Travel Pick: Art and Archaeology in Belgium
Peter Friedl: Blow Job

After publishing reviews and essays on contemporary theater for a few years, the Berlin-based Peter Friedl (b. 1960, Oberneukirchen, Austria) turned to his own artistic production in the 1980s. Friedl explores the conditions and genres of representation, using strategies of bracketing, exposing, editing, and other contextual transfers. His artistic practice emphasizes the friction between aesthetic and political awareness in the framework of their respective narratives. With the exhibition Blow Job in Extra City Antwerp, curated by Anselm Franke, Peter Friedl returns to his long-standing interest in theatre and its aesthetics, which was the subject of a large number of essays he wrote in the
early 1980s.

The title Blow Job refers to an Internet project which started in 2001. At the time, Blow Job was set up as an anonymous blog: a brief scenario (“Berlin, 2001”) full of biographical, historical, and fictional references including seven acting characters. Running dialogues, stage directions, or prose insertions could be contributed to the website anonymously.

This trash material, now anachronistic, is the starting point for the present exhibition. Extra City commissioned Peter Friedl to turn it into a definite dramatic text which will be published by Sternberg Press in conjunction with the exhibition.

Peter Friedl’s work has been exhibited worldwide, including at documenta X (1997) and documenta XII (2007), the 48th Venice Biennale (1999), the 3rd Berlin Biennale (2004), and the 2nd International Biennial of Contemporary Art in Seville (2006). Solo exhibitions include the Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels (1998); Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (1999).