Seeking Beauty - VIENNA ART WEEK 2016 | EN

14–20 November / www.viennaartweek.at

Seven days of art.

Every year, for one week in November, VIENNA ART WEEK and its approximately 90 partners bundle the most diverse activities of Vienna’s art scene into a marathon of art-related events. As members of Art Cluster Vienna, VIENNA ART WEEK’s sponsoring association, the festival is organized by museums, exhibition halls, art galleries and art universities. Smaller program partners including artist-run spaces, independent initiatives, curators and artists hone and elaborate the week with tailored smaller events.

All of Vienna is an art space!

© City of Vienna/PID Photo: Ian Ehm

© City of Vienna/PID Photo: Sabine Hauswirth

Photo: Peter Rigaud/VBW

VIENNA ART WEEK is now a mainstay of the Vienna cultural calendar. Every year in November, the Vienna art world shows itself in all its colorful diversity, proving time and time again that our city can hold its own in the international art world. Vienna is not only a city of tradition and history, great museums and exhibition halls – it is also fertile ground for a lively art scene, with space to implement creative ideas and make way for the new. Last but not least, Vienna’s vibrant cultural life is what makes it one of the most livable cities in the world.

From the 21er Haus to mumok, from established Vienna galleries to alternative spaces – this year’s VIENNA ART WEEK brings another bunch of art events to the capital.

We’d like to take this opportunity to congratulate the art institutions, arts universities, galleries and artists who have made Vienna a world-class cultural center. We owe a special thanks to DOROTHEUM as initiator, to the members of Art Cluster Vienna, as well as more than 170 program partners and artists for their unwavering commitment!

Held under the motto “Seeking Beauty,” the twelfth VIENNA ART WEEK offers more program points this year than ever before, giving visitors a unique glimpse into the diversity of art production in this city. But VIENNA ART WEEK is also – and very importantly, I think – a major national and international forum for exchange and dialogue: a number of events allow the public to engage directly with artists, for example. Open Studio Day, now in its fifth year of existence, is an exceptional opportunity to do just that.

Dr. Michael Häupl Mayor of Vienna

35,000 international and Austrian festival visitors will spend an autumn week on their feet to draw inspiration from over 200 program events. Exhibitions, panel discussions, artist talks, guided city tours and performances shed light on contemporary creativity and art-making in Austria using various media.

Producing, discussing, communicating and mediating are the cornerstones of VIENNA ART WEEK. They show that art and culture contribute something essential to the prevailing climate in society, enriching our capacity for openness, tolerance, vitality and future prospects. With all this in mind, I wish the VIENNA ART WEEK team great success and the festival’s many art-loving visitors an exciting week filled with discovery and fresh inspiration.

Dr. Andreas Mailath-Pokorny City Councillor for Cultural Affairs and Science, Vienna Thomas Drozda, MA Minister for Arts and Culture, Constitution and Media Curriculum

PREFACE

Seeking Beauty Martin Böhm President of Art Cluster Vienna Robert Punkenhofer Artistic Director of VIENNA ART WEEK Anja Hasenlechner Project Manager of VIENNA ART WEEK

VIENNA ART WEEK is on course for success. Now heading into its twelfth year, the annual art festival’s international response and growing visitor count show what can only be called an upward trajectory. Launched

by DOROTHEUM in 2005 to enhance Vienna’s profile as an international art hub, VIENNA ART WEEK has long become an institution that brings some 90 program partners together.

The festival’s varied calendar of events speaks to audiences young and old, large and small, art experts and art lovers alike.

The theme for VIENNA ART WEEK 2016 is “Seeking Beauty.” Where does beauty lie? By what criteria is it defined? What changeable concepts underlie beauty? Is art the practice of discovering the beautiful where it is least expected? This year’s program of exhibitions and performances, interventions and discussions gets to the heart of how beauty is perceived today in all its diversity and contradictions, opening new aesthetic, philosophical, sociopolitical and neurobiological perspectives in the process. A performative interview marathon featuring curator Mark Evans, designer Dejana Kabiljo, body art and performance artist ORLAN, and literary theorist Barbara Vinken, as well as performances by Krõõt Juurak and Anne Juren, Elisabeth von Samsonow, Station Rose and Doris Uhlich cast new light on the topic from various angles, encouraging further exploration.

VIENNA ART WEEK 2016 will also see the return of tried-and-true formats by popular demand: some 70 artists will open their studios to visitors as part of Open Studio Day on Saturday, 19 November – an actionpacked day complete with guided tours, curator talks and other events.

Family Art Day on Sunday, 20 November, is once again offering a free, children- and family-friendly program.

Leading figures from Vienna museums, exhibition institutions and art universities will convene at DOROTHEUM for a round table discussing strategies and visions for enhancing Vienna’s profile as an international art hub. Gerald Bast (University of Applied Arts Vienna), Matti Bunzl (Wien Museum), Bettina Leidl (KUNST HAUS WIEN), Klaus Albrecht Schröder (Albertina), and Hans-Peter Wipplinger (Leopold Museum) take up the central question: where does Vienna stand compared to art hotspots such as Berlin, Shanghai and Abu Dhabi?

Here’s to a fabulous week through the Vienna art world, with plenty of exciting and inspiring art in store!

Art Cluster Vienna

Academy of Fine Arts Vienna Eva Blimlinger Albertina Klaus Albrecht Schröder Architekturzentrum Wien Dietmar Steiner Association of Austrian Galleries of Modern Art Hans Knoll Austrian Film Museum Alexander Horwath Austrian Frederick and Lillian Kiesler Private Foundation Peter Bogner Belvedere, 21er Haus, The Winterpalais of Prince Eugene of Savoy Agnes Husslein-Arco DOROTHEUM Martin Böhm Jewish Museum Vienna Danielle Spera KÖR Kunst im öffentlichen Raum Wien Martina Taig Kunsthalle Wien Museumsquartier & Kunsthalle Wien Karlsplatz Nicolaus Schafhausen KUNST HAUS WIEN Bettina Leidl Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien Sabine Haag Künstlerhaus Peter Zawrel Leopold Museum Hans-Peter Wipplinger MAK Wien Christoph Thun-Hohenstein mumok Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien Karola Kraus MUSA Berthold Ecker Q21/MuseumsQuartier Wien Christian Strasser Sammlung Friedrichshof Stadtraum Hubert Klocker Secession Herwig Kempinger Sigmund Freud Museum Monika Pessler Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary Francesca Habsburg University of Applied Arts Vienna Gerald Bast Vienna Business Agency, Creative Center departure Gerhard Hirczi Wien Museum Matti Bunzl

Photo: Yasmina Haddad 1

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Martina Taig, KÖR Kunst im öffentlichen Raum Public space confronts us with traditional and contemporary notions of beauty in various ways.

Since public art is mostly characterized by its site-specificity, intensive dialogue with the immediate environment is unavoidable.

And yet one of the prerogatives of art is the decision of whether to speak the contemporary language of beauty, satirize it, turn it around or break with it altogether.

Photo: Sabine Hauswirth

Photo: Natascha Unkart

Agnes Husslein-Arco, Belvedere and 21er Haus Beauty always reflects the taste of its times.

And yet contemporary artists in particular often strive to reflect the political situation, which is why ugliness is coming more and more to the fore. But essentially, I concur with the late Umberto Eco, who concludes in his “History of Beauty” that beauty can never be something fixed or absolute.

Peter Bogner, Austrian Frederick and Lillian Kiesler Private Foundation In 1959, Friedrich Kiesler created a sketch entitled “sleeping beauty awakening,” showing an accumulation of tangled lines.

They become parts that merge together to form a biomorphic object, though the final form is left to the viewer’s imagination. Both the visionary Kiesler and contemporary art aim for an ideal that can only be tapped by merging the lines of social relevance and timeliness, and the presentation and reception of a work of art.

Hans Knoll, Association of Austrian Galleries of Modern Art Tolerance and beauty go hand in hand – beauty means different things to different people.

Gerald Bast, University of Applied Arts Vienna The rising clamor for “beauty” in art is all too often a thinly-veiled call for simplicity and superficiality. It implies a certain form of aesthetics and obscures the historical, cultural and contextual variability of the concept of beauty. It smacks of a dominant true/false culture’s inability to deal with uncertainty and ambiguity. But art is the best teacher when it comes to handling uncertainty in unsettling times.

Photo: angewandte/com

Photo: Sabine Hauswirth

Nicolaus Schafhausen, Kunsthalle Wien “To say that art is not identical with the concept of beauty, but requires for its realization the concept of the ugly as its negation, is a platitude,” Theodor W. Adorno noted long ago.

A devil’s advocate could, like Donald Trump – “The beauty of me is that I am very rich” – conclude that today’s answer to the question of the nature of beauty is money. The exhibitions of Kunsthalle Wien prove the latter assumption to be wrong.

Photo: Heribert Corn

Photo: KHM-Museumsverband

Monika Pessler, Sigmund Freud Museum The issue of beauty in art is a relic of the past, but aesthetics – perceiving an idea through the senses – will likely persist throughout the ages and live on as a criterion for cultural value. The question of beauty seems strange, and implicitly hints that the search for the “beautiful” has something else at its core: the current “uneasiness in culture” is much more clearly reflected in the fear of losing our “as-it-is-ness” – beautiful or not.

Dietmar Steiner, Architekturzentrum Wien “Beauty” has been lying low in today’s mainstream architecture. What is being produced are images of a “historicist Modernism,” egocentric, cool, technoid, supposedly efficient, determined by a developed and dominant building industry.

And yet we’ve lost sight of “beauty” as a design value and quality point.

It would be nice if we could speak of beauty in architecture again, because even a heterogeneous society would be able to understand what beauty is.

Photo: Winfried Barowski

Alexander Horwath, Austrian Film Museum Beauty – in art and everywhere else – strikes a chord when the “beauty and the beast” appear together. Cleanly separate the two, place them in separate spheres, and you will see no glimmer of truth or get even a taste of it, only its “tasteless” counterpart: constant advertising and selfpromotion from the society of the spectacle.

Beauty can only escape this vulgar world of cheerful untruth and the torpidity of all living things (including a vibrant political sphere) in the form of a beast.

Sabine Haag, Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien Beauty in art has also always been a quest for the ideal state of body and soul, the natural idyll of a landscape, a fineness of feeling, an image of God or ideas.

Art depicted the beautiful to encourage good thoughts; outer beauty was also always a reflection of inner beauty. Awakening desire while simultaneously curbing it with moral implications could still be a way to understand beauty not only as an aesthetic criterion, but also as impetus for a thoroughly beautiful life.

Photo: Robert Polster

Photo: Satoshi Mühlöcker

“How important is ‘beauty’ in art?”

Herwig Kempinger, Secession Beauty has always been essential for art. It goes beyond visual harmony or twee, and still there has been a long-running attempt to banish it from contemporary art altogether. Contemporary art that deals with something that has been vitally important throughout human history and in all forms of society is, in my opinion, far more interesting than art that plays it safe, sailing wherever the spirit of the times takes it.

Matti Bunzl, Wien Museum Our exhibition practice at Wien Museum is a daily attempt to pluralize our culture’s idea of beauty. Visitors quite rightly expect to find “beauty” in museums, and we show that art is not the only vehicle for these kinds of experiences. In our museum you find everyday objects next to masterpieces by Klimt and Schiele, showing that even ordinary things have thought-provoking aesthetic qualities. Our presentations encourage their reflection.

Hubert Klocker, Sammlung Friedrichshof Stadtraum Sigmund Freud questioned both the benefits and the cultural necessity of beauty while simultaneously confirming its continuous presence in culture. In doing so, he very nicely articulated the relativity at the very core of this concept. Beauty is nothing but another mystery. Still, it’s worth considering.

Christian Strasser, MuseumsQuartier Wien The schöne Künste, which literally translates to “beautiful arts,” are no longer beholden to provide us with maximally pleasant, harmonious impressions.

Instead of massaging our minds, they prod them into action. And yet that is precisely what makes contemporary art so essential: this constant challenge and scrutiny is the single, vital lifeline for our understanding of “truth, goodness and beauty” in all areas of social life.

Eva Blimlinger, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna What is beauty, anyway?

What could “the beautiful” be? Is art always beautiful? Is beauty always inherent to art?

Isn’t “fine art” always beautiful art? And if so, is the ugliness in art also fine? Is there fine art in the fine arts? Is there ugly art in the fine arts? Do we recognize the beauty in art anymore? And who wants to see beauty in art at all?

Everything is deconstructed and never­ theless (or perhaps because of it) fine arts.

Photo: MUSA

Berthold Ecker, MUSA Just as politics and religion elegantly appropriated the regulative power of universality by determining what they found was ideal beauty, we now have commerce defining individual beauty as a feature to strive for in this phase of global capitalist meritocracy. Art that has been reflected upon plays with this phenomenon using any number of possible tactics, from affirmation to compromising exposure.

Photo: Julia Stix

Photo: Andrea Kremper

Karola Kraus, mumok Of course art throughout the ages has always questioned and reflected the contemporary definition of beauty.

But art has a much more important purpose in a time of severe global crises, and that is to give an outside perspective, to render a reflective gaze that triggers startling emotional and mental processes, eventually resulting in unexpected changes of perspective and, consequently, new solutions to our problems.

Photo: Claudia Rohrauer

© APA, Photo: Barbara Gindl

Peter Zawrel, Künstlerhaus Beauty – it’s a matter of perspective. The Künstlerhaus, for example, is gorgeous!

Both from a distance and close-up, on Karlsplatz and in Margareten. And yet there’s no way around the “aesthetics of ugliness”: art must display “those conditions and forms that make the ugly ugly, but it must remove from it all that intrudes into its existence only accidentally, weakening or confusing what is characteristic in it.”

(Karl Rosenkranz, 1853) The question of beauty always includes the question of what art must do or need not do.

Photo: Lukas Beck

Photo: Aleksandra Pawloff

Christoph ThunHohenstein, MAK In an era that sees the cool, digital measuring of every area of our lives, we look to art to have the courage to give beauty another chance. Not superficial or kitschy, but honest and profound. When all is said and done, the ability to value and appreciate beauty is still one of the things that distinguishes us human beings from artificial intelligence and robots. Vienna is an inspiring place to search for the lost beauty in art!

Photo: Sofia Goscinski

Photo: stefanjoham.com

Hans-Peter Wipplinger, Leopold Museum Whereas Art Nouveau continued to associate “beauty” with sociopolitical aspirations (an aestheticization of the ordinary would improve quality of life for people), the current, general trend toward aestheticization reflects the hedonism of our time as a matrix of culture that stands in stark contrast to the present-day political situation. Contemporary art opens new, alternative horizons of beauty – not least in that it questions the values of this matrix.

Photo: Sabine Hauswirth

Photo: Lukas Beck Photo: Florian Rainer

Bettina Leidl, KUNST HAUS WIEN The artist Peter Dressler, subject of a retrospective at KUNST HAUS WIEN, produced a series called “Tangible Beauty” with an interesting take on the topic.

It takes you to a department store where (unlike in a museum) the longing for contact with objects of desire can actually be lived out. For Dressler, beauty lies in the haptic appropriation of the aesthetically sublime. Conve­rse­ ly, one could say that beauty is that which touches or grips us.

In whatever way.

Klaus Albrecht, Schröder, Albertina The belief that modernism finally, permanently substituted the twinned concepts of truth and beauty with the aesthetics of the ugly needs further qualification.

Beauty has endured, and not just in all the art forms that rely on the power of decoration and ornament; the sense of beauty is still a key aesthetic concern for the tradition of the sublime. Say nothing of the fact that every successful work of art is perceived as “beautiful” – even Grünewald’s tortured Christ on the cross.

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Art Cluster Member

21er Haus – Museum for Contemporary Art 21er Haus – Museum for Contemporary Art Quartier Belvedere Arsenalstrasse 1 1030 Vienna T +43 1 795 57 770 E public@21erhaus.at www.21erhaus.at Opening hours: Tue. 11:00 am–6:00 pm Wed. 11:00 am–9:00 pm Thu.–Sun. 11:00 am–6:00 pm Open on public holidays

PANEL DISCUSSION

“The Contemporary Museum: An experiential destination or archival institution?”* Wed., 16 Nov. 2016 7:00 pm Blickle Kino at 21er Haus To mark the fifth anniversary of its activity, 21er Haus has invited curators and art critics to discuss the new role of contemporary museums in view of social change. How can a museum perform a balancing act between scientific source research, archival storage, and the experience of art?

Participants: Sebastian Frenzel, editor “Monopol – Magazin für Kunst und Leben”; Nicolas Bourriaud, curator and art theorist; Harald Krejci, chief curator at 21er Haus; Luisa Ziaja, curator GUIDED TOUR

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Ai Weiwei © Marlene Rahmann

In English

EXHIBITION

EXHIBITION

“The Language of Things.

“AI WEIWEI. translocation – Material Hi/Stories from the transformation” Collection” 14 July–20 Nov. 2016 10 June 2016–22 Jan. 2017

Curator Axel Köhne gives a tour of the exhibition “The Language of Things.

Material Hi/Stories from the Collection”*

GUIDED TOUR

Wed., 16 Nov. 2016 5:30 pm

Thu., 17 Nov. 2016 4:30 pm

In German

In German

Matter, material and materiality have acted both as points of departure and subjects of artistic production since the 1960s. 21er Haus presents the “material (hi)stories” of more than 60 artists from its collection of contemporary art.

In his space-consuming installations, the conceptual artist, documentary filmmaker and activist Ai Weiwei criticizes the regime of his native China and responds to the political reality of Europe’s current refugee crisis.

Curator Alfred Weidinger gives a tour of the exhibition “AI WEIWEI. trans­ location – transformation”*

FAMILY ART DAY

In the Year of the Monkey* Sun., 20 Nov. 2016 3:00–5:00 pm Is it possible to see the Great Wall of China from the moon? What do rabbits, tigers and monkeys have in common? And can tea also be art?

Children aged three to twelve are welcome to join a tour of Ai Weiwei’s exhibition and unravel a number of mysteries about the Middle Kingdom. The tour is followed by a workshop where we will make our own dragon masks or indulge in Chinese handicraft. * Limited number of participants. Registration is required: www.21erhaus.at/de/events, T +43 1 795 57 770, E public@21erhaus.at

Art Cluster Member

Academy of Fine Arts Vienna

Academy of Fine Arts Vienna Schillerplatz 3 1010 Vienna T +43 1 588 16 0 F +43 1 588 16 1399 E info@akbild.ac.at www.akbild.ac.at Opening hours: Tue.–Sun. 10:00 am–6:00 pm

EXHIBITION

“Living On | In Other Words on Living” OPENING

Exhibition “Living On | In Other Words on Living” Thu., 17 Nov. 2016 7:00 pm xhibit, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna The term ‘anthropocene’ was coined some time ago to denote a new geochronological era in which man has become a determining factor in biological, geological and atmospheric processes on earth.

Referencing Jacques Derrida’s essay “Learning to Live Finally,” the research project “Living On | In Other Words on Living” is a critical approach to this topic in three chapters, using afro-futuristic, feminist, literary and media-archaeological images and highlighting the economical, social and historical aspects of narratives about the end of the world. How do experiences, images and people continue to live

after the end of an era which they feel is the end of time? Are there any forms of expression beyond controlled historiography that allow us to exist after and beyond such historic events? Based on landscape views from Brazil, Upper Mesopotamia, Austria and Kuwait, the artists in the exhibition address the remembrance of genocide, massacre and delocalization, as well as the associated economization and experience of landscape or nature. Historical parallels between colonialism as a project of the modern era and its continuation in the form of climate and environment politics in the Global South (cf. Bruno Latour’s concept of “diplomacy”) will be illustrated by showing Thomas Ender’s watercolors from Brazil, indige­ nous material culture as aesthetic production, and in dialogues about artworks.

Artists: Lorenz Helfer, Max Jorge Hinderer Cruz, Clara Ianni & Clara Ianni in collaboration with Débora Maria da Silva, Monira Al Qadiri, Juliana dos Santos, and others

Curated by: Delal Isci and Thiago de Paula Souza

Clara Ianni in collaboration with Débora Maria da Silva, Apelo/Plea, still frame © Clara Ianni

EXHIBITION

“Living On | In Other Words on Living” 18 Nov. 2016–8 Jan. 2017 xhibit, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna

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Art Cluster Member

Albertina

Albertina Albertinaplatz 1 1010 Vienna T +43 1 534 83 0 F +43 1 534 83 430 E info@albertina.at www.albertina.at Opening hours: Thu.–Tue. 10:00 am–6:00 pm Wed. 10:00 am–9:00 pm

CONVERSATION

“Too beautiful to be true?”

Konrad Paul Liessmann, Kia Vahland and Klaus Albrecht Schröder in conversation Thu., 17 Nov. 2016 6:30 pm Hall of the Muses In German

For centuries, art has been regarded as the epitome of beauty, if not beauty itself. And yet a number of today’s artists seem to be suffering from a kind of “callophobia” – fear of beauty: perish the thought that their work should be seen as merely decorative! But even contemporary artists have to grapple with the notion of beauty in some form, be it in a criticism of advertising, media and popular beauty standards or as a provocation, in a conscious turn to the supposedly ugly.

In a conversation titled “Zu schön, um wahr zu sein? Schönheit, Schein und das Wahre in der Kunst,” culture editor Kia Vahland of the “Süddeut­ sche” newspaper speaks with philosopher Konrad Paul Liessmann and Albertina Director Klaus Albrecht Schröder about the idea and purpose of beauty in art.

GUIDED TOUR

FAMILY ART DAY

Curator Heinz Widauer gives a tour of the exhibition “Seurat, Signac, Van Gogh. Ways of Pointillism”*

Children’s guided tour of the exhibition “Seurat, Signac, Van Gogh. Ways of Pointillism”*

Wed., 16 Nov. 2016 4:00 pm

Sun., 20 Nov. 2016 10:30 am

In German

The Pointillists put an end to the naturalistic representation in art.

The dots, colors and light in their paintings assumed a life of their own, creating new pictorial realities.

Curator Heinz Widauer gives a tour of the exhibition, which features 100 selected works that illustrate the development of this innovative, dot-based method between 1886 and 1930. * Limited number of participants. Registration is required: E presse@albertina.at

In German

What makes a painting? Colors and shapes. When painters resolve to apply color only by means of dots, the result is a new art movement, Pointillism. We’ll be showing you “dot paintings” by famous artists such as Vincent Van Gogh, Georges Seurat and Paul Signac. Join us for a wealth of challenging perception games and sensory conundrums in a one-hour guided tour for children aged six to twelve. *

Limited number of participants. Registration is required: call the Albertina art education team on T +43 1 534 83 540 or send an email to besucher@albertina.at

EXHIBITION

“Seurat, Signac, Van Gogh.

Ways of Pointillism” 16 Sep. 2016–8 Jan. 2017 Théo van Rysselberghe, July before Noon, or The Family in an Orchard, 1890 Courtesy: Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo

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Art Cluster Member

Architekturzentrum Wien

Architekturzentrum Wien Museumsplatz 1 1070 Vienna T +43 1 522 31 15 F +43 1 522 31 17 E office@azw.at www.azw.at Opening hours: 10:00 am–7:00 pm, daily

EXHIBITION

CONGRESS

STUDIO VISITS

“In the End: Architecture.

Time Travel 1959–2019”

20th Vienna Architecture Congress

6 Oct. 2016–20 March 2017

18–20 Nov. 2016

Az W in the field: tours of selected architecture studios*

Old Hall, Architekturzentrum Wien

In English

On the occasion of Director Dietmar Steiner’s taking his leave, the Az W addresses the present state of architecture. Its rapid development in the course of globalization in recent decades has left architecture in a deep crisis: after a period of disorientation, new trends have emerged. Some are marked by social commitment, others by awareness of historical or regional tradition. Barely visible at the beginning, they have breathed new life into the discipline and are now at the heart of theoretical discourse. The exhibition meanders between contemporary themes and historical references, narrating an architectural history that takes the present as point of departure.

As part of the exhibition “In the End: Architecture,” leading architecture theoreticians and architects of our time were invited for a cross-genera­ tional exchange of views at the 20.

Vienna Architecture Congress. There will be kick-off speeches and numerous top-class talks to review the historical development of architecture on the basis of individual topics, thus providing a platform for comments on the exhibition.

Participants: Richard Burdett, Jean-Louis Cohen, Irina Davidovici, Nathalie de Vries, Roger Diener, Oliver Elser, Anna Heringer, Jacques Herzog, Steven Holl, Ulrike Jehle, Elke Krasny, Wilfried Kühn, Anne Lacaton, Vittorio Magnano Lampu­ gnani, Sami Rintala, Bruno Reichlin, Stephan Trüby, Ana Maria Zahariade Information and tickets: www.azw.at/kongress

Museo del Novecento, Milano © Comune di Milano

Fri., 18 Nov. 2016 1:45–6:00 pm In German

On the occasion of the exhibition “In the End: Architecture,” the Studio Visits are dedicated to the question of what tendencies, figures, pro­ jects and phenomena have shaped Vienna’s architecture internationally over the last 60 years. The three studios along the bus tour are regarded as Viennese references and are going to give an insight into their current projects and practices.

1:45 pm: meeting point Az W shop, Museumsplatz 1, 1070 Vienna 2:00 pm: shuttle departs 2:30–3:15 pm: studio Boris Podrecca 3:45–4:30 pm: studio Werner Neuwirth 4:45–5:30 pm: studio architect Krischanitz 6:00 pm: return to Az W Moderation: Anneke Essl, Az W * The maximum number of participants is 25.

Registration starts on 2 Nov. 2016 (by email only): E office@azw.at 7

Art Cluster Member

Belvedere

Upper Belvedere Prinz-Eugen-Strasse 27 1030 Vienna Opening hours: 10:00 am–6:00 pm, daily Lower Belvedere, Orangery Rennweg 6 1030 Vienna Opening hours: 10:00 am–6:00 pm, daily Wed. 10:00 am–9:00 pm T +43 1 795 57 134 F +43 1 795 57 136 E public@belvedere.at www.belvedere.at

GUIDED TOUR

GUIDED TOUR

CONVERSATION

Curator Markus Fellinger gives a tour of the exhibition “Tina Blau”*

Curator Sabine Grabner gives a tour of the exhibition “Is that Biedermeier?”*

Harald Krejci, chief curator of 21er Haus, in a conversation with artist Hubert Scheibl*

Wed., 16 Nov. 2016 5:30 pm Lower Belvedere

Sat., 19 Nov. 2016 2:00 pm Lower Belvedere / Orangery

In German

In German

The exhibition “Is that Biedermeier?

Amerling, Waldmüller, and More” focuses on painting between 1830 and 1860, i.e. art from an era that started in, but extended far beyond the Biedermeier period. These decades were a golden age in the development of painting, as the exhibition demonstrates in a selection of representative works by masters like Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller and Friedrich Amerling. The focus is on Vienna, with a special tribute to Waldmüller’s late work, and on interior design – furniture manufacture in particular – which developed tremendously during these years.

The Belvedere features one of the most recent work series by Huber Scheibl, an eminent representative of Austria’s abstract-sensitive, gesture-intense painting. The show juxtaposes large paintings and space installations of various dimensions, transforming the Orangery’s architecture into a mysterious labyrinth of rooms and images. The large, abstract canvases characteristic of Scheibl’s work increasingly disrupt the spatial structure and transform the beholders’ perception and awareness of the picture plane.

Mon., 14 Nov. 2016 4:30 pm Upper Belvedere In German

One hundred years after her death, the Belvedere is paying tribute to the painter Tina Blau in an exhibition from the series “Masterpieces in Focus.” The show features major works from every stage of the artist’s career as well as less-known paintings that came to light during research for the new catalogue raisonné of her work. Born in Vienna in 1845, Tina Blau ranks among the most successful landscapists of her time. She co-founded and taught at Vienna’s art school for women and girls and, through her courageous and independent personality, had a tremendous influence on subsequent generations of young female artists.

EXHIBITION

EXHIBITION

“Masterpieces in Focus: Tina Blau”

“Is that Biedermeier?

Amerling, Waldmüller, and More”

4 Nov. 2016–15 Jan. 2017 Upper Belvedere

EXHIBITION

Hubert Scheibl 9 Nov. 2016–5 March 2017 Lower Belvedere / Orangery

21 Oct. 2016–12 Feb. 2017 Lower Belvedere * Limited number of participants. Registration is required: www.belvedere.at/de/events E public@belvedere.at Hubert Scheibl, Desastres, 2013/14 © Hubert Scheibl, Photo: Armin Plankensteiner

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Art Cluster Member

DOROTHEUM Dorotheergasse 17 1010 Vienna T +43 1 515 60 550 F +43 1 515 60 467 www.dorotheum.com Opening hours: Mon.–Fri. 10:00 am–6:00 pm Sat. 9:00 am–5:00 pm

Photo: eSeL.at / Joanna Pianka

DOROTHEUM

PANEL DISCUSSION

“Art venues Vienna–Rome.

A comparison“ Thu., 17 Nov. 2016 6:00–7:30 pm In English

Protagonists of the art hub of Rome will be talking about the city’s contemporary art scene, which brims with collaborative initiatives and new synergies between the private and public sectors.

Constantin Luser, artist, Vienna; Elfie Semotan, photographer, Vienna; Christoph Thun-Hohenstein, Director of MAK Vienna; Laurids Ortner, architect, Ortner & Ortner Baukunst, Vienna Moderated by Michael Freund, “Der Standard” newspaper, Vienna

Panelists: Flavio Ferri, Vice President of Fondazione per l’Arte, Rome; Bartolomeo Pietromarchi, Director of MAXXI, Rome; Pier Paolo Pancotto, independent curator, Rome; Luca Lo Pinto, curator, Kunsthalle Wien Moderated by Maria Alicata, curator and art critic, Rome

PANEL DISCUSSION

PANEL DISCUSSION

Vienna boasts an incredible density of great museums, exhibition venues, galleries and high-class art universities. What have Vienna’s art institutions achieved in recent years and what remains to be done in order to consolidate the city’s position as an international center of art.

“Space for New Ideas.

Art and Urban Development” Fri., 18 Nov. 2016 4:00–5:30 pm In German

A high-class panel of experts on art, architecture and urban development discuss the role of art as image factor and integral part of the cityscape, its benefit for society, and the balancing act between art and promotion.

Panelists: Thomas Jakoubek, Executive Director of BAI, Vienna;

“Creative City Vienna.

Challenges and potentialities for art institutions” Fri., 18 Nov. 2016 6:00–7:30 pm In German

Panelists: Gerald Bast, University of Applied Arts Vienna; Matti Bunzl, Wien Museum; Hans Knoll, Association of Austrian Galleries of Modern Art, Vienna; Bettina Leidl, KUNST HAUS WIEN; Robert Punkenhofer, Artistic Director of VIENNA ART WEEK; Klaus Albrecht Schröder,

Albertina, Vienna; Hans-Peter Wipplinger, Leopold Museum, Vienna Moderated by Sabine B. Vogel, art critic and curator, Vienna GUIDED TOURS

Previews of the auctions “Modern Art” and “Contemporary Art” 14–18 Nov. 2016 10:00 am–6:00 pm on all days Sat., 19 Nov. 2016 9:00 am–5:00 pm Sun., 20 Nov. 2016 2:00-5:00 pm All items of modern and con­ temporary art to be auctioned at DOROTHEUM in its fourth week of auction (21–25 Nov. 2016) will be put on display during VIENNA ART WEEK. Experts on modern and contemporary art will be standing by for information and guided tours; for prior appointment, call T +43 1 515 60 550.

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Art Cluster Member

Austrian Film Museum

Austrian Film Museum Augustinerstrasse 1 1010 Vienna (in the Albertina building) T +43 1 533 70 54 F +43 1 533 70 54 25 E office@filmmuseum.at www.filmmuseum.at Opening hours: Office: Mon.–Thu. 10:00 am–6:00 pm Fri. 10:00 am–1:00 pm Library: Mon., Thu. 12:00 noon–6:00 pm The evening box office opens one hour prior to the first screening.

SERIES OF SCREENINGS AND TALKS

“The Last Machine.”

Analog cinematic art from Berlin, Paris, Vienna 16–18 Nov. 2016 “No activity can become an art until its proper epoch has ended and it has dwindled, as an aid of survival, into total obsolescence,” Hollis Frampton states in an essay describing analogue film as the “Last Machine.”

While the idea that analogue film is obsolete and is outdated is one we hear mostly in the context of today’s media industry, a kind of countermovement has emerged in cinephile circles and within the art world: it seems many are only just now rediscovering the singularity and beauty of this last mechanical art.

For VIENNA ART WEEK, the Film Museum is focusing on three places where celluloid is never considered obsolete and is very deliberately chosen as a medium: Vienna’s “School Friedl Kubelka for Independent Film,” now celebrating its tenth anniversary, is a rare case of an analogue film-focused educational institution in the proper sense of the word. Its curriculum-based program stands in contrast to LaborBerlin, which operates more as an independent film

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collective centered around analogue film and, consequently, an analogue film processing lab. The structure of the Berlin group echoes that of L’Abominable, a Paris workshop and artist collective that has been supporting, accompanying and helping to develop analogue film projects for the past 20 years.

The film and discussion series “The Last Machine” consists of three program points and highlights a representative selection of works that started circulating around these institutions. Through dialogue with protagonists from these three groups, it also gives insight into the contexts and structures that actually allow film to live on despite its industrial extinction, helping it to unleash its unruly forces in new orbits of our worldview.

SCREENING | TALK

“The Last Machine” VIENNA School Friedl Kubelka: screenings and talk with Philipp Fleischmann Wed., 16 Nov. 2016 8:15 pm In German

SCREENING | TALK

“The Last Machine” BERLIN LaborBerlin: screenings and talk with Linn Löffler Thu., 17 Nov. 2016 8:15 pm In German

SCREENING | TALK

“The Last Machine” PARIS L’Abominable: screenings and talk with Nicolas Rey Fri., 18 Nov. 2016 6:30 pm and 8:30 pm In English

Nicolas Rey, Autrement la Molussie, film still, 2012

Art Cluster Member

Austrian Frederick and Lillian Kiesler Private Foundation

Austrian Frederick and Lillian Kiesler Private Foundation Mariahilfer Strasse 1b 1060 Vienna T +43 1 513 07 75 E office@kiesler.org www.kiesler.org Opening hours: Tue.–Fri. 9:00 am–5:00 pm

EXHIBITION

“Designing Tomorrow: Frederick Kiesler’s Mergentime Apartment” 8 Nov. 2016–17 Feb. 2017 Nesting side tables cast in aluminum, drop-shaped floor lamps, unconventional cantilever chairs, three-legged stools and a lounge sofa with “enough space to seat an entire party”: Frederick Kiesler’s mid-1930s design for Charles and Marguerita Mergentime’s apartment included an entire universe of cutting-edge furniture. Given the highly functional and aesthetic quality of this interior it is hard to believe that the designs were never produced as a series and that the Mergentime apartment would be the only one Kiesler ever designed.

Two lucky coincidences have given cause to dedicate an exhibition to the Mergentime apartment after more than 80 years: in cooperation with the Frederick Kiesler Foundation and a private sponsor, the Wittmann furniture workshops were able to purchase two of the eight original stools from the Mergentime apart-

ment, which have now been reissued as a new edition. Simultaneous to this, negatives of a previously unknown photo series documenting the Mergentime apartment have turned up in the estate of architect and photographer Robert Damora (1912–2009). After extensive restoration, they allow a first glimpse into Kiesler’s apartment design. We can now experience the apartment as a whole, and not just for the unique furniture pieces.

Kiesler continued to develop the nesting tables – considered ancestors of the kidney-shaped table – and extensively documented the new versions. Some 70 images of these elaborately-staged objects have survived. Taken in front of a neutral black background, the nesting tables seem to float in space, which makes them look like abstract geometrical compositions.

