Jonas Höschl

Concept by Jonas Höschl

Music written and produced by Florida Juicy

Edited by Ruth Glas

Lyrics from the Song „Point Of No Return“ by Gene McDaniels (Scorpio Rising, 1963)

The video essay “Why are you crying?” (2024) by Jonas Höschl, which was first shown last year at the Various Others gallery festival organized by Nebulya X EIGEN+ART Lab in cooperation with the Museum Brandhorst and the NS Documentation Center, deals with the auction of 135 works from the private art collection of Gloria von Thurn und Taxis at Phillips auction house in New York in 2005. While a static camera repeatedly shows the sky above St. Emmeram Palace in Regensburg, a voice-over describes exemplary works of art that were auctioned off. He continues this exploration of the presence and absence of art in Gloria von Thurn und Taxis' collection in a new series of works in the exhibition “Why are you crying? Volume 2” at the Neuer Kunstverein Regensburg.

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The exhibition “Why are you crying? Volume 2” by Jonas Höschl uses the example of the collection policy and public figure Gloria von Thurn und Taxis to deal with disappearance, transience, and the fading of memory. In a gesture critical of institutions, the artist has flooded the exhibition rooms with 5 tons of sand. This interferes with the physical reception of the artworks by the viewers and allows them to leave traces that extend into the public urban space.

The title of the two wall display cases “They took the idols and smashed them” comes from a quote by the fictional character Norma Desmond from the 75-year-old film Sunset Boulevard, in which the former acting icon desperately fights against her own insignificance and a changing film industry. She lives in isolation in a large villa with a butler, clinging to her long-gone fame. The display cases contain archive material (magazines, interviews, and pictures) from Gloria von Thurn und Taxis' glorious past as a “punk princess” which is faded beyond recognition by the repeatedly superimposed collage of transparent paper.

On the 7th of November 1962, the then Governing Mayor Willy Brandt ceremoniously laid the foundation stone for the first construction phase of the large housing estate „Berlin-Gropiusstadt“ in the presence of Walter Gropius. Almost 30 years later, the documentary „Gropiusstadt - Ist alles Kacke hier! (1990) by Eberhard Weißbart appeared, which deals with gang wars in the satellite town. At a similar time interval, the artist Jonas Höschl is now reacting to the documentary, using the Film as the basis for his work. In collaboration with the audio film author Petra Schielke and the narrator Christian Bergmann, he created a sound piece with the use of audio description. A sound framework freed from narration, consisting of descriptions of the protagonists and locations of the short film, which interrogates the visual material itself. The producer Philipp Dittmar (Red On) reacts to this with sound documents of the 1960s from Neukölln`s museum archive, which accompanied the building process and the inauguration of Gropiusstadt. The result is a melodious radio play between German officialese, the subcultural sounds of Berlin at the time of reunification and contemporary, experimental electronics.

https://www.hoelzldaniel.com/aushang

"It confronts the history and contemporary implications of Neukölln's Gropiusstadt, one of West Berlin's major urban development projects from the cold war era. Höschl's contribution is a counter-narratological soundstream consisting of two elements: audio descriptions created to represent the protagonists and locations of the documentary "Gropiusstadt - Ist alles Kacke hier!" (1990) by Eberhard Weißbarth, as well as materials retrieved from audio archives dating to the 1960s documenting the building process and the inauguration of Gropiusstadt.", Mohammad Salemy

"Time disappears and leaves behind memories - of people, moments, melodies. "Fade Away Medley" is what Jonas Höschl calls his work, which revels in the thoughts and feelings of a generation. Carried by the soundtrack of his youth, Jonas Höschl tells in the photo book of scenes of debauchery and rebellion, but also of pausing and looking up. The hedonistic urge for extravagance and exaggeration is palpable in the full-page photographs, which are juxtaposed and enter into dialogues of content and form in direct succession. The transfiguring view of days gone by is broken up by sobering images of conservative lifestyles and world views. The oppressive conformity goes hand in hand with the longing for dissolution of boundaries, which Jonas Höschl also embodies himself in his photographs. He confronts the dialectic of his pictorial milieus in order to overcome them.", Carina Essl (LEONARDO – Zentrum für Kreativität und Innovation)

A: Fade Away Medley 1 (11:09 min)
B: Fade Away Medley 2 (16:47 min)

LP Fade Away Medley
Artist: Jonas Höschl, Photography: Jonas Höschl,
Composer: Tydings McClary, Mastering: Emanuel Geller,
Presswerk: MATTER OF FACT,
Design: Michael Seibert (unfun)

The photo book Fade Away Medley can be ordered here.

