Otto Muehl

Otto Muehl (born on June 16th 1925, in Grodnau, the Burgenland, Austria) is one of cofounders, and an important member, " Wiener Aktionismus" or Actionnisme Viennese. In 1972, it founds the famous community Friedrichshof which will exist during several years before dissolving in the years 1990.

In 1943, Otto Muehl was useful in the Wehrmacht and in 1944, it was sent to the face. After the war, he studied German, the history, and pedagogy of art to the " Wiener Akademie DER bildenden Künste".

Actionism Viennese

In the Sixties, it started to paint; it tested " to exceed pictorial painting by the representation of the lawsuit of its déstruction". It made plastics starting from waste (" Gerümpelplastiken"), then it passed to the " Aktion" in the vein of the Fluxus and Happening S newyorkais. In 1962, its first " Aktion" will be " Die Blutorgel" , which took place at his place, with Adolf Frohner and Hermann Nitsch. The " Fest of the psycho-physischen Naturalismus" and " Versumpfung einer Venus" followed in 1963. Of 1964 with 1966, much of " Malaktionen" were filmed and photographed. In 1966 a new concept of Aktkion is developed with Günter Brus: instead of the fabric, the human corp becomes the scene of the action. In 1968, Muehl, Daughters-in-law and Oswald Wiener organize a " Aktionsveranstaltung Kunst und Revolution" at the University of Vienna, which because a scandal in the press; Daughters-in-law was condemned and emigrates in Berlin.

Community

Gradually Muehl outdistances " Aktion". He regards the happenings as a form d'" middle-class art, simply of the art". These reflections on l'" art bourgeois" in 1971 and 1972 will carry out with the realization of a community, called AAO (" Aktionsanalytische Organization"), like a project of against-company.

Like symbol of refusal of estethic conventional, all the members of the community had a shaven cranium and wore all the same overalls in stripe blue and white. Inspired inter alia in the writings of Wilhelm Reich, the Gestalt-therapy of Fritz Perls, Alexander Lowen (bioenergetic therapy) und Artur Janov (therapy of the original cry), Muehl develops the " Aktionsanalyse" , which wanted to be like a new form of therapy and which seeks an emotional regression to be able to live a " Re-naissance" , then to reparcourir the social development in manner " positive". This therapy is initially individual, forming integral part of the life of the community, beside the " sexuality libre" , the " property commune" , the common education of the children and the encouragemnt of the " creativity artistique". Then the " develops; Selbstdarstellung" , a form of personal expression in front of the public of the community, and with partially therapeutic vocation. She encourages certain forms of artistic expression. She will determine also the social position of the individuals in the hierarchy of the community. This hierarchy must replace the hidden hierarchies of the company and indicate the personal degree of development reached. Thus the couples and homosexuality are regarded as morbid forms of sexuality, and the people concerned are often displaced in the hierarchy.

For better carrying out its utopian projects, the community buys in 1974 an old farm called Friedrichshof, in Burgenland not far from Vienna. The community finds more and more followers who form as of years 1970 of the additional communities in various European cities with to 40 members: inter alia in Vienna, Munich, Geneva, Nuremberg, Hambuurg, Bremen, Berlin and Oslo.

Friedrichshof becomes the center of the community and the residence of Muehl, where will live there to 240 people. The infrastructures, of the workshops and agriculture are developed. After a financial crisis in 1979, and especially after the Catastrophe of Tchernobyl in 1986, the community is closed again more and more on itself and will be often regarded as a Secte. The rules of the common life become increasingly rigid and authoritative, the members of the community, adults and children, are subjected to psychic and material pressures. Muehl which takes more and more the forms of a Gourou misuses sexually the girls, and sometimes with the assent of the parents. The distribution of soft, and physical violences and psychic drugs often formed part of the daily life of the teenagers, D after some to say, but these accsuations are contradicted per much of anybody of the community. Force is to observe qu it is complicated to establish a diagnostic reality on the charges related to Otto Mueh, because of the social strains and divergent which reigned in the community. In 1988 a penal procedure is open against Muehl which will be condemned in 1991 to seven years of prison firm without deferment. The prosecutor explains in his plea: " Mühl exerted a terror… Otto Mühl tested with human beings and handled them… The teenagers were not free of their choice, it took the parents, and thus the possibility to them of leaving the communauté." But even during the lawsuit, the psychological pressures continued to be exerted on the " témoins" , some say whereas others contradict these charges, and thus the sexual abuses in early childhood were not thématisé during the lawsuit, but only in 2003, during the retrospective exposure on the work of Muehl to the " Museum für angewandte Kunst" in Vienna. Its charges are of course contradicted by Muehl and much of members of the community.

Since its release of prison, Muehl life with some adults and children in Portugal.

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