CONVERSATION

Exhibition talk with curators Jill Meißner and Gerd Zillner Tue., 15 Nov. 2016 4:00 pm In German

The exhibition talk will be followed by a champagne reception starting at around 5:00 pm with Peter Bogner, Director of the Austrian Frederick and Lillian Kiesler Private Foundation.

Nesting Table Photo: Ben Schall © Frederick Kiesler Foundation 11

Art Cluster Member

KÖR Kunst im öffentlichen Raum Wien

Kunst im öffentlichen Raum GmbH Museumsplatz 1 / stairway 15 1070 Vienna T +43 1 521 89 1257 F +43 1 521 89 1217 E office@koer.or.at www.koer.or.at

GUIDED TOUR

Competition winners Michael Sailstorfer and zwoPK give a tour of Südtiroler Platz* Sat., 19 Nov. 2016 2:00–3:00 pm Meeting point: Südtiroler Platz 2, 1040 Vienna In German

Redevelopment of the area around Vienna’s Hauptbahnhof (Main Station) included a new design for Südtiroler Platz, a square in the fourth district, which the municipality envisioned as the city’s new “vestibule.”

In fall 2013, residents were given an opportunity to make suggestions as to what the future square should look like. The results of the survey were incorporated into the anonymous competition initiated by KÖR Kunst im öffentlichen Raum (Art in the Public Space) and the MA 19 department for architecture and urban design.

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Six groups of competitors from Austria, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands developed sophisticated design concepts for the competition. While all submissions had been developed by architects and landscape planners together with artists, Michael Sailstorfer and zwoPK’s design emerged victorious in June 2014, with a great majority of votes.

Their concept includes four “green isles,” bordered by seating steps and light sculptures above the ventilation shafts of the subway as an art intervention. The winning design restructures the current square by playing on its insular character and connecting footpaths. The major footpaths not only remain intact but are upgraded. Four green isles are embraced by sitting areas, while drinking fountains, small play areas and sheltered sitting areas with lovely views offer many options for use, thus fulfilling a communicative function.

Michael Sailstorfer’s light sculptures floating above the ventilation shafts of the subway account for the importance of the square as a traffic hub. Sailstorfer visits sites to draw sketches of traffic situations and use them to design sculptures reminiscent of maps, paths or routes followed by travelers. * Limited number of participants.

Registration is required: E office@koer.or.at or T +43 1 521 89 1257

© cy architecture, 2014

Art Cluster Member

KUNST HAUS WIEN

KUNST HAUS WIEN Untere Weißgerber­ strasse 13 1030 Vienna T +43 1 712 04 91 F +43 1 712 04 96 E info@kunsthauswien. com www.kunsthauswien.com Opening hours: 10:00 am–7:00 pm, daily

OPENING

Peter Dressler and Nasan Tur exhibitions Tue., 15 Nov. 2016 7:00 pm EXHIBITION

EXHIBITION

Peter Dressler

Nasan Tur

16 Nov. 2016–23 Apr. 2017

16 Nov. 2016–28 Jan. 2017

Few figures have influenced Austrian post-1970s photography more than Peter Dressler, an artist, collector and critical member of the art scene.

His first photographic works were produced in the 1960s. The “Dressleresque Vienna” of the day was a city in which the “magic of everyday life is very evident.”

Nasan Tur’s works reflect the social conditions in which they were produced. Often they focus on political ideologies, subliminal messages and the symbols of power and contradiction that are to be found everywhere in the cityscape. The investigation of tensions between public action and apathy is an important aspect of his artistic approach; frequently, this involves a participatory element that implies the subjectivity or presence of the observer. The limits of communication, yet also the tentative, fragile character of perception, are some of the driving forces behind the artist’s working method and behind many of the situations he creates.

Nasan Tur was born in Germany in 1974; he lives in Berlin.

Born in 1942 in the Romanian city of Bras¸ ov, Peter Dressler studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna and then worked there as assistant professor of painting from 1972 to 2008, also developing a high profile in Friedensreich Hundert­ wasser’s class.

The exhibition at KUNST HAUS WIEN is the first comprehensive retrospective of his work since his death in September 2013.

Curated by: Rainer Iglar and Christine Frisinghelli

Curated by: Verena Kaspar-Eisert Nasan Tur, Time for Revollusion, 2008 © Nasan Tur Peter Dressler, From the Series “Aus unmittelbarer Nähe,” 2003 Photo: Jörg Burger 13

Art Cluster Member

Kunsthalle Wien

Kunsthalle Wien Museumsquartier Museumsplatz 1 1070 Vienna Kunsthalle Wien Karlsplatz Treitlstrasse 2 1040 Vienna T +43 1 521 89 33 E office@ kunsthallewien.at www.kunsthallewien.at facebook.com/ KunsthalleWien twitter.com/ KunsthalleWien instagram/KunsthalleWien blog.kunsthallewien.at Opening hours: Fri.–Wed. 11:00 am–7:00 pm Thu. 11:00 am–9:00 pm

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CONVERSATION

“The Experiment as Method”: Nicolaus Schafhausen in a convers­ ation with Beatrix Ruf Sat., 19 Nov. 2016 6:00 pm Kunsthalle Wien Museumsquartier

ized, digitalized world, all of the players within the art context – whether they are artists, curators or visitors – are facing new challenges. Beatrix Ruf, Director of the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, and Nicolaus Schafhausen, Director of Kunsthalle Wien, discuss issues revolving around exhibition making, production, education and collecting of contemporary art.

In German

What challenges do innovative contemporary art venues feel that they face? How is creating an exhibition different between institutions that collect or do not collect? How have both the perception of contemporary art and the self-image of artists changed within the exhibition context? What opportunities does innovation offer, what obstacles need to be negotiated? In a global-

Beatrix Ruf studied psychology, ethnology, art and cultural sciences in Zürich and Vienna, then went on to work as an independent curator, choreographer and critic. In 2001 she became head of Kunsthalle Zürich and was involved in numerous renowned international biennials and triennials. She has been Director of the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam since 2014.

Beatrix Ruf Photo: Robin De Puy

Art Cluster Member

Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien

Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien Maria Theresien-Platz 1010 Vienna T +43 1 525 24 4025 F +43 1 525 24 4098 E info@khm.at www.khm.at Opening hours: Tue.–Sun. 10:00 am–6:00 pm Thu. 10:00 am–9:00 pm

GUIDED TOUR

General Director Sabine Haag and artist Zenita Komad give a tour of the Kunstkammer* Tue., 15 Nov. 2016 10:30 am–12:00 noon Meeting point: Vestibule, Kunsthistorisches Museum In German

The Kunstkammer Wien is the most important collection of its kind in the world. Dedicated to 20 themes, its newly-designed rooms take their visitors to the land of beauty and wit, of curiosities and wonder. On a tour of the Kunstkammer, General Director Sabine Haag and artist Zenita Komad reveal some astonishing stories about (and personal views of) the precious exhibits.

GUIDED TOUR

Jasper Sharp gives a tour of the exhibition “Edmund de Waal: during the night”* Wed., 16 Nov. 2016 4:00 pm Meeting point: Vestibule, Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien In English

In 2012 the Kunsthistorisches Museum initiated an exhibition series, inviting internationally renowned artists to curate a show based on their personal choice of artworks from the museum’s collections. This fall, the curator is the British writer and artist Edmund de Waal. He visited Vienna repeatedly

over the past three years to inspect a great number of objects. Titled “during the night,” his choice of artworks opens with the watercolor of a nightmare by Albrecht Dürer from the Kunstkammer Wien. Other representations of dreams, anxiety, unrest and the moment between sleep and wakefulness were taken from the Picture Gallery, the Kunstkammer, the Collection of Antiquities, the Library, the Collection of Historic Musical Instruments, the Treasury, and the Kunstkammer of Ambras Castle. The show also includes loans from the Natural History Museum Vienna and an artwork by de Waal especially produced for the exhibition in Vienna.

GUIDED TOUR

Inspection of a work

by Peter Paul Rubens in the Picture Gallery’s conservation studio* Thu., 17 Nov. 2016 4:00 pm Meeting point: side entrance to the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Burgring 5, 1010 Vienna

Getty Panel Paintings Initiative.

Starting on 17 October 2017, a major Rubens exhibition will be on show at the Kunsthistorisches Museum.

FAMILY ART DAY

“The Beauty and the Beast”: guided tour for families* Sun., 20. Nov. 2016 12:00 noon Meeting point: Vestibule, Kunsthistorisches Museum In German

Our tour of the museum is not only about princesses and sublime landscapes; we shall also come across beastly creatures and disturbing paintings. Some of them are even more fascinating than beauties.

What do we perceive as beautiful and how do artists depict beauty? Are all monsters ugly and dangerous? Join us on a quest of beasts and beauties and decide for yourself which one you prefer. * Limited number of participants. Registration is required: E viennaartweek@khm.at

In German

Peter Paul Rubens’ “Stormy Landscape with Jupiter, Mercury, Philemon and Baucis” was committed to the care of the Picture Gallery’s conservation studio in 2015. Composed in several stages on a panel of 16 oak planks, this highly complex structure is the subject of comprehensive technological examination and conservation carried out at Kunsthistorisches Museum in cooperation with the

© KHM-Museumsverband 15

Art Cluster Member

Künstlerhaus 1050

Künstlerhaus 1050 Siebenbrunnengasse 19–21 building D/5th floor 1050 Vienna (alternative access via Stolberggasse 26) T +43 1 587 96 63 F +43 1 587 87 36 E office@k-haus.at www.k-haus.at By public transport: Bus 12A to Siebenbrunnengasse, 59A to Bacherplatz square; tram 62 to Laurenzgasse; U4 subway line to Pilgramgasse

DISCUSSION | PERFORMANCE

“A romANTIc evening – seeking beauty in Margareten” Tue., 15 Nov. 2016 6:00 pm In German and English

Renovations to the Künstlerhaus building on Karlsplatz prompted a lengthy search for an exhibition venue to use in the meantime. Now that S IMMO AG has given the Künstlerhaus access to the building on Siebenbrunnengasse 19–21, the institution has found an exciting and charming place to exhibit work over the next two years.

As part of the opening exhibition “romANTIc? – Our technological society needs Romanticism!” in the old Altmann knitwear factory in Margareten, artists will hold an open discussion about the existence

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of romanticism with guests from various generations. This evening of presentations, storytelling and performance will address the ambivalence between our longing to trust our feelings and intuition while at the same time mistrusting them. We will explore the dynamic interplay between a technology-saturated present and an era of dreaming big and feeling with all the senses, asking the question of how a visual language of “big emotions” might look today – an invitation to a sensory or entirely pragmatic encounter. What significance does Romanticism hold for us in the 21st century? Beauty notwithstanding – how much does it have to have? And, can Romanticism be beautiful, can it be too beautiful, can it be ugly?

Participating artists: Peer Bach, Stella Bach, Sibylle Gieselmann, Gerald Holzer, Ursula Hübner, Matthias Lautner, Gert Linke, Claudia Maria

Luenig, Nemanja Nikolic´, Karin Pliem, Helmut Pokornig, Kurt Stranitzky Curators: Stella Bach, Claudia Maria Luenig EXHIBITION

“romANTIc? – Our technological society needs Romanticism!” until 31 Jan. 2017

That's just – beautiful! Friends of the Künstlerhaus at the Cup on Karlsplatz 2016 Photo: Marika Rákóczy

Art Cluster Member

Leopold Museum

Leopold Museum Museumsplatz 1 1070 Vienna T +43 1 525 70 0 F +43 1 525 70 1500 E office@leopold­ museum.org www.leopoldmuseum.org Opening hours: Mon., Wed., Fri.–Sun. 10:00 am–6:00 pm Thu. 10:00 am–9:00 pm closed on Tuesdays

EXHIBITION

GUIDED TOUR

“Foreign Gods. Fascination Africa and Oceania”

Curator’s tour of the exhibition “Foreign Gods”*

23 Sep. 2016–9 Jan. 2017

Thu., 17 Nov. 2016 6:00 pm

African and Oceanic tribal art allegorized the people’s awe of the elements and epitomized their ancestors’ strength. In the early 20th century, Europeans introduced tribal objects to the pantheon of art. Rudolf Leopold, founder of the Leopold Museum, described them as “a priori Expressionist” and built a considerable collection of rare masks, figures, and cult objects over the decades.

“Foreign Gods” is the first exhibition to show them publicly and in their entirety after they were scientifically recorded. The exhibits enter into a lively dialogue with masterpieces by Pablo Picasso, Constantin Brâncus¸i, Max Pechstein, Emil Nolde, Max Ernst and other representatives of Modernism whose work dealt with art from other parts of the world. The exhibition also addresses Europe’s enthusiasm for the “primitive” art of African and Oceanic ethnicities from a postcolonial perspective.

In German

address materiality and its potential to create meaning: the exhibited artworks, most of which were produced for the show, place a new emphasis on tangible objects, their esthetics and history.

GUIDED TOUR

Curator Ivan Ristic´ gives a tour of the Leopold Museum’s collection of African and Oceanic art featuring in “Foreign Gods,” the first show of all items of the archive.

EXHIBITION

“The Poetics of the Material” 21 Oct. 2016–30 Jan. 2017 The exhibition features Benjamin Hirte, Sonia Leimer, Christian Mayer, Mathias Pöschl, Anne Schneider and Misha Stroj – six Vienna-based artists who reference the most diverse forms of narration and historicity and use a broad range of media and materials.

In recent years, the critical contemplation of historicity and its representation has increasingly become the focus of contemporary art, lots of which comments on the unfettered technical production of images blurring the boundaries between reality and virtuality. The opposite is true of the installations on show, which

Curator’s guided tour of the exhibition “The Poetics of the Material”* Thu., 17 Nov. 2016 7:00 pm In German

Curator Stephanie Damianitsch and the artists featuring in the show give a tour of “The Poetics of the Material.” * Limited number of participants. Registration is required by 16 November 2016: E kunstvermittlung@leopoldmuseum.org

Max Pechstein, Still Life with Negro Statues, 1918 Private collection/permanent loan from the Stiftung Schleswig-Holsteinische Landesmuseen Schloss Gottorf © Pechstein Hamburg/Tökendorf/Bildrecht, Vienna, 2015 17

Art Cluster Member

MAK

MAK – Austrian Museum of Applied Arts / Contemporary Art Stubenring 5 1010 Vienna T +43 1 711 36-231 F +43 1 711 36-291 E marketing@MAK.at www.MAK.at Opening hours: Tue. 10:00 am–10:00 pm Wed.–Sun. 10:00 am–6:00 pm Free admission on Tuesdays 6:00–10:00 pm

INTERVIEW MARATHON

“Seeking Beauty” Tue., 15 Nov. 2016 2:00–8:00 pm MAK Columned Main Hall In German and English

VIENNA ART WEEK’s performative interview marathon with Mark Evans, curator at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, designer Dejana Kabiljo, body and performance artist ORLAN, and literary theorist Barbara Vinken; performances by Krõõt Juurak and Anne Juren, Elisabeth von Samsonow, professor at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Station Rose, and Doris Uhlich.

GUIDED TOURS

Franz Graf, Constantin Luser, Eva Schlegel and Sofie Thorsen search the MAK Collection for “most beautiful things” Tue., 15 Nov. 2016 starting at 6:00 pm Meeting place: MAK Columned Main Hall In German

Often art is less about producing beauty than finding it. Whether this means actively looking for it or a beauty that simply catches the eye on its own is anyone’s guess. Applied art objects seem to call on us to acknowledge the idea of loveliness in gestures of everyday life and 18

to cultivate it beyond that. Beauty, in its obviousness, often appears immune to questions of relevance, and artistic discourses often sideline it in favor of object functionality or content. And yet we do see an interest in the concrete and often superficial practicality of pleasure, especially in art. But where does this pleasure stand relative to the apparent logic of object use? Beauty, unlike the material nature of surfaces, is not an object property or characteristic; it is a subjectively-rendered judgment.

MAK is inviting four contemporary artists and its visitors to search the MAK Collection for “beautiful things.” In a series of 45-minute tours led and moderated by Janina Falkner from the MAK Collection of Contemporary Art, Franz Graf, Constantin Luser, Eva Schlegel and Sofie Thorsen will highlight specific objects and speak about their individual approaches, various perspectives on beauty, and its significance for their specific artistic practice.

6:00 pm: guided tour with Eva Schlegel 7:00 pm: guided tour with Constantin Luser 8:00 pm: guided tour with Sofie Thorsen 9:00 pm: guided tour with Franz Graf

PERFORMANCE

Actress Susanne Sachsse performs as part of the exhibition “JOSIAH MCELHENY. The Ornament Museum” Sat., 19 Nov. 2016 5:00 pm Josiah McElheny’s installation “The Ornament Museum” reinterprets the formal design language of Viennese Modernism and raises questions concerning art and psychology. For his first solo exhibition in Austria, the New York artist has designed a museum within the museum in the form of a walk-in pavilion activated by a performance.

MAK Permanent Collection “ASIA. China – Japan – Korea,” 2016 In the foreground: two bronze statues (Buddha and Daoist deity), China, Ming period, 16th–17th c. © MAK/Georg Mayer

Art Cluster Member

MAK Branch Geymüllerschlössel

MAK Branch Geymüllerschlössel Pötzleinsdorfer Strasse 102 1180 Vienna T +43 1 711 36 231 or 248 E marketing@MAK.at www.MAK.at Opening hours in 2016: 1 May–4 Dec. every Sun. 11:00 am–6:00 pm during VIENNA ART WEEK also on Fri. 4:00–8:00 pm

CONVERSATION

Conversation with artist Martin Guttmann as part of “MAK ART SALON #01: Clegg & Guttmann.

Biedermeier reanimated” Fri., 18 Nov. 2016 5:00 pm In English

Geymüllerschlössel’s architecture and interior design invite visitors to experience and explore the richly diverse Biedermeier period firsthand.

True to the MAK’s programmatic approach of allowing various eras of applied arts, visual arts and architec-

ture to intermingle with one another, the new “MAK ART SALON” exhibition series at Geymüllerschlössel launches an exciting dialogue with contemporary artists about space, time and history. Built as a summer villa, the building is an example of a checkered past that has been forged over generations and is now being illuminated by the current issues of our time.

The new exhibition series kicks off with “Biedermeier reanimated,” an intervention by the artist duo Clegg & Guttmann. Conceived specifically for Geymüllerschlössel, the project uses the structure’s facade and interior as

a backdrop for a group of poignant tableaux composed of Biedermeierera furnishings, objects, instruments and materials. Specially lit and accompanied by music and spoken text, the scenic displays are activated in a theatrical tour of the rooms at Geymüllerschlössel, with the aim of bringing the summer villa on the outskirts of Vienna to life.

The artists are interviewed by Bärbel Vischer, curator of the exhibition and custodian of the MAK Contemporary Art Collection.

© Wolfgang Kraus, MAK 19

Art Cluster Member

mumok Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien

mumok Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien MuseumsQuartier, Museumsplatz 1 1070 Vienna T +43 1 525 00 0 F +43 1 525 13 00 E info@mumok.at www.mumok.at Opening hours: Mon. 2:00–7:00 pm Tue., Wed., Fri.–Sun. 10:00 am–7:00 pm Thu. 10:00 am–9:00 pm

EXHIBITION

GUIDED TOUR

Anna-Sophie Berger

Eva Chytilek and Jakob Neulinger give a tour of the exhibition “We Pioneers.

Trailblazers of Postwar Modernism”

22 Oct. 2016–29 Jan. 2017 Born in Vienna in 1989, artist AnnaSophie Berger is the first winner of the Kapsch Contemporary Art Prize.

The award was initiated in 2016 by Kapsch AG and mumok – Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, aiming to support young artists based in Austria.

Anna-Sophie Berger studied Fashion Design and Transmedia Arts at the University of Applied Arts Vienna.

Apart from a number of group exhibitions, her previous shows include solo exhibitions in New York (JTT and Ludlow 38) and Vienna (21er Haus and Mauve).

Berger works across all media, exploring the aesthetic and functional characteristics of images and everyday objects in changing conditions and environments, and their effect on viewers. For her solo exhibition at mumok, she has developed a sitespecific installation that references the architecture of the exhibition space and analyzes our society’s ability to enter into dialogues and discourses.

Curated by: Marianne Dobner

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Wed., 16 Nov. 2016 5:00 pm In German

Exhibition designer Eva Chytilek and sculptor Jakob Neulinger guide a special tour to offer new perspectives of the exhibition “We Pioneers. Trailblazers of Postwar Modernism.”

SCREENING

Video by Darja Bajagicć´ Thu., 17 Nov. 2016 7:00 pm mumok cinema In English

One part of Anna-Sophie Berger’s exhibition at mumok is the screening of a film by artist Darja Bajagic´. She was born in Podgorica, Montenegro, in 1990, and now lives and works in New York. Her art addresses controversial issues such as sexual power relations, censorship, authorship and identity. She works with images of the supposedly dark, underground world of porn stars, serial killers and goths. Bajagic´’s artistic practice compels viewers to face social taboos and understand them to be part of their own cultural identity. Anna-

Sophie Berger: “I find it particularly interesting how Darja Bajagic´ works with images in different media, which seem familiar and easy to classify at first sight, but then turn out to be complex codes with a psychological dimension. Especially her recent video works complicate the relation between images or signs and personal, narrative structures.”

Anna-Sophie Berger © Hanna Putz Darja Barjagic´ © Christian MacDonald

Art Cluster Member

MUSA

MUSA Museum Startgalerie Artothek Felderstrasse 6–8 1010 Vienna T +43 1 4000 8400 F +43 1 4000 99 8400 E musa@musa.at www.musa.at Opening hours: Tue., Wed., Fri. 11:00 am–6:00 pm Thu. 11:00 am–8:00 pm Sat. 11:00 am–4:00 pm

PANEL DISCUSSION

“Eyes On” talk: “This Beast Called Beauty” Thu., 17 Nov. 2016 7:00 pm In German

How does contemporary photography deal with the subject of beauty?

Which notion of beauty is even relevant in art anymore, or is already out of date? How is photography as a medium used to critique the prevailing concept of beauty?

In a discussion titled “This Beast Called Beauty,” we tackle this fractious concept of beauty – a concept that is as difficult to grasp in art history and philosophy as it is in artistic and social practice. Not only are we

faced with a wildly diverse array of theoretical positions, aesthetics and artistic practices, but recourse to the dominant concept of beauty found in product advertising, brand communication and fashion photography is anything but uniform.

This talk negotiates “Seeking Beauty,” the motto of this year’s VIENNA ART WEEK, with concrete art photography projects shown as part of “Eyes On – Month of Photography Vienna.” Various approaches to nude photography from the “Nu Nudes” exhibition curated by Elsa Okazaki (text: Magdalena Vukovic´) stand in dialogue with the taboo- and sexual fantasy-charged tension of photographer Ursula Röck’s project “Palms & Penguins.” Christiane Peschek and Gianmaria Gava’s work “Extended

Landscapes / Temporary Promises” reflects mechanisms of perception and memory, while the project “Wieso?” by photographers Gerlinde Gorla and Gabriele Koch deconstructs the unreality of fashion photographs through their meticulous re-enactment.

Panelists: Gabriela Koch, Christiane Peschek, Ursula Röck, Magdalena Vukovic´ Moderation: Andreas J. Hirsch

© Ursula Röck, PALMS & PENGUINS, 2012 21

Art Cluster Member

Q21/MuseumsQuartier Wien

Q21/ MuseumsQuartier Wien Museumsplatz 1 1070 Vienna T +43 1 523 58 81 F +43 1 523 58 86 E q21tours@mqw.at www.Q21.at facebook.com/Q21vienna twitter.com/Q21_vienna instagram.com/Q21_ vienna Admission is free

EXHIBITION

GUIDED TOUR

SOUND INSTALLATION

“SeekingBeautyQ21”

Curators Gülsen Bal and Walter Seidl give a tour of the exhibition “What is left?”

TONSPUR 72: Artist in Residence Charlemagne Palestine

Wed., 16 Nov. 2016 7:00 pm

MQ, TONSPUR_passage (between courts 7 and 8)

MQ, frei_raum Q21 exhibition space

As part of the Q21/MQ’s artist-inresidence program, US-American minimal music pioneer and Gesamtkunstwerk Charlemagne Palestine has composed a sound-image installation. He is one of the foremost minimalist composers, along with La Monte Young, Terry Riley and Philip Glass, and has also made a name for himself as an object and installation artist. His sound track is another highlight in the “TONSPUR for a public space” series, initiated in 2003.

14–20 Nov. 2016 10:00 am–10:00 pm on all days MQ, Electric Avenue | Room D / Q21 | Twitter, Facebook, Instagram & Flickr The project “SeekingBeautyQ21” visualizes the Q21 users’ divergent ideas of beauty, both as an exhibition and as an accompanying initiative on the social media channels of Q21.

In the weeks before the exhibition, images and texts focusing on the subject of beauty are collected via digital channels under the hashtag “#SeekingBeautyQ21.” During VIENNA ART WEEK, they will be exhibited in digital and analog form in show rooms along Electric Avenue and in Room D / Q21. Visitors are welcome to add some digital photos to the discoveries they make at Q21.

Concept & realization: eSeL & Q21/ MuseumsQuartier Wien PERFORMANCE

Katarina Zdjelar performs “By Burning We Obtain One Gram of Powder” Wed., 16 Nov. 2016 6:00 pm

In German and English

The exhibition “What is left?” explores alternative life forms and non-hegemonic political and financial systems, asking how cultural diversity can best be empowered through art in order to counteract unilateral forms of post-global thinking and draw new boundary lines between past and future.

10:00 am–8:00 pm on all days

Aiming to unveil the rapid process of change based on a series of historic watershed events, “What is left?” challenges any type of space as a place of intervention and interruption. Interventions don’t always come from outside but are frequently the result of internal power struggles aimed to enforce self-articulation and self-empowerment.

Artists: Halil Altındere, Sabine Bitter & Helmut Weber, Jan De Cock, Mona Hatoum, Nasan Tur, among others

MQ, frei_raum Q21 exhibition space Sabine Bitter & Helmut Weber, Untitled (for now) – Neue Räume des Gesellschaftlichen, installation view, 2015 22

Art Cluster Member

Secession

Secession Friedrichstrasse 12 1010 Vienna T +43 1 587 53 07 F +43 1 587 53 07 34 www.secession.at Opening hours: Tue.–Sun. 10:00 am–6:00 pm

CONVERSATION

Artist Francis Alÿs in conversation Thu., 17 Nov. 2016 6:00 pm In English

Event by Friends of the Secession OPENING

Exhibitions: Francis Alÿs and Avery Singer Thu., 17 Nov. 2016 7:00 pm GUIDED TOUR

Guided tour by and dialog between Avery Singer and curator Annette Südbeck Fri., 18 Nov. 2016 3:00 pm In English

FAMILY ART DAY

Guided tour for families through the Francis Alÿs and Avery Singer exhibitions* Sun., 20 Nov. 2016 3:00 pm In German * Registration is required: T +43 1 587 53 07, E kunstvermittlung@secession.at

EXHIBITION

EXHIBITION

Francis Alÿs

Avery Singer

18 Nov. 2016–22 Jan. 2017 Main hall

18 Nov. 2016–22 Jan. 2017 Gallery

Alÿs transforms simple actions in the public sphere into symbolic political and poetical gestures that broach issues such as national boundaries, social inequality, or intra-communal conflict. His actions and performances often spawn a range of associated works and media.

The Secession presents the work of young American painter Avery Singer, whose art effortlessly integrates references to art history and contemporaneity with an exploration of the underpinnings and mechanisms of digital media.

His show at the Secession includes “Le Temps du Sommeil,” a series of small-sized paintings which have been continuously reworked since 1995 and reflect his ideas and the development of his œuvre in recent decades.

Singer’s large-format pictures bristle with elaborate formal and semantic contradiction. Her motifs often highlight the processes of banalization that we associate with the stereotypes of the art scene and that make artistic careers appear as nostalgic, commercially constructed fantasies: ritualized behavior during studio visits, conventions of exhibition-making, the premises of Singer’s own art production, happenings and parties …

Avery Singer, Untitled, 2015 Courtesy: the artist and Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler, Berlin Photo: Thomas Mueller 23

Art Cluster Member

Sigmund Freud Museum

Sigmund Freud Museum Berggasse 19 1090 Vienna T +43 1 319 15 96 F +43 1 317 02 79 E office@freud-museum.at www.freud-museum.at Opening hours: 10:00 am–6:00 pm, daily

CONVERSATION

“The two sides of one coin: Freud Museum London & Sigmund Freud Museum Wien”* Fri., 18 Nov. 2016 12:00 noon In English

For many years now, the site where Sigmund Freud developed his theories of psychoanalysis has offered contemporary art a space to explore diverse sociocultural issues. The current exhibition, “Setting Memory,” shows works developed and selected especially for the Sigmund Freud Museum by London-based artists Bettina von Zwehl and Paul Coldwell. The reference to the life and work of the former residents of 24

Berggasse 19 – Anna and Sigmund Freud – transforms the scene of early psychoanalysis into a visual platform of discourse on themes such as “memory,” “intimacy,” “loss,” as well as “awakening” and “re-orientation.”

Carol Seigel, Director of the Freud Museum in London, and Monika Pessler, Director of the Sigmund Freud Museum in Vienna, discuss the relationship between two institutions inextricably linked by their history. In the future, the two buildings are to be seen as “two sides of one coin,” and will be embedded as such within the museum context and cultural evolution of Europe.

The new science of the unconscious established by Freud on Berggasse 19 in Vienna at the turn of the 20th century was continued, further

developed and disseminated following his expulsion to London in 1938.

Today, its effects can still be felt far beyond the European cultural environment. For the two museologists, its documentation and mediation to a broad international public is a task that extends beyond national concerns, and one that is diametrically opposed to the current culture of exclusion and dissociation. * Registration is required: E veranstaltung@freud-museum.at

Bettina von Zwehl, The Session, 2016 (detail)

Art Cluster Member

Sammlung Friedrichshof Stadtraum Sammlung Friedrichshof Stadtraum Schleifmühlgasse 6 / courtyard 1040 Vienna T +43 2147 7000 190 E oucherif@friedrichshof.at www.sammlungfriedrichshof.at Opening hours: Tue.–Fri. 2:00–6:00 pm

EXHIBITION

“Yasumasa Morimura.

One Hundred M’s self-portraits” 30 Apr.–18 Nov. 2016 Friedrichshof Collection, Römerstrasse 7, 2424 Zurndorf Friedrichshof Stadtraum, Schleifmühlgasse 6 / courtyard, 1040 Vienna Artist Yasumasa Morimura has been working as a conceptual photographer and filmmaker for over three decades, though in fact his œuvre is closer to performance art than to conventional art photography. A leading representative of “staged photography,” Morimura uses props, costumes, makeup, and digital manipulation to undergo an impressive metamorphosis and become a subject of the Western art and cultural canon. Morimura’s Appropriation Art questions authorship, originality and intellectual property, and addresses issues such as gender, identity and difference.

The focus of the exhibition at the Friedrichshof Collection in Zurndorf is on the artist’s emblematic photographic series “One Hundred M’s self-portraits.”

An accompanying exhibition at Stadtraum (Friedrichshof’s city space in Vienna) features pictures from the series “Las Meninas renacen de noche.” Morimura has appropriated pictures by Diego Velázquez since 1990, when he expanded his series of photographs by an impersonation of “Princess Margarita.” In addition to the figures from Velázquez’ painting, eleven in total, Morimura for the first time impersonates his – uncostumed – artistic self.

LECTURE

Yasumasa Morimura on his œuvre Tue., 15 Nov. 2016 7:00 pm Friedrichshof Stadtraum, Schleifmühlgasse 6 / courtyard, 1040 Vienna In English

Yasumasa Morimura talks about his œuvre in a one-hour lecture. His photographs are based on masterpieces by famous artists like Édouard Manet, Frida Kahlo and Vincent van Gogh. He also restages selected pictures from historical sources, mass media, and popular culture. By reinventing iconic photographs and masterpieces of art history he challenges traditional views of their subjects and comments on Japan’s complex relationship with the West and its absorption of Western culture.

SCREENING

Yasumasa Morimura – films and videos Tue., 15 Nov. 2016 8:30 pm Top Kino, Rahlgasse 1, 1060 Vienna Screening of a representative selection of works from Yasumasa Morimura’s film œuvre.

Entrance is free! © Sofia Goscinski © Yasumasa Morimura + ROJIAN 25

Art Cluster Member

TBA21

Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary–Augarten Scherzergasse 1A 1020 Vienna T +43 1 513 98 56 24 E augarten@tba21.org www.tba21.org Opening hours: Wed., Thu. 12:00 noon–5:00 pm Fri.–Sun. 12:00 noon–7:00 pm

GUIDED TOUR

Curator Cory Scozzari gives a tour of the exhibition “An Arrival Tale” Sat., 19 Nov. 2016 11:00 am In English

The Mexican artist Mario García Torres (born 1975) deploys investigative artistic strategies to uncover hidden narratives, embedded in archives, environments and sites, and thereby document the state and limitations of historical records and objects. In his work, he uses a number of narrative techniques including fictional letters, reports, and first-person narration to stage forms of appropriation, re-enactment and repetition, 26

or potentialities thereof. “An Arrival Tale,” an exhibition at Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary (TBA21) Augarten, uses a conceptual gesture to detach works by the artist in the TBA21 collection from their original contexts and descriptions and open them for reinscription as a collection of narratives and artistic experiments.

EXHIBITION

“Mario García Torres: An Arrival Tale” 18 June–20 Nov. 2016

Mario García Torres, The Way They Looked at Each Other, undated, work commissioned by TBA21 Photo: Nik Wheelr / Alamy

Art Cluster Member

University of Applied Arts Vienna

University of Applied Arts Vienna Exhibition Centre Heiligenkreuzer Hof Schönlaterngasse 3 1010 Vienna T +43 1 711 33 2160 E info@uni-ak.ac.at www.dieangewandte.at Opening hours: Mon.−Fri. 2:00−6:00 pm

EXHIBITION

“Glance” EXHIBITION

“Glance” 9–25 Nov. 2016 Opening: 8 Nov. 2016, 6:30 pm

open exhibition formats that widen the medium discursively, based on a photographic perspective. The individual works, photographs, room and video installations, drawings, and sound projects form symbiotic relationships and provide progressive alternatives to generally accepted norms. The focus is on radical free spaces of thought.

we see an idea we think it’s taking us somewhere without anything being said I have a weird understanding

Students of Gabriele Rothemann’s photography class show new works, try out various artistic strategies, and develop utopias and ideas. “Glance” is the starting point for projects and

Anna Sophia Russmann, nun beschämt es mich, dem impuls nicht gefolgt zu sein, das geschehen sofort zu veranlassen, 2016 27

Art Cluster Member

Wien Museum Wien Museum Karlsplatz 1040 Vienna T +43 1 505 87 47 0 F +43 1 505 87 47 7201 E service@wienmuseum.at www.wienmuseum.at Opening hours: Tue.–Sun. and on public holidays 10:00 am–6:00 pm

PANEL DISCUSSION

Science for the City.

The issue of diversity in the working environment and health policy Mon., 14 Nov. 2016 6:30 pm In German

Human, social and cultural sciences are an inherent part of Vienna. The panel references ongoing research work to highlight current social challenges with respect to diversity.

The debate focuses on issues of labor migration and health policy in terms of diversity.

Panelists: Klemens Himpele, head of the Dept. for Economic Affairs, Labour and Statistics (MA 23) of the City of Vienna; Ulrike Felt, Dept. of Science and Technology Studies, University of Vienna; Christoph Reinprecht, Dept. of Sociology, University of Vienna, among others Moderated by Matti Bunzl, Director of Wien Museum In cooperation with the Vienna Science and Technology Fund (WWTF).

