Wunderkind, scandalous author, traitor to the fatherland, fury of the theater, feminist, fashion-lover, communist, pessimist, language terrorist, rebel, enfant terrible, nest fouler, brilliant, vulnerable artist, Nobel laureate. This film about Elfriede Jelinek, who in 2004 became the first Austrian author to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature, focuses on her artistic approach to language. The montage of archive material with voiceovers and interviews, some of them recently recorded, is told from Jelinek’s point of view.
She is the godmother of performance art. With her shocking public actions she created in the late 60s images that have burned into the general visual memory until today. The life and work of the Austrian artist Valie Export exemplify a development in art history in which women sought and found new ways and means of expression. Her work provides a feminist counterpart to the Viennese actionism of her time, which has influenced numerous artists of subsequent generations. The innovative diversity of her artistic approaches makes Valie Export an icon of 20th century art history.
Two women communicate in a language of art, working men in a pub speak in their Viennese idiom, patients of a psychiatric hospital arrive at speech through improvisation – all these diverging portrayals do not merge into one another but communicate by their proximity.
Elfriede Jelinek is an Austrian playwright and novelist. She was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2004. Jelinek's output has included radio plays, poetry, theatre texts, polemical essays, anthologies, novels, translations, screenplays, musical compositions, libretti and ballets, film and video art. She has also appeared in a couple of feature films. She is probably best known for her novel "Die Klavierspielerin/The Piano Player" published 1983.
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