Artist Statement SANDRA HAUSER

Voir l'ensemble des texte : https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Hmv3pKnyuGazKCjEK2nT0rfJOTQ0q-0A5EjWiwBwvEY/edit?tab=t.0

(Changes every once in a while, just like life itself)





In general:

"The problem is all inside your head," she said to me

"The answer is easy if you take it logically.

I′d like to help you in your struggle to be free

There must be 50 ways to leave your lover.”

(Paul Simons, 50 ways to leave your lover)

Re-appropriation of the thought, of the inner truth. Emancipation means to me to reappropriate certain words, meanings, spaces, overall and at first for ourselves. I am doing art in first means to reappropriate what is already mine. To vanish away all what holds wrong, different meaning, opinion, energy, vibe. Me shooting inappropriate words and gestures like a rapper against critique is not an act of violence, but an act of reappropriating what is already mine - to get back to my specific position I am carrying inside myself.

It is all about believing in the position you are already holding, without doing anything. It is all about a circle, and while doing this circle I clean the meaning of what is already mine and had been made dirty and sticky by somebody else.

My artwork is performative in all its moments and so am. Whether it can be a title that performs your brain to the right content road I want you to take...wether it is a ready-made becoming sculpture through withholding the wind, the rain and the too hot sun that dried it, whether it is a documentary that shows me performing my life, a process while creating, whether it is the uncertainty of what is true and what might not, that I want the viewer to experience when watching that film documenting my process, my life.

I am working on the edges on the truth of a possible reality. I want to show the blurred lines. I'm tending to channeling into my pieces always the tension that comes from private life and formal, from made experiences and fantasies. Why my film often seems to be fictional, when they are in reality not, is because I document the version of my brain of the reality that surrounds me and by fantasizing emotions, facts or relationships the art piece gets saturated with this weird fictional taste my childhood in a world of alcohol had.

My work is a work on life itself.
My art is a manifesto to prove that it is possible to change ontological facts, your own subjective reality, your belief system, your simple being and the circumstances you are living in – by acting out a specific artistic (or non-artistic) process focused on a topic, issue, challenge or problem that doesn't resonate with your energetic vibration.
Every artwork is the material output that manifests, in this matter-based world, representing the process I went through while facing a state of being that wasn't aligned with my innermost vibration.
I explore the tension between control and disorder. Installations, sculptures, and performances become vehicles for reflecting on the inherent resistance in any attempt at transformation.
What do I mean? I'll give you a practical example: my debts.
I used the capitalist system, taking out loans every now and then to buy time for my way of being. Of course, this was a lie, as I knew one day I would have to pay it back. I dreamed the naive dream that by buying time with these loans—time to create and to live far from my traumatic childhood experiences and the people who caused them—I would become famous and pay off the debts with the sale of a single artwork. This is still my goal.
As I began to realize that time was running out, and that the loan installments were too much to pay back while trying to live as an artist, I also saw that the traumatized version of me couldn't perform as the winner I needed to be to succeed in this challenge—to become famous, to become rich, to pay it all back.
Because of the urgency of this chasing game, I began using the very struggles that this process brought with it. I created a solo show out of the world I had built through my debts (-73,630.67 € – sum variable), and through making a docu-fiction film based on a three-month performance, installing it, and showing it to the public and the art world, I penetrated the state of being ashamed for having debts.
Instead, I embraced the debt as artistic material and as a part of myself.
At the moment, I'm drawing on my unpaid bills—and by directly paying the outstanding sum to the debtor, you can receive the drawing on the bill and become an art collector.
I have tied myself to the mountains of debt, transforming it into material for artworks. This is just one step within the ongoing process of shaping my personal, specific being on this planet.
My most complex problem, and also its most beautiful solution, is my traumatized horse, Don Orèo. Since 2020, we have been working collectively on our joint project “I Would Prefer Not To.”
Inspired by Arno Gruen's theories (Wider den Gehorsam – Against Obedience), psychoanalysis, and anarchism, I question the mechanisms of obedience and the longing for autonomy in a world structured by power relations. One must seek out one's true nature, fight against one's own cowardice to return to the stranger within, and learn to love that stranger.
My interventions – often collaborative and theatrical – engage my surroundings (humans, animals, landscapes, space) in a confrontation where art becomes a testing ground for conflict and resistance, thus creating new spaces for imagination.