"He brings his own powerlessness into focus, addressing the journalistic routinization of news agencies and editorial offices in our digitalized world. The work was supported by the Alexander Tutsek Foundation and the Cultural Office of the City of Munich.", Kunstverein Baden (OE)

"Jonas Höschl nimmt auf die Olympiade 1972 Bezug. Der (...) Künstler (...) setzt sich in verschiedenen Medien mit den als "heiter" intendierten Spielen auseinander, die mit der Geiselnahme der israelischen Sportler und einem Blutbad mit elf ermordeten Geiseln, einem toten Polizisten und fünf toten Entführern endete.", aus dem Artikel "Bayerische Kunstförderpreise 2021" von Roberta De Righi in der Abendzeitung München vom 04. Februar 2022

Die internationale Gruppenausstellung ‹in situ› zeigt zeitgenössische Kunst, die sich mit den Verbrechen der NS-Diktatur auseinandersetzt. Die teilnehmenden Künstler*innen untersuchen, wie Erinnerungsarbeit heute geleistet werden kann. Sie bedienen sich dazu verschiedener Medien, die vielfältige Bezüge zwischen Vergangenheit und Jetztzeit herzustellen vermögen. Wie wichtig die Erinnerung an die Gleichschaltung, die Bücherverbrennung und die Shoa ist und bleibt, zeigte sich in jüngerer Zeit an dem Antisemitismus-Skandal um die Documenta (2022), sowie den Anschlägen in Halle (2019) und in Hanau (2020). ‹in situ› vertraut auf die Kraft der Kunst, Geschichte zu aktualisieren und damit nachwachsenden Generationen zugänglich zu machen.

Künstler*innen:

Soso Dumbadze
Talya Feldman
Abie Franklin
Bastian Gehbauer
Jonas Höschl
Kollektiv Schandwache
Leon Kahane
Maria Margolina
Kai Altheim

‹in situ› wird von Miriam Schmidt, Kai Altheim und Jonas Höschl kuratiert.

The table with sacrificial candles, like the kind found in churches, invites visitors to light a candle themselves. At the center of this exhibition, it brings to mind the mystification of RAF terrorism and questions whether the artistic reading of terror allows for a critical approach.

Jonas Höschl
Den Toten - Hommage an Hans-Peter Feldmann (2025)
Sacrificial light table
100 x 80 x 35 cm

Richard Prince's work "Why are you crying?" was part of the Phillips auction in 2005 and is the title of Jonas Höschl's video work of the same name. In it, he brings this artwork—or at least its title—back to St. Emmeram Palace in the form of a banner on an airplane. The banner lies folded in a transparent archive box in front of a large-format collage of a Phillips auction bidder's slip and a photograph showing the airplane over Regensburg.

"Europe is lost (...) leaves an oppressive feeling. One photo shows a man whose face is completely masked, another wears dark sunglasses and smokes.", from the article "Nie wieder!" by Amelie Völker in the Süddeutsche Zeitung, July 05, 2020

"Nebenan nimmt Jonas Höschl auf die Olympiade 1972 Bezug. Der (...) Künstler (...) setzt sich in verschiedenen Medien mit den als "heiter" intendierten Spielen auseinander, die mit der Geiselnahme der israelischen Sportler und einem Blutbad mit elf ermordeten Geiseln, einem toten Polizisten und fünf toten Entführern endete.

Der Künstler verweist (...) auf Leni Riefenstahl, die das "Fest der Völker" 1936 unterm Hakenkreuz in Berlin filmisch heroisierte. Höschl macht aus Versatzstücken Anti-Propaganda.", aus dem Artikel "Bayerische Kunstförderpreise 2021" von Roberta De Righi in der Abendzeitung München vom 04. Februar 2022