Idea, Jorinna Diotima Girschik, Wolfgang Hutter, Jakob Lena Knebl, Anton Josef von Kenner, Alfred Kubin, Hanna-Christina Mannsberger, Helen Marsden, Sabin Meco, Pierre Molinier, Anna Pelz, Johannes Porsch, Felix Schwentner, Lisa Maria Sifkovits, Franziska Sponring, Julia Stern, Petra Strasser, Richard Teschner, Eva Topić, Valentin Unger, Angela Wiedermann, Vivian Virginia Zech, Robert Zeppel-Sperl.

Curatorial Team: Anette Freudenberger, Jakob Lena Knebl, Alexandra Millner, Cosima Rainer, Eva Maria Stadler