Robert Jelinek
Robert Jelinek (1970, Pilsen) is an Austrian artist. His work includes time-based media, olfactory science, electronic music and conceptual art.
Robert Jelinek grew up in Pilsen (Czechoslovakia) for the first 10 years. In 1980 his family emigrated to Austria. He studied commercial graphics at the HTL in Linz (1986) and painting and visual design with Wolfgang Flatz at the Linz Art University (1987-1989). He was studying fine arts with Fritz Schwegler at the Düsseldorf Art Academy, and from 1991 to 1995 in the graphics master class with Gunter Damisch at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna.
He lives and works in Vienna.
In June 1992, Robert Jelinek founded the “Sabotage” group in Kassel, Germany. “Sabotage” began operating that year as a small project/collective, and in 1994 they became into “Sabotage Communications — an art organisation and music label”. Eventually, “Sabotage” evolved into “a union of various sub-labels brought together by their shared way of thinking and similar style of expression through different media.”
These “sub-labels” were simply “a number of flexible subdivisions which emerge as the needs arise and dissolve under their own inertia. Each of the sub-labels primarily works within its medium, nevertheless their bonds are firm and fruitful. The fields of activities of Sabotage defy definition of contents, theme and geographic concentration and therefor different projects and target groups are represented in different sub-labels”. These sub-groups fall under the category of art — Sabotage acts (since 1992), Alibi Service (1992-95), Sabotage events (Since 1994), Sabotage projects (since 1995) or CaSH (1998) — and music — Sabotage Recordings (1994-99), Craft Records (since 1995), Subetage Records (since 1999).
“Since 1992 more than 100 international ‘public sabotages’ have taken place in form of performances, actions, events and exhibitions…‘Sabotage’ in this sense means the braking of conventions, the artistic interruption of processes of thinking and manipulational transfer. ‘Sabotage’ is not a technique that transports meaning. Sabotage transgresses positions without presenting a new social order, provokes thinking by intervening in the official discourse. Sabotage is the experiment to brake up incrustation of an organised bourgeois society that insulates itself against all changes and tries to make thinkable new possibilities.” Etymologically, the name “Sabotage” originates “from the French word ‘sabot’ and means ‘to trample with wooden shoes.’ A sabot is a clog with a leather top. At the beginning of agricultural mechanization French farm workers threw their ‘sabotes’ into harvesting and processing machines (which were taking their jobs), thereby blocking the complicated mechanics of the mowing and threshing machines and rendering them useless. For the sake of their labor, they engaged in ‘sabotage.’”
For this organization, “Unpredictability and subversion” (characterized by solidarity and unity) became “escape routes through the system of dominance.” In their quest towards greater individual self-determination and collective autonomy, these close-knit saboteurs clip-clopped their way into the micro-national world. Enter “Amorph!” (the most important and influential performance festival of Europe), which took place in Helsinki from August 29-31 of 2003. That year's theme was “Micronations”. Fitting to the theme, the festival was relocated to the uninhabited island of Harakka, just 100 meters off of Helsinki. During this international summit of mini-states, conferences, presentations, proclamations and performances were presented by representatives of the individual micronations. “On August 30, 2003 at 1:00 pm Finnish time…SoS (the State of Sabotage) was called into existence before a large audience. ROBERT JELINEK and H.R. GIGER, together with ‘HUUTAJAT,’ the Finnish 25-man screaming men’s choir, ceremonially inaugurated the state.” According to their “official website and electronic embassy” (see: http://www.sabotage.at/sos/), the State of Sabotage “is a secular, sovereign and democratic state.”
- Links
- SoS (State of Sabotage), 2003-2013
- Wikipedia-DE
- Profile on Abart