Mon travail est un travail sur la vie elle-même.
Mon art est un manifeste visant à prouver qu'il est possible de transformer des faits ontologiques, sa propre réalité subjective, son système de croyances, son simple état d'être et les circonstances dans lesquelles on vit – en s'engageant dans un processus artistique (ou non artistique) ciblé, centré sur un thème, un enjeu, un défi ou un problème qui ne résonne pas avec sa vibration énergétique.
Chaque oeuvre est le résultat matériel qui se manifeste dans ce monde fondé sur la matière – elle représente le processus que j'ai traversé en affrontant un état d'être qui n'était pas aligné avec ma vibration la plus profonde.
Qu'est-ce que je veux dire par là ? Voici un exemple concret : mes dettes.
J'ai utilisé le système capitaliste en contractant des prêts de temps à autre pour acheter du temps – du temps pour mon mode d'être. Bien sûr, c'était une illusion, car je savais qu'un jour, je devrais tout rembourser.
Je caressais ce rêve naïf : qu'en achetant du temps grâce à ces crédits – du temps pour créer, pour vivre loin des expériences traumatiques de mon enfance et des personnes qui en étaient responsables – je deviendrais célèbre et que je rembourserais tout d'un coup grâce à la vente d'une seule oeuvre. C'est toujours mon objectif.
Mais au fur et à mesure que je réalisais que le temps s'épuisait, et que les mensualités devenaient impossibles à rembourser tout en essayant de vivre en tant qu'artiste, j'ai compris aussi que la version traumatisée de moi-même ne pouvait pas performer comme la « gagnante » que je devais être pour réussir ce défi : devenir célèbre, devenir riche, tout rembourser.
Face à l'urgence de cette course-poursuite, j'ai commencé à utiliser les luttes que ce processus faisait surgir. J'ai créé un solo show à partir du monde que j'avais bâti à travers mes dettes (73 630,67 € – somme variable) – en réalisant un film docu-fiction basé sur une performance de trois mois, en l'installant et en le montrant au public et au monde de l'art, j'ai pénétré dans cet état d'être : celui d'avoir honte de ne pas être la « gagnante » que j'avais imaginée.
À la place, j'ai embrassé la dette – comme matériau artistique, et comme partie de moi-même. En ce moment, je travaille à partir de mes factures impayées – et en payant directement la somme due au créancier, vous pouvez acquérir le dessin réalisé sur la facture, et ainsi devenir collectionneur·se d'art.Je me suis liée à ces montagnes de dettes, en les transformant en matière artistique.
Ce n'est qu'une étape dans un processus continu : celui de sculpter mon être personnel et singulier sur cette planète.

My work is a work on live itself. It is a work on changing ontological facts. I work in an interdisciplinary and total way. I use everything that surrounds me: found objects, people, animals, and the relationships I have with them, as well as more traditional materials like linseed oil, pigments, time, unpaid bills, the chaos in my basement, and my horse – all of which I confront with forms of visual and performative expression.
I explore the tension between control and disorder. Installations, sculptures, and performances become vehicles for reflecting on the inherent resistance in any attempt at transformation.
At the heart of my work lies the concept of Die Erstverschlimmerung (“initial aggravation”), a phenomenon in which any attempt at a solution only exacerbates the problem, thereby revealing new layers of aesthetic and conceptual tension.
For example, my overflowing basement becomes an oversized installation for sale. I now have not only the problem of the chaos of a full basement, but also the issue of professional storage, of the artwork as a collectible object, and of finding someone to buy the chaos of my life. I can no longer even throw away my old stuff. But even though it stinks, I really like my basement in the exhibition space – I find it beautiful.
My most complex problem, and also its most beautiful solution, is my traumatized horse, Don Orèo. Since 2020, we have been working collectively on our joint project “I Would Prefer Not To.”
Inspired by Arno Gruen's theories (Wider den Gehorsam – Against Obedience), psychoanalysis, and anarchism, I question the mechanisms of obedience and the longing for autonomy in a world structured by power relations. One must seek out one's true nature, fight against one's own cowardice to return to the stranger within, and learn to love that stranger.
My interventions – often collaborative and theatrical – engage my surroundings (humans, animals, landscapes, space) in a confrontation where art becomes a testing ground for conflict and resistance, thus creating new spaces for imagination.

Je suis la femme qui recherche les problèmes. J‘en ai déjà beaucoup, mais je veux en avoir beaucoup plus, je veux m‘en submerger, je veux en être riche. Je détecte les noeuds, souvent je les crée - les miens et ceux de la société. Je travaille de manière interdisciplinaire et totale. J‘utilise tout ce qui m‘entoure, les objets trouvés, les gens, les animaux et les relations que j‘ai avec eux, des matériaux plus classiques comme l‘huile de lin, les pigments, le temps, les factures impayées, le chaos de ma cave, mon cheval. Les sculptures, les films, les installations, les performances qui naissent lorsque j‘essaie de résoudre un de mes problèmes actuels ont pour but de montrer la complexité, l'utilité, la beauté et l‘ambivalence des résistances trouvées.

La plupart du temps, cela ne fait qu‘aggraver les problèmes, ce que j‘appelle “Die Erstverschlimmerung (l‘aggravation initiale)”. Par exemple, ma cave pleine devient une installation surdimensionnée à vendre. J‘ai maintenant non seulement le problème du chaos de ma cave pleine, mais aussi celui du stockage professionnel, de l‘objet d‘art à collectionner et celui de trouver quelqu‘un pour acheter le chaos de ma vie. Je ne peux même plus jeter mes vieux trucs. Mais même si elle pue, ma cave me plaît beaucoup dans la salle d‘exposition, je la trouve magnifique.

Mon problème le plus complexe, et aussi sa plus belle solution, est mon cheval traumatisé, Don Orèo, avec lequel je travaille en collectif depuis 2020 sur notre projet commun “I Would Prefer Not To”.

Mon postulat, librement inspiré d‘Arno Gruen, est “Wider dem Gehorsam (Contre l‘obéissance)” et pour cela, il faut partir à la recherche de sa vraie nature, lutter contre sa lâcheté et si nécessaire, patauger dans la merde pour revenir à l‘étranger qui est en nous et apprendre à l'aimer. La psychanalyse, l‘idée d‘anarchie, la recherche d‘autonomie et l'ontologie sont les piliers porteurs de mon travail.

Sur invitation, je cherche le problème le plus important et le plus embarrassant du moment et je travaille dessus. J‘implique souvent mon entourage, les animaux ou les paysages qui me sont proches dans la résolution des challenges actuels et j‘essaie de les convaincre de participer. Issus du monde du théâtre, ce sont souvent des gestes dramatiques qui dénouent les noeuds.