SS UND JUDENSTERN
“SS And Star Of David”
Production: Austria, 1971
Director: Günter Orban
Category: Performance Art
This 7-minute Vienna performance aktion, originally commissioned by German TV, is one of a series of extreme filmed provocations perpetrated by Otto Muehl and Kurt Kren of the Vienna Aktion Group in the late 60s and early 70s. Muehl, who claimed his films were imbued with the stench of the concentration camps, took the opportunity to project as much abuse and outrage at the Germans as possible, setting up a scenario of SS officers engaging in sexual depravity. Lisl Nürnberger plays a Jewish girl trapped in a playpen, with Muehl, Herbert Stumpfl and Otmar Bauer as bare-chested Nazi interrogators. As they engage in homo-erotic cavorts and viciously whip the bars of the playpen with leather straps, Nürnberger breaks down and, finally, the cameramen stop filming in protest.
For a full illustrated account of the films made by the Vienna Aktion Group, see Stephen Barber’s seminal study The Art Of Destruction.
Posted by Captain Nightshade
