In Furrious the artists Otto Krause and Milan Loviška employ the artistic processes of furrification and plushification. In reference to the practice of fursuiting in faux fur and plush undertaken by members of a subculture called the Furry Fandom, they constitute their own disarming aesthetic plushyverse of everything childish. Endowing spatial and material entities with features that evoke certain squeezability and a large dose of innocence they play with the boundaries of human and creature in a notably artificial and abstract way. Amidst the current political climate that tends to trivialize serious matters with simplified and alternative political messages they also point to the reduction of psychological defence mechanisms and the increase of susceptibility when exposed to cuteness. Their hybrid plushophilia is as much a subversive act of creative involution as it is a reminder of the seductive power of cute imagery in the ever-frightening political propaganda.
During the residency at Blitz in Valletta the artists descended with their hybrid plushophilia into one of the last resorts left where one can truly be offline. Exploring the potential of scuba diving as artistic practice, the two artists performed underwater and filmed their furrious interactions with the cute plushiness of marine flora and fauna.
Concept / Development / Performance / Installations / Costumes / Textile works / Films: Otto Krause and Milan Loviška
Performance duration: 65 minutes
Performance premiere @ Kunstraum Niederösterreich, 06. September 2018, Vienna
Solo exhibition @ Kunstraum Niederösterreich, 07. - 15. September 2018, Vienna
Film screening, talk and solo exhibition @ Blitz, 01. - 02. November 2018, Valletta
A production of Territorium KV
Supported by Kunstraum Niederösterreich, Vienna, and the Life Long Burning Wild Card Residency Program at Workshop Foundation, Budapest, and awarded the H13 2018 Lower Austria Prize for Performance, Kunstraum Niederösterreich, Vienna. Furrious: Underwater in collaboration with Blitz, Valletta, is supported by the Arts and Culture Division, Federal Chancellery of Austria. Thanks to Dive Systems Malta and Anne Javaloyes.
Photo: eSeL.at - Lorenz Seidler, Eva Würdinger, 2018
Video stills: Territorium KV, 2018
Catalogues:
Furrious. Valletta: Blitz, 2018.
H13 2018: Furrious. Vienna: Kunstraum Niederösterreich, 2018.
