Hans-Christian Dany / Valérie Knoll. No Dandy, No Fun. Looking Good as Things Fall Apart

09.05.2023 - 28.05.2023

Tiny Mutual Admiration Societies, Wien / Österreich

No Dandy, No Fun. Looking Good as Things Fall Apart
May 9 – May 28, 2023
Book release and talk: May 8, 2023 at 6 pm
University of Applied Arts Vienna, rooms 623 and 626 in the Painting department, Oskar-Kokoschka-Platz 2, 1010 Vienna, Austria

The Painting department and Tiny Mutual Admiration Societies invite you to a book launch, a talk, and an accompanying exhibition on the occasion of the publication of No Dandy, No Fun. Looking Good as Things Fall Apart written by Hans-Christian Dany and Valérie Knoll....

As the old order collapses, the dandy makes no claim to be leading an exemplary life. He does not defend property or privileges. He finds conflicts over the distribution of goods distasteful. To the dandy, any kind of war, even a war of liberation, seems an affair of the benighted, of those who don’t realise that the only point of putting on a uniform is to look good in it. As an ascetic, he has always been in favour of less of everything, and opposed to any claims to novelty, which generally prove to be little more than advertising for a new product. The dandy doesn’t ask how he wants to live; he lives, albeit with a sad countenance. He proposes no solutions, and denounces nothing as false – since he makes no declarations of any kind. He simply plays a different game.
The essay follows the traces of this masquerade ball, moving among accounts of lives as they were lived, literary sketches and performances in the visual arts down to the present day. In a time of transition, it sifts through tactics in order to find a way towards a self-determined future.

The talk will be held in German, the book is available both in German (May 2023) and English (September 2023). The exhibition at Tiny Mutual Admiration Societies (May 8 – May 28, 2023) is accessible during the opening hours of Angewandte.

The book is edited by Valérie Knoll and Hannes Loichinger and published as a sequel to the exhibition No Dandy, No Fun (curated by Hans-Christian Dany and Valérie Knoll), which was on view at the Kunsthalle Bern from October 17, 2020 – February 14, 2021.

Sternberg Press, May 2023, German
11.5×18 cm, 240 pages, 30 s/w ill., softcover
ISBN: 978-1-915 60-916-8
Design: HIT
Co-publisher: Kunsthalle Bern

[Quelle: Einladung]