Margot Pilz draws in her work from people's capacity to criticise and powers of reasoning: processes of civilisation, debates on modernisation, the destruction of natural resources and, with these, parallel ongoing sociological developments such as alienation and the decline in significance of individuality are the issues that have primarily preoccupied this Dutch-born artist raised in Indonesia. In this 'antiglobalisation art' Pilz alludes avant la lettre to a critical discourse in the art context itself ? even in its Actionist, activist or conceptual variations ? far more than topics addressed outside this context (environmental concerns, feminism, sociology). In this respect Margot Pilz is perhaps best compared with her Austrian colleague Valie Export, whose more recent multimedia installations, above all, criticise global exploitation. (It ought to be mentioned here too that Pilz, who is a few years older than Export, was one of the pioneering artists in Austria to have started incorporating digital data in her work).
Such an appellative character is also implied by the work The Spirit of St. Lucifer Nr. 3, which is currently among other of Pilz's multimedia sculptures in the collection of the Lower Austrian Landesmuseum. A looped video of a flying eagle runs on a monitor built into a plinth-like stainless steel case. Both are entrapped in an "unnatural box": The work symbolises man's cruelty and arrogance in restricting a wild animal's free movement while having associations with Icarus, who reached for the skies. The Spirit of St. Lucifer, in the title, was also the name of the airoplane in which Charles Lindbergh flew across the Atlantic.
(Patricia Grzonka/Jonathan Quinn, Engl.)

Exhibitions

Die Auflösung der Fotografie - Der kalte Raum, 1992

Blau-Gelbe Galerie, NÖ Landesgalerie, Wien, Austria

Specifications

40sec bw PAL

Technical protocol

S-VHS video (master copy), television footage showing an eagle's flight, analog cut

Video installation/Video sculpture with brushed Nirosta case, iron grille; monitor, video player, tape; nine color prints titled "Nebelflug", silk-screen print on Eternit cement

Production

Margot Pilz

Copyright

Margot Pilz

Copy to see