EXHIBITION

“Sex in Vienna. Desire.

Control. Transgression” 15 Sep. 2016–22 Jan. 2017

The nightclub “Moulin Rouge” on Walfischgasse © Imagno 28

People have always had sex. But the forms and representation of sex as well as the social and individual significance attached to it have changed over time. These changes have never been more profound than during the process of urbanization. The modern city provided free spaces that enabled new forms of sexuality, both in terms of practices and identities. The urban milieu promised anonymity, an escape from social control, and the

fulfillment of sexual desire. But the modern city also spelled constraint, making possible new configurations of surveillance and enabling new ways of disciplining and categorizing sex. Yet neither moralistic sermons nor the medicalization of sex, nor in fact monitoring by the police could curb what took place in the city’s secluded bedrooms, secret places, and darkened corners.

Based on this continuous conflict between the “wild” practices of a libidinous life and the attempts of repression, the exhibition “Sex in Vienna” gives a historical review of urban sexuality from the 19th to the 21st centuries. In the rapidly growing city of Vienna, the controversy over freedom and repression resulted in heated debates on sexuality, for example when, around 1900, sex became a fiercely disputed issue in terms of social and individual development and Vienna became the center of an emerging sexual science.

“Sex in Vienna” shows which areas of the city were open to which groups of people for which forms of sex in the past, and whether or not this is still the case today. It also shows which groups tried, and continue to try, to expand or limit these spaces.

GUIDED TOUR

Wien Museum curator Martina Nußbaumer gives a tour of the exhibition “Sex in Vienna” Tue., 15 Nov. 2016 4:00 pm In German

GUIDED TOUR

QWIEN curator Andreas Brunner gives a tour of the exhibition “Sex in Vienna” Thu., 17 Nov. 2016 4:00 pm In German

CONVERSATION

“Queer Aesthetics” – Matti Bunzl in conversation with historian George Chauncey Sat., 19 Nov. 2016 4:00 pm In English

“The homosexual” in art has been hotly debated since the 1960s, when Susan Sontag attempted to anatomize the aesthetics of camp. Is there a queer culture? And if so, what are its attributes? As part of the exhibition “Sex in Vienna,” Wien Museum Director Matti Bunzl discusses this question with historian George Chauncey, Professor at Yale University and a leading international expert on gay history. His groundbreaking study “Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890–1940” is the founding text of modern gay and lesbian historiography. After years of devoting his expertise to the ultimately successful fight for gay marriage, Chauncey is currently working on the study’s eagerly anticipated continuation.

Art Cluster Member

The Winterpalais of Prince Eugene of Savoy

The Winterpalais of Prince Eugene of Savoy Himmelpfortgasse 8 1010 Vienna T +43 1 795 57 134 E public@belvedere.at www.belvedere.at Opening hours: 10:00 am–6:00 pm, daily

GUIDED TOUR

Curator Maike Hohn gives a tour of the exhibition “Johann Georg Pinsel”* Fri., 18 Nov. 2016 4:30 pm In German

Johann Georg Pinsel was an eminent Baroque sculptor in what is now Ukraine. He left his mark on the sculptural activity in the area between Lviv and Buchach for about a decade and a half. Pinsel died in 1761 or 1762 and remains a mysterious figure to this day. His first names were unknown for a long time, and there is still a lot of speculation on his origin and education. Most of his Baroque sculptures of wood or stone were made for churches, which he equipped in close collaboration with architect Bernard Meretyn. Their

tremendous expressiveness is due not only to gestures and facial expressions but even more so to the design of their garments, which was often flamboyant. All in all, it is safe to say that Johann Georg Pinsel’s form language was unrivaled in contemporary Europe.

EXHIBITION

Johann Georg Pinsel 26 Oct. 2016–12 Feb. 2017

Johann Georg Pinsel, Samson tearing the Lion's Mouth, around 1758 Lviv, National Gallery . © Dariusz Bl/ azewski

GUIDED TOUR

Unique Winterpalais* Sat., 19 Nov. 2016 11:00 am In German

How come there’s a cyclist in a Baroque picture that was painted long before bicycles were even invented?

Are there any invisible treasures hidden in the Winterpalais? And what’s the deal with Prince Eugene’s mourning lion? Facts and fiction are at the heart of this tour with a twist, which shows the Winterpalais to be a place of bliss, death and glory. * Limited number of participants.

Registration is required: http://www.belvedere.at/de/events, E public@belvedere.at

Staterooms of the Winterpalais Photo: Oskar Schmidt © Belvedere, Vienna 29

Art Cluster Member

Vienna Business Agency

Vienna Business Agency Mariahilfer Strasse 20, 1070 Vienna T +43 1 4000 8670 F +43 1 4000 86720 E departure@ wirtschaftsagentur.at www.wirtschaftsagentur.at

GUIDED TOUR

“departure tour”* Sat., 19 Nov. 2016 11:00 am–2:00 pm In German

highly topical real-life scenario: they took up the issue of migration and combined it with the upcycling concept. The result was a prize-winning, internationally recognized architectural project. www.alleswirdgut.cc

This year’s “departure tour” by the Vienna Business Agency is a tour of the realms of architecture and fashion. Designers open the doors of their studios, offices and galleries to offer the public a glimpse of their work and design processes.

The manager of the Vienna Business Agency’s creative center departure, Elisabeth Noever-Ginthör, will join in.

AllesWirdGut, an international architecture firm based in Vienna and Munich, was founded in 1999 by Andreas Marth, Friedrich Passler, Herwig Spiegl and Christian Waldner. The group sees the anticipation of future working and living space scenarios as part of what is required of emerging architecture today. With this aim in mind they collaborate with experts from other disciplines, including scientists and artists. For the design of the extremely successful magdas Hotel for Caritas Vienna in 2015, AllesWirdGut addressed a 30

Vienna master workshop VON MORGEN has been producing modern bespoke shoes since 2014 using traditional methods – a fine example of long-lasting, uncom­ promising quality craftsmanship.

At the same time the makers of VON MORGEN, Nicole Üblacker and Thomas Licht, are setting new standards in sustainable footwear, created entirely from organic leather and 100% by hand: a revolutionary soling technique makes it possible to repair the inside of the shoe without having to take it all apart, or to replace sections that are still in good order. The shoes are produced and presented in their charming workshop located on Karmelitermarkt in Vienna’s second district. Those with a keen interest in handcraft can watch them being made – an opportunity to learn more about shoes by VON MORGEN and feel their quality first-hand. www.vonmorgen.at

The FEMME MAISON fashion label was founded in 2012 by fashion designer Franziska Fürpass and visual artist Sia Kermani. They draw inspiration for their collections from the works of French-American artist Louise Bourgeois, among other things. This is reflected, above all, in the Vienna label’s eagerness to experiment and their affinity for sculpture.

Fashion designer Franziska Fürpass describes her work for FEMME MAISON: “Our body is influenced by our life. And yet it is more than just the sum of its parts. Ultimately, we too are more than the sum of our experiences. We can all be shaped as easily as wax.” www.femme-maison.com * Limited number of participants, registration is required: E departure@wirtschaftsagentur.at The meeting point will be announced after the registration.

© VON MORGEN

ART CLUSTER MEMBER

DIE GALERIEN Association of Austrian Galleries of Modern Art Open Gallery Night: Wednesday, 16 November 2016

Aa collections Opening of the exhibition Zˇarko Aleksic´, “Homunculus. States of Mind,” and performance Wed., 16 Nov. 2016, 8:30 pm Taking its cue from Jonas Mekas’ video diary and James Joyce’s stream of consciousness technique, the long-term project “Homunculus” unfurls against the background of a philosophy shaped by neuroscientists Antonio Damasio and V.S. Ramachandran. The artist takes a fragmentary and sequential approach in constructing his own autobio­ graphical self. His archive increases daily and currently comprises more than 3,000 audio-visual sequences with a duration of three to 30 seconds each. www.aacollections.net

Galerie Crone Artist talk as part of the exhibition “Proxemia – Another Co-Creation of Space” Fri., 18 Nov. 2016, 6:00 pm In German

Monika Grzymala lives and works in Berlin, Nikolaus Gansterer in Vienna. Both took part in the 2015 exhibition “Drawing Now” at Vienna’s Albertina, both deal with the transformation of drawings within a space and into moving forms. In the jointly conceived exhibition “Proxemia,” the two artists turn their attention to proxemics – a psychological term related to nonverbal communication and signals individuals give off by keeping a certain physical, interpersonal distance. www.galeriecrone.com 31

ART CLUSTER MEMBER

FIVE PLUS Art Gallery Artist talk & making of the exhibition “Resurrected” on the occasion of the opening Wed., 16 Nov. 2016, 7:00 pm In German, Romanian and English

Curated by Ada Muntean, “Resurrected” is about reconfiguration and resuscitation in contemporary man’s existence; it offers a reflective and confessional experience. The show features works by Andreea Anghel, Anca Badea, Adelina Cacio, Cristina Coza-Damian, Oana Damian, Pavel Grosu, Ioana Iacob, Norbert Dako-Graff, Elena Ilash, Tudor Jucan, Florin Marin, Corina Oprea, Daniel Popescu, Axenia Ros¸ca, Ozana Mures¸an, Alina Staicu, Herbert Christian Stöger, Gabriel Stoian and Ada Muntean. www.fiveplusartgallery.eu

Galerie Gans Panel “Dialog between Painting and Architecture” as part of the exhibition Fabian Patzak – Hein Spellmann (Berlin) Wed., 16 Nov. 2016, 7:00 pm In German

Fabian Patzak has no intention of faithfully representing architecture as we see it in real life; instead, he is interested in the emotional impact of a building. He focuses on details in the architecture or light that can transcend the actual place. Hein Spellmann, on the other hand, creates image-objects based on photographs of architecture.

In their unguided anonymity, they form an exciting counterpart to Patzak’s paintings. www.galerie-gans.at

Galerie Ernst Hilger Exhibition “Julian Schnabel. Paintings & Prints” 21 Oct.–19 Nov. 2016 Julian Schnabel came to fame in the 1980s as a pioneering figure in the return to painterly subjectivism. His paintings were devoted to a formal exploration of the painting’s surface. Schnabel expanded this call for threedimensionality into an effective way of involving the viewer. His large body of work from the 1980s reveals a range of criss-crossing experiments, with Schnabel appropriating both Pop Art and his own brand of New Realism. www.hilger.at 32

Galerie Jünger Artist-guided tour of the exhibition “Maria Hahnenkamp” and “Zwiegespräche” Wed., 16 Nov. 2016, 7:00 pm In German

Maria Hahnenkamp’s solo exhibition reflects on the medium of photography with works from 2003 to 2016.

The range of processes she uses spans from sanding the images or embroidering them to removing the photo layer altogether, thereby both addressing and exposing the authority of pictorial illusion. The second part, “Zwie­ gespräche,” features a photographic dialogue between Hahnenkamp and Casaluce-Geiger, Heidi Harsieber, Bettina Letz, Yvonne Oswald, Werner Schnelle, Claudia Schumann and Fritz Simak. www.galerie-juenger.at

Galerie Kandlhofer Talk with artist Rodrigo Valenzuela and curator Luca Lo Pinto as part of the exhibition “LANDMARK” Wed., 16 Nov. 2016, 7:00 pm In English

Knoll Galerie Opening of the exhibition Klára Rudas, “solo show” Wed., 16 Nov. 2016, 7:00 pm

Galerie Kandlhofer debuts work by emerging Chilean artist Rodrigo Valenzuela in his first exhibition in Europe.

Many of Valenzuela’s works revolve around social policy concerns and Latin American immigration to the United States. His photographs are reminiscent of film sets, ruins and rubble, and are the result of multi-part, complex processes behind the artist’s many installations, assemblages and studio arrangements. www.kandlhofer.com

Klára Rudas explores classic yet radical art practices. Primarily using abstraction, she points out contradictions and problems that seem to be art’s main quandary when it comes to creating a more just society.

Rudas’ works are devoted to these very issues, whether it’s in the form of painting, spatial compositions, photographs, sound installations or performative situations. www.knollgalerie.at 33

ART CLUSTER MEMBER

Mario Mauroner Contemporary Art Exhibition “Bernardí Roig.

Cuidado con la cabeza” 11 Nov. 2016–14 Jan. 2017 Neon lights are constant companions to Bernardí Roig’s gleaming white sculptures, whose electric luminance points to advancing technology: just as our ancestors stared into fires, we stare into the bright light of screens.

Besides Roig’s sculptures (to be understood as visual manifestations of such classics as Thomas Bernhard’s “Frost” or “Breath”) the exhibition features the photo project “POETS (99 Men and A Bearded Lady)” – portraits that resemble two-dimensional sculptures. www.galerie-mam.com

Galerie Raum mit Licht Exhibition: Iris Andraschek 27 Oct.–3 Dec. 2016 Andraschek has been working with photography and drawing for a long time. Her recurring themes include nature as a social space, alternative lifestyles, social and regulatory systems. Her photo series are characterized by the grey area between private and public, daily life and staging, as she merges given situations with constructed image concepts. Her drawings isolate the images from their context. Thus fragmented, she laces elements of the photo series with woodcut-like drawings or writing. www.raum-mit-licht.at

Galerie Reinthaler Exhibition “Michael Bachhofer. Sources of Construction” 16 Nov.–23 Dec. 2016 Michael Bachhofer expands human perception by showing what is invisible or has simply been overlooked.

Similar to the networks that he constructs using fuzzy cognitive mapping, his works consist of multiple photographs that make a whole when put together, enabling a “holistic” view. His “You are beautiful ...” series revolves around the antagonistic desire to know everything and hide anything negative. www.agnesreinthaler.com

12–14 contemporary Performance by Bosˇtjan Drinovec & Primozˇ Oberzˇan and lecture on cymatics by Primozˇ Oberzˇan Thu., 17 Nov. 2016, 7:00 pm In English

As part of the exhibition “Don’t Panic Honey Part III,” curated by Denise Parizek and featuring works by Cristina Cojanu (Romania), Bosˇtjan Drinovec, Primozˇ Oberzˇan (both Slovenia), and Michael Koch (Germany/Austria). www.12-14.org

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GALERIE V&V Opening of the exhibition Stella Bach and Peer Bach, “Wald,” and presentation of the book “Ins Holz. Zur Andacht” Wed., 16 Nov. 2016, 7:00 pm The exhibition features “Steckenparade” (Stick Parade) – Peer Bach’s hiking sculptures carved from hazelwood – along with C-prints from the photo book “Ins Holz. Zur Andacht” (Into the Woods: A Devotion), a project realized

by Stella Bach and Peer Bach and published by Edition Zwibuch. www.galerievundv.at

zs art Galerie Artist talk as part of the exhibition “Das Verborgene im Augenscheinlichen”: Claudia Aigner, “Wiener Zeitung,” in conversation with Robert Staudinger and Albert Winkler Thu., 17 Nov. 2016, 7:00 pm In German

Galerie Slavik Opening of the exhibition “Winter Journey” to mark the 25th anniversary Fri., 18 Nov. 2016, 6:00 pm

Photography as painting and not as documentation of reality. Photographed paintings that gesture to what lies behind them. In “La Nuit étoilée,” Jean-Paul DumasGrillet emphasizes that which is absent – something more comprehensive that we cannot consciously perceive.

Robert Staudinger’s “heaven and hope” looks to the horizon and thus to the desire for the Beyond. And in “Relicts,” Albert Winkler fuses the remnants of affluent society together to form dense images. www.zsart.at

“Winter Journey – 25 Years Galerie Slavik” features a selection of fantastical creations by artists of the gallery. These one-of-a-kind jewelry pieces are fascinating in their inventiveness and artistic quality – a little piece of heaven for any jewelry lover.

Remarkable work from Germany, Denmark, Italy, Spain and Austria awaits. Knocking on heaven’s door! www.galerie-slavik.com

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ART CLUSTER MEMBER

Open Gallery Night: Wednesday, 16 November 2016

Aa collections

OPEN GALLERY NIGHT

Exhibition: Zˇ arko Aleksic´, “Homunculus. States of Mind” 17–26 Nov. 2016 Burggasse 68, 1070 Vienna M +43 699 17536814 E aacollectionsgallery@gmail.com www.aacollections.net

Galerie bei der Albertina – Zetter

Galerie Johannes Faber

Galerie Nathalie Halgand

Galerie Julius Hummel

Exhibition: “AUSTRIAN PICTORIALISM. Photographs 1890–1930” 9 Sep.–3 Dec. 2016

Exhibition: “Tropical Punch” Group exhibition curated by “keen on magazine” 17 Nov. 2016–14 Jan. 2017

Brahmsplatz 7, 1040 Vienna T +43 1 505 75 18 M +43 664 515 15 17 E office@jmcfaber.at www.jmcfaber.at

Stiegengasse 2/3, 1060 Vienna M +43 650 244 47 79 E info@galeriehalgand.com www.galeriehalgand.com

Dorotheergasse 5, 1010 Vienna T +43 1 512 53 15 E ernst.hilger@hilger.at www.hilger.at

Exhibition: “Informel II” Günter Brus, Felix GonzalezTorres, Heidi Harsieber, Man Ray, Otto Muehl, Hermann Nitsch, Miroslav Tichy, Franz West, among others 23 Sep.–23 Dec. 2016 Exhibition: “CAPTURING INFORMEL” as part of “Eyes On – Month of Photography Vienna” 4–30 Nov. 2016 Event: “Franz Koglmann informel” with trumpet / flugelhorn Thu., 17 Nov. 2016, 8:00 pm

Hilger NEXT | BROTKunsthalle

Bäckerstrasse 14, 1010 Vienna T +43 1 512 12 96 E office@galeriehummel.com www.galeriehummel.com

Galerie Ernst Hilger

Exhibition: Painting, sculpture, design

FIVE PLUS Art Gallery

Lobkowitzplatz 1, 1010 Vienna T +43 1 513 14 16 E zetter@galerie-albertina.at www.galerie-albertina.at

Exhibition: “Resurrected” 17–30 Nov. 2016 Argentinierstrasse 41, 1040 Vienna M +43 660 299 81 64 E office@fiveplusartgallery.eu www.fiveplusartgallery.eu

Artmark Galerie Program available on request Singerstrasse 17, 1010 Vienna T +43 1 512 98 80 E wien@artmark.at www.artmark.at

Anzenberger Gallery

OPEN GALLERY NIGHT

OPEN GALLERY NIGHT

Exhibition: “Danila Tkachenko: Restricted Areas” 4 Nov. 2016–31 Jan. 2017 Absberggasse 27, 1100 Vienna T +43 1 587 82 51 E gallery@anzenberger.com www.anzenbergergallery.com

Galerie Crone Wien Exhibition: Nikolaus Gansterer, Monika Grzymala, “Proxemia – Another Co-Creation of Space” 20 Oct.–24 Nov. 2016 Getreidemarkt 14, 1010 Vienna T +49 30 259 24 49 0 E info@galeriecrone.at www.galeriecrone.com

Galerie Wolfgang Exner Exhibition: “Maximilian Otte: Alice In Wonderland – Lost In Hollywood” 5–28 Nov. 2016 Rauhensteingasse 12, 1010 Vienna T +43 1 512 99 17 E office@galerie-exner.at www.galerie-exner.at

Galerie Frewein-Kazakbaev Exhibition: Tassilo Blittersdorff 6 Oct.–18 Nov. 2016 Closing event Thu., 17 Nov. 2016, 7:00 pm Schulgasse 70, 1180 Vienna M +43 664 424 47 26 E office@galerie-frewein-kazakbaev.com www.galerie-frewein-kazakbaev.com

Galerie Frey Exhibition: Harald Gangl, “Traces” 9 Nov. 2016–14 Jan. 2017 Gluckgasse 3, 1010 Vienna T +43 1 513 82 83 M +43 664 120 46 10 or +43 664 203 96 97 E art@galerie-frey.com www.galerie-frey.com

Galerie Gans

OPEN GALLERY NIGHT

Exhibition: Fabian Patzak – Hein Spellmann (Berlin) 20 Oct.–19 Nov. 2016 Panel discussion: “Dialog between Painting and Architecture” with artists Moni K. Huber, Felix Malnig, Fabian Patzak, Hein Spellmann, among others Wed., 16 Nov. 2016, 7:00 pm Kirchberggasse 4, 1070 Vienna T +43 1 895 94 97 E office@galerie-gans.at www.galerie-gans.at

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Exhibition: “Julian Schnabel.

Paintings & Prints” 21 Oct.–19 Nov. 2016

OPEN GALLERY NIGHT

Exhibition Hilger NEXT: “Eyes On: Gelatin Silver Print is dead!”

Corinne Vionnet, Shepard Fairey, Mishka Henner, Raphael de la Porta, among others; curator: Jonas Tebib 25 Oct.–23 Dec. 2016 EXHIBITION projectroom @ NEXT: Mahir Jamal EXHIBITION BROTKunsthalle: “The Hilger Collection Part 2” 7:00 pm: curator Jonas Tebib in conversation Absberggasse 27, 1100 Vienna T +43 1 512 53 15 E ernst.hilger@hilger.at www.hilger.at

Galerie Ulrike Hrobsky Program available on request Grünangergasse 6, 1010 Vienna T +43 1 513 76 76 E galerie@hrobsky.at www.hrobsky.at

Galerie Jünger

OPEN GALLERY NIGHT

Exhibition: “Maria Hahnenkamp” and “Zwiegespräche” as part of “Eyes On – Month of Photography Vienna” 12 Nov. 2016–31 Jan. 2017 Event: Walter Seidl in a conversation with Maria Hahnenkamp Sat., 19 Nov. 2016, 3:00 pm Paniglgasse 17a, 1040 Vienna M +43 664 111 47 71 E office@galerie-juenger.at www.galerie-juenger.at

Galerie Kandlhofer

OPEN GALLERY NIGHT

Exhibition: “Landmark” 25 Oct.–18 Dec. 2016 Brucknerstrasse 4, 1040 Vienna M +43 660 481 55 13 E lisa@lisabird.at www.lisabird.at

Knoll Galerie

OPEN GALLERY NIGHT

Exhibition: Klára Rudas, “solo show” Gumpendorfer Strasse 18, 1060 Vienna T +43 1 587 50 52 M +43 664 181 08 48 E office@knollgalerie.at www.knollgalerie.at

Konzett Gallery

12–14 contemporary

Exhibition: “Sex Appeal of the Inorganic” as part of “Eyes On – Month of Photography Vienna” Günter Brus, Christian Eisenberger, Richard Hoeck & John Miller, Otto Muehl, Hermann Nitsch, Rudolf Schwarzkogler 11 Nov.–10 Dec. 2016

Exhibition: “Don’t Panic Honey Part III” Cristina Cojanu, Bosˇtjan Drinovec, Primozˇ Oberzˇan, Michael Koch 4–26 Nov. 2016

Spiegelgasse 21, 1010 Vienna T +43 1 513 01 03 E gallery@artkonzett.com www.artkonzett.com

Kro Art Contemporary Exhibition: “Drab everyday life with a touch of youthful recklessness” as part of “Eyes On – Month of Photography Vienna” 20 Nov. 2016–9 Jan. 2017 At the project space: Wojciech Krzywobl/ ocki, “Negativ Positiv” Getreidemarkt 15, 1060 Vienna T +43 1 585 71 43 M +43 676 503 05 32 E office@kroart.at www.kroart.at OPEN GALLERY NIGHT

Mario Mauroner Contemporary Art

Exhibition: “Bernardí Roig.

Cuidado con la cabeza” 11 Nov. 2016–14 Jan. 2017 Weihburggasse 26, 1010 Vienna T +43 1 904 20 04 E office@galerie-mam.com www.galerie-mam.com

Galerie Raum mit Licht

Galerie Slavik Exhibition: “Winter Journey – 25 Years Galerie Slavik” 18 Nov. 2016–4 Feb. 2017 Himmelpfortgasse 17, 1010 Vienna T +43 1 513 48 12 E galerie.slavik@vienna.at www.galerie-slavik.com

Suppan Contemporary Program available on request Habsburgergasse 5, 1010 Vienna T +43 1 535 53 54 E info@suppancontemporary.com www.suppancontemporary.com

Galerie V&V

OPEN GALLERY NIGHT

Exhibition: Stella Bach and Peer Bach, “Wald” 17 Nov.–early Dec. 2016 Bauernmarkt 19, 1010 Vienna T +43 1 535 63 34 M +43 699 140 93 221 E vundv@aon.at www.galerievundv.at www.kunstnet.or.at/v+v

White8 Studio Program available on request

OPEN GALLERY NIGHT

Exhibition: Iris Andraschek 27 Oct.–3 Dec. 2016 Kaiserstrasse 32, 1070 Vienna T +43 1 524 04 94 E galerie@raum-mit-licht.at www.raum-mit-licht.at

Galerie Reinthaler

Schleifmühlgasse 12–14, 1040 Vienna M +43 676 735 49 10 E gallery@12-14.org www.12-14.org

OPEN GALLERY NIGHT

Exhibition: “Michael Bachhofer.

Sources of Construction” 16 Nov.–23 Dec. 2016 Gumpendorfer Strasse 53, 1060 Vienna M +43 699 106 81 871 E office@agnesreinthaler.com www.agnesreinthaler.com

Rechte Wienzeile 23, 1040 Vienna M +43 664 202 67 54 E dagmar@white8.at www.white8.at

zs art Galerie

OPEN GALLERY NIGHT

Exhibition: “Das Verborgene im Augenscheinlichen” Jean-Paul Dumas-Grillet, Robert Staudinger, Albert Winkler 21 Oct.– 25 Nov. 2016

Guided Gallery Tours 2016 Why go to Berlin, New York or Shanghai when Vienna has its own vibrant art scene to boast? Join our renowned art experts on a Guided Gallery Tour and see for yourself!

Guided tour with independent art critic Manisha Jothady Thu., 17 Nov. 2016, 3:00 pm 12–14 contemporary Galerie Nathalie Halgand Galerie Reinthaler Knoll Galerie – 4:30 pm: break with drinks Kro Art Contemporary Galerie Crone Wien Meeting point: 12–14 contemporary, Schleifmühlgasse 12–14, 1040 Vienna Guided tour with curator Christina Werner Thu., 17 Nov. 2016, 4:30 pm Galerie V&V Galerie Slavik Mario Mauroner Contemporary Art Meeting point: Galerie V&V, Bauernmarkt 19, 1010 Vienna Guided tour with independent art critic Manisha Jothady Fri., 18 Nov. 2016, 3:00 pm Charim Events Gabriele Senn Galerie Christine König Galerie unttld contemporary Meeting point: Charim Events, Schleifmühlgasse 1, 1040 Vienna Guided tour with curator Lucas Cuturi Sat., 19 Nov. 2016, 2:00 pm Galerie Raum mit Licht ZS Art Galerie Krinzinger Projekte Galerie Hubert Winter Aa collections – the tour will be rounded off with drinks and finger food Meeting point: Galerie Raum mit Licht, Kaiserstrasse 32, 1070 Vienna

Westbahnstrasse 27–29, 1070 Vienna T +43 1 895 93 95 12 E galerie@zsart.at www.zsart.at

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Program

Seeking Beauty Where loveliness lies Text by Robert Punkenhofer and Ursula Maria Probst

Is art the practice of discovering beauty where it is least expected? By what criteria is beauty as such defined, and which of these forged the canons of beauty we use today? To what culturally changeable conditions is it beholden? Held under the motto “Seeking Beauty,” this year’s VIENNA ART WEEK deals with the ambivalence of beauty.

The questions above have been pondered extensively across 2,500 years of Western history of philosophy and aesthetics, engaging such diverse thinkers as Aristotle and Immanuel Kant, René Descartes, Alexander Gottfried Baumgarten, Friedrich Nietzsche, Marcel Proust, Theodor W. Adorno, Roland Barthes and Hannah Arendt, all the way to Susan Sontag, Judith Butler and Elisabeth Bronfen.

Robert Punkenhofer is Artistic Director of VIENNA ART WEEK and founding Director of Art&Idea. As a curator he works at the interface of art, design, architecture and international commerce. He curated the Murinsel with Vito Acconci in Graz and oversaw Austria’s contributions to the world exhibitions in Aichi, Japan; Zaragoza, Spain; and Shanghai, China.

After more than 100 artistic projects on three continents, he recently realized presentations in the Triennale di Milano design museum and the Goethe Institute Barcelona. He is a visiting professor at New York University and a member of the Princeton University / PLAS International Advisory Board.

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In his publication “Aesthetica” (1750/1758), recently rediscovered philosopher Gottfried Alexander Baumgarten refers to the senses as having their own, independent ability to judge and discern based on the phenomenon of taste. Philosopher Hannah Arendt energetically pursued the question of how aesthetics and the assessment of beauty could contribute to political ethics, while semiotician, philosopher and writer Umberto Eco spoke of the “polytheism of beauty” – the myriad forms of beauty that have confronted us all throughout cultural history into the present day. His 2004 book “History of Beauty” explores this diversity. Nevertheless, there have always been other, deviating and contrarian factors beyond the mainstream and the values that define it.

“Too lovely to be true” – a phrase that connects beauty with both truth and illusion. One need only recall Oscar Wilde’s novel “The Picture of Dorian Gray” (1890); the promise of eternal youth through beauty remains one of the most impressive literary motifs of all time. We find a panorama of violations, negative transgressions and adversity in the abuse of beauty for propaganda and power. While the historical avant-garde reacted with rebellion, turning to the abysmal, dark side of beauty, contemporary artists like Marina Abramovic´ are modifying their own bodies with cosmetic surgery. Does beauty promise happiness? Why is it that the dangers of beauty standardization remain hidden?

Berlin-based South Korean-German philosopher ByungChul Han makes for lively discussion with his 2015 book

Orlan, 4th Operation-Surgery-Performance titled Successful Operation, printing lips on paper, Cibachrome, 1991 Copyright: courtesy of the artist Ursula Maria Probst lives in Vienna, where she works as an art historian, university lecturer, art critic, independent curator and artist (Female Obsession). In 2015, she served as curator for the Austrian contribution to the Havana Biennial.

Her topics of focus include performance art, art in public space (Fluc Vienna, “In the Cabinet’s Cubage,” “Transcultural Emancipation,” BKA/ KulturKontakt Austria) and art collections, with the objective of developing new structures in the art world.

“Die Errettung des Schönen” (The Salvation of Beauty).

Picking up on current social media trends, the publication contains such critical diagnoses and metaphors as “selfie addiction points to the inner void of the ego.”

Byung-Chul Han sees no abiding substance in our digital present; “likes” have fostered an addiction to pleasure and acts of kindness. Could it be that beauty is used as a weapon, seducing us into a complete surveillance society – one we hardly even resist as we voluntarily expose and publicize our own lives? Byung-Chul Han has diagnosed glossiness as the main feature of our neoliberal present, one that seamlessly accelerates communication and the transfer of information. His thoughts on the beautiful – not beauty – and the search for it fuel his diagnosis of our era and current psycho politics. Han comes to the conclusion that the pleasing

and glossy have come to replace an ambivalence of beauty; he draws a parallel between the sculptures of Jeff Koons, smartphones and Brazilian waxing, asking: “Why do we consider smooth, glossy things beautiful today?” The opposite of the surface smoothness described by Byung-Chul Han is “the beautiful” and its desideratum – something that goes against mere pleasure, triggering shock or creating moments of awakening. Han insists that the beautiful cannot be consumed; recognizing it requires further action.

Such action can be found in the ambiguities and shifts in focus employed by artists: filmmaker and writer Harun Farocki cast a critical eye on the production of beauty, which he mentions in the same breath as surveillance, war, the public, and the building of shopping 39

© Studio Samsonow

Programm

malls. Vito Acconci’s artistic statements ponder ways to see through beauty’s manipulative aspects, while Bruce Nauman’s works reject conventional concepts of beauty in favor of disappointment and cruelty. Quotes from Cindy Sherman (“Even as a child I wanted to look ugly”) put a fine point on her sometimes gruesome staged photographs and self-dramatizations. Louise Bourgeois packed a tremendous punch with art that walks the fine line between beauty and pain. An enigmatic visual beauty infuses the works of photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto with a unique aura, while Robert Mapplethorpe’s pro­ vocative homoerotic portraits strive for perfection through art. The photographs of Nan Goldin capture the dramatic and glamorous, but also banal aspects of beauty. Even couturier and art collector Karl Lagerfeld finds little allure in classical beauty – only in abysses felt with all five senses. Unsettling or disturbing beauty appears in works as early as those by Hieronymus Bosch, whose now 500-year-old “Garden of Earthly Delights” shows a scenario rife with beauty and ugliness myths; in the creations of Alberto Giacometti – one of Modernism’s most important proponents, whose sculptures address existentialist questions; and in pieces by Robert Ryman, the painter known for his minimalist works who preferred to be called a realist and shunned the creation of beautiful, illusionistic images.

Our perception of beauty – like our perception of art – is contextual. Still, it is a magic moment when we stumble across something which we believe is beautiful, and here the act of seeing becomes an act of creation. Current advances in neuroaesthetics – a science of the brain that investigates the neurobiological basis of aesthetic sensations – have yielded astonishing findings on beauty and its biochemical effects. What happens in our minds when we experience art? Can neurobiology explain how we perceive art and the emotions we feel when we look at it? Which brain functions are relevant for the creative process and how do we judge or evaluate aesthetic creations? What processes are triggered when we see something beautiful, and how are various sensory areas stimulated? The more pleasing we find a work of art to be, the more it activates the medial orbitofrontal cortex. According to an analysis by neurobiologist Semir Zeki, a pioneer in the field of neuroaesthetics, this part of the brain is also extremely active when we love someone. Whenever 40

an artwork hits a nerve, all of our reward-driven emotional centers spring into action. It also jumpstarts areas in the cerebral cortex used to assess and assemble various individual perceptions into a larger, general impression.

The level of activity in all of these areas correlates with the amount of beauty we think we see.

Beauty, like art, dies with stagnation or stultification of any kind; it demands animation, has to take on a life of its own. Beauty can also come cloaked in the seemingly ugly. The beautiful develops its appeal in the interplay between individual imagination and that of the collective. It is more than pure luxury or a sheer source of enjoyment, goes beyond a mere matter of taste; it happens in dialogue. The 2016 VIENNA ART WEEK program is an opportunity to do just that.

INTERVIEW MARATHON

“Seeking Beauty” Tue., 15 Nov. 2016 2:00–8:00 pm MAK Columned Main Hall, MAK – Austrian Museum of Applied Arts / Contemporary Art, Stubenring 5, 1010 Vienna In German and English

VIENNA ART WEEK’s performative interview marathon with Mark Evans, curator at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, designer Dejana Kabiljo, body and performance artist ORLAN, and literary theorist Barbara Vinken; performances by Krõõt Juurak and Anne Juren, Elisabeth von Samsonow, professor at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Station Rose, and Doris Uhlich.

Program

Open Studio Day Saturday, 19 November 2016 1:00–6:00 pm

Open Studio Day offers art lovers a unique opportunity to take a look behind the scenes of art production and speak with Vienna-based artists in the creative atmosphere of their studios. Around 70 artists selected by Anne Faucheret, curator at Kunsthalle Wien, Walter Seidl, curator e.g. of “Kontakt.

The Art Collection of Erste Group and ERSTE Foundation,” and Eva-Maria Stadler from the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna will keep their studios open for visitors on Saturday, 19 November 2016, from 1:00 to 6:00 pm.

Those who prefer to visit artist workshops in company can do so by joining renowned art experts on a Guided Open Studio Day Tour of selected studios.

The Open Studio Day program is rounded off by numerous events in the studios, including artist talks and readings, screenings and performances, as well as hands-on workshops and participatory performances.

