Elisabeth von Samsonow
The Elder Poem
Grazer Kunstverein
25. Juni – 12. September 2021
What if the alphabet was invented by the trees? What if the alphabet was invented by the trees? In her project The Elder Poem Elisabeth von Samsonow explores and stages convergencies between art and ecology, namely poetry and botanical systems. Starting from the Old Irish Alphabet of Trees Beth-Luis-Nion as explored by Robert von Ranke-Graves in his voluminous book ”The White Goddess“ Samsonow maps the Land of the Goddesses, which she co-founded with agroup of artists and supporters (among them the Grazer Kunstverein) in 2020 in Lower Austria.This land is a highly diverse territory with wine, wood, field and bushland. Using a system of association between letter, tree, place, quality, historical and mythical narratives (which is also the case in the Alphabet of Trees), von Samsonow reads the landscape of this biodiverse habitat, and in doing so creates a journey into the core of imagination, a poem written by the land itself.
Von Samsonow‘s project aims at giving space to gestures of attention and mutual recognition,expanding the zone of transhuman communication. The project seeks to offer new dimensions to ”thinking Gaias“ or ”reading Gaia“, the autopoetic planetary force, and to support the creation of ”trigger points“ which serve as nodes for building a complex architecture of coexistence.
The Elder, giving name to the project, is a bush or tree that features frequently in fairy tales, folkmedicine and mythology, as a healing plant offering flower, berry and bark for therapeutical use. Technically it is a pioneering plant able to grow even under difficult conditions. The Goddesses‘Land is located in the region of Hollabrunn referring to the connection between the Elder and the ”fountain of Holla“ which is the Goddess, more precisely: the White Goddess or her Winter aspect.The project engages with local village residents, hunters and farmers in order to retrace the manifold imaginaire of Elder in the region.
Ringel, Ringel, Reihe,
sind der Kinder dreie,
wir sitzen unterm Hollerbusch
(12‘, A 2020)
In this lecture-performance Elisabeth von Samsonow presents the key ideas of her eponymous book in a self-commenting hysterical attack. She shows how the figure of the girl represents not just the left-out, ephemeral, powerless neutrum in the family romance but turns out to be the core player in totemic transavantgarde. Mirroring and critizing concepts from the Deleuzian/ Guattarian Anti-Oedipus, Elisabeth von Samsonow's book Anti Electra unfolds how the substance of the girl - far beyond the reality of girlisms - fires contemporary media culture, gender concepts and today’s revisions of ontological positionalities.
The Brezel Goddess’ Lounge by Elisabeth von Samsonow shows two sculptures and drawings. The pretzel is present as an overarching mathematical form by which its inner relationships of forces become tangible. The Brezel Goddess herself proves to be a liminal figure between a banal everyday world (having pretzels every day) and a radical metaphysics of the production of bodies. The pretzel is the primary signature (a double helix in a crescent moon) of the kind of plasticity that must be taken as a requisite when dealing with the body. The pretzel is the favorite object of sculptors and theorists who explore bodies producing bodies (also: mother, the future of bodies). The exercise machine repurposed as a Doe Bride (created for the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich) serves as a contemporary meditation machine in this context. A little prayer book with pretzel mantras will be published in conjunction with this event.
A special edition is brought out by Gallery Andrea Juenger Vienna on the occasion of the exhibition „Th Parents‘ Bedroom Show“ by Elisabeth von Samsonow and Juergen Teller at Spazio Ridotto/ Zuecca Project Space Venice 2019.
PRESENTATION OF THE CATALOGUE 