Set This House in Order is an exhibition in progress with the artists Annja Krautgasser, Claudia Larcher and Bern Oppl entering into mutual dialogue in individual successive and complementary presentations. The artists focus on architectural, psychological and social spaces, which are contextualised in the new exhibition space of Neuer Kunstverein Wien.

The title of the exhibition, which is one of the literature sources from Krautgasser’s presented performative installation refers to Matt Ruff’s detective story ‘Set This House in Order’, which tells the story of a man suffering from a multiple personality disorder.

For several years, the artist Annja Krautgasser, as she says, has been dealing with the ‘border areas of social fears’. Her both essayistic films ‘Waldszenen‘ and ‘Dachszenen‘ resulted of the research for a planned feature film production. Both video works are combination of a documentary and fictional material, which she linked with film quotes, which are usually enacted or reenacted by amateur actors. In her performative work she seeks for the ‘here and now’ — staged and integrated into the setting of a film production. In the created for the exhibition ‘performative screenplay’ the question of truth, manipulation and perspective within our society is raised — of the own positioning and role assignment, of the demarcations between self-determination and heteronomy and of the absorption through social and medial structures.  

Annja Krautgasser writes about her project at NKW: ‘Setting of a performance in a film scenery and the related juxtaposition of subjectivity vs. film is for me an exciting development in terms of content as well as formal development of my film work. The final film material ‘Rollenszenen‘ is intended as documentation and self-reflection of an artistic positioning and could be created as the third part of the already mentioned series ‘Szenen‘. In ‘Rollenszenen‘, in the broadest sense it is about the positioning of one's own person within an unknown system and the question of the actual state and its future perspective. This performative act unfolds both references to questions of influence and being exposed as well as issues of scientific reproduction. Thus, film and art historical references are included in the plot: text passages and film sequences address the knowledge of the unknown and refer to constantly recurring sources.

Another level explores the contextualized space of the Neue Kunstverein Wien. The exhibition space transforms into a stage that draws focus to the view of the staging. Relationships between space, performers and audience outline the ambivalence of reality and fiction (production), of publicity and individuality, but also of representation and mediation.‘