You were a fundamental part of Viennese Actionism. Can you explain to our public what this movement was about and how it reflected, in the sixties, an important shift in the arts?

the viennese actionism was a group of like-minded artists. brus, mühl, schwarzkogler and i, were disgusted and cramped by post-fascist austria. we were locked up for our artistic achievements. brus and mühl protested politically with their art against devastatingly conservative social situations. the liberation of the sexual was important to all of us. nevertheless, don’t define my work in terms of my participation in a group. i am primarily interested in building up my own project, the orgies mysteries theatre. in an apolitical way, i was concerned with the intensity values of the tragic, the tragedy. i wanted to create an intense feast from the start.

Your practice, even when you produce paintings, is deeply performative. Do you perform differently as a human than you do as an artist, or is it a whole?

my ecstatic action painting, the sensually intense acting out, is the first stage of my theatre. the painter acts out even on the surface of the canvas. the next stage is the performance with blood, viscera and acting naked bodies. the canvas is left. the expanded theatre, the stage-less space of the event is found. man and artist are identical in excitement.

Since the beginning of your career, you have worked with the idea of total artwork – gesamtkunstwerk. Which of your work best reflects this notion? Is it linked with some kind of spirituality?

with the staging of real events, the total work of art is found. a real event is experienced through all five senses.