Happening

Once again, the title is to be taken entirely literally. It's happening – for about two seconds: a man and a woman (Günter and presumably Anna Brus) in the position of coitus a tergo in shallow water in front of reeds. Their athletic bodies are painted white (in the typical Brus action style); they hardly move, and look like classical statues. Or is what is happening rather a sequence that takes up, for an even shorter amount of time in this super-short film, its foreground? What happens is this: a naked man walks through the picture, cigarette in hand, bent over, as if unplanned. Strolling into the picture becomes the picture. This happening, casually recorded as reality, overlays the ritual happening as it is associated (even if the art-historical terminology may be inaccurate) with Viennese Actionism – including its moments of eroticisation of male authoritarian violence. Kurt Kren had his rhythmically complex ways of deconstructively counteracting the style of some Materialaktionen; this Schmidt Jr. fragment, which lacks nothing, does something similar in a charmingly matter-of-fact way. (Drehli Robnik)