Photo: eSeL.at/Lorenz Seidler

For more information, visit: www.viennaartweek.at/open-studio

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Programm Program

Open Studio Day Saturday, 19 November 2016, 1:00–6:00 pm Artists open their studios to the public

Photo: eSeL.at/Lorenz Seidler

Lisl Ponger Galerie Charim, Dorotheergasse 12/1 Film screening Florian Raditsch Franziskanerkirche, Franziskanerplatz 4

1st District Catharina Bond Maysedergasse 2/28 Project “Deine Seite, meine Seite – Arbeiten im Gemeinschaftsatelier” Veronika Dirnhofer Maysedergasse 2/28 Catalog presentation & “Der Atelierraum als Experimentierraum” Hilde Fuchs Maysedergasse 2/28 Performance installation “Das Prinzip Fundus”: the studio as an archive of works and collection depot Julia Gaisbacher Maysedergasse 2/28 Project “Deine Seite, meine Seite – Arbeiten im Gemeinschaftsatelier” Elke Silvia Krystufek A.E. Köchert jeweler, Neuer Markt 15 Installation: ring “Equilibrium” (“Fingerhackelehering”) for MAK, 2006; and ring “Feuerwerk” for the 200th anniversary of Köchert in 2014 Beat Lehner Franziskanerkirche, Franziskanerplatz 4 Constantin Luser Schönlaterngasse 7A Collective sculpture for visitors to solder on 42

2nd District Ricarda Denzer Obere Donaustrasse 97–99/1/63 Judith Huemer Novaragasse 17/22 Ronald Kodritsch Grosse Mohrengasse 23 Hans Kupelwieser Prater studios, Meiereistrasse 3 Johannes Porsch Obere Donaustrasse 59/2/18 Hans Scheirl Prater studios, Meiereistrasse 3 Constanze Schweiger Alliiertenstraße 5/2 Steinbrener/Dempf & Huber Glockengasse 6/1 Shop window “Wandzeitung”: “The chemicals between us.”

Script for a 18-scene piece about photography, Ruth Horak & Claudia Rohrauer transparadiso (Barbara Holub/ Paul Rajakovics) Grosse Mohrengasse 34/3 4:00 pm: artist talk with curator Gabriela Vaz-Pinheiro from Portugal Tanja Widmann Obere Donaustrasse 59/2/18 3rd District Theresa Eipeldauer Kundmanngasse 13/4 Simon Iurino Hafengasse 13 2:30 pm: artist talk with curator Victoria Dejaco on blurring boundaries between art genres

Sebastian Koch Kundmanngasse 13/4 Lone Haugaard Madsen Boerhaavegasse 23/1 Tobias Pilz Kundmanngasse 13/4 5th District Sofia Goscinski Obere Amtshausgasse 27 6th District Abdul Sharif Baruwa Turmburggasse 5/13 Elisabeth Gabriel & Daryoush Asgar Gumpendorfer Strasse 15/2 Manfred Grübl Bürgerspitalgasse 18/11 7th District Miriam Bajtala Federal government-sponsored studios, Westbahnstrasse 27–29/7 Gilbert Bretterbauer Bandgasse 34/29d (courtyard) Veronika Burger / Christina Werner Lindengasse 61–63/2/14 1:00–6:00 pm: Screenings 5:00 pm: “Genius femininus” round of talks, moderated by Katharina Brandl along with Renate Bertlmann, Veronika Burger, Nicole Sabella, Hemma Schmutz and Christina Werner Eva Chytilek Federal government-sponsored studios, Westbahnstrasse 27–29/9 Lukas Janitsch Stuckgasse 11 Zenita Komad Stuckgasse 11 Moussa Kone Stuckgasse 11 Roberta Lima Federal government-sponsored studios, Westbahnstrasse 27–29/5

Anja Manfredi Federal government-sponsored studios, Westbahnstrasse 27–29/6 Peter Sandbichler Westbahnstrasse 26/2/4a Liddy Scheffknecht Federal government-sponsored studios, Westbahnstrasse 27–29/3 8th District Johann Karner Blindengasse 36/2 Sissa Micheli Albertgasse 4/9 9th District Antonella Anselmo Glasergasse 4a Marc-Alexandre Dumoulin Löblichgasse 8 Wolfgang Pavlik Glasergasse 4a Anna Zwingl Rotenlöwengasse 16/1–2

10th District Annja Krautgasser Karmarschgasse 53/2/54 11th District Krõõt Juurak Eisteichstrasse 7/18 Informal conversation about performing for pets, auto­ domestication, bad mood and inter-institutional conflicts Lena Lapschina Music City Gasometer, Guglgasse 12 A number of attempted screenings [which are bound to founder on the limitations of the system …]

12th District Gillian Brett studio das weisse haus, Korbergasse 15

Photo: eSeL.at/Lorenz Seidler

Art Cluster Member

Flora Galowitz Tichtelgasse 10/13–14 Caroline Heider Hetzendorfer Strasse 43–45/R1 (courtyard) Presentation of the project “White Paper Museum” by prior appointment: E hello@carolineheider.com Stefanie Winter & SALON HYBRID Rauchgasse 40 Performative installation “M.I.S.S. – MY INTERN(ATION) AL SPACE STATION” 15th District Albert Mayr / Hans Weigand Märzstrasse 111/1A 11:00 am: sound installations and conversation between Felicitas Thun-Hohenstein and artists Albert Mayr and Hans Weigand Fabian Seiz Holochergasse 45 (no doorbell, please call: 0699/12 01 77 40) Ellen Semen Salon Braunhirschen, Braunhirschengasse 24/14 5:00 pm: “schön befremdlich – neue Bilder,” artist talk with art historian Simone Christl 16th District Ana Hoffner and Katrin Hornek Lorenz-Mandl-Gasse 33 5:00 pm: bar conversations between Ana Hoffner and Katrin Hornek Franz Kapfer Koppstrasse 55 Michail Michailov Habichergasse 30/35 Linda Reif Fröbelgasse 8/16–18

17th District Bernhard Hosa Federal government-sponsored studios, Wattgasse 56–60 Moni K. Huber Federal government-sponsored studios, Wattgasse 56–60 Michael Kargl Federal government-sponsored studios, Wattgasse 56–60 Florian Schmeiser Federal government-sponsored studios, Wattgasse 56–60 Sabine Schwaighofer Federal government-sponsored studios, Wattgasse 56–60 Exhibition from the series “double-portrait ‘..as..’”

by Martina Mina & Sabine Schwaighofer Barbara Sturm Federal government-sponsored studios, Wattgasse 56–60 Paul Wagner Federal government-sponsored studios, Wattgasse 56–60 1:00–6:00 pm: exhibition “Vernis de printemps,” Karina Bruckner – Markus Sulzbacher – Paul Wagner Letizia Werth Federal government-sponsored studios, Wattgasse 56–60 New drawings and installations Eva Würdinger Federal government-sponsored studios, Wattgasse 56–60 “Flut” – project presentation with Markus Gradwohl 18th District Insolar Theresiengasse 20–24

Cäcilia Brown go to www.viennaartweek.at for address 43

interview Programm

The Beauty of Indifference Curators of Open Studio Day in conversation Interview by Ursula Maria Probst

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Walter Seidl, Anne Faucheret and Eva Maria Stadler Photo: Marlene Rahmann

Every year, countless art lovers accept the invitation of Vienna-based artists to get a glimpse of their workplace within the context of Open Studio Day. Curated by Anne Faucheret, Eva Maria Stadler and Walter Seidl, this year's edition will once again be a pillar of the VIENNA ART WEEK. Ursula Maria Probst spoke with the curators about Vienna as a rising inter­national art city and the search for beauty in a society gripped by radical change.

What advantages do you see in Vienna as an art city?

Anne Faucheret: Vienna is international but also manage­ able at the same time. I like that. There is a joining of Western and Eastern European traditions; I see it in the city’s art history, cultural identity and perception of public space, and that makes it very dynamic in my opinion.

Eva Maria Stadler: Vienna has developed a lot since Austria joined the European Union in the mid-1990s; it is literally more cosmopolitan, brighter and more open.

Vienna is buzzing, you could say. This hustle has done a lot to boost the level of artistic discourse. Today’s Austrian artists are active and well-connected not only on a national level, but internationally as well.

Walter Seidl: Vienna has countless museums and art i­sti­ tutions, and consequently an incredible array of options for showing contemporary art. That is rarely the case in other cities of this size.

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interview

Where do you see room for growth as far as Vienna’s art scene is concerned?

Anne Faucheret: Art education and outreach are actually at the heart of what we do. Without interaction, the insti­ tutions drift further and further away from the general population base and from the idea of an institution of the “commons,” or one that works to enhance social bonds and encourage political debate. I think we still unfortunately have too little participation and involvement from population groups or social classes who do not have ready access to culture, that is to say people who are not from the middle or upper classes.

Eva Maria Stadler: What is lacking in Vienna, in my view, is the civic model of the Kunstverein, or art association, like they have in Switzerland and Germany. A Kunstverein differs from a museum in that it not only gives young artists a chance to experiment and produce new works; it also has a membership system that creates a built-in audience. Vienna is in sore need of both.

Walter Seidl: We are seeing a global takeover of art by the market. This has reduced the number of artist-run spaces, and we need more of these to enable a niche program. But to do this, of course, you need more funding.

Places like Fluc or Open Space have become more and more attuned to the question of how art can be more directly anchored in public and political spaces, and escape the clutches of the white cube.

Ursula Maria Probst lives in Vienna, where she works as an art historian, university lecturer, art critic, independent curator and artist. Her key subjects are performance art, art in public space, and art collections. In 2016, she curates the exhibition “Touch the Reality” at Kunstraum Niederoesterreich. In 2015, she curated Austria’s contributions to the 12th Havana Biennial. She has curated the project “Transcultural Emancipation” by KulturKontakt Austria, the Federal Chancellery and Fluc since 2014.

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The motto of this year’s VIENNA ART WEEK is “Seeking Beauty,” with a focus on the ambivalence of beauty in art. How do you see the search for beauty in art?

Anne Faucheret: It is interesting to see beauty reappearing in the art discourse of the 21st century, as it all but disappeared in the 20th. In a time of political, economic and spiritual crises, does it signal a return to conservative issues or a longing for something that transcends the everyday? Or does it reflect a need to keep beauty from landing squarely in the hands of profiteers and trend­ setters?

Eva Maria Stadler: “Seeking Beauty” sounds a little like “Black Beauty,” that 1970s TV show with the black horse

galloping through the fields with abandon. Beauty is a tricky concept where art is concerned. We have spoken more of aesthetics than beauty since Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten’s “Aesthetica” was published in 1750. Beauty has come hand in hand with ugliness and the grotesque ever since.

Walter Seidl: The issues raised in recent years have more to do with challenging conventional ideas of beauty and how certain basic aesthetic patterns have shifted.

What facets of beauty do you find relevant?

Anne Faucheret: Art investigates categories and norms from a politically critical standpoint, shifts them and turns them around. In this sense, I think the opposite of beauty, the things beauty defines as negative, are much more relevant: the ugly, the monstrous, the disgusting even, all the facets of the Dionysian impulse. Sigmund Freud’s concept of the “uncanny” and André Breton’s notion of “convulsive beauty” are interesting approaches.

Eva Maria Stadler: In order for something beautiful to be perceived as such, you first need a discourse, a trained eye, the ability to perceive with the senses or a honed thought. This isn’t just there, it develops – not least through the aesthetic operations and displacements found in art. Openness and skepticism, the “beauty of indifference,” as Marcel Duchamp put it, can keep beauty from becoming too stable.

Walter Seidl: Esthetic perception works with personal preferences that are not universal; they are only exposed to certain psychogeographic socialization processes.

The current “like” culture shows how an individual can experience beauty in the span of a few seconds. The flood of images and their fleeting perception by the eyes usually happens before mental control comes into play, if it does at all.

Art critic Peter Schjeldahl defines beauty as a “willing loss of mental control.”

To what degree does art offer possibilities for critique and revolt against beauty’s use for commercial, manipulative and suggestive purposes?

Photo: eSeL.at/Lorenz Seidler

Anne Faucheret: Art is privileged ground for uncovering or critically questioning ideologies behind these kinds of ideals and the reasons for their exploitation. In the end, art has the ability to bring out the beautiful where you would never expect to find it – that is, to draw beauty into a discourse where it seems irrelevant, even absurd at first.

Eva Maria Stadler: Articulating questions like that is one of art’s main raisons d’être, I would say. There is no beauty without critique, unless you’re just losing yourself in shallow affirmations. But even these have a crucial role to play – think of Hans-Peter Feldmann’s “Sunday Pictures,” for example.

Walter Seidl: Commerce and its advertising and photo campaigns try to tell us what beauty can be. Art can devote itself to these image production processes; it can appropriate or thwart them. Art should question the underlying mechanisms and lay them bare.

OPEN TALKS

Artists in conversation with the curators of Open Studio Day Sat., 19 Nov. 2016 starting at 1:00 pm Open talk with Anne Faucheret 1:00 pm: Paul Leitner, Galerie unttld contemporary, 1040 Vienna, Schleifmühlgasse 5 Open talk with Walter Seidl 3:00 pm: Maria Hahnenkamp, Galerie Jünger, Paniglgasse 17a, 1040 Vienna Open talk with Eva-Maria Stadler 5:00 pm: Henning Bohl, Painting department at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, Hohenstaufengasse 9, 1010 Vienna OPEN STUDIO DAY TOURS

Artists guide tours of studios selected for Open Studio Day Sat., 19 Nov. 2016 starting at 1:00 pm 1:00 pm: Nika Kupyrova, artist, Kiev and Vienna Meeting point: Studio Albert Mayr/Hans Weigand, Märzstrasse 111/1a, 1150 Vienna 3:00 pm: Gerald Straub, artist and cultural theorist, Vienna Meeting point: Studio Veronika Burger/Christina Werner, Lindengasse 61–62/2/14, 1070 Vienna For further information, go to: www.viennaartweek.at/open-studio

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Wurstelprater amusement park, Vienna

Hansenstrasse, Vienna

“Greetings from Vienna” Artist Paul Albert Leitner has graciously allowed VIENNA ART WEEK to use his photo series “Greetings from Vienna.” Anticipating the motto for VIENNA ART WEEK 2016 – “Seeking Beauty” – the artist’s analogue photographs offer an aesthetic glimpse of various places across Vienna. Paul Albert Leitner was born in 1957.

His work captures the ephemeral, exotic Vienna that escapes the eye at first, which includes it’s facades, wasteland, construction sites or advertising signs.

The selected photos from “Greetings from Vienna” were taken between 1997 and 2016.

Photos: Courtesy Galerie Steinek

Naschmarkt market, Wienzeile, Vienna 2011

Liechtensteinstrasse, Vienna 2000

Brunnengasse, Vienna 2011

Neilreichgasse, Vienna 2008

Triester Strasse, Vienna 2010

Vienna 2006

Matzleinsdorfer Platz, Vienna 1997

SĂźdtiroler Platz, Vienna 2010

Quartier Belvedere, Vienna 2014

Hauptbahnhof (Main Station, under construction), Vienna 2014

Mariahilfer GĂźrtel, Vienna 2010

Babenberger Strasse, Vienna 2010

Praterstern, Vienna 2005

Hauptbahnhof (Main Station, under construction), Vienna 2014

Vienna State Opera, Vienna 2010

Schwedenplatz, Vienna 2016

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Klaus Albrecht Schrรถder and Konrad Paul Liessmann Photo: Marlene Rahmann

interview

“The only ugly thing in art is failure” Klaus Albrecht Schröder and Konrad Paul Liessmann on the currency of beauty Interview by Christian Höller

Philosopher Konrad Paul Liessmann and Albertina Director Klaus Albrecht Schröder spoke to Christian Höller about beauty in art, the modernist breach with beauty, and the Viennese’ macabre predilection for the schöne Leich, the beautiful corpse.

From the look of things, it doesn’t seem that beauty plays an important role in contemporary art. Or does it?

Klaus Albrecht Schröder: Beauty had an even harder time in the contemporary art of the past than it does today.

The postwar-decades in particular were very averse to the idea of canonical beauty; it became something like a travesty of what art could have been. But all that changed in the 1980s. Today, beauty in art is either despised and criticized in the media or worshiped without any critical dis­ tance whatsoever. One such prominent worshiper is Jeff Koons, an enthusiast of the beauty of women, media and consumerism. Even Arnulf Rainer, who excelled in his total rejection of all notions of beauty or ugliness, is back to producing paintings over the last 15 or 20 years that are most definitely all about beauty. And then of course we have decorative beauty, which was very important in the early 20th century and which we see in the work of Henri Matisse, for example. This variant still exists and is on par with many other trends in contemporary art.

Konrad Paul Liessmann: The rejection of beauty as a central theme of artistic production was not an achievement of modernism but dates back to the late 18th century.

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Interview

Even Friedrich Schlegel noted that the idea of beauty had been replaced by that of interestingness. Art has to stand out, irritate and provoke; it has to enable discourse and facilitate theorization. Adding to this is the fact that certain modernist developments were deeply indebted to the idea of beauty – take abstract art, for example: what could possibly be so fascinating about a painting that consists only of form and color, if not its overwhelming aesthetics? When you look at a Mark Rothko, you think to yourself: “Wow, that is a gorgeous red!” Kazimir Malevich’s “Red Square” is definitely an intellectual provocation, and yet its unity of form and color is beholden to the idea of beauty. And here’s another point: beauty was never purely decorative or picturesque in Classical Antiquity or in 18th-century Neoclassicism. It was always an expression of truth or moral standards, so there was always something perplexing or irritating about it as well.

Klaus Albrecht Schröder: The very question as to whether or not beauty and contemporary art go together seems rooted in our overly simplistic idea of beauty. The culture and economy of beauty compel us to reduce beauty to an ideal body, when in fact we should be regarding aesthetics, the study of beauty, as the basis for any appreciation of art whatsoever. What could be more beautiful than Christ’s tormented body in Matthias Grünewald’s Isenheim altarpiece? It’s no coincidence that the Viennese have a predilection for what they call a schöne Leich, the beautiful corpse, and that Sigmund Freud was delighted with the “beautiful” neuroses he found in people. In all these cases, our fascination with what we perceive turns into a sensation of beauty. The fat, nude woman lying on the sofa may not exactly be our idea of beauty at first glance, but if Lucien Freud painted her, we will find her aesthetically appealing and will perceive her shape and form to be beautiful.

Christian Höller is editor and co-publisher of the magazine “springerin – Hefte für Gegenwartskunst.”

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The philosopher Arthur Danto said, “Most of the world’s art is not beautiful, nor was the production of beauty part of its purpose.” Would you agree?

Konrad Paul Liessmann: It’s true that art never aimed to produce beauty. The purpose of beauty was to express something different. From a broader perspective – for example when we ask ourselves what makes a good composition – beauty can also include the unpleasant or ugly. Let me give you an example from literature: there is nothing beautiful in Kafka’s “Penal Colony,” and yet the narration as such is art at its finest. Likewise, in modern art, we get the sense as viewers that we are facing something beautiful, if you don’t mind me adding this to what Danto said. At the heart of Danto’s thought was the question as to how we should deal with art that is in no way different from everyday objects. Being beautiful isn’t normally the main purpose of a bottle rack or a urinal.

On the other hand, you could argue that the revenge of the everyday on art came with the introduction of designs that meet the criteria of classical beauty. This is especially true of fashion, design and photography, where we have seen a renaissance of ancient beauty criteria such as proportionality and symmetry.

Klaus Albrecht Schröder: Beauty was always renounced by art when its effective dominance in fashion, cosmetics or plastic surgery had become so evident that it could no longer be associated with universal concepts like truth or the ideal type. Aesthetic ugliness was only invoked against beauty because the beauty of the real world suddenly found itself reduced to what shopping malls advertised in the shop windows. When Jeff Koons celebrates beauty, the beauty he has in mind includes the superficiality that fashion photography hails as beautiful.

The modernist break with beauty consisted, among other things, in insulting it as “something bitter,” as Arthur Rimbaud did, or painting a mustache on it, like Marcel Duchamp. What do you think about the fact that such approaches are now utterly and completely part of the aesthetic canon?

Klaus Albrecht Schröder: There is no point in referencing Rimbaud or Duchamp as witnesses of an epochal breach with beauty. They were individual positions. Rimbaud was a contemporary of Bouguereau, for example, and Duchamp saw Picasso return to classicism. We shouldn’t generalize whole periods on the basis of isolated cases, and the same goes for contemporary art.

Konrad Paul Liessmann: Whenever art revolted against the sleek shapes of the culture industry or design, it didn’t dispense with the notion of beauty. Instead, it tried to reinterpret it, as Friedrich Schiller did, for example, by regarding beauty as “freedom in appearance.” This, of course, is a political program: wherever art endeavors to visualize particular forms of freedom in order to fight the conditions of unfreedom, it does so to develop an authentic idea of beauty as critical potential. Whether or not it can ever succeed is another question. The only ugly thing in art is failure. Anything else is beautiful.

Art and Politics

Agnes Husslein-Arco and Ai Weiwei © Belvedere, Wien

INTERVIEW

How Ai Weiwei transforms reality Interview by Alfred Weidinger and Angela Stief

Ahead of the exhibition “AI WEIWEI. translocation – transformation” at Belvedere and 21er Haus, Agnes Husslein-Arco and Ai Weiwei discussed the role of art as a seismograph of the times, the work of an artist at the interface of society, personal perception and the public, and the sensitivity of an activist who alters the status quo. Curated by Alfred Weidinger, the show is on until 20 November 2016.

Alfred Weidinger, with the Belvedere since 2007.

Chief curator and deputy director, previously curator and deputy director at Albertina. His most recent exhibitions of contemporary art at 21er Haus include “Gelatin – Hole,” “Peter Weibel – Medien­ rebell,” and – along with curator Luisa Ziaja – “Oswald Oberhuber.”

Angela Stief, born 1974 in Augsburg, Germany.

Studied art history and philosophy. Curator at Kunsthalle Wien from 2002 to 2013. She lives and works as an independent curator and publicist in Vienna.

Ms. Husslein, this is the first time the work of Ai Weiwei, China’s foremost artist of his generation, is on show in Vienna. What compelled you to invite him?

Agnes Husslein-Arco: There has never been a comparable solo exhibition of Ai Weiwei’s work in Austria, despite his tremendous importance. So it seemed logical to invite him to collaborate with us on a project. The concept we developed for “translocation – transformation” goes far beyond that of a simple solo exhibition. The exhibition deals not only with aspects of Ai Weiwei’s biography, but also takes up issues that affect all of us in a sense and are of course pressing.

Ai Weiwei, what are you planning for your solo exhibition at the Belvedere in Vienna?

Ai Weiwei: Vienna is a fascinating place, so rich in both contemporary and intellectual practice. I am very happy that I will have the possibility to be part of this tradition.

And in the 21er Haus I will have the chance to exhibit a very ambitious work. It takes a crazy guy to follow this project through as I cannot accomplish this on my own.

It takes a curator who is a little weird and ambitious and interested. That is so important and can make an exhibition really special. A show is not just a show but it always has to be a final intellectual endeavor. Otherwise it is not interesting. It has to be meaningful for the place, the people who are curating it, the artist and the visitor.

And very often it does not happen that all those factors come together; maybe two or three, but all four is very rare. And I think in Vienna all four apply and I am very eager to see how it will actually turn out. In my understanding it is going to be a really nice and very unique event, an event that is hard to repeat. It is an immense challenge and I had to face various obstacles along the way.

Once the curator said something could not be done and I thought, well, let’s see. But step by step, a process that is sometimes painful, and feels miserable and impossible. But due to my persistence as well as to the curator’s character and patience we have made a lot possible and we have made good progress. Now we have to wait and see how the show actually turns out.

Ai Weiwei’s exhibition contribution reaches from the inside of 21er Haus to the parking lot and into the rooms of the Upper Belvedere. How did that come about?

Agnes Husslein-Arco: The works on view reflect the artist’s confrontation with changing locations and transformative processes. The exhibition concept is based on this idea and necessitated the decision to show the works at various sites.

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Photo: Marlene Rahmann

INTERVIEW

Ai Weiwei, your art often points to current political events such as the refugee crisis in Europe. One of your interventions referenced the tragic fate of the drowned child refugee Alan Kurdi, and you covered the pillars of the concert hall in Berlin with used lifejackets from Lesbos. You are currently working on a film about refugees. Do you believe in the transformative power of art?

Ai Weiwei: As artists we act as a medium. We often use ourselves to experience, to sense, to try and observe reality, but that is not enough. This insight is very painful.

As a medium you have to reflect on yourself in relation to your environment and you have to find a language to show the public as well as yourself how things around you work. That means you are constantly vulnerable and you put yourself in a dangerous state and often in what might be questionable situations in the eye of the public.

But that is what art is about.

The most intriguing and important art, actually, most art that is relevant, puts us in another condition. It is solid and clear and has this uncomfortable sensitivity, a certain unfamiliarity and investigative stance which supports the definition of how we see the world and how we see specific events.

We try not to use moral judgement, because all moral judgement should be left to the assumption of the public, as this is either religious or belongs to the realm of common sense. But art is not about that. Art is about making our sensitivity work in the moment, unfiltered and without guidance or protection, very nude, very investigative.

I think that transformation is the most important part of our activity as artists. Without it reality can be very crude, senseless and even brutal. But with this kind of human art activity or transformation it relocates ourselves or puts these inhuman events in some language which can be comprehensive and approachable, some time with beauty, sometime by shocking, even by way of anger, but always as part of ourselves.

the effort is to put art back to the intellectual argument rather than to come with a formalistic approach. Both of them made a great advance and built a platform for everybody which we can call liberation of our mind. So I really admire both of them and what they did a lot, even if it was minimal. But what they did is really about how to create a personal interpretation of how to define their time, to define their state of mind, and to establish some kind of clear communication with the viewer. It could be big-mouth viewers as in the case of Warhol and it could be very small, kind of elite type intellectual viewers as in the case of Duchamp. They both stretch a maximum span of possibilities, which I find very interesting.

You advocate Western values such as those of the Enlightenment, freedom of expression and exposing corruption. And yet you’re always putting yourself in very risky situations; you were imprisoned and subjected to a government-imposed travel ban. Don’t you think you might be overextending yourself sometimes in your role as an activist?

Ai Weiwei: It is a nice word, a nice concept to think that I overextend myself. I think it is a positive thing if I can overextend or have overextended myself. But what I did was always in respect to my location and how it fed into my reality. I always try to give my own expression of a situation and that, of course, also happened in China and it had consequences. Any act without consequence is not a meaningful act. So this only means that my actions have some meaning in them. And it is somehow relevant to act in a certain way. And of course we do not always know in advance how situations and events develop with or without an intervention and we also never know what will be the consequence of an action. But as long as we can still act, learn from it and disarray, I fully appreciate the opportunity to do it.

Ms. Husslein, how political should contemporary art be in your opinion? Can art change political and social conditions? Should it?

Agnes Husslein-Arco: I view contemporary artists as important seismographs of our society. With all the challenges around the world, I am convinced that we will be seeing more work in the coming years that directly reflects global events. I can’t say whether art ultimately succeeds in changing the situation, but drawing attention to it is perfectly legitimate.

Ai Weiwei, your use of publicity and your work with everyday objects draws frequent comparisons to artists such as Andy Warhol and Marcel Duchamp, who clearly promoted a democratic understanding of art in the 20th century. How democratic can or should art be?

Ai Weiwei: I think both Warhol and Duchamp have been liberating art from some kind of existing theory, or some concrete understanding of what art should be to our personal eyes, intellect or private taste. It can be very superficial in the sense of pure joy or amusement. I think 55

INTERVIEW

How Beautiful Is Art Allowed to Be? Notes on the relationship between applied and fine art Interview by Angela Stief

Applied art versus visual art, beauty versus ugliness, analogue versus digital: a conversation with MAK Director Christoph Thun-Hohenstein and artists Constantin Luser, Eva Schlegel and Sofie Thorsen about crossovers, confounders and obsessions.

Modernism emancipated art and drew a distinction between fine art and applied art. Does this division still make sense today?

Christoph Thun-Hohenstein: It definitely makes sense, though there is a lot of crossover. Fine art, in contrast to applied art, is free-form and does not have to be useful or have a purpose. What’s interesting is when the two areas inspire one another. MAK invites contemporary artists to act as a catalyst for presentations of applied art, for example. Conversely, it is important for us to use the MAK’s rich collection of applied art to inspire and bring new impetus to contemporary visual art.

Angela Stief, born 1974 in Augsburg (Germany), studied art history and philosophy and was a curator at Kunsthalle Wien from 2002 to 2013. In 2014, she founded the Temporäre Halle für Kunst in Linz. She lives and works as an independent curator and publicist in Vienna.

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Mr. Luser, in 2015 you worked with various objects from the historical Hofstätter Collection, which encompasses both applied and fine arts. What attracted you to that project?

Constantin Luser: I thought several of the objects from the Hofstätter Collection had a strong aura. I was particularly interested in fragments and broken, discarded pieces, and chose things that had a strong inspirational pull on me. This could be anything from the case of a

grandfather clock to a clock pendulum to broken-off hands from a baroque sculpture. The parts were both the starting point and the guide for my artistic approach. The fragmentary quality of these “found objects” fits well with the process of welding and soldering I follow in creating my “object drawings” – collages made of brass. Many individual parts are joined together to form a “whole” artwork.

How important is applied art as a starting point for your work, Sofie Thorsen?

Sofie Thorsen: I’m interested in objects from the areas of architecture and design that later take on the role of artistic material in the broadest sense. There are often things that do not exist anymore, and in these cases I work with photographic images and documents. But sometimes the connection is much more loose; I could be attracted to a detail in a drawing, a particular color or the quality of a surface.

Can you name a recent example?

Sofie Thorsen: Yes, right now I’m working with a series of Japanese folding screens. I’m especially inspired by certain points of interest like hanging textiles or empty spaces in the execution, which I then incorporate into new work in a modified form. Sometimes, objects ask questions that lead me in a new direction, or push me towards new questions. I like that.

Constantin Luser, Sofie Thorsen, Eva Schlegel and Christoph Thun-Hohenstein (f. l. t. r.)

Photo: Marlene Rahmann

Programm

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INTERVIEW

The love of objects and impulse to collect extends to both applied art and ordinary, everyday objects – there’s no distinction there. Eva Schlegel, what is your relationship to collecting?

Eva Schlegel: Collecting has been a part of my life since I first got involved with art. Initially, I traded with my artist friends. But then I am also always stumbling across things that really grab me or capture my interest in a big way. Drawings by Claude Joseph Vernet, who depicted Louis XV’s entire fleet, are one example. I have also often incorporated erotic reference material into my art, and I looked for other artists working in this field, which is how I ended up buying a vintage print by Peter Hujar, from 1976. It shows a man of Arab origin, sitting on a chair in an empty room with a huge erect penis. This peaceful image takes on a whole new meaning in the current time.

Mr. Thun-Hohenstein, you once referred to yourself as a mental collector. What do you mean by that?

Christoph Thun-Hohenstein: I’m interested in collecting projects and ideas. This is a real motivator for me in my job as director of a museum. I also enjoy exploring formats that integrate and blend different genres. I did a series of projects in which music – by Gustav Mahler, for example – takes a visual form, both live and on DVD. The notion of beauty – the theme of this year’s VIENNA ART WEEK – is a controversial concept in visual arts, although it’s rather common in applied arts. How beautiful is art allowed to be?

Sofie Thorsen: Beauty is an ambivalent concept for many artists. I try to produce beauty in the execution, but still there’s usually a part of the production process that isn’t controllable. Without coincidence, there’s no surprise.

Apart from that, the concept has to have a kind of coherence, otherwise the art is pretty and not beautiful. The important thing for me is to work continuously on both the concrete materials and on the concept. A professor told me at the beginning of my studies that you should never stop working, because the material thinks for you.

I think that’s a beautiful way to put it!

What role does beauty play in your art?

Constantin Luser: At the Büro für Raumzeichnung, we follow strict aesthetic principles. In my case, the precise joining of details is done in pursuit of beauty.

Let me put the question the other way around: Eva Schlegel, does ugliness hold any significance for your art?

Eva Schlegel: We’re seeing a development in society that has to do with the optimization of work processes, etc.

This is as true for genetic research as it is for completely ordinary, everyday things. Here, confounding factors like 58

the non-perfect, the ugly and the sick – which I understand to be the potentials of evolution – are eliminated.

Beauty is also always something that is tied to time, a social convention that varies within different cultural contexts.

Christoph Thun-Hohenstein: To me, beauty is the opposite of algorithmic perfection. The more “digital beauty” we experience in everyday life, the more we’ll yearn for things that are incomplete, or things that might be considered ugly by popular parameters, but might just be different. I find it hard to imagine that something digital can radiate beauty from within. But I still think the virtual is interesting, as the interface where the human and the machine connect.

An institution for applied art constantly has to renegotiate and redefine the relationship between the digital and the analogue. Right now, so-called post-internet art is becoming something of a phenomenon. What do you make of it?

Christoph Thun-Hohenstein: I reject the term. We should be referring to the time we live in as “digital modernism.”

The impact of the digital has been at least as great as that of industrialization in the 19th century. What once took centuries to change changes almost instantly today.

Constantin Luser, your work involves something like an obsessive art-making, which is very strongly tied to the analogue manufacturing process. Would you say there’s something frenzied about your work?

Constantin Luser: Yes, but there is also something very controlled about it. It depends a lot on whatever activity I am doing at that moment. I think of drawing, for example, as a more frenzied process than soldering.

Switching between media makes both of them more interesting.

Eva Schlegel: Flow is a very important part of my work process. The ability to forget everything and just lose myself in the work was the main reason I became an artist.

Herwig Kempinger and Adolf Krischanitz

INTERVIEW

Architectural Jewel and Prestigious Exhibition Venue Construction work in store for the Vienna Secession Text by Silvie Aigner

Originally planned to become a temporary exhibition pavilion, the Secession has been a major public attraction for more than a century. 30 years after the last complete refurbishment, renovation work and adjustments to the halls of the legendary institution can no longer be postponed.

Architect Joseph Maria Olbrich’s extravagant art nouveau building has a special place in Viennese architecture history. No building articulated the dawn of the modern age more radically. Considered “too modern for the front row,” the City Council rejected the proposal to construct it at the corner of Ringstrasse and Wollzeile. Eventually they agreed on the present location. Olbrich’s design echoes the nearby baroque Karlskirche (St. Charles’s Church) with its famous “golden” dome of laurel leaves, which – as we know from chronicler Ludwig Hevesi – are not really made of gold: “They are painted yellow on the outside and every leaf was gilded with three stripes of real gold.”1 This only became visible with general renovations carried out in 1985/86, by Adolf Krischanitz and Otto Kapfinger.

Silvie Aigner studied art history at the University of Vienna, with postgraduate studies in cultural management at the Danube University Krems and a doctorate at the Art History Department at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. She currently works as an author and curator of international and Austrian museums and collections, mainly in the field of contemporary art. Aigner has been editor-in-chief of the art magazine “PARNASS” (www.parnass.at) since May 2014.

But the Secession is more than an architectural jewel; it is an active artists’ association that has long played a crucial role in contemporary art. And all this despite original plans that, in 1897, envisaged a “temporary exhibition pavilion for a period of no more than ten years.”2 After a programmatic change of exhibition policy in the mid-1980s, the Secession shifted its focus back to its original statute – to show international contemporary art in Vienna – and became a world-renowned exhibition venue.

“The Beethoven Frieze also creates a unique connection between history and a world-class contemporary art exhibition program. This is as much a part of the Secession’s success as the mix of people it attracts – from visitors interested in the avant-garde to those who want to see the building and the Beethoven Frieze,” say Herwig

Kempinger, President of the Secession, and architect Adolf Krischanitz, who is also in charge of the now imminent construction work.

