Coffee Milk, Coffee, Cookies, Curd Cheese, Apricots. A Homage to the Shopping List.
A book presentation plus exhibition at the Academy Library featuring editor Laura Nitsche as well as authors Martina Fleischer and Joachim Thaler
Introductory remarks: Laura Nitsche, editor, author, painter
Die Gegenwart der Dinge [The Presence of Things]: Martina Fleischer, until 2021 curator of the Paintings Gallery of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna
Mutbürger statt Veggieburger [Have civic sense, not veggie burgers]: Joachim Thaler, author, Austrian Society for Environment and Technology
Afterwards: book signing
Almost everybody does it: writing shopping lists—one way or another. Artist Laura Nitsche loves those documents of human existence, which she finds in shopping carts, in the street, in front of supermarkets, and has been collecting for years. But she is also “in cooperation” with street newspaper vendors and supermarket employees who are kind enough to pick up and collect “lost” shopping lists for her.
Can a society be described in terms of (a display of) products?
How has handwriting developed throughout history and will, a couple of years from now, people still be able to even write shopping lists? Or will handwriting have come to be a lost cultural technique, and grocery shopping an exclusive matter of fill-your-fridge apps?
How did the still life emerge, and what does it have to do with religious division, the battle of images, and colonialization?
And how to avoid excessive trash and waste of food and do what is socially good?
Laura Nitsche uses selected lists to put together compositions and paint in the manner of the Old Masters still lifes, which she juxtaposes with pictures of trash created in the process. Some forty (trash) still lifes as well as lavish paintings were created in this manner and assembled in the publication.
Laura Nitsche, born 1977 in Vienna, lives in Vienna and in Lower Austria. Studies at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. Her work focuses on oil painting, pictorial sculptures, and interactivity. Exhibition participations: Daniel Spoerri und die Eat Art (Spoerri Exhibition House, 2020) and Foodprints (traveling exhibition, Vienna Museum of Science and Technology as well as Germany, Spain, and Sweden, from 2021)
www.lauranitsche.com
Martina Fleischer, born in Vienna, studies of art history in Vienna and Venice, curator and longtime interim director of the Paintings Gallery of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna.
Joachim Thaler is a research associate with the Austrian Society for Environment and Technology. Before that, he worked as a campaigner for Greenpeace. He studied Environment and Bioresources Management and International Affairs in Vienna, Geneva, and Paris. His essay Mutbürger statt Veggieburger. Warum zivilgesellschaftliches Engagement mehr bewirkt als “ethischer Konsum” reflects his private opinion.
Laura Nitsche (ed.), Kaffeemilch Kaffee Kekse Topfen Marillen. Eine Hommage an die Einkaufsliste
With contributions by Claudia Anders, Elisabeth Charkow, Sigrid Eyb-Green, Martina Fleischer, Alois Geyer, Margarete Grandner, Markus Hübl, Florian Klenk, Andrea Lunzer, Werner Meisinger, Laura Nitsche, Konrad Pesendorfer, Barbara Räderscheidt, Tex Rubinowitz, Joachim Thaler, Gernot Waldner, Edith Weinlich
144 pages, 96 col. ills., hardcover., Hirmer Verlag, Munich 2022
ISBN (A) 978-3-7774-4049-1, € 35,90 (A)
https://www.hirmerverlag.de/de/titel-2-0/laura_nitsche-2382/