Category: zoot

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my last remembrance of georg paul thomann

I remember now the last time I saw him in vienna, when he was on his way to the office in Mueumsquartier, looking at an exhibition outside.

I said: Hi Georg, how are you?

and he just said: Schau dir das genau an, was haben die sich dabei eigentlich gedacht! Alles Käse.

which means roughly: look at the stuff in detail, they haven’t thought about it. All Cheese.

This was in December 2003, I think. Yup. December.

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Georg Paul Thomann dead – *urgs*

Oh my, soon a few months after I left vienna, Georg dies.
Its a strange feeling when somebody you know dies. I can’t really believe that he is not there anymore.

The austrian press agency wrote the news:
http://www.ots.at/presseaussendung.php?schluessel=OTS_20050725_OTS0034&ch=kultur

I was really impressed by Georg, I met him on different occasions on art events in Vienna. He was somehow shy, you know, artist, and didn’t go into public much. One time, in the Sezession in Vienna, he was in an exhibition of his own work but people didn’t recognise him. It was funny to talk with Georg, when he explained his stuff to me and a few friends. I liked his strange language, read his books for the written stuff, but in audio, it was even more complicated. I think nobody really understood the complexity of the work. For example, I wanted to read “Die Konflikt Masche” but didn’t understand it until he pointed me to his actionistic happenings.

Again, its strange. Now, when he’s dead I think of all the times when I saw him standing somewhere on an art event, often only in the background. He sometimes came to a place to just greet a few people (or no one), and then to suddenly hop away after 10 minutes. I wondered why he came at all, all the way down from his house the way to the center of vienna.

hm, I wish I could have made a photo of me and him back then, as a reminder. Pity. Ok, so he left again, see him in Artists heaven.

I will cite some here, if the other site goes down too, to keep the remembrance of him.

Prof. Georg Paul Thomann verstorben
Der Künstler und Autor Prof. Georg Paul Thomann ist in der
Nacht auf Freitag in Folge eines tragischen Unfalls verstorben.

Hall in Tirol (OTS) – Thomann, geboren 1945 in Vorarlberg,
studierte Kunst in Wien ab 1963. Danach verschiedene künstlerische
Projekte in Österreich. Von 1964 bis 1980 lebte und arbeitete er in
Berlin, Paris, München, Palo Alto/Kalifornien, New York, London. 1980
kehrte er nach Wien zurück.

Thomann arbeitete in den verschiedensten künstlerischen Kontexten,
unter anderem als Konzept- und Performancekünstler, Maler, Fotograf,
Videokünstler, Musiker. Er erhielt mehrere Stipendien, Preise und
Ehrungen.

Thomann unterrichtete zeitgenössische Kunst an verschiedenen
Kunsthochschulen.

Zuletzt vertrat Thomann Österreich mit seiner Installation <Yes,
Sir, I can network it out, Sir!> auf der Biennale Sao Paulo 2002.

Als Autor beschäftigte er sich in verschiedenen Werken mit
künstlerischen und sozialpolitischen Themen (u.a. “Die
Konflikt-Masche”, edition selene, Wien 1999).

Die feierliche Verabschiedung von Prof. Thomann findet am Freitag,
29. Juli 2005 in Hall in Tirol statt. Die Trauergemeinde trifft sich
um 15 Uhr in der Krippgasse 11, A-6060 Hall in Tirol.

Rückfragehinweis:
Julia Mumelter
Tel.: ++43 (0) 5223 / 45 111
mailto: kulturlabor@stromboli.at

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watched the terminal

just watched “the terminal”, movie directed by Steven Spielberg with Tom Hanks playing a guy stuck at NY airport for 9 months.

we checked a little and found the true story aspect at this nytimes article and a nice wikipedia entry about Merhan Karimi Nasseri, who still lives at Roisin Airport in Paris. The wikipedia entry says that this is still true on 17th July 2005, so probably the web keeps this story alive.

Funny thing, somebody has to have checked this and entered it in wikipedia. this alone is a weird fact, but also giving me a feeling of security: when I want to know something like this, many many other people write stuff down.