“What we are doing now is not a major renovation,” Krischanitz and Kempinger say, “but necessary adjustments, repairs and repurposing several rooms. Secession welcomes some 100,000 visitors a year, which is a massive strain on the building – from the terrazzo floor to the doorknobs. You have to use the best possible materials so that it can hold out over the years. Also, the art institution’s requirements have changed over the years, affecting everything from the museum shop to the in-house café. The latter has become obsolete with the neighborhood’s booming gastronomy industry.” Other changes include a new air conditioning system that meets EU standards, renovations to the wrought-iron dome, but also disabled access to the Beethoven Frieze – the biggest structural challenge. The ground floor will be restruct­ ured in the process. The café will be replaced by a room for events that can also serve as additional exhibition space. The shop is a major source of income at the Secession, like in other museums, and will get a new architectural concept with more display space. All of these structural changes and reinforcements will help Secession continue to write history as a leading forum for contemporary art in the future.

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Otto Kapfinger, Adolf Krischanitz, Generalsanierung 1985/86: Die Konzeption der Erneuerung [Refurbishment 1985/86: The Renovation Concept], in: Secession (ed.): Secession. Die Architektur, Vienna 2003 Minutes of City Council meeting on November 17, 1897

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Interview

A Museum for Everyone

125 years of the Kunsthistorisches Museum Interview by Maria Rennhofer

The Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna opened on 17 October 1891, after many years of preparation.

It has had a turbulent history since then, including the transfer of ownership to the Republic, the Nazi era, the issue of restitution and the attainment of complete independent legal status. The institution is commemorating its 125th anniversary with a number of exhibitions, conferences and events held throughout 2016.

Maria Rennhofer spoke to Sabine Haag, General Director of the institution, on the occasion.

What are your focal points or priorities for the anniversary of the Kunsthistorisches Museum – what is the main thing you want to convey to the public?

Sabine Haag: Our motto for the 125-year anniversary is “A Museum for Everyone,” and we’ve come up with a rich program to reflect that. Our exhibitions, but also all of our other activities, are designed to appeal to the widest possible audience. Our main concern is to lower barriers and to present a museum for everyone in the physical and intellectual sense. This also applies to the tone of our mediation and outreach programs. “Celebrations,” our major anniversary exhibition, draws from the richness of our diverse collections at the various locations, but we always like to include an outside perspective. This year, Edmund de Waal worked with our inventories as curator.

His “during the night” exhibition shows a very subjective take on our collections. It’s important to us to question our institution critically from different angles, so that we can better understand it from today’s standpoint. The anniversary should be more than a navel-gazing look at the past; we want to shed light on where we are now and where we want to go in the next 125 years.

The museum opened in 1891. It was a gracious gesture on the part of the Emperor to combine the Habsburg collections and make them accessible to the public. This is now a task that also comes with certain obligations.

How do you balance this opening of the institution to more and more visitors and preserving the objects in your care?

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Sabine Haag: I don’t see the two as mutually exclusive.

We understand a museum to be a place of joy, learning, beauty and discussion – and a place where very general questions of human existence come into play. The museum can only be such a place if it preserves the objects for the future. In our case, it happens that the building is a work of art in itself – object number one, you could say. We want to cultivate an understanding of this in the way we present the objects, the stories we tell about them, the knowledge and insights we give – especially among the younger generation, which of course wants to know why museums preserve objects in the first place. This works best if we show that these collections were not only a source of great pleasure and joy 125 years ago, but that with new knowledge from our time and a different understanding, they can act as a kind of anchor in times of turbulance, and therefore should justifiably be kept for the future.

How do you entice young adults into the museum – especially those who do not come from a middle-class intellectual background?

Sabine Haag: You appeal to the target audience of under25s. This year we have the “Annual Ticket U25” for these young adults at the very tempting price of 19 euros. We’ve developed an attractive program and new offers for these so-called digital natives, who have a very different approach to knowledge, knowledge transfer, and learning. We rely heavily on social media, but also offer a new, multi-lingual art education app especially for young people. When it comes to communicating content to this audience, we can’t rely on our decades of core competence in classical art education. We first had to learn what makes them tick, and then offer high-quality content and tools that make our objects more accessible.

The “museum for everyone” is especially relevant now that there is so much talk of migration and integration, where language is less important. Where do you see opportunities to give people – even people from other cultures with different learning experiences – something that can contribute to mutual understanding?

Sabine Haag Photo: Marlene Rahmann

Sabine Haag: The key is to meet people where they are, and not to assume that a young person with a migrant or an uneducated background, for example, would have any interest or know anything at all about older art and culture. These days, you cannot take for granted that museum visitors – even Austrians – are familiar with all the motifs. But if you address different social conventions, you can pick up on specific topics, engage in dialogue with visitors, get them to talk about their own experiences, let them present their own history and culture and then see whether or not there are any parallels. But the museum experience doesn’t work without language entirely, so it is important to be very careful and sensitive in the choice of language. Otherwise what you get is the opposite effect.

Maria Rennhofer is a cultural journalist and publicist. She studied journalism and art history at the University of Vienna, headed the contemporary cultural radio broadcasts of the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation (ORF) for many years, has been active since 2010 as a freelance journalist and author and working independently on culture and media projects.

Rennhofer has published various books, including a monograph on Koloman Moser.

The architects Semper and Hasenauer planned the Kunsthistorisches Museum as part of a large Imperial Forum, which was never built after the collapse of the monarchy. Years ago, there was talk of connecting several museum buildings underground as part of plans for the Museumsquartier. Your predecessor Wilfried Seipel intended to build space for special exhibitions in one of the yards, but the project could not be implemented for financial reasons. Do you have any specific structural expansion plans for the near future?

Sabine Haag: We have our wants and plans, but no concrete projects, because for that we would need partners in politics and the support of businesses. The Kunsthistorisches Museum urgently needs an extension to obtain space for temporary exhibitions, and to improve our infrastructure. We would like to take better advantage of the opportunities that come from our connection to the Vienna Museum of Natural History, and we also need to tie in the other collections of Kunsthistorisches Museum located outside the Ring Road. There are, in other words, a lot of needs that would have to be satisfied on the whole, and this would have to happen in several stages as part of a larger cultural policy master plan.

Where do you see the museum in 125 years in terms of content?

Sabine Haag: The museum of the future is still a museum of originals. Digitized object inventory is important for documentation and research purposes, as preliminary information, postprocessing and networked information retrieval. But an object can never be regarded holistically even in virtual space, and it will always only be seen for itself; dialogue and interaction happen only in a museum context. I am convinced that the museum will never die as a place of encounter with originals, which will also be around in 125 years. www.khm.at/125-jahre 61

Interview

“Artists have always been a voice of reason” Francesca Habsburg on the future of her foundation Interview by Irene M. Gludowacz

Over a year ago, Francesca von Habsburg decided to dedicate the work of her Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary Foundation to the most urgent issues of our time and to connect the “universal language” of art with science and the environment, with a focus on the oceans. For over a decade, TBA21 has commissioned art projects. The resulting major works of art address economic, social, and political issues and reflect the founder’s personal views. In a conversation with Irene Glodowacz, Francesca Habsburg talks about her most recent projects and her plans for the future.

The TBA21 Academy focuses on science and nature.

What type of projects is the Academy involved in?

Francesca Habsburg: I established the TBA21 Academy as a platform from which I can take this interdisciplinary work to another level, not only engaging artists but also taking science and conservation as our point of departure. We are bringing artists and scientists together, along with other cultural producers, and inviting them to the most remote places in the world. With the Aca­ demy’s director, Markus Reymann, we created TBA21 The Current, a three-year exploratory fellow program in the Pacific that aims to support new processes of knowledge production, as opposed to art production, and encourage and inspire new solutions for change. A tailor-made tool for commissioning and disseminating ambitious and unconventional projects beyond traditional art categories, The Current embraces the notion of the journey as a goal in itself.

Francesca Habsburg Photo: Irina Gavrich, © TBA21, Vienna, 2015 62

How is The Current structured, how does it work, and what are its future plans and mission?

Francesca Habsburg: Participants in The Current join an expedition on a research vessel that is led by two cura-

tors. The Current’s first two expeditions, guided by Ute Meta Bauer (founding director of the NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore) and Cesar Garcia (founding director and chief curator of Mistake Room, Los Angeles), both took teams of artists and researchers to Papua New Guinea in 2015. Each expedition results in a convening a few months later – a public presentation that is informed by the participants’ experiences at sea and the joint fieldwork. It is also a gathering of artists, scientists, and local stakeholders who have emerged as agents and voices of change. The first of these convenings took place in Kingston, Jamaica, in collaboration with the Jamaican Dance Theater and the University of the West Indies. The second will take place in India during the Kochi-Muziris Biennale in December.

The first thing we realized on location in these Pacific islands is the huge impact that climate change is having on communities, resulting in an increasing number of climate refugees. While they are responsible for about 1 or 2% of global emissions, they certainly suffer 99% of their effects. So you have to ask yourself, how can we become an agent of change to redress this imbalance if carbon trading is not the answer? Historically, artists have always been a voice of reason, and today many defy traditional market-driven ambitions to focus on the urgent issues of our time in a way that empowers people and inspires them to join the movement.

Irene M. Gludowacz graduated from the fine arts academies in Vienna (AfBK) and Berlin (UdK) and went on to work as a fashion/textile and product designer. She lived in New York, Paris and Munich but has meanwhile moved back to Vienna and now works as an author, curator and communications expert for collections, foundations, museums and enterprises in the sphere of international art management.

How do you aim to tackle these issues through art and with artists?

Francesca Habsburg: When I started the foundation I was very strongly in the world of conceptual art. When I made the decision to dedicate the work of my contemporary art foundation TBA21 to collaborating with artists who can inspire and explore new solutions that we all can focus on and which move us towards a better future, there was a lot of “huffing and puffing” in the art world.

However, it has been not unnoticed that we consistently invited artists who work with socio-political issues. In 2006 we had a project with Kutlug˘ Ataman, with Amar Kanwar we moved on to the environment and the devastating impact of unregulated mining, and with Christoph Schlingensief it was, of course, very political. In retrospect, these were our most successful projects. We thought, why not deepen and broaden the foundation’s focus on these topics?

Last year’s project with Ernesto Neto was a big step in that direction. In essence, it was a partnership with the Huni Kuin, an indigenous tribe from Acre, a remote region of the Brazilian rainforests near the Peruvian border. The way Neto incorporated them into his work was very important. It legitimized their position in our eyes and looked at these people not only through an anthropological lens, but gave them a voice, which they so deserve. This in itself was controversial, and some from the Austrian Green Party objected on those grounds.

The truth is, they were treated with great respect and we generated so much genuine interest, support, and muchneeded funding for them through the exhibition. So, as

complicated and controversial as this project was, it was a huge success. Olafur Eliasson’s “Green light” project responded to a situation of great uncertainty, both for refugees, often caught up in legal and political limbo, and the European societies that welcome them. It was a huge learning curve for us not only to cope with the emotional nature of this project but to establish a balance of deep respect and nurturing for each and every person participating in the project.

Do you see more artists working in this field?

Francesca Habsburg: A group of artists came with us to Cocos Island. Julian Charrière and Andrew Randall do important fieldwork. Charles Stankievech, who participated in the “Rare Earth” exhibition and joined the expedition last year, is renowned for his work in the Arctic. Tomás Saraceno has launched a project called “Aerocene,” which addresses the issue of fossil-free flight. Doug Aitken is creating underwater pavilions, which mark hope spots designated by legendary marine biologist Sylvia Earle. This project is produced by Parley for the Oceans. Jana Winderen is an extraordinary sound artist who is creating a work called “Silencing the Reefs.”

What has taken me by surprise is the tsunami of projects flowing in our direction ever since we became a bit of a mother ship for this kind of work! Not only artists are reaching out, but also scientists, marine biologists, film makers, philosophers, educational institutions, and politicians … At TBA21 we are now completely redefining the foundation to be able to not only absorb all the interest in our new line of work, but also grow with it and take on the challenge and responsibility this represents.

Do other institutions in the art world focus on these subjects?

Francesca Habsburg: Peter Weibel invited us to attend a conference with Bruno Latour at the ZKM. He is an important figure and an important reference for us. The exhibition “GLOBALE: Reset Modernity!” was fantastic and a new experience for me. Latour refers to our age as the anthropocene, in which mankind is the force of nature, in the sense that nature is no longer the force of nature. That very much reinforced what I decided one and a half years ago.

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interview

Emerging art at mumok Karola Kraus and Anna-Sophie Berger on the significance of art awards Interview by Sabrina Möller

Karola Kraus and Anna-Sophie Berger Photo: Marlene Rahmann

Kapsch AG and mumok awarded the Kapsch Contem­ porary Art Prize for the first time this year. Ten art experts nominated 17 applicants, from which a jury – Georg Kapsch, CEO of Kapsch Group, curators Eva Birkenstock and Stephanie Weber, Yilmaz Dziewior, Director of Museum Ludwig, and Karola Kraus, Director 64

of mumok – chose one: Anna-Sophie Berger was the award’s first recipient in 2016, winning 5,000 euros in prize money and a solo exhibition at the mumok.

Sabrina Möller spoke to Anna-Sophie Berger and Karola Kraus about the Kapsch Contemporary Art Prize and the current importance of art prizes in general.

What was the motivation for starting this new art prize?

How did you come to collaborate with the Kapsch Group?

Karola Kraus: Our successful ten-year cooperation with the Baloise Group ended unfortunately when the company gave up its headquarters in Vienna. I am happy to have found a new partner in the Kapsch Group. The Kapsch Contemporary Art Prize aims to promote young artists who live and work mostly in Austria.

This year, the jury selected Anna-Sophie Berger, whose work will be presented in a solo exhibition at mumok as part of the prize. This is an important step, considering that the mumok has been criticized repeatedly in recent years for giving too little support to Austria’s current, emerging art scene. Is the prize intended as a kind of statement?

Karola Kraus: The way I see it, considering current positions is not only one of the core, defining tasks of a museum with an explicit educational mission, it is inherent to a contemporary art museum’s innovative profile.

The same rule as for collecting applies to exhibiting: one of my main priorities is to discover influential artistic positions early on, and to give them space and public presence.

There are many prestigious awards that – aside from the financial aspect – also increase the artists’ visibility and set trends. What is the significance of art prizes? To what extent are they relevant from an artistic or institutional perspective?

Anna-Sophie Berger: A while ago, an article in the news magazine “profil” described the lack of young Austrian artists in museum programs. Without being polemical, I would say that the institutions’ fight to maintain their visitor counts means that they don’t always manage to fulfill their obligation to show younger, lesser-known artists and to promote them over the longer term. An art prize can help to address this group specifically.

Karola Kraus: In addition to the prize money, the winner receives a solo exhibition at mumok along with an accompanying exhibition catalogue. The Kapsch Group also purchases one work for our collection. Experience has shown that for some artists, this type of promotion can serve as a springboard for an international career.

Sabrina Möller was born in Germany and lives and works in Vienna. She founded the blog “art and signature” as a student.

Today, she is the editor of the art magazine “keen on” and writes for various magazines in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

of a work of art, but with what we as a society wish to preserve and what will tell our story in the future.

Anna-Sophie Berger: Here I would have to criticize the dualistic depiction of a more complex problem. Who is “the market”? And does it – as an abstract entity – include the galleries that museums use as financiers for exhibitions? Since an institution’s capacity to act is directly related to politics, it is up to us to fight this and defend these free spaces, rather than simply antagonize with buzzwords and surrender to paternalistic career demands.

What criteria did the Kapsch Contemporary Art Prize jury use to make their decision?

Karola Kraus: Using documentation submitted by the nominated artists, we discussed both the content as well as the formal quality of their work up to this point in their careers. Anna-Sophie Berger impressed the jury not only with the variety of media she employs, but also with the way she translates contemporary image logics into installations. Overlapping subject matter or content constitutes a defining feature of her work. We see snapshots and selfies appear simultaneously and with equal value in different virtual and real spaces.

What initial thoughts did you have about your upcoming exhibition, Ms. Berger, once you learned about the prize?

Anna-Sophie Berger: For some time now, I’ve had a sculptural idea that would be a major logistical undertaking for several reasons and is conceptually tied to the context of local institutions. So my first thought was to realize this idea for the mumok.

The Kapsch Group will purchase a work for mumok as part of the art prize. What do you want for your collection at mumok?

Karola Kraus: For her solo exhibition at mumok, Anna-Sophie Berger is developing a site-specific installation that deals with the architecture of the exhibition space and analyzes our society’s capacity for dialogue and discourse. I will work with my team of curators and Mr. Kapsch to choose a representative work or block of works from the exhibition for our collection.

Klaus Albrecht Schröder, Director of the Albertina in Vienna, recently commented that museums “don’t make artists anymore, they are made by the market.” To what extent do you agree with Schröder? Have we seen a shift in the position and power of institutions or institutional exhibitions?

Karola Kraus: Contemporary art has felt the influence of hyperactive movement in the art market for some years now. We’re seeing a scene dominated by an extraordinary energy, enthusiasm, breakneck speed and competition.

At the other end of this is the museum, whose main task is to preserve artistic and art historical memory. The work we do has nothing to do with the monetary value 65

interview

“… a city of longing” On Vienna as a gallery location Interview by Alexandra Matzner

Gallery scene, collectors, art fairs: Vienna has changed radically in recent years. Local gallery owners Gabriele Senn, Ursula Krinzinger and Martin Janda discuss structures, subsidies and collecting.

Alexandra Matzner, born 1974 in Linz, studied art history, history, and romance philology in Vienna and Rome. Her work as an art communicator and journalist includes numerous publications and catalog articles on photography and art in the 20th and 21st centuries.

She works as a freelance writer in Vienna and is currently developing the independent culture platform artinwords.de.

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How would you rate Vienna as a gallery location on an international level?

Gabriele Senn: Everyone who comes to Vienna – artists, curators, museum directors – is amazed and delighted at how well the scene and the gallery landscape are set up here.

Ursula Krinzinger: Vienna is a city of longing for artists and the arts scene. You will find at least 20 galleries that work internationally.

Martin Janda: I think that Vienna has developed incredibly in the last ten years. The influx of people has made it much more international. People may be less willing to take risks than in other countries, but that is gradually changing.

What kind of additional structures would you like to see?

Ursula Krinzinger: We have stressed repeatedly that the arts need an Austrian support fund. Switzerland and the Netherlands provide generous financial support to artists for international exhibitions. There is nothing comparable here. This foundation should at least contribute towards transport, travel and catalogs at international museums and galleries.

Martin Janda: Museums urgently need purpose-specific purchasing budgets in addition to their actual budgets to allow them to professionally discharge the third pillar of their activities, which is collecting.

Vienna has changed radically in recent years – and that includes fairs. Which ones are important to you?

Gabriele Senn: viennacontemporary is the only one that is important to me. It is well attended by foreign collectors, and local galleries are also very interested in making sure it goes well.

Ursula Krinzinger: Art Austria is often attended by col­ lectors who want to find out about Austrian art. But there is no discussion: viennacontemporary, with its intention of drawing international collectors to the city, has become very important.

Martin Janda: I think that viennacontemporary in fact still has the duty to work more intensively on the Austrian market – or rather the market within a 500-kilometer radius of Vienna. There is more than enough potential in this area.

What is your opinion of Austrian collectors? And how can you reach the next generation?

Gabriele Senn: Confidence has improved considerably in the past 15 years. Collectors, galleries and artists act at an international level. Every generation of artists has its own generation of collectors.

Ursula Krinzinger: The group of “established” collectors has also improved greatly. Krinzinger Projekte is a separate institution for young art and younger collectors.

What does Vienna need to be an ideal gallery location?

Gabriele Senn: I believe museums should buy art from Austrian galleries.

Ursula Krinzinger: I would like informative and less destructive art criticism. Belief in other countries is so great in Austria that artists who exhibit in galleries in Vienna are only bought by Austrian collectors at international fairs. That hurts.

Vienna gallerists Christine König, Ursula Krinzinger, Martin Janda, Rosemarie Schwarzwälder and Peter Krobath (f. l. t. r.)

Photo: Elisabeth Janda 67

INTERVIEW

“How can architecture contribute to a good life?”

Architekturzentrum Wien’s designated Director Angelika Fitz on the city as a living cosmos Interview by Wojciech Czaja

On January 1, 2017, Angelika Fitz will succeed Az W founder Dietmar Steiner as director of the institution.

The DNA of the Architekturzentrum Wien, she says, will most certainly remain intact. She also dreams of a real-life lab for museum haters, experimentalists and everyday experts.

You assume your new post on January 1. How are you feeling about it?

Angelika Fitz: Great. Architekturzentrum Wien is one of the most exciting architecture institutions in Europe, or in the world even. Directing a house like that is a great privilege.

Angelika Fitz, born in Hohenems in 1967, studied literature in Innsbruck and founded an independent firm as a curator and cultural theorist in Vienna in 1998. Her research interests include curatorial projects at the interface of architecture, art and urbanism. She realized several projects in South Asia between 1998 and 2005. In 2003 and 2005, she was commissioner for the Austrian contribution to the Architecture Biennale in São Paulo. Most recently, she curated the exhibitions “A City for Several Generations” and “Real City” as well as the international platforms “We-Traders: Swapping Crisis for City” and “Metropolis: Who Creates the City?”

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In your research, you often refer to the concept of urban citizenship. What exactly does that mean?

Angelika Fitz: At a time of great political and economic transition – think of neoliberalism, migration and displacement – I’ve observed that the city is becoming more and more important as a place of identity. The term for this in cultural theory is urban citizenship. In other words: while the 19th-century concept of citi­zenry was linked to the nation state, we are currently seeing a multinational citizenship in our cities. In the future, the city might replace the country of origin as a “homeland.” Instead of being citizens of countries, we’ll be citizens of cities.

What makes the Az W so special?

Angelika Fitz: Its approach. Az W is a platform that addresses not only individual buildings and architects, but all tangible and intangible aspects of the built world, including its social, political and economic factors. This embedding of architecture in a social context has been a hallmark of Az W from the beginning.

And what specifically would the city of the future need to prepare for?

Angelika Fitz: It would have to accommodate the needs of a culturally diverse, equitable, social society that also allocates its resources very carefully. Even now, a number of our cities are characterized by rising social inequality.

There are plenty of examples of this. We have to consider how we can make this city a place for everyone.

The city as a living cosmos is something you’ve been dealing with quite intensively. Will these years of scholarly study come through in the Az W’s future program?

Angelika Fitz: Definitely. I am interested in the city as a living cosmos, as you say, but also as a space for solidarity, a haven for urban democracy, a stage for various actors and developments from bottom-up processes to large structures, whereby the difficulty lies first and foremost in the interfaces between these aspects. The rise in the urban world population is going to present a major challenge for cities in the coming decades. There is no way around it.

Vienna is one of the most livable cities in the world.

Would you say it’s also an equitable city?

Angelika Fitz: Vienna has great international rankings, and it’s not for nothing. The city has a high quality of care in terms of housing, jobs, mobility and cultural activities.

But this also means that Vienna is already a very complete, very well-established city. That said, a new concept of the commons requires a clear break with business as usual. It demands a fundamental re-think when it comes to citizens having a hand in shaping the city. We need a great variety of possibilities for proactive engagement and residents actively contributing to the city.

Angelika Fitz Photo: Marlene Rahmann

Can you give an example?

Angelika Fitz: Right now, we can learn from cities in Southern Europe that have barely any money and suddenly have to rely on their own initiative. Lisbon was very strapped for cash even before the 2008 financial crisis.

They have large, very urgent urban development and revitalization projects in the works and can hardly afford anything else. So the city has defined some 30 crisis areas where a citizen or group can very easily get funding for a small, public space-related project, with a very accessible and uncomplicated application process – a concept on an A4 piece of paper is all you need.

How did this go over with the population?

Angelika Fitz: The approved projects include strategies that give very small but precise cultural impulses, as well as park redesigns costing no more than 50,000 euros. In total, we are talking about a budget of no more than two million euros per year. The completed projects are evaluated annually and receive further funding pending success.

Very little money, a lot of dedication. The results are great.

Wojciech Czaja, born 1978 in Ruda S´ la ska, ¸ Poland, works as a freelance journalist for newspapers and professional journals including “Der Standard.”

He has authored numerous books including “Zum Beispiel Wohnen” (2012), “Das Buch vom Land” (2015) and “Überholz” (2016). He lectures at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna and the Linz University of Arts, where he teaches communications and strategy for architects.

Would an initiative like that be conceivable in Vienna?

Angelika Fitz: It would be nice if politics would first of all acknowledge their urban planning responsibilities, and second establish new forms of cooperation with civil initiatives – and that means much more than just participation.

The Vienna population is growing by 30,000 to 40,000 people per year. What lies ahead?

Angelika Fitz: It won’t work without new points of contact between top-down and bottom-up approaches and without greater functional intermixing within the districts. I hope that the International Building Exhibi-

tion (IBA), which is just starting, will bring to the fore not only a lot of integrative residential and living models, but also new planning processes and procedures.

January 1, 2017, will be here before we know it. Do you already have plans for the future of Az W? Angelika Fitz: Dietmar Steiner is leaving a great institution behind, and I definitely want to preserve the Az W’s distinct DNA. That is absolutely certain. At the same time, I think it could be opened up even more. Architecture books and architecture museums still have the problem that they appeal mostly to architects. That’s nice on the one hand, but it’s also a shame because a lot of other potentially interested audiences do not feel addressed. I would like to make the Az W accessible to an even wider audience.

How? Angelika Fitz: I want to look at architecture and the city through the burning lens of the great issues of our time.

And we can’t forget the users’ perspective. We have to keep asking the basic question: “How can architecture contribute to a good life?” A medium-term goal would be to turn Az W into a kind of real-life laboratory, making it an initiator and partner institution for pilot models and experiments.

You were previously active as a curator in the architectural and cultural area and have already taught internationally. What will you miss about that in the future?

Angelika Fitz: Right now, I am running a busy firm working at maximum capacity. I’ve spent the past several months winding it down and dissolving it. This is also a sad process.

But I’m not sure I’ll really miss anything. On the contrary: I look forward to sharing my work as a researcher, curator and organizer with the great team at Az W. 69

INTERVIEW Programm

Newcomers New galleries in Vienna Text by Nicole Scheyrerer

The local gallery scene doesn’t often get new impulses.

Nicole Scheyerer seeks an explanation for this from newcomers to the scene and the Association of Austrian Galleries of Modern Art.

The name plate at the entrance of Galerie Nathalie Halgand looks brand new, the rooms freshly renovated. Its large windows offer a view of Naschmarkt, a trendy food market in the heart of Vienna. The gallery’s artists all have birth certificates dating no further back than 1980.

The art historian Nathalie Halgand ran Vienna’s first street art gallery, Inoperable, for eight years alongside Nicholas Platzer, before taking a chance and going solo in early 2016.

“The essential components needed for a successful gallery start-up are financial leeway, a strong social network, and lots of stamina,” Halgand says. Local art collectors are conservative when it comes to newcomers, she adds.

They take plenty of time to observe and evaluate the quality of the offer. “Apart from an attractive gallery program, word-of-mouth marketing is extremely important,” says Halgand, who spends lots of time travelling and researching.

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Vienna’s gallery scene is in dire need of the fresh blood of new enterprises. It saw its heyday around the turn of the millennium, but only few galleries were founded in the past decade. While the off-scene is brimming with activity, only few operators of alternative exhibition spaces venture to go one step further and become their artists’ professional representatives.

Curator Denise Parizek is one of them. She gathered valuable hands-on exhibition experience with pogmahon.art.club in the early noughties, and then moved on to open Produzentengallerie 12–14 contemporary. Only recently has she decided to focus on art collectors and has joined the gallery association. “We founded the gallery in 2009 to offer art school graduates an exhibition space they didn’t otherwise have at the time,” thus filling a gap in the promotion of young talent. “Unfortunately, the Austrian public appears to be lacking a sense of visual arts. People here really don’t show much interest, I’m afraid,” Parizek says. That’s why the curator has sought to establish ties with international galleries outside Austria in recent years. The resulting collaborations with exhibition organizers and gallerists in Slovenia, Romania, Mexico and Canada have brought a number of

Nathalie Halgand, Rina Grinn, Hans Knoll, Ileana Pop Dubovan, Oscar Sanchez, Denise Parizek, Ernst Hilger, Dora Da Costa (f. l. t. r.)

Photo: Marlene Rahmann

Cluj and Timis¸oara to Austria. “Our key objective is to co­llaborate even more closely with the local scene,” Dubovan says.

The importance of networking is equally important to gallerist Ernst Hilger, who has been in the art business for 45 years and has recently rejoined the gallery association’s board: “Traditional galleries must understand that their future hinges on the creation of partnerships.” One such example is the annual street art exhibition “Cash, Cans & Candy,” initiated by Hilger BrotKunsthalle in 2013 in cooperation with the Inoperable gallery. “We wouldn’t have succeeded on our own,” Hilger says.

As a member of the executive board, Hilger aims to make the gallery association a port of call for anyone bold enough to start an art business. What challenges do I face as an art entrepreneur? Can I get state funding? How do I get my artists displayed at an art fair? The gallery association has the answers. Hilger also hopes for new members to breathe new life into the umbrella organization.

exciting projects to Vienna and enabled Austrian artists to exhibit abroad.

In 2012, the Aa collections gallery opened on Burggasse, with a focus on young art: “We see ourselves as a start-up gallery, a platform for very young, local artists,” explains Managing Director Rina Grinn, emphasizing her supportive role in the artists’ creative development. “Our space is small in terms of size, but it offers lots of room for new ideas. It’s like a lab, really.” It’s not easy to find buyers for unknown artists, she says, but it is doable.

A native Muscovite, Rina Grinn has her own ways of connecting to Vienna’s established art scene, including collaborations with local institutions such as Ateliertheater and federal organizations like KulturKontakt Austria.

Nicole Scheyerer was born in Salzburg in 1974 and holds a degree in philosophy from Vienna University. She writes regularly about art and the art market for Viennese weekly “Falter,” and the dailies “Der Standard” and “Frankfurter Allge­ meine Zeitung.”

Five Plus Art Gallery has specialized in art by Eastern European artists, particularly from Romania. Gallery owner Ileana Pop Dubovan finds Vienna to be a good market for art from former socialist states. “Vienna is located in the very heart of Europe and has strong historical and cultural ties to Eastern Europe.” Founded on the initiative of a Romanian businessman, the gallery channels art from the emerging scenes of Bucharest,

So why, indeed, are there so few young gallerists in Austria? “Unfortunately, Vienna is extremely hostile to anything new,” says Hilger, suspecting an inherent fear of new competition. Mexican curator Oscar Sanchez, who has co-curated several exhibitions in Vienna with Denise Parizek, couldn’t agree more: “Austria fails to collaborate with art scenes from other countries. Many local players merely consider it unwelcome competition.” This attitude robs artists of an opportunity to benefit from new impulses, adds Parizek, who knows from experience that a change of cultural scenery inspires new artistic production.

Nathalie Halgand points to another reason for the inertia: “We need established gallerists to support newcomers in opening their own spaces. Which they do in other countries, I am told, but less so in Austria.” Most of all, however, founding new galleries is a way of fostering new artistic talent, because newcomers usually choose to represent artists from their own generation.

Gallery owner Hans Knoll, recently elected president of the gallery association, vividly remembers his own beginnings in the 1980s: “Luckily, I was naïve and inexperienced enough to give it a go.” The association can’t press anyone to found their own business, of course, it can merely support entrepreneurs with practical advice. The point is, new galleries don’t just take their slice of the pie; they make the pie bigger, Knoll says: “They are integrated into society, increase its sense of art, and thus acquire new art collectors.”

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Gheri Sackler and Wolfgang Renner Photo: Marlene Rahmann

INTERVIEW Programm

A Passion for Art A portrait of two collectors Text by Bettina Hoyos

At what point should you start calling yourself a “collector”? Both former gallerist Gheri Sackler and attorney Wolfgang Renner would prefer to avoid the label. They also share the conviction that it is only possible to buy “good art in good galleries.” As for what makes a true collector – it’s not something you can really talk about, they say; it’s something you have to feel.

“Frankly, my collection isn’t all that special,” Gheri Sackler demures, “I just happened to take an interest in art very early on.” Whatever the circumstances, the Austrian’s walls are absolutely covered with contemporary art. It all started in 1966, she reminisces, when she was a young art student in California and purchased her first piece of art by Charles “Chuck” Arnoldi. At the time it meant forking over 1,500 dollars, but she “never regretted it.” The charming lady admits that she has accumulated 72

“quite a few bits” in the meantime, perhaps unsurprising for a woman whose last name appears in museums including London’s Tate Modern (Sackler Escalator) and the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art (Sackler Wing), owing to her ex-husband’s patronage. She keeps those bits in her domiciles in Monaco and New York. The restless cosmopolitan could not imagine stashing them away in the attic.

Assuming that art collections have something to say about their founders, we gather in Mrs. Sackler’s case that she often acquires art locally: many pieces hanging in her Vienna residence were produced by Austrian artists and bought on a tour of her favorite galleries.

They include famous names like those of Franz West and Tamuna Sirbiladze, as well as a recently-delivered work

by Clemens Fürtler.

“It’s almost like an addiction,” Mrs. Sackler explains.

“I’m always craving news from the art market.” And what are her buying criteria? “When a piece touches me or makes me think about something, for example because it reflects the time we live in, I find it really hard to restrain myself.” So Gheri Sackler goes by her gut instinct when buying art. For her, the much-debated art bubble is not an issue: “You don’t have to be rich to buy good art.” The New York couple Dorothy and Herbert Vogel provide striking evidence that an impressive collection can be built with small pockets and a big sense of art. The librarian and the postman amassed almost 5,000 works by now-famous minimalist and conceptual artists in their one-bedroom apartment. Sackler also has an “absolute budget limit,” and is “definitely not” willing to pay the astronomical sums that certain (still) living artists are fetching at auction. And why would she: in the early 1970s, the mother of three moved to Paris and simultaneously opened Galerie JASA in Munich. “We also showed Gerhard Richter, of course.” Apparently the “21st-century Picasso’s” works didn’t sell very well, so she kept a few pieces for herself, Sackler says, with a big grin on her face.

But art is by no means the busy ex-model’s only pastime.

With her family, she founded the Sackler Center for Arts Education at New York’s Guggenheim Museum, whose “basic purpose is to highlight the close connection between art and education.” This is where philanthropist Gheri Sackler is completely in her element. For example, she is downright missionary in her commitment to Wiener Lerntafel, a platform that offers free learning aid for children in need and socially deprived families, and was founded by herself. “I chose to put my strength and energy where it’s really needed.” When she says this, the grin on her face is at least as big as when she thinks of Gerhard Richter.

including David Salle, James Brown and Philip Taaffe.

“My first art investment was a little drawing by Ross.” It cost him 1,500 dollars, he says, proud of his good nose, and there’s no denying that Ross Bleckner has been one of the most eminent US artists since the 1980s.

What role does the aspect of investment play when buying art? The attorney says none. Although: “I do of course learn about the artists and read up on their past careers and future prospects before I buy their work.” But art should first and foremost give pleasure to the collector, Renner adds, instead of being a mere asset. You can never be sure about future prospects, though some artists are certainly “risky.” With others you tell yourself, “If, for whatever reason, I have to sell this artist’s work in ten years’ time, I’ll be on the safe side. I’ll probably get more or less what I spent.”

Does Renner have a preference for a particular genre?

He says no: “I buy everything: photography, painting, sculpture – anything I like.” Do the works he picks tell us anything about him as a person? Renner wouldn’t really know: “I guess it’s a bit like in a love affair, where you also lose a clear view of the relationship.”

