Emmerich Weissenberger is an Austrian artist who studied with Franz Graf and Gunter Damisch at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. He is a painter, sculptor, and actionist whose consistency is reminiscent of the Viennese school of Actionism, as shaped by Günter Brus and Hermann Nitsch. His works can be found in numerous galleries, private collections, and museums around the world. Weissenberger is cofounder of the Rosasturm—Art laboratory for Sustainable Development. His spectacular art actions have been covered by media worldwide, from CNN to RTL. He symbolically crucified himself atop Vienna’s St. Stephen’s Cathedral on Good Friday 2010 at a height of 20 meters—clad only in a loincloth and wearing a crown of thorns on his head—to protest against abuse in the Catholic Church. He drove his “Cube of Dignity” in front of the Austrian Parliament to make a visible statement against the deportation of innocent children and read out the United Nations Convention on Human Rights with a megaphone. He landed a helicopter in front of the headquarters of a telecommunications company as an artistic statement against corruption. This is an overview of his artistic work:

Actionist, artist, visionary

Emmerich Weissenberger, born in Graz in 1966, devotes his work to universal themes such as sustainability, love, human dignity, and freedom. He is cofounder of Rosasturm—Art Laboratory for Sustainable Development and lives and works with his wife Nora Ruzsics at Landersdorf Castle in Lower Austria.

Nora Ruzsics knows about the power of images. In her video works, she combines narrative poetry with hard facts. Born in Hungary, she studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna and completed training in contemporary dance and theater. She has worked in the fields of video, performing arts, and sculpture. She is a student of Michelangelo Pistoletto and his Terzo Paradiso, with which Nora and her husband, Emmerich Weissenberger, are closely associated. In addition to impressive water objects made of clay and artificial stone, she has created audiovisual worlds in the form of short films, documentaries, and art films, in which she skillfully blends factual and storytelling and combines music with visual and performing arts under the “norarufilm” brand.

STORYTELLER, ARTIST, SCULPTOR

Nora Ruzsics, born in 1974 in Csorna, Hungary, is cofounder of the artist collective Art Embassy. Central elements of her work are artistic interventions at the intersection of art and sustainable development. In 2014–2015, she traveled for eight months with her husband, Emmerich Weissenberger, along the migration route from Colombia through Central America to California, collecting signals of the good, the true, and the beautiful. Signals are works of art such as films, photographs, paintings and drawings that were created during the journey. Nora Ruzsics lives and works with Emmerich Weissenberger at Landersdorf Castle in Lower Austria.