News and projects

Dur­ing the Pas­sion sea­son, the “Pain Por­traits” series by the artist Matthias Moll­ner will be exhib­it­ed in the Luther­an City Church in Vien­na.
In this pic­ture cycle, Moll­ner deals with the severe mul­ti­sys­tem ill­ness of his part­ner Judith Schoss­böck. The pro­gram includes a work­shop and a read­ing in which pas­sion and suf­fer­ing can be reflect­ed in a spe­cial way and are allowed to coex­ist.
Many peo­ple with ME/CFS, but also oth­er painful ill­ness­es, report not only the med­ical but also a human­i­tar­i­an and spir­i­tu­al cri­sis or chal­lenge of their sit­u­a­tion, for which our soci­ety often lacks the lan­guage. The lack of recog­ni­tion, being over­whelmed by the suf­fer­ing of oth­ers and the often dif­fi­cult to under­stand con­di­tion of those affect­ed often lead to the suf­fer­ing being euphemised, blend­ed out or ratio­nal­ized. The exhi­bi­tion project under­stands itself as a counter-idea to these ten­den­cies and invites to take a clos­er look and cre­ate understanding.

Matthias Moll­ner: Resis­tive milling
The source mate­r­i­al for the “Pain Por­traits” are pho­tos that I took of my bedrid­den part­ner in sev­er­al stages in 2021/22. It was impor­tant to me to doc­u­ment the sit­u­a­tion and, in par­tic­u­lar, to show this ambiva­lent per­cep­tion that often occurs when look­ing at peo­ple affect­ed by ME/CFS. Who is not con­nect­ed to any tech­ni­cal devices, has no ban­dages, pros­the­ses or oth­er med­ical mate­r­i­al on their body, and is not lying in a white hos­pi­tal or nurs­ing bed can­not be that seri­ous­ly ill, can they? I want­ed to exam­ine this false per­cep­tion of ill­ness and process it in images.
In 2022, the series of 9 “Pain Por­traits” was cre­at­ed, in which I expand­ed the doc­u­men­tary nature of my pho­tographs into a men­tal and phys­i­cal space. The images are pho­tos, paint­ings and objects; they are flat and three-dimen­sion­al at the same time. The “worm­holes” milled and cut from chip­board break through a smooth sur­face. They twist back and forth and stand in con­trast to the images as a phys­i­cal-spa­tial dis­so­nance. I also cut holes in some of the images that swal­lowed up parts of the motifs.
Milling is a dusty and slow process that requires sharp tools and a pre­cise hand. In this activ­i­ty I fight against the resis­tance of the mate­r­i­al and work my way into the depths lay­er by lay­er. At the end, these fur­rows almost come to life and emerge from the picture.

Judith Schoss­böck: Pas­sion­flower thoughts
The three upright stig­mas of the pas­sion flower are also inter­pret­ed as the nails with which Jesus was nailed to the cross. I take extracts of this flower as med­i­cine, among oth­er things. They help me (unfor­tu­nate­ly only very min­i­mal­ly) with neu­ro­log­i­cal states of emer­gency.
Some expe­ri­ences asso­ci­at­ed with ME/CFS are occa­sion­al­ly described by my friends as a kind of spir­i­tu­al expe­ri­ence. In par­tic­u­lar, the extreme con­di­tion in which in the severe stage or “crash” one may be too weak to express the suf­fer­ing itself, and the expe­ri­ence of prox­im­i­ty to death, some­times require a philo­soph­i­cal or reli­gious ori­en­ta­tion.
Look­ing at my own med­ical his­to­ry, I have had sev­er­al such near-death expe­ri­ences, and some of them occur reg­u­lar­ly. In my brain it feels as if an area that is respon­si­ble for pain is inflamed or acti­vat­ed and some­times as if my mind is leav­ing my body. In this extreme vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty, an out-of-body expe­ri­ence, nor­mal sen­sa­tions and con­nec­tions sud­den­ly seem part of the impos­si­ble, and our lan­guage fails. The pain is then omnipresent, and occa­sion­al­ly uni­ver­sal.
I can only speak from my per­spec­tive, but there should actu­al­ly be tens of thou­sands of por­traits of var­i­ous peo­ple affect­ed hang­ing in this church. It would not seem strange to me that we would then kneel in awe before these peo­ple, but rather appro­pri­ate: a cor­rec­tive mech­a­nism to the usu­al “treat­ment” of soci­ety or author­i­ties, in which the per­son­al quick­ly becomes polit­i­cal. Because peo­ple with ME/CFS, no mat­ter how peace­ful or sleep­ing they may look in some pic­tures (warn­ing: appear­ances are deceiv­ing), are, giv­en their great suf­fer­ing, among the strongest but most invis­i­ble of the world.