Draft:Eignblunzn

Eignblunzn is a performance art project by the Austrian art and theory collective monochrom, first presented on 10 September 2003 at the MuseumsQuartier in Vienna. The title uses the Austrian dialect word Blunzn, meaning blood sausage. Participants had blood drawn, which was incorporated into blood sausage that was subsequently eaten by the donors.

The performance opened monochrom's Wiener Faktionismus series, conceived in relation to Viennese Actionism. Later commentary discussed the work as a parody of Actionist practices and in connection with self-exploitation and the changing possibilities of artistic provocation.

Concept and first performance

Eignblunzn was presented at the MuseumsQuartier on 10 September 2003 as the opening event of Wiener Faktionismus. German writer and literary scholar Johannes Ullmaier appeared as a guest of the group. FM4 journalist Gerlinde Lang also participated and published a first-person account shortly afterwards.

The setting resembled a traditional Austrian Heuriger, with tables, wine and food. Participants had blood taken by a physician away from the main room. Lang reported that the donated blood was combined with conventional blood-sausage ingredients, including animal meat, before being filled into casings and cooked. The finished Eignblunzn was listed on the menu for three euros, meaning that participants had to pay for the sausage made from their own blood before eating it. Lang noted that this commercial transaction reinforced the theoretical premise of the performance.

Monochrom's advance announcement framed the performance as a series of questions. It asked whether the performance was a gender-critical response to the masculine and martial gestures of Viennese Actionism, whether changes from a disciplinary society to a society of control had altered the possibilities of artistic resistance, and whether the use of one's own blood could serve as an image of self-exploitation and the "vampirism" of capital.

Johannes Grenzfurthner later described the performance as both an homage to and a parody of Viennese Actionism, saying that monochrom had attempted to push the use of blood further while also questioning whether such imagery retained its ability to shock contemporary audiences.

Reception and interpretation

In 2013, Helmut Ploebst of Der Standard described the public consumption of the blood sausages as a test of whether Actionist methods could still provoke a tabloid scandal. In his reading, the difference between the outraged reception of the Actionists in the 1960s and the comparatively easy absorption of Eignblunzn reflected a broader change in media and society.

Wolfgang Paterno of Profil characterized the performance as a satire on the "blood brotherhood" of the historical Viennese Actionists. Thomas Edlinger of ORF placed it in a similar context, describing the reduction of the grand Actionist gesture to the making and eating of a sausage as a combination of an "Actionism downgrade" and a critique of neoliberal self-optimization.

In a 2008 column about disgust, Thomas Kramar of Die Presse used monochrom's Eigenblutwurst as an example of the unstable distinction between reactions to one's own bodily substances and to animal blood routinely consumed as food.

Robert Sommer discussed Eignblunzn at length in a 2013 Augustin feature on monochrom. He used the performance to discuss whether subversive art remained possible decades after the scandals of Viennese Actionism and contrasted it with later television stunts involving the consumption of human tissue. Sommer attributed the difference in part to the commercial pressures created by television ratings.

The performance was represented by a diorama in monochrom's 2013 twentieth-anniversary retrospective Die waren früher auch mal besser at Vienna's MUSA. ORF used the work as an example of the group's practice of directly involving audiences, while the City of Vienna's coverage listed "blood sausage made from one's own blood" among the retrospective's 23 stations. In a later profile, Die Presse referred to the Eigenblutwurst alongside Georg Paul Thomann as one of monochrom's projects that had achieved wider recognition.

Academic discussion

Art historian Eva Kulmer discusses monochrom in her 2008 study Kunst versus Kapital: Zeitgenössische künstlerische Strategien der Kapitalismuskritik, which examines contemporary artistic strategies of social and economic criticism. The group is treated in a thirteen-page section on "Aktionismus im öffentlichen Raum" ("actionism in public space") as one of the book's prototypical examples of contemporary interventionist practice; Eignblunzn is among the works reproduced in the section.

Thomas Ballhausen devoted an essay to the performance, interpreting Eignblunzn as a form of auto-cannibalism that dismantles heroic notions of artistic transgression. He linked the work's engagement with Viennese Actionism to questions of self-exploitation, commodification, and the artist's body as both a means and object of production and consumption.

Later versions and media appearances

In September 2017, monochrom member Günther Friesinger appeared in an episode of the ProSieben programme Joko gegen Klaas – Das Duell um die Welt. In the programme, Friesinger was introduced as a member of monochrom and his participation was explicitly linked to the group's Eignblunzn performance. He presented a challenge in which Joko Winterscheidt was to have blood drawn in Hong Kong, use it to make a blood sausage, and then eat it. Contemporary press coverage described Friesinger presenting the blood-sausage task to Winterscheidt, who ultimately refused to complete the challenge.

Monochrom revisited the concept at a Sky Night event for the ninth season of The Walking Dead at Vienna's Urania cinema on 8 October 2018. In this variation, blood donated by visitors was mixed with flour, milk and spices and baked as a human-blood version of the Styrian dish Bluttommerl.

Johannes Grenzfurthner presenting Eignblunzn at Fantastic Fest in Austin, Texas, in 2023

A further version was staged on the closing night of Fantastic Fest in Austin, Texas, on 28 September 2023. Volunteers had blood drawn under medical supervision, and the blood was then used to make sausages that could only be eaten by the respective donor. Austin Monthly later included the performance in a retrospective of memorable moments from the festival's first twenty years.

On 25 September 2025, monochrom staged the Eignblunzn Vegan Balkan-Grill Edition as part of SLASH (the) INDUSTRY at Vienna's Metro Kinokulturhaus. In this variation, blood donated by participants was used in otherwise vegan ćevapi.

External links

• Wiener Faktionismus: Eignblunzn at monochrom

Category:2003 in art Category:2003 in Austria Category:Performance art Category:Austrian art Category:Political art Category:Monochrom