31.07.2022 23:01
(Akt. 31.07.2022 23:10)
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The visitors also got blood spatters during a pouring action
©APA/Hermann Nitsch GmbH, photo FE
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Intensive action, lots of blood and actors whose clothes turned red marked the second and, for the time being, last day of the second version of the six-day game in Prinzendorf in Lower Austria. The audience also allowed themselves to be spattered with blood during a pouring action, proving the attraction that the work of action artist Hermann Nitsch, who died in April, also posthumously unfolds. Day three is scheduled for next year.
Sunday greeted the international and Austrian audience with better weather than on day one. The inner courtyard of Nitsch’s castle was also idyllic, with benches, tables and food already set up in the morning. The fact that this is not an ordinary Sunday outing, but a performance of Hermann Nitsch’s main work – the only reminder at first was a cross surrounded by flowers on a red-colored ground.
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Later, gigantic poured paintings with bright colors running into one another were to be created in the courtyard. In addition, it became the scene of an action characteristic of Nitsch, in which not only people were tied to crosses – the actionist repeatedly played with Christian symbolism – but also dead pigs were tied to people. As the bells rang loudly, actors dipped in blood threw not only entrails but also tomatoes and grapes, three tons each of which were bought for the festival, through the air.
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It has been “bombastic” so far, said Nitsch’s foster son and director Leonhard Kopp, who was covered in blood. The new version of the score that Nitsch had specified was “implemented one-to-one, without any blurring.” “I have the feeling that we did it in his spirit,” said the artist’s widow and organizer Rita Nitsch with conviction. “I think he would be satisfied.” In any case, the game is wearing out, said the son of the deceased artist: “You’re already at the limit”.
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Things got serious in the morning of the second day on Nitsch’s “Schuettboden”. The ingredients for the disembowelment action organized there: A dead pig whose abdomen was already slit open and hollow, a woman tied to a cross lying underneath, and a crowd of actors who repeatedly filled the animal with blood and entrails. A smoke test and the omnipresent smell of flesh and blood as well as the rising and falling, noise-like tones of the orchestra completed the experience, since it was Nitsch’s goal to make his orgy-mystery theater tangible with all senses.
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If the crowded visitors were allowed a certain distance, they were put right in the middle of the action during the tipping action that followed. Actors who had already worked on Nitsch’s behalf at the Bayreuth Festival spilled blood on horizontal and vertical screens. The tenor among the viewers was that the blood-splattered clothing was not a nuisance, but a unique souvenir. While the premiere of the six-day game 24 years ago brought extensive criticism, this year only the FPÖ Lower Austria expressed displeasure in the run-up to the “waste of food”. Later, when the drying blood had already turned brown, colors were added to alleviate the penetrating smell of blood in the warm bulky soil.
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According to Rita Nitsch, day three will take place next year, followed by days four to six in the next few years. Whether Prinzendorf will always be the stage for his actions in the future, as the artist had wished, depends on the finances. “If it is financially possible for me, I will continue to try to play excerpts or several days of his six-day game at regular intervals,” Nitsch told APA.
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Finally, the orchestra changed its volume and made nightfall a memorable moment: A sudden noise, which probably echoed beyond Prinzendorf, was amplified by the screams of individual actors, but was finally replaced by the enthusiastic clapping of the already reduced crowd of spectators. Those who held out longer joined a procession with torches that led to Nitsch’s wine cellar. The game participants kiss and hug each other at sunrise on Monday before they leave the castle.
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