Stages: Bernadette Laimbauer — HALLE FÜR KUNST Steiermark

Performance

Bernadette Laimbauer, *Permesso oder Bitte nicht lügen mit Handtuch*, 2023
Courtesy the artist and Merel Noorlander

The format STAGES is as radical as it is simple. The HALLE FÜR KUNST Steiermark makes itself available as a platform for artists from the immediate vicinity for the duration of an evening. The exhibition hall will serve as a stage to find out more about the artists’ work, what they are passionate and enthusiastic about.

Bernadette Laimbauer is a performer and uses the evening to present her previous work to the audience, which is also like a first self-introduction for the new Styrian. The method of choice is not a lecture, but a quiz in which the artist’s latest work can be won. If you want to win the main prize, you have to answer the questions about her practice correctly. The prize itself, Permesso oder Bitte nicht lügen mit Handtuch (Permesso or Please do not lie with towel) thematizes the relationship between work and leisure, as well as the strange intermediate role of art, or as Madonna puts it in her song Holiday: “One day to come together to release the pressure.”

Artists

Participating artists

Bernadette Laimbauer combines elements of the performing and visual arts. Initially working in monument preservation, she took acting and theater lessons and then participated in theater projects before creating her own performative concepts. She studied experimental design at the University of Arts Linz and graduated with the performance Bau mir ein Haus, in dem ich bleibe (2022) with Anna Jermolaewa. Most recently, she received a studio scholarship at the Hartheim Institute, which was funded by the Federal Ministry of Arts, Culture, Civil Service and Sport. She is currently attending a diploma course in voice training and speech technique in Linz and runs the Artist-run space Geschäftsstelle in western Styria.

In her artistic practice, Laimbauer involves the audience in intimate rituals that require intuitive reactions in the moment. Making habits visible plays an important role in her work. She often discovers “humor” in the seemingly tragic.