Paris 1925: the bulk of the public at the International Exposition of Modern Industrial and Applied Arts is predominantly occupied with art-deco fantasies, while at the same time, a creative revolution is occurring. For the first time, Le Corbusier presents his idea of the “dwelling machine” (Pavillon de L’Esprit nouveau), and the Soviet national artists Konstantin Melnikov and Alexander Rodchenko let audacious constructivist plans become reality, Melnikov as the designer of the Soviet pavilion, and Rodchenko as creator of the Workersʼ Club, kept in clear-cut, geometric design. Mobility is one of the central ideas for the furnishings of the famous and oft adopted club, and the multi-functional speakerʼs podium a piece of that.

Nearly 90 years after the fact, Carola Dertnig, who teaches performance art at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna, developed a mobile re-design for the stage. Though it consists of many elements (panel, lectern, lattice grate), the stage is foldable and can be stored, quite practically, on a handcart. The collapsible and mobile podium as an alternative to the fixed pulpit – flexibility instead of dogma – already, in a purely formal way, a strong pronouncement from an artist, whose work always displays a fine trace of humor. Carola Dertnig works in various media; themes like the body, staging, language or text are the focal point, innovatively implemented, often in connection with historical references or rediscoveries (for example, Tanzporträt Harald Kreutzberg – 10 Posen, 2014).

There are no records that tell if the tribune in the Workersʼ Club was ever put to use. The work from Carola Dertnig has, to date, been used twice as a stage: 2012 on the occasion of Realness Respect in Graz and 2013 in Vienna during the Festwochen exhibition Unruhe der Form. The performance Tacheles Speech in Vienna referred to a text by Donald Judd from 1989 about the strange public park, a non-space, behind the Viennese Secession building. “A non-space/space without function or exact affiliation, no, it can really not be absolutely NOTHING. And what has really to be. But it creates pauses. Breathers from actual, superfluous bickering.” (Carola Dertnig)

In this case, the sculpture is equal parts means as transmitter. Originally designed as a use-object for the political education for the freedom of the collective, today, this stage is part of a communal perception and is more than a functioning prop. Created in a time when the role of the artist was being newly defined by women like Varvara Stepanova and Lyubov Popova, Carola Dertnig, as an active feminist, show the objects as examples for the ongoing validity of Modern ideas. 

Heike Maier-Rieper, 2015 (translation: Virginia Dellenbaugh)