Event overview
A lecture by Ralph Kistler
In the early 1970s, the Viennese actionist Otto Muehl founded a commune to combine art and life. The AAO commune was intended as a counter-model to the bourgeois nuclear family and advocated free sexuality, communal property and Action Analysis. The group was very active in recruiting new members and soon had up to 700 communards, with sister groups in Switzerland, Germany, France, the Netherlands and Norway. During the 1980s the group focused on financial services and became very prosperous. The hard work, however, changed the joyful attitude of the early days of the community, and at great financial expense a secluded cove in the Canary Islands was purchased and converted into a holiday retreat: El Cabrito, on the island of La Gomera. But the investment did nothing to halt the community's decline. Otto Muehl's behaviour became increasingly despotic, and the group could no longer tolerate the dissipation of the collective's hard-earned money. In 1989, Muehl was removed from power by the communards and later sentenced to 7 years in prison. With the dissolution of the commune, El Cabrito was to be sold, but in the end it remained the property of the former communards. In the new millennium, the area has been carefully developed into an exclusive and ecological resort for sustainable tourism.
Ralph Kistler (*1969 in Munich) is an artist and researcher. He received his MFA in Public Art and New Artistic Strategies from the Bauhaus University in Weimar, Germany, and his PhD in Art Theory from the University of La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain. He has participated in international exhibitions and festivals such as Piksel Festival in Bergen, Transmediale in Berlin, Japan Media Arts Festival in Tokyo or FILE Festival in Sao Paulo. He is the author of La Gran Experiencia. La Comuna de Otto Muehl en La Gomera, Valencia: Concreta, 2018.
Image caption: A View of El Cabrito, photograph by Ralph Kistler
Dates & times
| Date | Time | Add to calendar |
|---|---|---|
| 26 Oct 2023 | 5:15pm - 7:00pm |
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