Since the beginning of her career as a protagonist of feminist and conceptual media and performance art, the Austrian artist Valie Export has been dealing with an increasingly mediatized society. She examines tensions between the individual and society in a media-reflexive and political manner. She developed her performative approach in the circle of the Viennese Actionists and in her film actions, breaking with the passive reception of the medium and examining the body, especially the female body, and its media images in often radical ways.
Thus, her work "Ping Pong" also requires active viewers: with a ping-pong paddle and ball, they can play a match with a sample film projected on a monitor, in which a point to be hit insistently appears briefly.
Intended as a "game film" in the literal sense, anyone can enjoy a match with "Ping Pong" from Hanns Sohm's archive collection, which was originally sold in an edition of ten during the 1968 Christmas vacations in a toy store.
The "Archiv Sohm" is one of the world's most important archives on Fluxus and intermediary art. Since 1981, the comprehensive contemporary documentation consisting of correspondence, photographs, books, films, action relics and object art of the Markgröningen dentist Hanns Sohm (1921-1999) has been part of our art archives. The series "Schaufenster Sohm" provides insights into the archive in changing exhibitions.