Turn on the Move is the title of the exhibition project that Dertnig has developed for the Museum der Moderne Salzburg’s experimental GENERATOR format. The phrase may be read as a friendly prompt to get moving—to try out, as proposed by Feldenkrais, an easily performed yet utterly unfamiliar movement that allows for a different perception of the body. To encourage the audience, Dertnig creates a kind of stage situation. At its center stands a newly conceived sculpture from her Feldenkrais series: black and white gently intertwined lines trace a flowing movement in three dimensions and on the scale of the human body. Further back, a decor responds to this dynamic. The bent-steel-tube sculpture becomes a prop and performative element: set on casters, it can be repositioned in the space as desired by the visitors. Two performances held in the exhibition at different points in time activate and alter this setting. Reels mounted on the walls with miles of colored pantyhose—an airily light and highly elastic fabric associated with intense physicality—are mobilized during the performances and set in relation to the elements in the room by the active participants.

As part of the exhibition, the museum also screens the performance film trilogy es ist eh schon alles da (2018), donauspuren, digitale weite und andere dinge (2019), and vorblinzeln (2024). The three films embed the dynamic-abstract shapes of the Feldenkrais sculptures and the distortions of the pantyhose fabric in a larger social space: three women protagonists—seen first as teenagers, then as young adults—interact with these elements in selected private and public settings; with their distinctive presence and attitudes, they limn a portrait of today’s young generation.

For Carola Dertnig, the engagement with Feldenkrais and a transformed body consciousness is a theme that spans not only media but also generations. Her mother, the dancer, writer, and culture manager Christiane Dertnig, was one of the first Feldenkrais teachers in Austria. She left extensive notes that serve as an important reference for Carola Dertnig and the development of her specific idiom interweaving movement, sculpture, drawing, and film. In the performance films, it is in turn Carola Dertnig’s daughter Felicia and her two friends Alma Brugger and Flora Buchberger who build a bridge to the young generation and its situations, desires, and challenges.

Jürgen Tabor