Tag Archives: Ludwig Museum

Antal Lakner’s Passive Working Devices at the Ludwig Museum

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Antal Lakner’s retrospective exhibition Workstation at the Ludwig Museum, Budapest, covers the artist’s oeuvre of engaging, design-oriented conceptual artworks that challenge the passivity of the museum environment and the individual’s response to contemporary life. My favorite works, which are representative of many of Lakner’s concerns, are the INERS Passive Working Devices. It is a scientific-sounding name for these cleanly designed  machines that look as if they belong in a gym or an office–in fact, exactly the haunts of our post-industrial society of office workers who must pursue physical activity as exercise, a leisure activity, rather than as a necessary part of everyday life. Absurdly, these machines mimic the actions of formerly common labor, such as sawing, walking with a wheelbarrow, and house painting, transforming them into exercises that produce no result.

A demonstration of the Passive Working Devices in action:

Forest Master in action.

Home Transporter (1999) in action.

Wall Master (1998) in action.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

These devices highlight Lakner’s interest in the individual’s role in society, here in relation to physical labor. The obviously playful, interactive aspect of these devices belies their critical nature. There is a tension in the absurdity of the work which mimics usefulness but serves no purpose, between the carefully manufactured aesthetic that is in fact hand-made, and in the interactivity of machines which call for action while questioning agency. All these tensions suggest that modern life might turn us into automatons if we do not remain aware of the issues that the INERS Passive Working Devices bring up.

Zoom Glove

Lakner’s newer work, First Life Tools, is based on web communication devices and here the critique of modern life breaks down a bit. The tools allow you to practice zooming, work out your scrolling fingers on a little track wheel, or drag a heavy, magnetized mouse that strengthens your hand and arm. After a day of Photoshop, these devices might seem incredibly relevant in a non-ironic sense. Certainly the technology the devices train you for is contemporary, but I think the anxiety over technology in contemporary life (think Marshall McLuhan) that the First Life Tools suggest feels dated. More than that, I can’t help thinking that the focus on the physical isn’t nearly as relevant to web communication as, for example, dealing with the mental schizophrenia of trying to keep up with many streams of online information on multiple wired devices would be.

Scroll Master

 

Where I Want to Be: Ludwig Museum, Budapest, Hungary

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Budapest is looking lovely this time of year, despite the Danube rising over its banks and causing minor flooding in the city. My 4th of July plans don’t really have room for a trip to Budapest, but if they did, I’d go to the Ludwig Museum. The Ludwig Museum of Contemporary Art will be open until midnight on July 3 and 4. A night at the museum is always fun, and a night at the museum in Budapest during a warm summer sounds especially pleasant.

On these late nights, the Ludwig Museum will be showing films by Anton Corbijn to complement the photography exhibition of his work that focuses on rock and roll idols, documenting them, and in a later series trying to become them, rather like Cindy Sherman’s transformations.
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I have been- ahem– slightly focused on Hungarian art of late, and it just so happens the Ludwig Museum is displaying the largest amount of its permanent collection since its inception in 1991. How the collection came to be is an interesting story in itself: collector Peter Ludwig was a German tycoon with a passion for collecting art. In an obituary, The Independent described him as “either the most selfless and discriminating art collector of the late 20th century or a self- aggrandising amasser of objects which he regarded as bargaining counters in a relentless pursuit of honours and distinction in his native Germany and abroad.”
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Hommage à Dezső Korniss by Nadler, left, and Faces from the Square by Feher, right

Either way, Peter Ludwig created one of the largest collections in private hands, and turned over much of it to found museums in Cologne and Budapest, among other things. Because of his extraordinary donation, 200 excellent works of the 20th C. out of 300 in the Ludwig Museum’s show are from Ludwig’s original collection. The Warhols, Lichtensteins and Oldenbergs are complemented by works by Hungarian artists such as Keserü, Nádler and Feher.

Doesn’t it just look like fun? A night at the museum, a little rock and roll, a solid permanent collection of Hungarian and International art, and the story of an eccentric collector…