In any case, “buying art is mostly a matter of trust. For me, the gallerist plays a crucial role; perhaps even more crucial than the artist.” Whenever he is tipped off to have a closer look at an emerging artist, he does; “if only for the fact that I trust the gallerist’s judgment and know that I can rely on his or her professional opinion.” That’s why he only purchases art in galleries. Does Wolfgang Renner have a favorite artist? “Not really,” he says, adding: “My latest acquisition is always my favorite one.”

“Buying art is mainly a matter of trust”

Bettina Hoyos, born in Munich in 1963, studied German philology at Ludwig-MaximiliansUniversität München.

She worked as a trainee for the Regensburg-based newspaper “Mittelbayerische Zeitung” and was appointed permanently as editorial journalist in 1988. She has been a freelance journalist since 1991.

Wolfgang Renner is no fan of the term “collector,” either.

“What a pretentious word!” He prefers to associate art with joy, something he has experienced in abundance in his almost 30 years of dealing with art – joy and even love.

Over the years, the 47-year-old art-loving attorney from Vienna has amassed some 200 pieces. His focus is on contemporary Austrian art by the likes of Adriana Czernin, Svenja Deininger, Tillman Kaiser, Nick Oberthaler and many international artists. For the time being, he gets by without art storage. “After all, I want to live with those works and have them around me,” Renner says. Whether in his home or his office: “It all has to be hanging somewhere!”

Wolfgang Renner bought his first painting at the age of 23. He was studying in New York at the time, and because he was spending lots of time in art circles, he was lucky enough to meet the painter and lithographer Ross Bleckner, along with other New York art stars of the 1990s 73

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Art Education for Everyone!

On the art of mediating between objects and real life Interview by Michael Huber

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Brigitte Hauptner, Susanne Wögerbauer, Claudia Ehgartner, Andreas Hoffer, Anne Wübben and Andreas Zimmermann (f. l. t. r.)

Photo: Marlene Rahmann

Michael Huber, born 1976 in Klagenfurt, has been art correspondent for the “Kurier” newspaper since 2009. He studied communication studies and art history in Vienna and New York (NYU) and took a master’s degree in cultural journalism from Columbia University, New York, in 2007.

The fact that art enriches life is well known to anyone who has ever found a way to access it, and yet that same access eludes many people for a variety of reasons. Art educators try to keep the door open – and are confronted with radical changes in the process.

A group of top-class art educators met to swap ideas on this very topic: Claudia Ehgartner, mumok; Andreas Hoffer, longtime curator and art educator at the Essl Museum; Anne Wübben, Architekturzentrum Wien; Andreas Zimmermann, Kunsthistorisches Museum; Susanne Wögerbauer, Belvedere, and her colleague Brigitte Hauptner, who developed an outreach program for people with dementia.

There’s no law dictating what art education is supposed to achieve. Is there consensus about how people should participate in art and culture?

Andreas Zimmermann: The Kunsthistorisches Museum announced a very nice motto for this year’s anniversary program – “A Museum for Everyone.” Still, it’s clear that certain groups are not participating at all.

Claudia Ehgartner: Sometimes it comes down to a specific invitation, a specific form of communication or a specific language. At mumok, I would say it has to do with my desire for everyone to be introduced to modern art and the museum at some point.

Brigitte Hauptner: At the Belvedere, we’ve developed a number of formats for visitors who wouldn’t normally come to the museum through conversations with those same people. They articulated certain needs and named reasons why a visit to the museum might appeal to them, but also possible barriers. Careful listening helps to keep it on track.

Andreas Hoffer: With a lot of groups, you first have to reach out to disseminators – non-profit groups, teachers, youth group leaders and the like. That’s when you are more likely to see people who would not necessarily come to the museum otherwise.

Susanne Wögerbauer: Current demographic developments are another important aspect to consider. This is where you find groups that you have to keep approaching and reaching out to on a regular basis: people with dementia, for example, or refugees.

How much of a consideration is art education in conceiving exhibitions?

Susanne Wögerbauer: It depends a lot on the curators, 75

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as I’ve observed in my 15 years at the Belvedere. But things are opening up a lot!

Claudia Ehgartner: We’re also more confident. Twenty years ago, we were happy to be allowed to do anything.

Anne Wübben: Our focus at Az W is architecture and the urban environment. Right now we’re leading architecture expeditions meant to increase the refugees’ radius of movement throughout the city. A lot of them have been to Praterstern, and that’s about it – but we don’t want that to be their only impression of Vienna.

What does art education aim to do? Educational objectives are often at odds with the reality of people’s lives.

Andreas Zimmermann: Connecting to the realities of life is crucial. With young people it’s gender issues, for example; we target those very consciously and get much further than we would by declining all the verbs in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, as Latin teachers often want us to do.

That’s not what is going to get 95% of teenagers interested in ancient art. But the posing and selfie trend, for example, has interesting precedents with Velázquez, who often posed and painted not-so-handsome princes.

Brigitte Hauptner: Our “Art Education for People with Dementia” project is not about imparting knowledge. Instead, we ask specific questions to trigger memories that people with dementia have a harder time accessing. What comes up are more like islands of memory, triggered by the objects these people are seeing. The pictures usually bring up everyday stories. We want to offer more of this, both to return our visitors to a world that’s normal for them and to give them an experience they will enjoy.

Andreas Zimmermann: Studies have shown that most Austrians prefer not to go to the Kunsthistorisches Museum because they are intimidated by the educational content and assume they will somehow fail. This is much worse than the old fear of the unknown. The idea of education still seems so elitist, menacing and condescending that a lot of people avoid it altogether. Now the Board has introduced a 19-euro annual ticket for visitors aged 25 and under, and I think that’s a big step in the right direction. We’ve also launched an art education app in SerboCroatian and Turkish that will hopefully draw in some more visitors. You have to meet people where they are!

How important is the object, the original?

Andreas Zimmermann: The museum is the opposite of virtual. We are talking about an experience that you have with your body in front of a unique object. The museum is one of the best places you can possibly go to experience authenticity. For that you need time – and the original.

Claudia Ehgartner: For us, it’s also important to perform artistic strategies or art-related processes as part of art education – in our studio, for example.

Andreas Hoffer: Hands-on activity can intensify the connection with an original. It’s good to have various different ways to approach and access originals.

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Claudia Ehgartner: At the same time, art is often resistant or frustrating – it can make you angry. The experiences we create in art education aren’t always wonderful.

A lot of people are not able to see the original. Az W offers tours for the blind – how does that work?

Anne Wübben: We had models built, like the one of Karl Marx-Hof, for example, and made touchable floorplans.

We take blind tour participants to Karl-Marx-Hof and allow them to walk around the premises so that they understand the dimensions, and they touch the model.

The touchable floorplans also allow participants to reactivate the experience at home.

Susanne Wögerbauer: It’s relatively easy with threedimensional objects – we also have a model of the castle at Belvedere and copies of sculptures that have been approved for tactile tours. With two-dimensional images, we create a very precise description and try to address all of the senses, including smells, or by allowing visitors to touch objects that appear in the picture.

Andreas Zimmermann: Back when Culture Minister Claudia Schmied was in office, we had half a dozen paintings with relatively simple compositions translated into touchable reliefs. Sylvia Ferino-Pagden, who was Director of the Gemäldegalerie at that time, immediately consented to having the reliefs permanently installed in the gallery. The touchable reliefs are also an attraction for sighted visitors, because people like to “get a feel” for things.

Claudia Ehgartner: We have something of a focus on seniors; they are almost like colleagues and help develop workshops that they as docents give to children. Another key target group is young people.

Susanne Wögerbauer: A lot of programs require a certain amount of special expertise as well. We also support linguistically heterogeneous classes – I wouldn’t have dared to offer this if we didn’t have two art educators in the team who also work as language teachers.

Andreas Zimmermann: Generally speaking: looking at art is an enormous freedom with inherent emancipatory potential for visitors. Emancipatory art viewing situations provide a very important counter-model to all the commercial, compulsive contexts we navigate on a dayto-day basis.

Program

More than Hieronymus Bosch Julia M. Nauhaus Photo: Marlene Rahmann

New things in store for the collections of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna Text by Karin Cerny

German literature- and art historian Julia M. Nauhaus started as Director of the Academy of Fine Arts Picture Gallery on April 1, 2016. At a meeting she spoke of her plans for the future.

Julia M. Nauhaus can skip the gym for now: the 41-yearold German tackles countless flights of steps every day as she gets to know her new workplace. On April 1, she began her post as Director of the Academy of Fine Arts Picture Gallery, home to magnificent Old Master works from the likes of Hieronymus Bosch, Peter Paul Rubens, Lucas Cranach the Elder and Rembrandt. But still, far too few people know about it: the impressive collection of some 1,600 paintings continues to be something of an insider’s tip. “We’re not located directly on Ringstrasse,” says Nauhaus, who has made it her mission to bring not only the Picture Gallery, but also the Academy’s Print Room and Glyptotheque, its collection of plaster casts, to a wider audience.

Karin Cerny, born in the Waldviertel region, studied German philology and theater studies in Vienna and Berlin. She works as a freelance journalist, writing regular theater and literary texts for the “profil” magazine and fashion and travel stories for “Rondo” and “Diva.”

Nauhaus is raring to go. She wants to establish a closer link between the different collections. She views museums as “living places of encounter”: “Our job is to mediate art, not just to hang pictures on the wall.” She succeeded admirably as Director of the Lindenau-Museum Altenburg, a post she started in 2012, creating close ties between the art school and the museum, boosting attendance and convincing the Thuringian town of some 33,000 residents to donate up to 90,000 euros for needed art restorations. One of her ideas for Vienna is to put the old collections in dialogue with contemporary productions featured at xhibit, the Academy’s exhibition space. But first on the agenda is a summer exhibition of 15th- to 18thcentury master drawings from the Print Room, followed by those from the 19th and 20th centuries in early 2017.

A number of works still have yet to be shown to the public, Nauhaus assures us; it’s about enabling discoveries.

Renovations on the Academy building will begin in the summer of 2017 and are expected to last three years.

There will be no exhibitions in the gallery’s own premises at that time. Nauhaus sees this interlude as a chance to come up with a new concept. Digitization of the collections will continue, the database will be updated, and objects from the museum holdings will be put online.

“I can’t do analogue exhibitions at this stage, but there will be more to see in the virtual sense,” the new director promises. She also wants more cooperation with other art institutions.

Nauhaus is no stranger to her new city. Even in the days of East Germany, the first trip her father, a musicologist, ever took to a foreign country was to Austria. The family was not allowed to join him on that particular trip, but later, thanks to contacts and friendships, the family went to Vienna and Lower Austria almost every year. Nauhaus has no blinkers in terms of art, either. She raves about visits to the Burgtheater, and when the job gets stressful (she initially signed a six-year contract) there is nothing like a walk in the Lainzer Tiergarten wildlife preserve.

EXHIBITION

“NATURE GONE ASTRAY? Hybrids, Gnomes and Monsters (not only) in the work of Hieronymus Bosch” 3 Nov. 2016–29 Jan. 2017 Picture Gallery of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Schillerplatz 3, 1010 Vienna 77

INTERVIEW Programm

“That was when I fell in love with the city” Three Vienna-based artists in conversation Nina Schedlmayer led the discussion

Vienna is becoming more international – and it isn’t just the German managers and Russian opera singers, but the art scene as well. It is not uncommon for people based in Vienna to have been born in Frankfurt or Belgrade, rather than somewhere in rural Austria. Three artists convened at Vienna’s Café Landtmann on Universitäts­ring: Australian-born Andy Boot, erstwhile Parisian Laurent Ajina, and Roberta Lima, who grew up in Brazil. They discussed the paths that brought them to Vienna, the specific qualities of the local arts scene, and the boredom and ugliness of this city.

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You are all from different countries and have chosen to make a life in Vienna. What brought you here in the first place?

Andy Boot: I originally studied communication design and got a fellowship to come to Graz in 2007. I met my partner there, and when the grant period was over we decided to move to Vienna, where I began to study art.

Laurent Ajina: I came for family reasons. We used to come here on vacation a lot, and at some point we just decided to stay. That was when I fell in love with the city.

Roberta Lima, you also came here to study, am I right?

Roberta Lima: Not really. For me, it all started in 1997.

I studied architecture in Brazil, but then I took a break.

My partner at the time had family in Vienna. I came here and fell in love with the city, but then the relationship fell apart. I returned to Brazil and told my father that I didn’t want to study architecture anymore, but photography, in Vienna or somewhere else in Europe. My father and I struck a deal: if I finished my architecture degree, then he would fund another course of study. That’s what happened, so I’ve been living in Vienna since 2001.

Laurent Ajina, born in Paris in 1970, trained as an architect but ultimately became an artist. He has developed his own vocabulary based on abstract lines, networks and rhythmical systems, which he applies to three different types of surfaces. Ajina experiments with light, volumes and materials. He first exhibited his work in 2008 in Switzerland and has been exhibiting worldwide since. He moved to Vienna two years ago.

Roberta Lima was born 1974 in Manaus, Brazil.

After finishing her architecture studies, she took a Master’s degree and a PhD from the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, where she has lived and worked since 2001. In her photographs, videos and installations, Roberta Lima focuses on her own body. She investigates various contexts ranging from subculture to science and feminist theory, opening a discourse on art production and the roles of artist and viewer.

Andy Boot, born 1987 in Australia, lives and works in Vienna. His œuvre evolves around the Duchampian questions whether it is possible to make an image that is not an image and what constitutes an image today, in a world with constant overload of information and images through media such as, first and foremost, the internet, where the background less and less frequently rises through the shining surface.

Nina Schedlmayer, born 1976, studied art history in Vienna and Hamburg.

She works as a freelance journalist and art critic after forays into the gallery and exhibition sector.

She has contributed to numerous newspapers and magazines since 2004, including “profil,” “artmagazine.cc,” “Handelsblatt,” “EIKON” and “Spike Art Quarterly,” among others, in addition to many contemporary art exhibition catalogues and publications. Nina Schedlmayer has written a dissertation on art historiography under the Nazis. She lives and works in Vienna.

Why did you “fall in love with the city,” as you put it?

Roberta Lima: I was born in a society where everything is controlled: the body, identity, sexuality, gender orientation. When I came to Vienna and saw the legacy of queer art, performance and Actionism, I realized this was the right place for me.

Laurent Ajina: I remember my first impression of the city eleven years ago when I came here from Paris. I was struck by how imperfect everything was. I was used to living in a kind of open-air museum. Here, everything is unfinished, it’s a place where anything can happen – a very important ingredient in any relationship!

Andy Boot, what was your first impression of Vienna?

Andy Boot: The first thing I remember thinking is, wow, they use so much Helvetica here! I was quite taken with that.

Comparing Vienna’s art scene to the one you knew before: what are the main differences?

Roberta Lima: I wasn’t really anchored in the art scene in Brazil. But here, I notice that there is an emerging scene for postcolonial, migrant and queer debate in art: decolonization, the country’s political situation, the refugees – all of these are very important, burning issues.

Vienna may be conservative, but it’s been open to protest since Viennese Actionism.

Laurent Ajina, what do you think?

Laurent Ajina: Vienna is a good place to live because it’s fairly inexpensive. The high cost of living in other European cities makes it hard to rent a studio, but here you have plenty of space. Paris is also much more focused on literature, whereas people here are more interested in the image. People in Paris talk and write non-stop; Vienna is much more direct.

Andy Boot: The Australian art scene is a little disappointing. There are some interesting things happening, but when I was there it was a bit like it would have been in the UK 30 years ago, with artists dealing with portrait and landscape. Here, there is much more going on.

What’s your take on the alternative art scene in Vienna?

Roberta Lima: It’s actually very lively. You can see that in some classes at the Academy. There are initiatives like “Wienwoche” or “kültür gemma,” which deliberately encourage precarious forms of art. And there are a lot of

spaces and people working in this area: das weisse haus, Ve.Sch, ARTmART at Künstlerhaus, and Rosa Lila Villa has a lot going on as well.

Which exciting places have you discovered here most recently?

Roberta Lima: Where we are right now! I’ve never been to Café Landtmann. We don’t have anything like it in Brazil.

The first time I sat in a Viennese coffee house and the waiter was unfriendly to me, I thought, “Oh God, what am I doing wrong?” Now you’ll probably say, “Sure, everybody knows the waiters here can be rude!” But you’re not used to it when you come here for the first time.

Andy Boot: I take my dog for a lot of walks in the Vienna Woods because they are easy to reach by public transport.

Vienna is a very green city.

Laurent Ajina: I like walking through the streets and seeing a new place next to a very old business that could easily have been there for 50 or 60 years, selling all of these old things. And there’s space in between. Unlike in Paris, where “Baron” Haussmann planned the entire urban scheme, you still have an interesting mix here.

Roberta Lima: It’s the same in the seventh district, Neubau. I’ve lived there since I moved to Vienna. I'm a real Neubau girl! It was still a red-light district in the 1980s, then it turned into a kind of bourgeois-bohemian area, and now there are various refugee centers in the area. The city is becoming more and more colorful.

Whenever I have visitors from Brazil, I take them to Kahlenberg, because I read somewhere that Vienna is the only city in the world that grows wine within the urban tissue.

Since we’re talking about Vienna, where people enjoy a good gripe now and then: Any complaints about the city?

Roberta Lima: That’s the good thing about this place, that you can have a problem with something. In Brazil, everything has to be fine. There, people ask: “Tudo bem?”, which means, “Everything good?” In Austria they say, “Wie geht’s?” meaning or “How’s it going?” That's the difference.

Laurent Ajina: Some say Vienna is somewhat boring. I think it’s pretty ugly sometimes. But that’s a good thing; too much beauty can be paralyzing.

Laurent Ajina, Andy Boot and Roberta Lima Photo: Marlene Rahmann 79

Interview

“It is an absurd and surreal action” Artist Francis Alÿs in a conversation with Robert Punkenhofer Interview by Robert Punkenhofer

Francis Alÿs’ political and poetical interventions address issues of social inequality and conflict, making him one of the most exciting artists of our times. The Secession presents the Belgian-born artist’s work in the context of this year’s VIENNA ART WEEK. In a conversation with the ART WEEK’s Artistic Director Robert Punkenhofer, Alÿs reminisces about the beginnings of his career, discusses the responsibility that comes with his work and the meaning of his diary-like series “Le Temps du Sommeil.”

We first met 1994 at a party in Mexico City. Your career in arts had just started – you were still introduced to me as a Belgian architect.

Francis Alÿs: That’s what I was back then. After I came to Mexico I mostly worked as an architect. It was only after I met Melanie Smith that she got me into arts.

I remember visiting your studio, this amazing, rundown place in the historical center of Mexico City.

You had just finished your doormats and offered me one for 100 US dollars. That was 20 years ago. Since then, you and the whole gang – Abraham Cruzvillegas, Damian Ortega, Thomas Glassford, and the others – have become extremely successful.

Francis Alÿs: We were all very lucky. We didn’t realize it back then, but there was an awakening of Mexico City after the earthquake of 1985. There was a kind of complicity which, if we are honest, had to do with there not being any market and money.

Were these conditions central as to why all the artists did so well?

Francis Alÿs: I’m not trying to say how beautiful the art world is without any money. But for us, there was no intent of seducing. Since our only audience were our artist friends, we were free and could just try out things. Many young artists today are so concerned about presenting the right project at the right spot – back then, there were no such considerations. It was just fun and a way of socializing.

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Wasn’t it also a way of dealing with the political realities at the time?

Francis Alÿs: 1994 was a key moment in the Mexican history, when the whole system started collapsing. President Salinas’ corruption scandal broke out, the NAFTA trade started, presidential candidate Colosio was shot.

Socially, politically and economically, times were quite intense. But on the other hand, for us artists it was a very protected environment without competition.

Do you think your art could have developed similarly under different conditions, or was it really a question of this specific time and location?

Francis Alÿs: Part of the reason I switched from architecture to visual arts was because it allowed me to react to Mexico City. I came there directly from Venice, where I had been studying and working as an architect. I had never lived in a metropolis before. I found the mix of the city’s culture and urban structure destabilizing and needed to find a way of listening to myself and be even more focused as the city was so spread. Watching the artists interact with the city was very seducing.

Do you sometimes think about going back to architecture?

Francis Alÿs: I got so used to the fact that my interventions are ephemeral that I now have a bit of a problem with the idea of a project being permanent.

The projects you’re doing now require an organization as complex as a building anyway.

Francis Alÿs: Even with small projects, the preparation takes very long. My intervention “Paradox of Praxis I” from 1997, where an ice block is being pushed through the streets, happened in just two days. Sometimes I wish I could go back to more spontaneous actions.

The moments when you desire a break from organizing interventions – is that when you recur to “Le Temps du Sommeil”?

Francis Alÿs, Le Temps du Sommeil, from 1995, series in progress Courtesy: the artist and Galerie Peter Kilchmann

Francis Alÿs: It is a very meditative practice that helps me keep in touch with my art. The paintings are so small that I can take them on my travels. I started the first painting in 1995 and stopped at number 111. Now I’m still working on it, adding little details, or erasing old parts and repainting on top of it.

The series has no connecting narrative, but still opens up the viewers’ way to a magical, private world of yours.

Francis Alÿs: I’m not a big fan of the concept of a diary, but in a way it is one, as it retraces over 20 years of my notebook extracts. Pretty much all of my ideas came out of these notebooks. There is for example a sketch of a donkey – I see it as related to the workers in Ciudad Juárez, pushing and pulling all the time; but also to the red Volkswagen that was going up and down the hill in “The Rehearsal 1.” There are many possible associations.

Francis Alÿs was born in Belgium in 1959. He now lives and works in Mexico City and is one of the world’s most widely acclaimed contemporary artists. His work has been featured at documenta 13 and in solo exhibitions at MoMA, New York, and Tate Modern, London. His show in the Secession’s main hall is the conceptual artist’s first solo presentation in Austria.

Robert Punkenhofer is Artistic Director of VIENNA ART WEEK and founding director of Art&Idea. As a curator he works at the interface of art, design, architecture and international commerce. Most recently he realized exhibitions at the Triennale di Milano design museum and the Goethe Institute Barcelona.

Punkenhofer is a visiting professor at New York University and a member of the Princeton University/PLAS International Advisory Board.

How did you select the work for your exhibition at the Vienna Secession?

Francis Alÿs: When I visited Vienna a year ago, I learned about Viennese Actionism. I went to some galleries and museums and I felt that it was more oriented towards film and sculpture than towards paintings. The architecture of the Secession is very strong so I did not want to compete with it. It’s an amazing space, where it is better to intervene in a subtle way.

You show a new film, “Paradox of Praxis 5,” where a ball of fire is kicked through Ciudad Juárez. Is it a political or a poetic intervention?

Francis Alÿs: Like with the ice block, it is an absurd and surreal action. On the one hand I'm suggesting withdrawal from reality into a dreamlike stage, and on the other hand I feel that showing reality is the only way we can make people look at the world differently. The movie also questions the role of the artist in such a context.

Through your work you can have a tremendous impact on political situations.

Francis Alÿs: That’s true. I often go to places that experience critical situations of conflict. These are moments in which society is so fragile that it’s more likely to consider alternative systems. That interests me, but I’m sometimes scared by the responsibility that is given to the artist in terms of revealing the truth. Artists are subjective beings, we have our own narrative, our own agenda. People sometimes forget that the way we render events is not always literal or functional. It’s much more poetic.

How do you deal with the risk of exploiting politically fragile situations for your own success?

Francis Alÿs: That I asked myself after “When Faith Moves Mountains” in Lima. I solved my personal concerns by deciding not to commercialize my videos anymore, especially since most of them happen in collaboration with local communities and children. It’s a fine line.

But in the end I think it’s always better to do something than not to talk about the violence going on.

EXHIBITION

Francis Alÿs 18 Nov. 2016–22 Jan. 2017 Secession, Friedrichstrasse 12, 1010 Vienna 81

Bettina Leidl and Rainer Iglar Photo: Marlene Rahmann

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InTERVIEW

Photographic Milestones

On the Peter Dressler retrospective at KUNST HAUS WIEN Interview by Manisha Jothady

Continuing the programmatic focus on art photography, KUNST HAUS WIEN has dedicated a first major posthumous retrospective to the work of Austrian photographer Peter Dressler. KUNST HAUS WIEN Director Bettina Leidl and Fotohof Salzburg’s Rainer Iglar – one of the exhibition’s curators – discuss the metaphorical and humorous visual vocabulary of an exceptional artist.

Peter Dressler died in 2013. How did KUNST HAUS WIEN decide to show a retrospective of his work?

Bettina Leidl: Austrian art photography has been with me since the earliest part of my professional career. I met Peter Dressler personally in the early 1990s. By then, Dressler was already considered an established artist.

Shortly before his death, I visited him in his studio and was once again struck by the singular quality of his work, which had yet to be shown on a major scale. When I started working at KUNST HAUS WIEN in 2014, I noticed that many of the postcards in the museum shop showing Friedensreich Hundertwasser’s architecture and paintings credit Peter Dressler as photographer. This was news to me. I knew he had been an assistant professor in Hundertwasser’s painting class at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. The connection between the two artists – though they developed very different œuvres – solidified this idea to dedicate a first major retrospective to Peter Dressler, one of Austria’s most important photographers.

In addition to Rainer Iglar and Michael Mauracher of Fotohof Salzburg – the organization entrusted with managing Dressler’s artistic estate – the exhibition was curated by Christine Frisinghelli, who followed Dressler and his work for a long time in her former capacity as Director of Camera Austria.

What is your connection to Peter Dressler, Mr. Iglar?

Rainer Iglar: Peter Dressler was an important contact for me when I came to Vienna as a young artist-photographer in the 1990s. I found him to be tremendously open to 83

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young artists. He was committed and energetically engaged with the work of his colleagues – he was critical, but also encouraging. We have been showing his work at Fotohof since we first started in the 1980s, and later published it in the form of artists’ books. To handle his estate is to process an important œuvre: not only the series and bodies of work he arranged in his lifetime, but countless negatives, contact sheets and work prints as well. Among them is a series of shots that shows a strong connection to his books, even if they did not find their way into the publications. Basically, Dressler was not an artist who archived his work on an ongoing basis. If you visited him in his studio to look at or buy something, it was often unclear where the work was or how much it cost.

Bettina Leidl: I remember something similar. Once, when I was in his studio, I pulled a photograph from a stack to look at it more closely and he asked, “Where did you get that one?” In any case, the exhibition shows some work that could not be exhibited until now.

What characterizes Dressler’s work in particular?

Bettina Leidl: Austrian photography was for the most part mired in documentary and reportage until well into the 1970s. Think of the generation of photographers before Dressler, people like Franz Hubmann, Erich Lessing and Inge Morath. Dressler always pushed the artistic value of the medium. Painting was in many ways an important context and point of reference for his photographic approach.

Rainer Iglar: He did study painting after all, and referenced visual art repeatedly in a number of series, using humor and irony to address issues that had to do with painting in particular. This is especially evident in series like “In unmittelbarer Nähe” from 2003. In it, Dressler mimics an art collector who gets up close and personal with the masterpieces by interfering in the painting, and correcting one or the other spot by hand with his own paintbrush. One of the formal features of his early work is his break with the single frame or image in favor of image compositions.

Manisha Jothady is an independent art critic based in Vienna. She has contributed to contemporary art catalogues and written numerous articles for magazines and newspapers including “Wiener Zeitung,” “Eikon” and “Camera Austria.”

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To what extent does his work also show cinematic and performative aspects?

Rainer Iglar: The exhibition also contains an actual film: Dressler realized “Sonderfahrt” between 1975 and 1978, in collaboration with Franz Zadrazil. It is an urban exploration of Vienna. With its associative blending of staged and documentary elements, the film very clearly shows Dressler’s own structural and content-related approach to his subject matter. In it, we basically see all of his early work boiled down to its essence. Afterwards, in the 1980s, we see a greater emphasis on performativity, staging, and the use of image sequences to create narrative. From then on, Dressler moved more and more from black-and-white to color photography. In these photographs he slips into different roles, which always paraphrase basic elements of the human condition. In “Wiener Gold” for example, a series created during the 2008 financial crisis, we see him in a ditch panning for

gold nuggets. This humor, combined with a thoroughly critical view of social relations and knowledge of what drives human beings – greed in this case – are particularly characteristic of his work. For the staged photographs, Dressler often asked artist colleagues like Leo Kandl, Joerg Burger and Christoph Rodler to photograph the scene following his instructions.

Bettina Leidl: To me, some of the most striking staged photographs are the ones showing a dog named “Burschi” in various public places. I am amused by the ambiguity of the name, which in German can stand for both a pet and a young man. Burschi is not a real dog in this case, but a three-dimensional photo object, an easycare pet that – as we see in the photographs – can even be taken into the museum. In works like this, Dressler satirizes the defined hierarchical relationships between viewer, the “aura” of exhibited art and the venerable nimbus of exhibition halls.

What should visitors to the exhibition leave knowing?

Bettina Leidl: What the exhibition surely conveys is that in seeing Peter Dressler’s work, they have seen one of the key representatives of Austrian photography since the 1970s – in a density and quality unlike any presentation that came before.

From the Baroque to the Present Day

Alfred Weidinger Photo: Marlene Rahmann

Program

Belvedere catalogues raisonnés Text by Silvie Aigner

As a competence center for the research and preservation of Austrian art, the Belvedere has increasingly been documenting the estates of Austrian artists. One focus is the “Belvedere catalogues raisonnés” publication series, which delves into the œuvres of Austrian artists from the Baroque to the present day.

Silvie Aigner studied art history at the University of Vienna, with postgraduate studies in cultural management at the Danube University Krems and a doctorate at the Art History Department at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. She currently works as an author and curator of international and Austrian museums and collections, mainly in the field of contemporary art. Aigner has been editor-in-chief of the art magazine “PARNASS” (www.parnass.at) since May 2014.

“Creating catalogues raisonnés is essential, basic research that is very much in line with our objectives as a research center,” says Alfred Weidinger, deputy director of the Belvedere. “This work is especially important given the diversity of exhibitions. An exhibition can focus only on a few facets of artistic production, while a catalogue raisonné can in some cases involve the artist’s entire life.

We are putting all our efforts into the biographies, including a dense interdisciplinary network to provide a basis for later criticism and research on individual works and bodies of work. We especially try to understand the artist as a person and at a personal level, to understand his or her thought processes. Merging the artists’ biographies with their work and its reception, and taking contemporary history into account is the only way to characterize the artists’ work in a contemporary way. This seems obvious today, but was negated by the classic art history – the kind that praises the artist to the skies – for a long time.”

The first Belvedere catalogue raisonné was put together

by Sabine Grabner, on Biedermeier-period Austrian painter and graphic artist Josef Danhauser. Since then, there have been volumes on Herbert Boeckl, Anton Romako, Josef Danhauser, Carry Hauser, Hans Makart, Franz Xaver Messerschmidt, and more recently one on Marc Adrian by Dieter Bogner, Cornelia Cabuk, Olaf Moeller and Harald Krejci. The choice of artist’s œuvre mostly has to do with the museum’s resources. “Our curators have expertise in different areas, and we have

to make use of this expertise where we can. The catalogues raisonnés have no connection to financial interests or planned major exhibitions; we do them only to benefit and promote scholarship on Austrian art.” The list of finalized and planned catalogues raisonnés is long and could still be extended especially in terms of desiderata, “even if the financing is always a major challenge.”

The Institute for the Compilation of Catalogues Raisonnés was initiated by DOROTHEUM, which has a great interest in reviewing and documenting artist œuvres.

DOROTHEUM’s support as sponsor has made it possible for the institute to publish five catalogues raisonnés since 2015.

The Belvedere is once again breaking new ground with its new current catalogues raisonnés, which will be published online first. The first example is a comprehensive catalogue raisonné of 300 paintings and thousands of drawings by Styrian artist Alfred Wickenburg, put together by Lucia Beck. “The catalogue of paintings is manageable in this case and can also be published as a book once it has come out in digital form, but the huge abundance of drawings would require a massive amount of work and funding. The drawings will appear only online, and only as a selection. It means a more immediate availability of the data, which is something that interests collectors, art dealers and scholars in particular.

While the paintings receive a definitive catalogue raisonné number, the drawings will have provisional numbers at first and we will be sharing the work of documentation with the online community. We encourage them to interact with our researchers. There will come a time when the research and dating issues have largely been resolved, and only then will we give it a definitive catalogue raisonné number as well. This is also how we will handle the catalogue raisonné for Tina Blau-Lang, which Markus Fellinger and Claus Jesina are compiling now.”

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INTERVIEW

The State and the Art

Gabriele Rothemann on educating young art photographers in Vienna Interview by Nela Eggenberger

Gabriele Rothemann Photo: Jorit Aust

How has teaching in the art photography division changed over the years and what is studying at the University of Applied Arts Vienna like in practice?

Gabriele Rothemann: I was appointed professor at the University of Applied Arts Vienna in 2001, to set up the photography program. The chair came with the workshops that were already on site, and I teamed up with the colleagues working there to put this new class together.

Of course a lot of it was improvised at first, but we were given new facilities after four years. The curriculum used for this new course of study was the same as for fine arts, and we kept adapting it over time. The program has not changed in any fundamental way over the years, but our activities have become more complex and diverse as our new publication “Bilding. Fotografie an der Angewandten” (Education: Photography at the University of Applied Arts) shows.

To what extent does the program take “new media” into account?

Gabriele Rothemann: “New media” are of course used alongside all other analogue media. The art photography department understands itself as a place of research where a combination of media can be used to break new artistic ground. Our first thesis project, for example, was a video installation based on a photographic view.

2018 marks the 150th anniversary of the University of Applied Arts Vienna. Its now 32 areas of study include a Photography program initiated at the department of Fine Arts and Media Art in 2001.

Gabriele Rothemann, professor of art photography, discussed the many facets of photography as a medium, studying in Vienna, and the need for derelict sites in urban areas.

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The Academy of Applied Arts started a new branch for Applied Photography and Time-Based Media in the winter semester of 2014. Can you understand why they established this new course and do you think it was necessary? If so, why?

Gabriele Rothemann: Yes. I also supported this new course, which was created in response to the large number of young people in Austria who are interested in this particular kind of work.

Photography, as we know, is a versatile medium that can be explored and taken in many different directions. It’s

a big win for the Academy of Applied Arts and for the country that they were able to create this chair, which is now held by Matthias Koslik.

ten go on to study art at an academic level. You also have the Graphic Arts Technical Institute (HGBLVA), which is more practical and job-oriented.

You are probably also alluding to the fact that this opens doors for other classic genres like portrait photography, for example, to be taught as well …

Gabriele Rothemann: … for instance, but also fashion photography and photojournalism. This is the first time a university-level academy in Austria has offered these “genres” of study, so the University of Applied Arts really did fulfill an actual need.

How do you feel about the cultural offerings in Vienna in general – is the city well positioned?

Gabriele Rothemann: The city is developing at a high level and is very lively. It is astounding what people working in this cultural context have achieved.

By contrast, is it also possible to graduate from your program without ever touching a camera?

Gabriele Rothemann: Yes, theoretically; even in painting you don’t necessarily need to use brushes. I would never try to dictate how any young artist should work and develop; every student has his or her own personality – that is the prerequisite. The way an artist works with a medium and which medium he or she uses hinges on their individual personality. At the same time, of course, the focus is photography. We have a very high quality of facilities and every possibility to use this medium in practice, be it analogue or digital. And the students of course take advantage of these resources.

Participation in exhibitions is an important part of the course – does this mean you also do joint projects with Matthias Koslik’s students?

