I re-read you, always for another first time
Installation made of books, photographs, prints, accessoires, textile, glas, metall, wood, 2018
(...) Can a milieu be defined here? Not as a term, but as a practice, this could perhaps look like Katharina Aigner‘s open-ended, investigative-erotic search for the „Temple of Friendship“ of the US-American writer Natalie Clifford Barney, who Aigner believes to have found in 1920s Paris, but knows only from novels and memoirs of the time. In her salons, Barney coupled literature and lesbian love. Aigner‘s performative re-reading of her works „I re-read you, always for another first time“ (2018) is carried by the intimate wish to receive the overlooked circle of female artists for herself and others. Similar to Mirjam Thomann‘s engagement with Mary Miss, Aigner‘s milieu practice is also characterized by care work: Maintaining contact with other artists and their works makes preservation and positive identification possible. It is work on milieu by means other than those of the term: A reciprocal negotiation - here as in the other works in this show - of some conditions of production, representation, self-determination and friendship.
(Excerpt from: Term(s) Of Endearment, Kathi Hofer about „MILIEU“ at after the butcher / Berlin, Texte zur Kunst Magazin Nr. 111)
Photos by Marcel Dickhage
(...) Can a milieu be defined here? Not as a term, but as a practice, this could perhaps look like Katharina Aigner‘s open-ended, investigative-erotic search for the „Temple of Friendship“ of the US-American writer Natalie Clifford Barney, who Aigner believes to have found in 1920s Paris, but knows only from novels and memoirs of the time. In her salons, Barney coupled literature and lesbian love. Aigner‘s performative re-reading of her works „I re-read you, always for another first time“ (2018) is carried by the intimate wish to receive the overlooked circle of female artists for herself and others. Similar to Mirjam Thomann‘s engagement with Mary Miss, Aigner‘s milieu practice is also characterized by care work: Maintaining contact with other artists and their works makes preservation and positive identification possible. It is work on milieu by means other than those of the term: A reciprocal negotiation - here as in the other works in this show - of some conditions of production, representation, self-determination and friendship.
(Excerpt from: Term(s) Of Endearment, Kathi Hofer about „MILIEU“ at after the butcher / Berlin, Texte zur Kunst Magazin Nr. 111)
Photos by Marcel Dickhage
