MEXICO 68/CU (2007)
8 video interviews on 4 tv-s, double dia-projection
During her six-month artist residency by the Austrian Arts Council in Mexico City in 2005, Holzfeind repeatedly visited the CU, the campus of the National University (UNAM) in the south of Mexico City. Her fascination with the stunning modernist architecture started her personal investigation into the history of the CU in terms of its design and planning as well as its rich history of student activism and revolt, which climaxed in the 1968 student movement. The outcome of this two-year-long investigation are two closely related projects, which combine Holzfeind’s fascination for modernist architecture as a social space with her interest in the 1968 Mexican student movement to illuminate a turbulent chapter in Mexico’s history.
“Mexico 68” (2007) is a series of 18 video interviews with activists of the 1968 student movement and a set of 26 b&w archive prints documenting the course of the movement. The interviews (conducted between 2005 and 2007) investigate the significance and the impact of the ‘68 movement on Mexican society, politics and culture in general, and on the lives of the participants in particular. Conducted almost forty years after the fact, the interviews offer a diverse range of personal accounts, political and social analysis as well as reflections on the events that took place during that mythic year. They document the visions and dreams of a generation that aspired to change an authoritarian political system and transform Mexican society.
The slide installation “CU (Mexico City, August 2006)” (2007) is a personal portrait of “Ciudad Universitaria”, the Mexico City’s National University campus. The carefully composed shots of exterior and interior views, architectural details, eerily unpopulated hallways, class rooms, walkways and social structures highlight Holzfeind’s interest in aging modernist structures, the conceptualization of the campus as a modern “city” and the use of functionality in the Mexican modernization project.
Heidrun Holzfeind
born in 1972 in Austria, lives in Vienna (Austria)
www.heidrunholzfeind.com
Heidrun Holzfeind is concerned with how architecture interacts with people’s everyday life. She lives and works currently in Vienna. Selected solo shows include Bawag Contemporary, Vienna; OK Centrum Linz; CCA, Ujazdowski castle, Warsaw; De Vleeshal, Middelburg, NL; Sala de Arte Público Siqueiros, Mexico City; Galerie im Taxispalais, Innsbruck; Lado b, MUCA Museum Mexico City; Artists Space / project room, New York; W139, Amsterdam. Recent group exhibitions and screenings include Communitas, Camera Austria, Graz; Documentary Fortnight exhibition 2010, MOMA, New York; Living modern, CCS Bard, New York; Architecture and its discontents, Kaleidoscope, Milan; See this Sound, Lentos Museum, Linz; After Architecture, CASM, Barcelona; Manifesta7, Trentino; Photocairo4, Cairo. Recent awards include the Camera Austria prize for contemporary photography 2011 and the Gerhard and Birgit Gmoser-Prize for Contemporary Art, Secession Vienna 2011.
GROHMAN’S VILLA
Tylna 9/11
opening hours
10.05 (Thu): 6 p.m. – 9 p.m.
11.05–20.05 (Mon-Sun): 11 a.m. – 8 p.m.
latest entrance: 7.00 p.m.
opening: 10.05, 6 p.m.
exhibition will be held: 10–20.05
