Wir kaufen Seelen (also known as Seelenankauf or Soul Sale) is a 1998 performance by Austrian art theory group monochrom and is considered a significant work in the group's history and Austrian art history in the 1990s. [1] [2] [3] [4]
Performance art is a performance presented to an audience within a fine art context, traditionally interdisciplinary. Performance may be either scripted or unscripted, random or carefully orchestrated, spontaneous or otherwise carefully planned with or without audience participation. The performance can be live or via media; the performer can be present or absent. It can be any situation that involves four basic elements: time, space, the performer's body, or presence in a medium, and a relationship between performer and audience. Performance art can happen anywhere, in any type of venue or setting and for any length of time. The actions of an individual or a group at a particular place and in a particular time constitute the work.
monochrom is an international art-technology-philosophy group, publishing house and film production company. monochrom was founded in 1993, and defines itself as "an unpeculiar mixture of proto-aesthetic fringe work, pop attitude, subcultural science and political activism". Its main office is located at Museumsquartier/Vienna.
On 1 November 1998 (All Souls' Day), monochrom members Johannes Grenzfurthner and Harald Homolka-List (supported by their friend Ulrich Troyer) [5] staged a "spirituo-capitalist booth" at Stock-im-Eisen-Platz (very close to St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna's first district) where the project members tried to buy the souls of passers-by for ATS 50 [6] (roughly US$5) per soul. The "acquisition team" performed an "evaluation routine" to check the "quality" of the soul of interested sellers, for example by asking jargon-laden philosophical questions, by using a divining rod and similar pseudoscientific techniques. A total of fifteen were purchased and registered. These souls are still being offered for sale to third parties.
In Christianity, All Souls' Day or the Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed, that is, of the souls of all Christians who have died, follows All Saints' Day. Observing Christians typically remember deceased relatives on the day. In Western Christianity the annual celebration is now held on 1 November and is associated with the season of Allhallowtide, including All Saints' Day and its vigil, Halloween. In the Catholic Church, "the faithful" refers specifically to baptized Catholics; "all souls" commemorates the church penitent of souls in Purgatory, whereas "all saints" commemorates the church triumphant of saints in Heaven. In the liturgical books of the western Catholic Church it is called the Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed, and is celebrated annually on 2 November. In the ordinary form of the Roman Rite, as well as in the Personal Ordinariates established by Benedict XVI for former Anglicans, it remains on 2 November if this date falls on a Sunday; in the 1962−1969 form of the Roman Rite, use of which is still authorized, it is transferred to Monday, 3 November. On this day in particular, Catholics pray for the dead. In the Church of England it is called The Commemoration of the Faithful Departed and is an optional celebration; Anglicans view All Souls' Day as an extension of the observance of All Saints' Day and it serves to "remember those who have died", in connection with the theological doctrines of the resurrection of the body and the Communion of Saints. In the Eastern Orthodox Church and the associated Eastern Catholic Churches, it is celebrated several times during the year and is not associated with the month of November.
Johannes Grenzfurthner is an Austrian artist, filmmaker, writer, actor, curator, theatre director, performer and lecturer. Grenzfurther is the founder, conceiver and artistic director of monochrom, an international art and theory group. Most of his artworks are labelled monochrom. Grenzfurther is an outspoken researcher in subversive and underground culture, for example the field of sexuality and technology, and one of the founders of 'techno-hedonism'.
St. Stephen's Cathedral is the mother church of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Vienna and the seat of the Archbishop of Vienna, Christoph Cardinal Schönborn, OP. The current Romanesque and Gothic form of the cathedral, seen today in the Stephansplatz, was largely initiated by Duke Rudolf IV (1339–1365) and stands on the ruins of two earlier churches, the first a parish church consecrated in 1147. The most important religious building in Vienna, St. Stephen's Cathedral has borne witness to many important events in Habsburg and Austrian history and has, with its multi-coloured tile roof, become one of the city's most recognizable symbols.
The group sees the project - beyond all philosophical discourses and argumentation seeking to prove the existence of God or an afterlife - in the classical sense of a market driven by supply and demand. For the group it "doesn't actually matter if there is a soul, as long as it can be sold for a profit. The soul is a tradable commodity, a form of virtual capital." [7]
In monotheistic thought, God is conceived of as the supreme being, creator deity, and principal object of faith. The conceptions of God, as described by theologians, commonly include the attributes of omniscience (all-knowing), omnipotence (all-powerful), omnipresence (all-present), and as having an eternal and necessary existence. Depending on one's kind of theism, these attributes are used either in way of analogy, or in a literal sense as distinct properties. God is most often held to be incorporeal (immaterial). Incorporeality and corporeality of God are related to conceptions of transcendence and immanence of God, with positions of synthesis such as the "immanent transcendence". Psychoanalyst Carl Jung equated religious ideas of God with transcendental aspects of consciousness in his interpretation.
The afterlife is the belief that the essential part of an individual's identity or the stream of consciousness continues after the death of the physical body. According to various ideas about the afterlife, the essential aspect of the individual that lives on after death may be some partial element, or the entire soul or spirit, of an individual, which carries with it and may confer personal identity or, on the contrary, may not, as in Indian nirvana. Belief in an afterlife is in contrast to the belief in oblivion after death.
In microeconomics, supply and demand is an economic model of price determination in a market. It postulates that, holding all else equal, in a competitive market, the unit price for a particular good, or other traded item such as labor or liquid financial assets, will vary until it settles at a point where the quantity demanded will equal the quantity supplied, resulting in an economic equilibrium for price and quantity transacted.
The performance has been presented in exhibitions and debated in magazines and in academic circles. [8] [9] [10] [11] [12]
