Wiener Spaziergang 1965

Directed by Günter Brus

The first six images of Wiener Spaziergang (Viennese Stroll, 1965), for example, are ghoulishly amusing. Painted white, with a jagged slash painted through the middle of his body, Brus takes a walk through Vienna’s historical centre. He is documented walking past smart storefronts and tourist hotspots, is gawped at by fussy locals, and finally booked and firmly rebuked by a stern-faced police officer. The later images are much more troubling. Lying prone, corpselike, on a table surrounded by scalpels, Brus claws at his sludge-covered face and appears to stab himself in the thigh. He eventually falls and drags himself, agonized, across the floor.