Oswald Wiener

In her characteristically pithy artistic manner, VALIE EXPORT portrays Austrian Oswald Wiener as an internationally famous writer and private personality. He made a significant contribution to Austria´s cultural rise after World War II as a member of the avant-garde Vienna Group and later on his own as a writer (Die Verbesserung von Mitteleuropa). As the Group´s leading theoretician he penned poetry, chansons, manifestos and stage plays. His novel makes him part of a large international movement which since the turn of the century has worked to introduce esthetic demands and contemporary knowledge into a scientific context. After 1968 Wiener began a new life in Berlin by founding several different restaurants which are now famous. As a private scholar he works on the continued application of his theories, and moved to a former gold-rush town on the Alaska border in 1984. In addition to the photographs and archival material used, new footage was shot in Berlin and Canada.

(Christa Benzer & Dietmar Schwärzler)