Otto Muehl

In the early 1960s, Otto Muehl (1925 – 2013) formed the Wiener Aktionismus (Viennese Actionism, together with Günter Brus, Hermann Nitsch and Rudolf Schwarzkogler. He was one of the organizers of the Direct Art Festival on November 9, 1967 for which Günter Brus designed no less than fifteen different invitations. On the 7th of June, 1968, he was invited by the Austrian Socialist Student Society, together with Brus, Oswald Wiener and Peter Weibel, to give a performance in the hall of the University of Vienna. Motto: Art and Revolution.The event resulted in a lot of protest and the Viennese yellow press were keen to provide ever more details. Brus, Muehl and Wiener were arrested. At the end of 1972 Muehl founded the Kommune Friedrichshof, where he propagated free sexuality, group education and collective property. Important was the so-called Selbstdarstellung, a group therapy whereby one learned how to conquer bodily and emotional defence mechanisms.