Gabriele Rothemann: Yes. There was a joint exhibition from mid-August to early September, held parallel to the European Forum Alpbach. Rector Gerald Bast is a member of the executive board there and co-initiated the “New Enlightenment” project. The exhibition revolved around the Enlightenment in today’s context. The students developed works on that topic, which were then exhibited in Alpbach, both indoors and outdoors. The reason for showing work by the two photography classes together was not so much to address the differences in the programs as to show the full spectrum.

Nela Eggenberger studied art history at the University of Vienna.

Editor-in-chief of “EIKON” since 2013; previously acted as editor for other publications including those for “EIKON,” mumok, “frame” and others. Edited “5 x 5.

Photo Tracks” (2016) with contributions by Abigail Solomon-Godeau, Urs Stahel, and others. Curator of the exhibitions “Pas de Deux” at Kunst Haus Wien (2015) and “FRAGILE” in BAWAG P.S.K. Contemporary (2013), together with Gregor Ecker.

Is there a link between your department and the “Art and Photography” program headed by Martin Guttmann at the Academy of Fine Arts?

Gabriele Rothemann: I like going to the open house days and take friends and anyone interested to the Semperdepot, but we don’t have an ongoing dialogue.

In 2014 the electricity provider Verbund organized a joint exhibition called “Live Wire.” It would be nice to reinforce communication between the two programs.

Do you see a similar cultural variety in other European cities?

Gabriele Rothemann: Yes, in a lot of places: Paris, Berlin … all of Europe’s major cities have an abundance of it, especially London. It’s a terrible shame that the British voted in favor of Brexit. I am committed to unifying and enriching the European concept – not least when it comes to education.

What is your take on the Bologna system?

Gabriele Rothemann: It’s difficult to implement in terms of art education, because it is too regimented. I am for art education with an artistic focus that gives students the opportunity to create a body of work that reflects their interests. Having an academic title is not important as far as I’m concerned; what’s important is having the time and support to establish one’s own work in the field of contemporary art.

These days, people who would like to go on to do a PhD will probably have an easier time if they’re admitted to an international university with an internationally recognized title.

Gabriele Rothemann: Presumably. It wasn’t long ago that artists wouldn’t have even thought about doing a PhD: they had confidence in their own work, not in the system.

What would you like to see in Vienna in the future?

Do you think there’s catching up to do?

Gabriele Rothemann: There’s nothing derelict in Vienna.

There is little unused space in Vienna in general. Every centimeter is rented or sold. I hope the government doesn’t privatize public property, as so often happens – like the old telegraph office, for example, which would have been a wonderful place for an art school; or the Postal Savings Bank, the old patent office, the old Bank Austria am Hof and the old post office. It should be understood that these places are the property of the people, and they should continue to serve state-run institutions in the future and not be left to the hands of profiteers.

All in all, Vienna has a wide range of options for learning photography. What differences do you see between the institutions when it comes to studying photography as a subject?

Gabriele Rothemann: Friedl Kubelka’s School for Artistic Photography has a program that lasts one year, and a lot of interesting projects come out of there. Participants of87

Interview

“It’s about overcoming limitations” The architect and visionary Frederick Kiesler in focus Interview by Michael Hausenblas

Peter Bogner and Hani Rashid Photo: Sabine Hauswirth

Frederick Kiesler (1890–1965) was an architect, designer, set designer and, above all, a visionary. We asked Peter Bogner, director of the Austrian Frederick and Lillian Kiesler Private Foundation, to tell us something about the spirit and work of this great innovator.

Frederick Kiesler was an important multi-talent in the areas of architecture, design, set design and other fields, but only a relatively modest number of people know about his work. Why is that?

Peter Bogner: Frederick Kiesler was more inclined to share his progressive and uncompromising ideas with artists, architects, friends and colleagues than with the general public. The effects of this inclination can still be felt today.

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Kiesler befriended many greats, including Salvador Dalí, Luis Buñuel, André Breton and Marcel Duchamp, who even lived with Kiesler for a year in New York. To which of these artists was he closest?

Peter Bogner: His friendship with Duchamp was, I would say, particularly noteworthy. The two had a very close and artistically productive friendship, manifesting for example in the “Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme,” an exhibition that brought 100 artists of the movement together in Paris in 1947.

2015 was an important anniversary year for Kiesler. Not only would it have been his 125th birthday, but it also marked the 50th anniversary of his death. To what extent did the accompanying exhibitions and symposiums –

along with the awarding of the Kiesler Prize to Bruce Nauman – contribute to the public’s general awareness of Kiesler and his work?

Peter Bogner: The commemorative year gave us an opportunity to do presentations in cities from Stockholm to Budapest and Kiev to Chernivtsi, Kiesler’s birthplace in what is now Ukraine. These are being continued in cooperation with various universities and museums, helping to generate more interest on the part of artists and architects. We also had major exhibitions in Jerusalem, including one commemorating 50 years since the completion of the Shrine of the Book, the only building Kiesler ever realized. There was also an exhibition in connection with contemporary art at the Austrian Cultural Forum and another about the historical influence of his visionary Endless House at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Of course, all of this contributed to public awareness and facilitated a more in-depth understanding of Frederick Kiesler and his work.

The Kiesler Foundation has had a busy 2016 as well, with exhibitions at the Museum of Applied Arts Vienna and at Martin Gropius Bau in Berlin next year. You have quite the promotion campaign going on!

Peter Bogner: These are major projects coming out of the remarkable interest in showing other visionary Central European artists beside Schiele and Klimt. We’ve realized that the “visionary Vienna” of Arnold Schoenberg, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Sigmund Freud and Frederick Kiesler continues to be tremendously significant and relevant to the discourse and society of our time.

Frederick Kiesler was born in Chernivtsi in 1890 and began studies at the Vienna University of Technology and the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna in 1908. In 1926, Kiesler emigrated to the United States, where he became a unifying figure of the European avant-garde.

He died in 1965.

Peter Bogner has been director of the Austrian Frederick and Lillian Kiesler Private Foundation (est. in 1997) since 2013. He is an art historian, architect, cultural manager and previously served as director of the Vienna Künstlerhaus.

Hani Rashid is president of the Kiesler Foundation and a Kiesler Prize winner himself. He teaches architecture at the University of Applied Arts and is among the world’s leading architects. Like Kiesler, Rashid advocates a multidisciplinary concept of work. He has played a significant role in establishing the Kiesler Foundation internationally.

Michael Hausenblas has been on staff at “Der Standard” since 1999. He works mostly as an editor in the area of design.

If you could choose any building for a Kiesler exhibition, which would it be?

Peter Bogner: The Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao

by Frank Gehry, the first recipient of the 55,000-euro Frederick Kiesler Prize in 1998. The building echoes the spatial reasoning behind Kiesler’s Endless House like almost no other.

How would Frederick Kiesler exhibit his work today?

Peter Bogner: Kiesler was a master of display. Given his revolutionary exhibition designs beyond the White Cube for Peggy Guggenheim’s “Art of This Century” gallery in 1941, his expansive designs incorporating surrealist art for Hugo Gallery and the Galerie Maeght in 1947, I would expect an incredibly sensuous, spherical experience incorporating the latest media, and probably another radical contribution to new forms of art presentation as well.

There’s been another new development with the reissued editions of Kiesler furniture.

Peter Bogner: There was a very lucky discovery of previously unknown photos by Robert Damora, who photographed the apartment Kiesler designed for the Mergen­ time family in 1934. They include hitherto unknown shots and views of furniture designs, a major coup for research. We also managed to purchase two Wittmann chairs from a New York private collection, which was

extremely fortunate because these hardly ever appear on the market. So that was another big help for the new edition.

Wittmann is producing Frederick Kiesler’s correalistic furniture, which is among his best known. How would you describe Kieslerian correalism to someone who has never heard of it before?

Peter Bogner: Kiesler started developing his manifesto in 1937 at Columbia University in New York and published it in Paris in 1949. Correalism is a concept that integrates holistic relationships in society, politics and art into the artistic process. It is essentially a call to overcome the boundaries and limitations of the individual sciences in order to improve the living conditions of mankind.

What was visionary about Frederick Kiesler?

Peter Bogner: Kiesler’s work encompasses more than just concepts and manifestos for a new art and architecture – his work was always socially ambitious, reflecting very innovative and progressive social values.

Frederick Kiesler is hard to classify. If you had to label him as one thing or another, what would you say?

Peter Bogner: Alluding to something Philip Johnson said of Kiesler, he would probably be “the greatest non-building architect.” Incidentally, Kiesler responded by saying that he preferred not being one of the non-architects who build a lot.

Frederick Kiesler once said: “Function follows vision, vision follows reality.” What vision does the Kiesler Foundation follow?

Peter Bogner: It shouldn’t stay a vision. Our plan is to give Kiesler more scope with a permanent presentation in Vienna, so that we can bring his work to a wider audience. Given the high level of interest in Kiesler, repositioning the Foundation and moving to a “Kiesler Space” would be a powerful and innovative step forward in terms of cultural politics.

What can visitors who have never been to the Kiesler Foundation in Vienna expect to find there?

Peter Bogner: Our space on Mariahilfer Strasse not only houses treasures from the archive, which can be viewed by appointment, but also features changing exhibitions about new aspects of Frederick Kiesler’s multifaceted œuvre and relevant contemporary positions in architecture and art.

What is your favorite Frederick Kiesler quote?

Peter Bogner: “Life is short, Art is long, Architecture endless.” He said that in 1958. www.kiesler.org

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“We cherish the principle of dialogue” ERSTE Foundation’s commitment to contemporary art Interview by Karin Cerny

ERSTE Foundation, the majority shareholder of Erste Group, is a committed investor in the social development of Central and Southeast Europe. Its focus is on social issues, culture and Europe as a whole. Chairman of the Board Franz Karl Prüller and curator and project manager Christiane Erharter met Karin Cerny on the Erste Campus at Vienna’s new Main Station for a chat about future challenges.

What is the value and significance of art for ERSTE Foundation?

Franz Karl Prüller: Promoting contemporary, socially relevant art and culture is one of our main priorities.

Contemporary art addresses social developments and sharpens public awareness.

Christiane Erharter: We are facing a very changeable political landscape in Poland, Hungary, Croatia and elsewhere. Given the fact that Hungarian institutions are replacing staff and cutting subsidies, ERSTE Foundation’s private funding scheme gives artists and cultural workers a lot of freedom, allowing them to defy state control.

So basically you’re enabling critical art?

Franz Karl Prüller: We are aware that democracy hasn’t yet prevailed a hundred percent in the former socialist countries. This makes art all the more important as a way of highlighting social developments that stand counter to an open worldview.

Karin Cerny, born in the Waldviertel region, studied German philology and theater studies in Vienna and Berlin. She works as a freelance journalist, writing regular theater and literary texts for the “profil” magazine and fashion and travel stories for “Rondo” and “Diva.”

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How do you communicate with local artists?

Christiane Erharter: We cherish the principle of dialogue and collaborate closely with our local project partners.

We pick the core themes together and we established the independent “tranzit” network of non-profit organizations in Bratislava, Budapest, Bucharest, Cluj, Ias¸ i, Prague and Vienna. These art and exhibition initiatives create their own individual programs to respond to local needs and requirements.

So what are your plans for the future?

Christiane Erharter: There will be a public program offered on the Erste Campus at Vienna’s new Main Station. We also take great interest in social art practices, so the issues of flight and migration will play a major role here. In December 2016, we will give out the fifth “Igor Zabel Award for Culture and Theory.” Named after the Slovene art historian and curator Igor Zabel, the prize honors outstanding cultural achievements from curators and theorists picked by an international jury. The award ceremony will be held in Ljubljana, Slovenia.

Franz Karl Prüller: Right now, it is especially important to bolster all the forces in society that stand for an open, liberal democracy where people can work together for a better future rather than against one another, and for a society in which everyone gets a chance and no one is marginalized. We are convinced that artists and cultural workers play an important role in this.

Presentation | Conversation

“Art and Engagement” Fri., 18 Nov. 2016 5:00–6:30 pm ERSTE Stiftung, Am Belvedere 1, 1100 Vienna In English

Curator Hajnalka Somogyi presents the OFF-Biennale in Budapest, Hungary, and will then talk to the curatorial collective What, How & for Whom/WHW from Zagreb, Croatia.

Franz Karl Prüller and Christiane Erharter Photo: Marlene Rahmann

interview

INTERVIEW

“The local has become more important” Production between Industry 4.0 and urban manufacturing

The time is ripe for a new kind of production in the cities, says Gerhard Hirczi, Managing Director of the Vienna Business Agency. In an interview he explains what this means and how the Business Agency aims to bolster the city’s economic strengths – including the creative industries.

Pollution, noise, traffic: there was a time when manufacturing companies were not a welcome sight in the city. What has changed?

Gerhard Hirczi: The lines of conflict between residential and commercial uses of the city are still there, although they have faded somewhat since the type of industry we have now is different from what we had 20 or 30 years ago. We don’t have smoking chimneystacks within the city limits. There is limited space; we need green areas and places to live, and of course commercial use as well because the people who live in the city need jobs.

So I think it’s safe to say that the time is ripe for a new kind of production in cities.

What exactly do you have in mind?

Gerhard Hirczi: A different kind of production than we’ve had before. It will no longer be the big factories setting up their production lines, taking up hundreds of thousands of square meters of space. We at the Business Agency are taking a deliberately broad approach to the issue: from Industry 4.0, which is characterized by the digitalization of production processes, to urban manufacturing – a segment that reaches deep into the creative scene. This creates completely new opportunities for cities.

Stephan Hilpold heads “Rondo,” the lifestyle supplement for the daily newspaper “Der Standard.”

What do cities have that the countryside doesn’t?

Gerhard Hirczi: Know-how, a well-educated workforce, universities and research institutes. You don’t find all that in the open countryside, although the cost might be ten or 20 per cent lower.

Gerhard Hirczi Photo: Marlene Rahmann

Interview by Stephan Hilpold

Which sectors in Vienna show the highest growth potential?

Gerhard Hirczi: For one thing, as I said with regard to industry: digital production means a high percentage of information and communication technology. This is one of Vienna’s core strengths. We are one of the top five ICT locations in Europe; we have a lot of IT expertise, and we continue to have a good industrial infrastructure. This is something that often goes unnoticed by the public.

What’s the outlook for the creative industries? They breathe life into a city, and you see it in the urban landscape.

Gerhard Hirczi: The manufacturing sector is much more amorphous. A lot is going on there, but the scene is not homogeneous. Our basic approach is to combine existing competencies like quality craftsmanship with other areas like design – to bring design and production together, classic companies and young guns. We can see that small businesses once again have an easier time being competitive. New technologies have brought producers and consumers closer together. These days, it is easy for sole traders to open a web shop and reach their customers directly. But the local has also become much more important, and that is primarily a Vienna phenomenon.

To what extent is that a Vienna phenomenon and not a global one?

Gerhard Hirczi: We’ve identified this mostly by looking at how Vienna has changed over the past ten to 15 years.

Vienna has seen more structural changes over the past 20 years than almost any other Western European city.

By this I mean an economic transformation from the old mass structures to knowledge-based structures.

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INTERVIEW

“Art fairs are shop windows” Opportunities and risks for today’s gallery scene Interview by Dominikus Müller

How important is the local scene for your work as a gallerist?

Umer Butt: I firmly believe that “local” art scenes develop wherever “art” is made with sufficient discourse and curriculum to support it. An art scene requires an art school or art college, which has yet to be established in Dubai.

Galleries also provide a promotional and discursive basis for an artist’s career. Having an art scene means getting together to view work, discussing ideas and networking.

It is a very important space to have in a community.

Have gallery spaces become obsolete in an age of digitization and booming art fairs? And what role does the local art scene play in the international art world?

Gallerists from Berlin, Dubai and Vienna weigh in.

Henrikke Nielsen, Croy Nielsen Gallery; Umer Butt, GreyNoise Gallery; Oliver Croy, Croy Nielsen Gallery; Andreas Huber, Galerie Andreas Huber; and Emanuel Layr, Galerie Emanuel Layr (f. l. t. r.)

Photo: Sebastiano Pellion di Persano

Dominikus Müller is author and chief editor of “frieze d/e.” He lives in Berlin.

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How important is it for a gallery to have a concrete space, given the predominance of the art fair model and possibilities of digitization?

Henrikke Nielsen: I would say that physical gallery spaces and locations are still predominant, despite the growing importance of art fairs and the like. A gallery’s program is developed through gallery exhibitions, not art fairs. And these exhibitions remain the core of every serious gallery. Though our generation of galleries tends to depend less on a local market and audience than previous generations have – at least in terms of sales – local community is still crucial in terms of the discussions and dialogue that take place on site, the crowd attending the openings and so forth. All of this contributes to the way a gallery is perceived by the public.

Emanuel Layr: I think location is rebounding in terms of importance. Conditions of production are very important for galleries that work very closely with their artists, as is local support from institutions and collectors. Fairs are more like outposts or shop windows – you use them to communicate the gallery program.

Umer Butt: As someone who is working with a very specific focus on conceptual art in a very young [art] market in Dubai, I am a firm believer in carefully choosing where we present our program. Location does matter! I’m longing for a gallery space in Europe; it’s so much easier to give your artists better visibility by just taking a train or hopping on a cheap “.com” flight to meet a potential collector or institution.

Speaking of local scenes, what’s the difference between running a gallery in Berlin and running one in Vienna?

Henrikke Nielsen: We are currently in the process of moving our gallery from Berlin to Vienna. We have been watching Vienna over the past couple of years and see a lot of potential there. Not only are there great institutions, but the academies have a lot to offer – interesting professors, for example. We are also attracted to the mixture of history/tradition and contemporary discourse that Vienna has to offer. Berlin has obviously had a strong impact on our program and profile. We look forward to seeing what happens when we take this into the context of Vienna.

What are the specifics of Vienna’s gallery scene?

Emanuel Layr: You have a lot of possibilities in terms of production. Vienna is not hip and doesn’t get as much attention as Berlin or New York, but this also gives you a chance to develop things sustainably over time. And for sure Vienna has what I would call a “context” – the city is known for its alternative spaces, but institutions like Secession or Kunsthalle Wien also join in on this lively exchange and engage with the local scene. At the same time, there could definitely be more involvement in terms of collecting or accompanying artistic processes over the long run.

Andreas Huber: I agree. Curiosity is not Vienna’s forte.

Introducing new artists to a Vienna audience is a significant commitment, time and energy investment, especially if these artists are from abroad. But that aside, the city is a vivid art sociotope, not only for galleries and artists, but for institutions and project spaces as well. Vienna has always lived from a strong combination of the old and the new. The city has been changing non-stop behind its historical façade, and there will be more art to come because most people find Vienna to be an inspiring place.

Program

Art in the Skyscraper Neuer Kunstverein Wien

Katarzyna Uszynska and Felicitas Thun-Hohenstein Photo: Marlene Rahmann

Text by Sabine B. Vogel

Vienna’s oldest high-rise was built in 1932 according to plans by architects Siegfried Theiss and Hans Jaksch.

The 50-meter tower with 224 apartments on Herrengasse 6–8 is an attraction, not only for its architecture, but also thanks to the Neuer Kunstverein Wien (NKW) art association. A resident of the tower since 2013, the institution has become a prime address for young art in the city.

The initiative was launched by Katarzyna Uszynska, who founded the society in 2011 along with board members Elise Mougin-Wurm, Sabine Martin and Chiara Redini: “Neuer Kunstverein Wien is neither an artist association nor a traditional member society but a private initiative organized as a society. Its simple structure allows us to react quickly, flexibly and cost-effectively to developments in the art world,” Uszynska explains.

Sabine B. Vogel has a PhD in art history. She has been a lecturer at the University of Applied Arts Vienna since 2003 and President of AICA AUSTRIA since 2009, and has worked as a freelance art critic and curator since 1987.

NKW’s annual budget is based on a state subsidy of 22,000 euros. Its program consists of four to six exhibitions per year, performances, video art or installations (such as those by João Onofre, Toni Schmale and Kay Walkowiak), monographic shows (e.g. by Barbara Hammer or the Romanian Sigma1 Group), as well as lectures and discussions. The idea is to discover art by little-known, almost forgotten and, above all, women artists, “and to do so in response to interesting, changing environments,” founder Katarzyna Uszynska says. As for the name of the society: “We called it ‘new’ because Vienna already had an older art society, the Alte Schmiede, and because it stands for new art, new ideas, new spaces.”

Another distinctive feature of Neuer Kunstverein Wien is its concept of changing spaces: it isn’t confined to a particular apartment in the tower but can be on any floor.

The current show is featured in a unit that was initially planned for a family, including a room for a maid. Since 2014, the board has been supported by a society of friends whose president, Felicitas Thun-Hohenstein, also curates exhibitions at NKW. She is a professor of art and cultural studies at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna: “As a professor, I see how important exhibitions are for young artists after graduating, and that there is a big deficit in Vienna,” Thun-Hohenstein says. As a consequence, her curatorial work at NKW focuses on young Austrian art, for example in the exhibition “Painting Is Not The Issue” held this fall. Instead of citing traditional media, she discusses painting “in light of a performative art practice,” whereby the intermedia (i.e. physical) aspects of painting also come to the fore. Another topic of the “discursive lab” will be the “increasing gap between neoliberal conditions and artistic marketing strategies.” After all: NKW is more than just an exhibition space – it’s a markedly political debate platform as well.

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Queer Topics for Five O’Clock Tea The Austrian Association of Women Artists – then and now Text by Christa Benzer

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Elke Auer, Julia Gaisbacher, Nina Höchtl, Catharina Bond, Julia Wieger and Ruby Sircar (f. l. t. r.)

Photo: Marlene Rahmann

An organization that played no role in the Vienna art scene for many years has (re)-established itself as a pioneer of queer-feminist art in Vienna. But the yellowed sign that marks the entrance to the Austrian Association of Women Artists (VBKÖ) rooms also points to a long, not-always-glorious history.

The VBKÖ was founded over a century ago by artists in the women’s movement who saw the need for collective action. They were interested in “working to improve the economic and artistic situation of female artists,” as Rudolfine Lackner, President from 1998 to 2011, wrote in a publication commemorating the 100th anniversary of the artists’ association, founded in 1910.

In 1912, members including Tina Blau, Olga Brand-Krieghammer (the association’s first President), Ilse Conrat, Terese Ries and Olga Wisinger-Florian rented the VBKÖ premises on the top level of a building in Vienna’s inner city, which is still its headquarters today. But its exhibition space on Maysedergasse was not large enough for one of the first exhibitions the association organized in 1910, so “Die Kunst der Frau” (The Art of Women) occupied the nearby Viennese Secession instead. Ilse Conrat and Olga Brand-Krieghammer compiled more than 300 works by international artists for this first exhibition of women’s work in Vienna which, despite its popular success, eventually fell into oblivion.

Still it was extraordinary, as Julie M. Johnson stresses in her contribution to the commemorative publication. She compares the Vienna show to the legendary exhibition “Women Artists 1550–1950,” curated by Anne Sutherland Harris and Linda Nochlin for the LA County Museum of Art in 1977. Several of their selected artists had already been shown in Vienna, where they lacked both the institutional foothold and support from a broad feminist base like the one in Los Angeles in the 1970s.

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But this wasn’t the only gap in history that prompted Nina Höchtl and Julia Wieger – both members of the VBKÖ’s current board – to found the Sekretariat für Geister, Archivpolitiken und Lücken (Secretariat for Ghosts, Archival Politics, and Gaps) in 2012. The VBKÖ’s own National Socialist past went unacknowledged and unprocessed for many years. The organization collaborated with Nazis under its President Stephanie Hollenstein (1939–1944) and excluded all Jewish women artists, including Ilse Conrat, whose impending deportation caused her to commit suicide in 1944. That same year, the VBKÖ was taken over by Grete KmenttMontandon, who served as President of the increasingly conservative and irrelevant artists’ guild until 1968.

“What exhibitions and activities took place during that time? Were there internal discussions about a post-Nazi positioning, and was there ever – in the 1960s? – a clear break?” The Secretariat for Ghosts, Archival Politics, and Gaps is devoted to working through these and other questions in lecture performances, publications of historical documents, and an essay film. It is an integral part of the VBKÖ, which only remembered its women’s movement beginnings and feminist attitude in the 1990s under Rudolfine Lackner.

The organization has since restructured itself, and is now headed by a regularly rotating, currently eightmember board, rather than a president. All eight artists work on a volunteer basis; together and despite budget limitations, they have realized an exhibition program that has revived the VBKÖ as an important place for activist, queer-feminist art practices in Vienna.

Group exhibitions such as “Modern Holes” or “Dear Anus” dissected heteronormative sexuality politics with relish. Another important focus is on post-/decolonial approaches: in 2015, for example, Ruby Sircar organized the “Familiarity – Imperial Myths. Unexpected Queerings” exhibition featuring works by Sabelo Mlangeni, Amoako Boafo, Sunanda Mesquita, Lydia Hamann, Kaj Osteroth, Mulugeta Gebrekidan, and others to introduce “decolonizing moments” in contemporary art.

Christa Benzer is an editor of the art magazine “springerin” and a freelance reporter for the daily newspaper “Der Standard.”

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The exhibition also brought back the “Five o’clock Tea,” which – along with a Trade-off Show and Christmas Show – had been a steadfast lobbying platform in the VBKÖ’s otherwise fractious history into the 1980s. Barbara Steiner, who acted as a guest curator in 2015, conceived a four-part series of exhibitions on (also women) artists’ associations in Vienna, including the Künstlerhaus and the Secession. At the VBKÖ, she referenced both historical event- and exhibition formats and the “Art of Women” exhibition from 1910. She added “Friends and Accomplices” to the title and referred to “The Art of Women” as a category that should be redefined. She also invited male artists such as Johannes Schweiger, Helmut Kandl and Christian Helbock / Markus Lobner. Participating artists included two

former board members: painter Veronika Dirnhofer’s installation addressed the history of VBKÖ and her own clashes with the current board, while Hilde Fuchs referenced the historical lack of space and called for an occupation of the Vienna Secession.

Both artists have their studios at the VBKÖ and will be giving a glimpse into their work as part of VIENNA ART WEEK; the shared studio of Catharina Bond and Julia Gaisbacher will likewise be open to the public.

A group exhibition is planned for November in keeping with the Association’s annual theme “Scandalous Bodies.” Factors contributing to this included issues that emerged in the context of the current situation of refugees in Austria and are now part of the 2016 events, such as: “How can we highlight the plurality of the post-/ de-colonial feminist perspective?” or “How can approaches and practices from different language regions and geopolitical areas of the world be brought into a productive dialogue?”

In the exhibition “Bodies as Archives,” Elke Auer and Ruby Sircar share philosopher and queer theorist Paul Beatriz Preciado’s belief in bodies as political and cultural archives: “If you carefully look at it, you realize that your body archive is connected to the history of the city, the history of design, technologies, and goes back to the invention of agriculture like eighty thousand years ago,” Preciado writes. The exhibition will feature artistic concepts that question the body as an archive of technological, ideological and cultural inscriptions while showing various political and sexual empowerment strategies at the same time. With this, the association has once again claimed an important spot on the 2016 art calendar, bringing an exhibition program that is not unique to Vienna, but also continues to reflect on the economic conditions of women artists (and their association).

The founders would hardly have believed that their struggle for (economic) recognition would take another 100 years. But right now, it looks as though the topic might be one for the occasional five o’clock tea at the VBKÖ.

“How do I see the world?

What do I say about it?”

Michael Stampfer Photo: Marlene Rahmann

INTERVIEW

Vienna’s humanities and social science research in focus Interview by Daniela Fasching

The Vienna Science and Technology Fund (WWTF) is embracing the humanities, social sciences and cultural studies, and has spearheaded a new impulse program to boost their potential. Michael Stampfer, Director of the WWTF, discusses the topics, benefits and results of social science research.

Why do you think it is important to promote the humanities, social sciences and cultural studies in Vienna?

Michael Stampfer: The humanities, social sciences and cultural studies have a firm foothold in a number of research institutions in Vienna, and while we have outstanding people working in these areas, we could use more. It’s important to introduce more dynamism, both in the universities and through institutions like ours.

Better energy and support puts young people on a faster career track, lowers the threshold between the individual disciplines, and – without unduly affecting the choice of projects – also allows the public, policymakers and funders to ask questions and inspire researchers so that transformations in society do not run too far ahead of scientific change.

Daniela Fasching, born 1986 in Eisenstadt, studied English and art history in Vienna and London (Royal Holloway).

She has been active as an art educator and freelance journalist in Vienna since 2012. She works in the field of innovative museum education and deals primarily with topics in visual art related to social and identity politics.

How do you choose the topics for your calls for proposals?

Michael Stampfer: First, we as the funding body decide on them. The WWTF gets most of its money from a private foundation, but individual programs are co-financed by the City of Vienna. The idea was that the city would work with us to identify which topics are interesting for urban co-existence and further development of the city.

Our most recent call addressed the issue of public space in a growing city where open areas are shrinking, others are growing, and still others are going digital. These are key issues for the city.

Another current focus is diversity and identity.

Michael Stampfer: Exactly, we deliberately avoided calling it migration. The key point is diversity in the city, in whatever form – discovering and appreciating diversity.

The humanities are always having to fight for their legitimacy. Where do you see their potential? Why is it worthwhile to invest in them?

Michael Stampfer: The humanities, like science, are a part of our culture. The pursuit of knowledge is something deeply human. But society derives enormous bene­ fit from them as well. An example: you’d have to have a cast-iron stomach to read newspapers, even quality newspapers these past few years. There are so many ludicrous discourses out there, rife with fear and paranoia. So an evidence- and theory-based narrative has to come from somewhere. How do I see the world? What do I say about it? The humanities can do this if they are fit and alert, and stay focused on the world. We have one project about the multilingualism of migrants from African countries, for example, which led to advice for judicial proceedings as regards language barriers. That kind of result is equivalent to a patent as far as I am concerned.

PANEL DISCUSSION

Science for the City. The issue of diversity in the working environment and health policy Mon., 14 Nov. 2016 6:30 pm Wien Museum, Karlsplatz, 1040 Vienna In German

(see page 28) 97

INTERVIEW

Green Archipelago with Large Sculptures On the redesign of Südtiroler Platz in Vienna Interview by Patricia Grzonka

Südtiroler Platz has had a shadowy existence until now; many would even call it a “non-place.” All that will change with its redesign. Christian Wagner of zwoPK Landschaftsarchitektur, Vienna, and Berlin-based artist Michael Sailstorfer speak about the challenges of designing a plaza that gives visitors arriving at Vienna Main Station a first impression of the city’s public space; and they speak about their project, which merges landscape architecture and art.

How did your collaboration on Südtiroler Platz come about?

Christian Wagner: Our firm zwoPK Landschaftsarchitektur was invited to participate in the competition to redesign Südtiroler Platz in Vienna. The initiators – Kunst im öffentlichen Raum GmbH and MA 19 for Architecture and Urban Design – wanted a collaboration between planners and artists. We had been familiar with Michael Sailstorfer’s work for a long time, and we all agreed that he was the right partner for the job. It was clear that this location called for a powerful statement, and Michael Sailstorfer’s urban-spatial interventions seemed like a perfect fit. We were especially inspired and excited by his works in public space, like the street lamps or the “Tornado” of car tires in New York.

How did the project develop?

Christian Wagner: Michael visited us here in Vienna twice, staying for several days during two different work phases. We took a good, thorough look at the plaza and its surroundings. These site visits were actually more like walks where we discussed specific characteristics of the place and possible strategies. Walking on the site became a kind of concept generator.

Michael Sailstorfer: Visiting and inspecting the site several times was crucial. The design has to be autonomous, but also work in a site-specific way. There are a number of different problems with the place itself, including 98

four very obvious ventilation structures that had to be incorporated into the plan. The sculptures have to be large enough to be seen coming from the train station, but can’t obstruct the view of the station from Südtiroler Platz. With these parameters in mind, we set to work.

What was your first impression of Südtiroler Platz?

Christian Wagner: Many people think of Südtiroler Platz as an unattractive place, if not a “non-place.” But it’s precisely sites like this that are the most fascinating places to work. Our first impression was that it is definitely worthwhile getting something going here.

Michael Sailstorfer: Christian Wagner and I agreed on this right away. Attractiveness isn’t usually an added value from an artistic perspective; a place’s usage characteristics and its social character are far more crucial as far as I’m concerned.

The project essentially consists of two components: landscape architecture (“green archipelago”) and art (“main path and subsidiary paths”), which intermingle in a network of urban space structures, landscape and sculpture. How do these different levels play into one another?

Christian Wagner: The green archipelago concept describes on the one hand the place’s current, heterogeneous situation – an amalgam of countless traffic routes and island-like rest areas – and offers the solution to it at the same time: namely to highlight this superimposition of different structures as a quality. Here, we work with various functional layers and overlapping elements to change this mono-functional space into a multifunctional one. We discovered that there isn’t much to be done in terms of changing the traffic situation: Favoriten­ strasse cuts into the square, creating a central island with a rest area. We had to work around this particular situation, so we tried to reinterpret the plaza: Can a place that is inhospitable in terms of urban development with

Programm

Christian Wagner and Michael Sailstorfer Photo: Marlene Rahmann

island-like rest areas be positively reinterpreted with a new topography? Can it be turned into something that you might even associate with a vacation?

Michael Sailstorfer: These kinds of culturally formed landscapes that live from the contrast between traffic and greenery are an exciting challenge for me as an artist in that the art acts as a third factor. I tried to develop the artistic intervention from the site visits, and lend it a convincing rigor at the same time.

Patricia Grzonka, born in St. Gallen, Switzerland, lives and works in Vienna as an art historian, curator and author. She writes about art and architecture for “Neue Zürcher Zeitung,” “Monopol” and “Kunst­ bulletin.” Her articles have appeared in “Art,” “Frieze,” “springerin,” “profil” and “Texte zur Kunst,” along with many other art and architecture publications. patriciagrzonka.net

I really like the idea of appropriating the ventilation structures – it also means that no new “object barriers” can be built on the plaza. How did you come up with this idea?

Michael Sailstorfer: The artistic intervention tries to deal with the plaza’s current situation by installing four large sculptures on the already-existing ventilation structures. I wanted to avoid adding foreign bodies to the multi-layered, complex landscape of Südtiroler Platz, as Christian Wagner described it, so I decided to use the ventilation structures as bases for the sculptures. It isn’t just the anchoring that’s site-specific, but also the shape.

Südtiroler Platz is mostly frequented by local residents and travelers. The meter-high steel sculptures look like a tangle of lines and are reminiscent of the various travel routes that I first drew using the Vienna rail network as a template, and then rendered in 3-D. The curved and tangled steel pipes manifest the fleeting nature of travel in a material way. The static, monumental sculptures show a play of line and space that can also be associated with movement. They look different depending on the viewing position, and resist any one definitive perception of form. The surfaces are painted with photoluminescent enamel, so you can still clearly see the sculptures after dark – it’s a reference to the detached quality of time you feel while traveling, or a time that is often incongruent with the regular temporal processes you experience when staying in one place.

The urban space you created does indeed offer different qualities. How will these look specifically? What can or should people do on this plaza?

Christian Wagner: The occupants’ quality of stay is crucial for us planners. This is why we created the plaza-like expansions composed with elongated seating units, and the “transversal” as a new, diagonal path with multifunctional wooden elements for sitting and lying, but also for children to play along.

Michael Sailstorfer: As an artist I try to come up with visual statements that appeal to viewers’ imaginations – both in private and public spaces. Passersby will be able to connect their own experiences with the opposing states of standstill and movement that these sculptures embody or suggest.

Is the project based on a particular understanding of public space?

Christian Wagner: Our priority in dealing with public space is to approach it in a non-hierarchical and multifunctional way; we tried to realize both with Südtiroler Platz.

