Brunner, Norbert/Michael Schuster
Biographie
Norbert Brunner was born in 1959 in Lienz, Austria. The artist was particularly active in the audio-visual field since the 1970s. His main concern was with language and communications. He was awarded the state stipend for composition in 1981. In "Bundeshymne" (1978), Brunner imprinted a tape recording of the Austrian national anthem with its text, generating interference and reciprocal disturbance of the two media. He wrote radio plays, including "Tontheater für einen Bahnhof" (1984), created performances such as "Psss" , (with Peter Weibel and Herbert Brandl, 1985) and produced videos, among them "TV translate waiting" (Vancouver, 1982). Amongst his solo exhibitions are "König Laurin und sein Rosengarten" (Galery Pakesch, Vienna, 1982), and "Im Spiegel der Psyche" (Secession, Vienna, 2003). He passed away unexpectedly in 2014 in Vienna. Michael Schuster, born in 1956 in Graz, Austria, has been involved with questions regarding the perception and reproduction of reality inherent in the medium of photography. In "Autofocusfalle I and II" (1989/1991), Schuster used the new, interactive possibilities of auto focus. His works only appear to be documentary and are interrupted by strategies of media reflection, e. g., in "America" (1993), where he inserted Kodak step wedges into images of tourist sights, and in the installation "Dromberg" (2002), a complete representation of a pre-historic Irish stone circle, composed entirely of computer simulations. In 1991, Michael Schuster was awarded the Federal Ministry of Education and Cultural Affairs Appreciation Prize for artistic photography. He lives in Graz.
Additional biography
The observation of linguistic variations and a critical approach to the characteristics of documentary forms of scientific research methods are also central to "Dokumentarische Dialektstudie vom Fersental bis Garmisch Partenkirchen" (1979), which Michael Schuster and Norbert Brunner jointly undertook, and which they repeated 20 years later. In the 1999 reiteration, they consciously introduced new digital techniques thus focusing on the issue of the changes in the media. (Monika Vykoukal)
