User:Medialectique/Masoch Fund

The Masoch Fund is a Ukrainian art association founded in 1991 in Lviv by Roman Viktyuk, Ihor Podolchak and Ihor Dyurych. Its artistic practice is connected with the tradition of European actionism and Nicolas Bourriaud’s “relational aesthetics”. The Fund is named after Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, which makes a reference to the marginal fields of culture and society and also underlines the locality (since Sacher-Masoch was born in Lviv).

The ideological principle of the Masoch Fund is “Aesthetics contra Ethics”. Podolchak and Dyurych are called the masters of perfectly elaborated provocations. The Masoch Fund reveals and criticizes the fetishist mentality of modern society and tests the institutional boundaries of contemporary art.

The Masoch Fund focuses on the social, political and economic context of the Ukrainian society. Unlike other action artists whose work often refers to personal experience (Marina Abramović) or mysterial impermeability (Viennese Actionists), the Masoch Fund emphasizes the active role of its audience. It can be best compared to the work of Slovenian artists’ collective IRWIN, Danish artists’ group Superflex and the tandem of Svetlana Heger and Plamen Dejanov.

In 2006–2009, the Masoch Fund included a subsidiary production company MF Films that produced the films Las Meninas and Delirium.