Michael Sailstorfer: To me, public space means, above all, that the art’s target group has to be interpreted more broadly, and it has to have a more immediate impact in terms of both perception and content. This is where abstraction and reduction come in.

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Our Daily Art The Vienna Insurance Group puts its art on display Text by Stefan Musil

Barbara Grötschnig Photo: Marlene Rahmann

want our stakeholders to identify with it as well.”

The collection consists of various parts and its history dates back to the mid-20th century, which explains how key modernist works such as Oskar Kokoschka’s “Anschluss – Alice in Wonderland” (1942) have found their way into the collection. The core collection consists in holdings from the Wiener Städtische and Donau Versicherung insurance companies and the rapidly growing inventory of works of the main shareholder, the Vienna Insurance Association. The Czech Kooperativa insurance, which also belongs to the VIP group, has a large collection as well, as does the Serbian branch of Wiener Städtische.

Enter the Vienna Insurance Group’s (VIG) headquarters in the Ringturm office tower and you will be overwhelmed with art in every nook and corner. It goes to show just how deeply art is ingrained both in the Group and in the people who work there.

Every year since 2006, the VIG and its main shareholder, the Vienna Insurance Association, have had their Ringturm wrapped to make an eye-catching and much talked-of statement about art in urban space. Previous wrappings include contributions by Christian Ludwig Attersee, who started the tradition in 2006, Robert Hammerstiel, who designed a model of his project, and Hungarian artist László Fehér, who produced numerous sketches for “Society,” recalls Barbara Grötschnig, the Group’s art commissioner. This year’s wrapping by Czech painter Ivan Exner is entitled “Unburdened.”

Stefan Musil is a Viennabased art historian, freelance cultural journalist and music critic.

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Grötschnig’s office brims with contemporary art: “The VIG has always considered itself an art patron. The idea of wrapping the Ringturm evolved from its concept of commissioning art, which has existed from the start.

We mainly purchase art from the regions where our individual insurance companies are located, because we

When purchasing art, the collections seek advise from art dealers and expert consultants. Their focus is on contemporary works from young artists who have already made a name for themselves. More recently, the collections have taken to promoting emerging artists by buying works from students and graduates, and they have added video art to their portfolios.

The collection was first presented to the public in 2010/11 with the “Ringturm.Art” exhibition at Leopold Museum, which featured a small selection of works. While the total holdings add up to far more than 5,000 pieces, they are by no means hidden away from the public eye. The art is displayed “in the insurance companies’ stately rooms, at their branches and headquarters, and in the offices. We want visitors to see our artworks. We believe this to be a way of popularizing artists and promoting their work beyond the purchase,” Grötschnig says. Staff can choose their own works for their offices and have them switched out whenever they like. Curator Philippe Batka has hung a selection of works in the Ringturm staircase, accompanied by texts. Grötschnig is delighted to say that the response was overwhelming: “Everyone’s curious, and the staff ask for guided tours. People have developed a sense of quality over the years – without even being art experts!”

INTERVIEW

Space for New Ideas When art and architecture come together

For years, property developer BAI Bauträger Austria Immobilien has been turning heads with a somewhat different kind of image campaign: its artist-designed ads are a stark contrast to the tepid renderings of other developers. Art even plays a role in the company’s construction projects themselves – from the T-Center in St. Marx to the G3 Shopping Resort Gerasdorf and the Wien-Mitte complex. The strategy is the brainchild of CEO Thomas Jakoubek, Executive Director of the Vienna Danube Region Development Corporation (WED), the development company that crowned Donau City with its latest prestige project, the DC Tower. Maria Rennhofer spoke with Jakoubek, who also heads the university council at the University of Applied Arts.

Maria Rennhofer is a cultural journalist and publicist. She studied journalism and art history at the University of Vienna, headed the contemporary cultural radio broadcasts of the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation (ORF) for many years, has been active since 2010 as a freelance journalist and author and working independently on culture and media projects.

Rennhofer has published various books, including a monograph on Koloman Moser.

Art plays an important role in projects by both BAI and WED. What is the motivation behind it?

Thomas Jakoubek: We live in a reflection-obsessed, rationality- and efficiency-influenced, overaestheticized world – a world of eternal return to the same, of boredom and one-dimensionality. On the other hand, we also live in a world of hypertextuality, in a hypermarket of opportunities and defactification. We don’t try to escape it with superficial architectural contortions; instead, we see the need for a much more nuanced approach. One of the options is to view art as a driving force for architecture. Architecture is meanwhile more of an exercise in justification than one of design. Involving art and artists is also a way to motivate the architects. Not only because it is more economical in the end and more fun, but also because we want to acknowledge a certain responsibility towards society.

Some of the projects integrate art rather early on – Esther Stocker designed the ceiling for Wien-Mitte, for example.

Thomas Jakoubek: Art should be a driver for the architecture, and that is why we try to implement it as early as possible and not to top it off with prettifying “building art” after the fact. Of course you have to be clear from the

outset that the aesthetic approach matches and that the architect and artist more or less understand each other, or chaos ensues. This worked out well for us in WienMitte with Esther Stocker and Laurids Ortner, I believe.

Your company has other ties to art as well, with the advertising campaigns that you commission an artist to produce. What image are you hoping to convey?

Thomas Jakoubek: When I think of the DC Tower by Dominique Perrault, for example: you can’t do regular commercial marketing for architecture like that; you have to come up with something else. Wien-Mitte took eight years to build – how do you promote a project on the market for eight years? And so we came up with the idea of documenting the various construction stages. We did the first photos with Erwin Wurm; after that, we kept inviting artists like Gottfried Helnwein or Rita Nowak to develop an ad campaign for the individual construction phases. Of course, then you also have to position the entire company in a different way, and we’re talking about a company with a huge range of projects. What do apartments, offices, hotels, shopping centers, and various other projects have in common? Concrete, structures, space. And that’s how we came up with the slogan “Ideas need space,” which artists including Birgit Graschopf, Constantin Luser and Leopold Kessler have been realizing since 2014. This year, it’s Werner Schrödl.

PANEL DISCUSSION

“Space for New Ideas.

Art and Urban Development” Fri., 18 Nov. 2016 4:00–5:30 pm DOROTHEUM, Dorotheergasse 17, 1010 Vienna In German

(see page 9) 101

Thomas Jakoubek, Photo: Marlene Rahmann

Interview by Maria Rennhofer

Contemporary Art in Intercultural Dialogue How does Vienna’s art scene benefit from Austria’s cultural forums in Budapest and Beijing?

Interviews by Martina Zerovnik

The 29 Austrian cultural forums (ÖKF) of the Federal Ministry for Europe, Integration and Foreign Affairs are centers of Austrian cultural activity abroad. Their focus is on contemporary art and science. A conversation with Susanne Bachfischer, Director of ÖKF Budapest, and one with Arnold Obermayr, Director of ÖKF Beijing.

Budapest – a long-standing cooperation partner What kind of Austrian art gets the most response in Hungary?

Susanne Bachfischer: Austrian art registers mostly when the Hungarian media reviews its classical “high-culture” events, and of course everything related to Hungary.

How do you manage to foreground contemporary art against classical forms of expression?

Susanne Bachfischer: Many Hungarian institutions we work with, such as the Ludwig Museum in Budapest, the Mu˝ csarnok (Hall of Art), Trafó, or the Budapest Music Center, have a contemporary profile and are wellattended. Our focus is strictly contemporary and is very well received. Hungarians have an open mind about modern art.

How important are cooperations?

Susanne Bachfischer: We entertain numerous longstanding partnerships. Our “Austrian” partners include 102

Austro-Hungarian schools (Europaschule high school), the Austrian Institute and Austrian libraries; other partners are the German-language Andrássy University and German Studies departments at various universities, the Budapest Music Center, the event ship A38, the FUGA Center of Architecture, the Vasarely Museum … the list goes on and on, because we always make sure to pick the right partner for each project. We only organize a small number of events in our own spaces.

Which projects are in the pipeline at the moment?

Susanne Bachfischer: This fall the focus is on the 60th anniversary of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. Pupils at the Austro-Hungarian Europaschule have developed a bilingual exhibition; a conference is scheduled for September. The ÖKF is also participating in an international film festival in Miskolc and cooperating with the Goethe Institute and the Swiss embassy on the film festival “Sehenswert.”

You also show “paired exhibitions” of Austrian and Hungarian artists. How does this pairing work?

Susanne Bachfischer: Sometimes it happens because the artists know each other, or because their works complement one another thematically and/or technically.

We either appoint a curator or develop the exhibition in a trialogue between the two artists and the ÖKF.

Arnold Obermayr © Austrian Cultural Forum, Beijing

interview

Susanne Bachfischer Photo: Orsolya Nemesházi

How has the cultural forum developed over the years?

Susanne Bachfischer: I think it has become much easier for artists to contact one another directly, not least due to Hungary’s EU membership. This often happens without the involvement of ÖKF, so the cultural forum’s work is in many cases limited to putting people in touch.

What image should Austria as a country of art and culture have in, say, ten years’ time?

Susanne Bachfischer: A positive image. An image that shows Austria to be a modern hub of art and culture with a long-standing tradition and historical ties with Hungary; a country that attracts young people, too.

Beijing – mediator of a varied culture China’s idea of Austria is one of classical music and romantic replicas of cities. Is that a stereotype?

Arnold Obermayr: I’m afraid not; it’s true. The mainstream fame and popularity of Sissi films, for example, still baffles me. Of course you could argue that this is a positive image. But the image is so strong that we’re finding it hard to superimpose a different image and communicate how varied Austria’s culture actually is.

What importance does China attach to contemporary art?

Arnold Obermayr: Considering that contemporary trends could only take shape in the process of modernization initiated by Deng Xiaoping, it is impressive how quickly different styles developed. Some of them interpreted various avant-gardes from the West, which there had been no exchange with for a long time. One example is the “Post-70s Ego Generation”: raised in the one-child policy era, these artists highlight the status of the individual rather than the collective. Media art and performance are also going strong. China has a very active gallery scene and entire artist villages. More than 5,000 artists live in Beijing’s art district Songzhuang.

Martina Zerovnik worked for many years as an assistant and project manager in the area of museum concepts and exhibition management.

Since 2012, she has been a freelance literary theorist, cultural scientist, curator, copy-writer and copy-editor.

What are the cultural forum’s big themes?

Arnold Obermayr: This year we are supporting a few projects in Chengdu, a city in Southwest China. Whenever we do the planning ourselves we try to stress the dialogue between Austrian and Chinese artists. We deliberately use social media like Weibo and WeChat. On Weibo, China’s equivalent to Twitter, we already have more than 10,000 followers. I visit art institutions in Beijing and beyond, and of course I regularly go to exhibitions and visit the studios of Chinese artists. The sheer size of the country and its huge number of institutions means it’s imperative to draw a line between who is important and who is not. This learning process implies that some efforts come to nothing. I am also president of the China

cluster of the European Union National Institutes for Culture, by the way, whose projects aim to make Europe more visible in China.

What projects is the ÖKF planning right now?

Arnold Obermayr: The biggest one is an exhibition at the renowned Times Art Museum Beijing in late September, curated by Alexandra Grimmer and myself. Austria’s own Josef Ramaseder and the Chinese artists Liang Shaoji and Feng Lianghong will be showing their works side by side. The two have different techniques and aesthetic approaches, but we will see some conceptual parallels and strategies.

Are there more similarities or dissonances when Austrian and Chinese artists meet?

Arnold Obermayr: Both, actually! I often feel that there is a curiosity for each others’ culture that is naïve in the best sense of the word. Interestingly, some Austrian artists have this fixed idea that their project “has to” work in the Chinese context as well. Everyone has his or her own sociocultural backpack to carry.

What image should Austria as a country of art and culture have in ten years’ time?

Arnold Obermayr: The image I’d like to see would still be that of a cosmopolitan, innovative, creative, European, self-confident, yet also self-critical country whose cultural impetus reaches far beyond its borders.

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Time for Something New Temporary body sculptures in service of Austria “cultural midpoint,” Museumsquartier Wien Photo: Thomas Smetana

Text by Salomea Krobath

The Austrian Tourist Office’s “cultural midpoint” campaign puts a spotlight on the contemporary art and culture scene in 2016.

Austria – say the word and most people picture hiking in the mountains, dancing through the gardens of Schönbrunn Palace and a stroll through magnificent buildings bearing the mark of Sisi and the Habsburgs, in time to the Viennese waltz. Countless visitors come from far and wide to marvel at the local, imperial cultural heritage and experience something of it firsthand. Wonderful! It’s just that Austria has much more to offer than that. “There is a natural implicitness to the way visitors can experience new approaches to culture, be it dance, design or architecture, in addition to the established imperial culture,” says Petra Stolba, Managing Director of the Austrian Tourist Office, which has set itself the mission of raising public awareness about these new aspects of culture.

In the spring of 2016, the Austrian Tourist Office launched the “cultural midpoint” promotion campaign to highlight Austria’s ability to enchant visitors with imperial charm while impressing them with a young, exciting art scene at the same time.

Salomea Krobath studied social and Chinese sciences in the Netherlands, China and the UK. She has been a freelance reporter for news magazines including “profil” since 2014.

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The project already premiered at the Frankfurt Book Fair in October last year, where human figures slithered, bent and squeezed between gaps, behind columns and on bookshelves at Europe’s preeminent book fair. The philosophical, ironic body performances are titled “Bodies in Urban Spaces,” and have won their creator international acclaim. Austrian artist Willi Dorner’s temporary body sculptures are the flagship project of the “cultural midpoint” campaign, which aims to pique

future visitors’ curiosity and spirit of discovery. “I think it’s great that the Austrian Tourist Office is approaching contemporary artists,” says Willi Dorner. “Austria is very modern. But I think this image needs even more of a global audience.”

Petra Stolba also seems convinced of Willi Dorner’s choreography and its ability to draw international attention: “I think the intervention with the temporary body sculptures is fascinating because it directs our gaze to the undiscovered, to what lies in-between, giving us completely new insights in the process,” says the Managing Director of the Austrian Tourist Office. “We want to do the same thing with our art and culture campaign: to rediscover Austria as a cultural center.”

Willi Dorner’s team of dancers and parkour runners have sought to do just that in recent months, traveling throughout Austria in search of surprising gaps, hidden corners and new ways of looking at the country. The photographs and video clips they have created will be published online over the course of the year, or – like Dorner’s body sculptures themselves – turn up in sur­ prising, unexpected places. The first appearance at the Frankfurt Book Fair, the organizers tell us, offered a small taste of Austria’s creative side.

Who knows: maybe culture-loving visitors will stumble upon a “body in urban space” on their next stroll through the historic streets, and leave with the lasting impression that Austria has many more things still waiting to be discovered – Sisi and Mozart aside. www.austria.info/immermittendrin

INTERVIEW

The City’s Storefront The Vienna tourist information office by Delugan Meissl Associated Architects Interview by Maik Novotny

Elke Delugan-Meissl and Norbert Kettner Photo: Marlene Rahmann

Spacious, curved and all in gold: opened in 2014, the tourist information center on Albertinaplatz is Vienna’s storefront for tourists. Norbert Kettner, Director of the Vienna Tourist Board, and architect Elke Delugan-Meissl of Delugan Meissl Associated Architects explain the ideas behind it.

The tourist information center deliberately avoids Vienna clichés. What image of Vienna does the space try to project?

Elke Delugan-Meissl: It’s meant to give visitors a first, lasting impression of Vienna. The centerpiece of the concept is the faceted, space-creating brass wall, which interprets Vienna’s diversity in a spatial way.

Norbert Kettner: We don’t use Vienna clichés, but we do consciously incorporate the gold that you see in many imperial buildings in Vienna. Vienna has a rich abundance of historical buildings, but it is also a modern metropolis that has a lot to offer in the way of contemporary art and culture. Vienna carries this duality in its DNA, and it should also be understood as a promise of quality to our guests.

Maik Novotny was born in Stuttgart in 1972. He studied architecture in Stuttgart and Delft, moved to Vienna in 2000, is a co-founder of the online archive “Eastmodern” for late modernism in Eastern Europe, and writes regular articles on design and architecture in “Der Standard,” “Falter” and other media.

What core message does the Vienna Tourist Board want to convey here?

Norbert Kettner: We managed to transform the tourist information office into a highly functional Gesamtkunstwerk with an impressive contemporary design, the latest technology, and an intelligent spatial concept. It not only draws attention to Vienna as a top destination, but also serves as a calling card for “Smart City” Vienna.

Does the architecture promote Vienna as a design hub as well?

Elke Delugan-Meissl: Vienna is a city with a rich architectural, art and design heritage and a lively array of contemporary cultural activities. It was important to us that our design reflect this richness.

Norbert Kettner: Contemporary design is not a question of advertising, but one of rationality and fulfilling high, self-imposed standards. The architecture of the tourist information center points to the contemporary aspects of Vienna, while the Vienna State Opera next door shows the city’s historic side. Modern architecture and design are closely intertwined, so a visit to the tourist information center should also make visitors curious about Vienna’s emerging design scene.

What were the criteria for functionality and use of space?

Norbert Kettner: It was important to provide an optimal combination of functional and aesthetic qualities. We paid particular attention to the intelligent management of visitor flow, finding ways to reduce waiting times and creating smoother workflows for staff. According to a survey, tourists are very happy with the new information office.

Elke Delugan-Meissl: The spatial configuration divides the interior into two clearly-identifiable areas. The brass wall enhances this as a central design element: in the ticket area, it works as a kind of display; in the information area, it serves as a functional rear wall behind the staff, helping to ensure a smooth workflow.

How does the tourist information center make its purpose visible to the outside?

Norbert Kettner: Vienna has a core competence as a particularly hospitable, cosmopolitan city, and I see that quality realized architecturally in the concept for the new tourist information center: the design is very inviting and very visible from the outside, piquing visitors’ curiosity about what there is to discover inside.

Elke Delugan-Meissl: Most of the structure’s impact from the outside comes from its largely unobstructed view of the interior. At night, the clearly visible, illuminated presentation wall shows the tourist information office’s rich trove of information in the public space.

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Program

Programs with Year-Round Potential From cultural production to the art market: Vienna is booming

The fall art season is the highlight of Vienna’s cultural calendar. But a number of initiatives work year-round to continue expanding the Austrian capital’s position as an international art hotspot. Horst Szaal, gallery owner and committee chairman for the Vienna Regional Committee on the Art and Antiques Trade, considers the current situation and future trends in the Viennese art market.

It’s here, the fall art season with its concentrated array of art and cultural events! “VIENNA ART WEEK does a lot to reinforce Vienna as a major art city,” says Horst Szaal, gallery owner and committee chairman. “A lot of young and new art lovers are too intimidated to venture into galleries, but they do see and experience art during the VIENNA ART WEEK studio visits, panel discussions and talks, as do more seasoned connoisseurs.”

Yet the fall art season isn’t the only draw for the international and national art scene. With its diverse programs and varied events highlighting exciting contrasts between traditional and contemporary art, Vienna attracts art-loving visitors throughout the year. But of course there is still room for growth.

Salomea Krobath studied social sciences and Chinese in the Netherlands, China and United Kingdom. She has worked as a freelance journalist since 2014, writing for the news magazine “profil,” among others.

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By and large, the Austrian creative scene is booming: while the economy stagnated for the most part, the number of creative industry companies rose by eight percent between 2008 and 2012; their employees and sales went up by ten percent. Vienna is without a doubt the most important platform: we have 41 percent of the domestic

Horst Szaal, Photo: Marlene Rahmann

Text by Salomea Krobath

creative industry companies, and together they generate 58 percent of the industry’s revenues. Some 120 contemporary art galleries, 575 art, antiques and stamp dealers, a number of auction houses, and 72 museums make for an ambitious art program of growing importance for society. Their success owes not least to the establishment of a specific arts district: “Concentration into art districts, or urban areas with a denser concentration of dealers, have really paid off,” Szaal says. The significance of these art clusters is fortified by events such as the gallery tour in the city center, in which 19 galleries participated over the summer, or the sister event on Schleifmühlgasse, where numerous galleries simultaneously kept their doors open a bit longer than usual. Held several times a year, the evening gallery tour is popular among students and night owls, and has long established itself as a social jour fixe for collectors and art connoisseurs of the Vienna scene.

Even the art and antiques trade relies on consolidation.

A thriving scene has emerged around DOROTHEUM on Stallburggasse and in the area around Spiegelgasse – likewise a resounding success. The largest auction house in Central Europe houses art in more than 40 categories, from Old Masters to contemporary art. DOROTHEUM hosts 120 catalogue auctions a year in addition to daily auctions and regularly breaks world records for auction prices, with six record wins for classical modern and contemporary art in the first half of 2016 alone.

Yet for all the successes, Szaal sees room for growth with regard to the broader impact of the art and antiques trade: “This fall, we’re starting an initiative to enhance the presence of art in print media,” he says. Those who might be interested in art and potential international clients should be made aware of Vienna’s varied art scene.

After all, international clients account for 15 percent of profits in these sectors. With this, the Vienna art scene is striving not only to strengthen internal cooperation, but promote international exchange as well.

But for all the excitement of this fast-moving international art world, Szaal warns against sidelining local tradition. Each country’s unique cultural scene has its own language, and this also comes to bear, even on the globalized art market: “It’s fascinating to see how regional the booths actually are in terms of orientation – a Greek, Brazilian or Austrian booth is recognizable as such,” Szaal says. As global as the art market might be, it always comes out of local, cultural conditions; our task is to preserve and protect this basis for artistic creativity.

What’s more, small, specialized institutions focused on topics outside the mainstream are often neglected by funding bodies and depend on international networking and presentation options. In 2014, the Austrian Federal Chancellery released an arts report showing that, although contemporary genres of visual arts, architecture, design, fashion, photography, video and media art received 10.48 million euros (200,000 euros more than the previous year), it still amounted to a mere 11.4 percent of the total cultural funding. The lion’s share of funding – 69.5 percent or 63.92 million euros – goes to the music and performing arts and film categories.

Even in terms of the art market, Horst Szaal criticizes complicating government regulations: the increase of the VAT rate, for example, has made products on the Austrian art market more expensive than in other countries, causing a dip in sales. “We shouldn’t underestimate that,” the committee chairman warns, “even if it’s only a few percent.” His goal is to further integrate art dealers into VIENNA ART WEEK’s supporting program. “All of us who love art should work together,” he says. “Like the galleries, art spaces and art institutions, those of us who work in art dealing want to show what a pleasure it is to be involved in art.”

The efforts of the contemporary and traditional art scenes have paid off in spades: a T-MONA survey from the Vienna Tourist Board revealed that half the visitors to Vienna between 2011 to 2014 traveled to the capital for its vast artistic and cultural offerings. Fairs have also played their part in luring global jetsetters to Vienna: the Vienna International Fine Art & Antiques Fair (WIKAM) at Palais Ferstel features an expertly selected array of everything from paintings, drawings and antique Baroque and Biedermeier furniture pieces to rare watches and precious jewelry. Art & Antique also draws some 18,500 visitors to Vienna’s Hofburg Palace with its wide range of art, antiques and design objects. In contemporary art, the viennacontemporary – a showcase for 105 galler­ ies from 25 countries and with a focus on Northern and Eastern European Art – offers a suitable platform for exceptional Austrian artists, helping them attract international attention. The fair’s visitor numbers climbed to 28,000 in 2015. Parallel Vienna, which Horst Szaal calls a “starter fair for emerging artists,” has also developed from a small, specialized event into a scene event with mass crowds.

Vienna art dealers have had a significant hand in Vienna’s rising status. The art trade has helped to expand the city’s international profile beyond its history and importance as a music capital, leading it into the international spotlight as a city for modern and contemporary art. This year’s VIENNA ART WEEK once again very impressively demonstrates just how lively and vibrant Vienna’s art scene really is; the city’s art market has blossomed from an exclusive event for connoisseurs and buyers into an open scene with many participants and visitors, with added economic benefit for our city. With all this in mind, the Vienna Chamber of Commerce stands firmly behind VIENNA ART WEEK, celebrating its achievements and supporting its development in the future.

DI Walter Ruck President of the Vienna Chamber of Commerce

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“A WAY”

The BKA’s International Studio Program goes public Interview by Maria Christine Holter

For some time now, the Arts and Culture Division of the Federal Chancellery of Austria (BKA) has been considering ways to boost the visibility of projects stemming from the popular international studio fellowship program for Austrian artists working in visual art, photography and media art. “A WAY” is supposed to do just that.

Project director Alexandra Grausam explains.

Maria Christine Holter lives and works as an art historian and curator in Vienna. She studied art history at the University of Vienna and at Berkeley in the United States, and interned at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York. Exhibition series in situ and follow-up; guest curator at museums, art galleries, institutions and artist-run spaces.

Corporate consultancy in the field of exhibitions and collection activities, numerous publications on contemporary art.

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You were charged with developing and implementing this exciting project. What can be said about it at this point in the planning stage?

Alexandra Grausam: … that I am absolutely delighted with the decision to implement “A WAY” in Vienna. The commitment I see in the art department concerning the funding program for foreign residencies cannot be overestimated and is unparalleled in the world. The art and culture scene lives from continuous dialogue and exchange at the global level, and our objective in making this a funding priority is to offer Austrian artists new development opportunities through residencies abroad.

I now know how important these kinds of impressions and experiences have been for many of the artists involved in the program. Residencies spent in the twelve cities we fund – including Beijing, Tokyo, New York and London, but also more “exotic” destinations like Mexico City or Yogyakarta – were and continue to be crucial for their artistic career and personal development, and yet our local art scene often has little idea that this is the case.

Some of the artists have opportunities to present their projects or works-in-progress in the places where they were developed, but these opportunities have not existed in Austria until now. The “A WAY” program, which I developed and which is being supervised by Genoveva Rückert-Sommerauer and Katja Stecher, was initiated to close that gap.

How do you intend to implement this in concrete terms and what aspects of residencies does it take into account?

Alexandra Grausam: For the sake of brevity, I would mention four tools: exhibition; think tank / laboratory (facilitating intellectual dialogue between international and national program directors, artists and theorists);

website / social media / blog; and subsequently a publication. Bearing in mind the complexity of personal experiences abroad and the artistic results that come out of them, “A WAY” is not about selective perception. It is about sustainable visibility and long-term networking for program fellows, and the discourse of how the government initiative affects artistic production and living conditions. These benchmarks deserve a closer look, because some have voiced criticism that the residencies indirectly promote increasingly precarious living conditions among artists. “A WAY” also wants to open up the discussion on that topic, but it is just one of many that we want to address.

Which artists will benefit from “A WAY,” and will there be a continuation of the project after 2016?

Alexandra Grausam: The international studio program worked with over 1,000 fellows since it was launched in the 1980s, and it would of course be impossible to take them all into account. This year, we’re focusing on some 150 artists from the past three years, which already promises a lot of diversity and interesting results. (Laughs) For the last question, you would need to ask the Federal Chancellery directly – the pathway is clear for that, at least in theory.

CONVERSATION

“The romance of the atelier will probably disappear in time” Wed., 16 Nov. 2016 5:00 pm Address at viennaartweek.at or www.away.co.at In German and English

Genoveva Rückert talks to Jörn Schafaff and others.

Alexandra Grausam Photo: Marlene Rahmann

Programm

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Program

A Tour of the Art Week Guided tours during VIENNA ART WEEK

Olli Hangl and Barbis Ruder Photo: Helmut Prochart

STUDIO VISITS

OPEN STUDIO DAY TOURS

Artist-in-residence studios in Vienna

Artists give tours of studios selected for Open Studio Day

Fri., 18 Nov. 2016 Sat., 19 Nov. 2016 Artist-in-residence programs allow international curators, artists and theorists to network and exchange views with actors of the local art scene. This makes them an important link between the Viennese and international art scenes.

Our guided tours of artist-in-residence studios provide a deep insight into a great number of workshops with the most diverse artistic orientations.

Q21 / MuseumsQuartier Wien Studio visit with art and cultural mediator Wolfgang Brunner Fri., 18 Nov. 2016, 1:00 pm Meeting point: MQ Staatsratshof, Courtyard 7 (entrance across from Volkstheater), 1070 Vienna

studio das weisse haus Studio visit with cultural journalist Alexandra Matzner

Sat., 19 Nov. 2016 1:00 pm: Nika Kupyrova, artist, Kiev and Vienna Meeting point: Studio Albert Mayr/Hans Weigand, Märzstrasse 111/1a, 1150 Vienna 3:00 pm: Gerald Straub, artist and cultural theorist, Vienna Meeting point: Studio Veronika Burger/Christina Werner, Lindengasse 61–62/2/14, 1070 Vienna For further information, go to: www.viennaartweek.at/open-studio STUDIO VISITS

Federal government-sponsored studios Fri., 18 Nov. 2016 Sat., 19 Nov. 2016

Fri., 18 Nov. 2016, 3:00 pm Meeting point: Korbergasse 15, 1120 Vienna

Prater studios Guided tour with curator Maria Christine Holter

Krinzinger Projekte Studio visit with cultural journalist Alexandra Matzner

Fri., 18 Nov. 2016, 3:00 pm Meeting point: Meiereistrasse, across from Ernst-Happel-Stadion, 1020 Vienna

Sat., 19 Nov. 2016, 11:00 am Meeting point: Schottenfeldgasse 45, 1070 Vienna

Kunsthalle Exnergasse Studio visit with art and cultural mediator Wolfgang Brunner Sat., 19 Nov. 2016, 12:00 noon Meeting point: Währinger Strasse 59/stairway 2/1st floor, 1090 Vienna

Studios on Wattgasse Guided tour with curator Maria Christine Holter Sat., 19 Nov. 2016, 2:00 pm Meeting point: Wattgasse 56–60, 1170 Vienna

Studios on Westbahnstrasse Guided tour with curator Maria Christine Holter Sat., 19 Nov. 2016, 5:00 pm Meeting point: Westbahnstrasse 27, 1070 Vienna

Drinks Sat., 19 Nov. 2016, following the guided tours, around 7:00 pm 110

Program

Anything but off Artist-run spaces in Vienna Text by Christian Bazant-Hegemark

Known internationally as artist-run spaces, non-commercial exhibition venues in German-speaking countries are usually referred to by the pseudo-Anglicism “off-space.”

But the term is a misleading one, not only because the independent art spaces are anything but “off” – either geographically by address or in terms of their program – but because the autonomous initiatives are an important part of the cultural landscape. In fact, depending on your perspective, it doesn’t get much more “on” than this. A portrait of three Vienna “off-spaces.”

Christian BazantHegemark, born 1978, works as a painter and curator. Represented by Galerie Voss, Düsseldorf, he studied fine art at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna under Gunter Damisch, Daniel Richter and Harun Farocki. He holds a doctorate in philosophy from the same institution (Elisabeth von Samsonow, Felicitas Thun-Hohenstein, 2011 to 2015). Various solo exhibitions, awards and residencies. Lives and works in Vienna.

Artist-run spaces usually have a program that focuses on transient aspects of various different subcultures. And, at least here in Austria: after an indeterminate establishing phase, they often receive subsidies from the federal government, city and district. The money serves to not only maintain the space and fund project implementation, but also to cover the costs of documentation, international exchange or symbolic compensation for work done. The following introduces three spaces that, for all their curatorial differences, have similarities in terms of their (considerable) personal contributions, ability to attract attention, and sensitivity toward the not-yet-canonized. This is how they lend visibility to an ever-greater range of artistic theories and practices and broaden the city’s cultural program. Their collaborations with other institutions and ties to galleries, museums and Kunsthallen only further attest to the relevance and quality of these autonomous initiatives.

Kunstraum SUPER In 2010, a group of architecture students rented a studio where the occasional installation was created outside of the space. This led to the idea of developing interventions for the area visible from the street. What began as an interest in sounding out concepts of space has since blossomed into Kunstraum SUPER, officially run by Andreas Perkmann Berger, Victoria Mayer and Rainer Stadlbauer since 2013.

Over time, the curatorial concept developed into the idea of a model as a utopian practice of thought: the confrontation with objects or ideas that are not necessarily realizable makes it possible to transcend limitations encountered in the physical world. They are interested in working outside of established terms. The space currently hosts eight exhibitions per year. After a great deal of experience with open calls, the Kunstraum now prefers to contact artists directly since the resulting commitment benefits collaborations. While the trio values its physical address as a relevant geographical site for its curatorial practice, it also works on projects that are independent of space – a catalogue, for example – which makes it possible to pursue the group’s research interests and curate internationally as well.

“Container formats” provide specific framework conditions that make it possible to bring to light various kinds of art practices, encouraging potential points of friction.

Curatorial selection happens on the basis of predefined formal conditions and seems more open-ended than any pre-set theme. The exhibition “SMALL,” for example, stipulated a maximum size for submitted work.

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Viktoria Mayer, Andreas Perkmann Berger and Rainer Stadlbauer (f. l. t. r.)

Photo: Marlene Rahmann

Programm

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Lukas Thaler, Titania Seidl and Daniel Ferstl (f. l. t. r.)

Photo: Marlene Rahmann

Mauve Daniel Ferstl, Titania Seidl and Lukas Thaler opened Mauve in late 2012 after a six-month planning phase.

The space’s original spot on Lazarettgasse was a temporary rental, so a later move was always on the horizon.

In early 2015, Mauve moved to Löwengasse in Vienna’s third district, where it has been operating ever since.

The project began with the group’s shared interest in developing an understanding of “exhibitions as a medium.” Consequently, Ferstl, Seidl and Thaler have come to see curating as an integral part of their artistic practice – just another medium they work with. From the start the exhibitions have been based on self-developed curatorial concepts, where the team structure offers a dialectical advantage. Another major consideration is networking: inviting international artists enables a (re)contextualization of established ways of looking at things – at the work of local artists, for example.

Since 2015, the space has hosted mostly formally rigorous group exhibitions where the curation has less to do with the lineup of exhibiting artists than the work itself. The group develops concise curatorial approaches to works and themes in a triumvirate, so there is a personal approach to the exhibitions that could influence the space as well. Exhibition development follows insti­ tution-like procedures: artists around the world are contacted on the basis of content to participate in formal, substantial dialogues. This serves to establish rapport and builds trust with exhibiting artists, whose works Mauve usually install themselves, making the degree of mutual emotional commitment seem higher than in other art spaces. Mauve has regular visitors that like to visit exhibitions several times, so less well-known artists including those from abroad, for example, benefit from a visibility that is unusual for art spaces.

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Claudia Charlotte Linder Photo: Marlene Rahmann

Susanne Richter Photo: Marlene Rahmann

pinacoteca Susanne Richter and Claudia Charlotte Linder founded pinacoteca in mid-2013 as part of a temporary use agreement for a basement on Margaretenstrasse, initially only as a place to show their own work. And yet ten exhibitions were implemented in the first year – all focused on painting or art that somehow operates in a painterly way.

Since then, it has mostly been previously-exhibited artists who are invited to curate. Linder and Richter see this dispensing of curatorial agendas as an enrichment; they are happy to assume the work of maintaining the infrastructure (counterpart to the curatorial “Carte Blanche”): they speak, among other things, of refusal as a curatorial strategy, and are especially keen on artists who operate outside of the traditional art market.

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Besides the concrete work of exhibiting artists, the team is particularly interested in creating dialogues with them; the exhibitions serve as initial discursive anchor points.

Organizing a “small” space has proved empowering, enabling an intimacy in dealing with experiments. pinacoteca has been at its present location since April 2014. It meanwhile receives funding from the federal government, city and district, enabling more independent work. The team considers the space to be part of their artistic practice. It reflects the desire and need for international exchange on artistic and curatorial levels.

Program

Family Art Day Sunday, 20 November 2016

Photo: eSeL.at/Lorenz Seidler

Who said art was just for grown-ups?

VIENNA ART WEEK’s new Family Art Day on Sunday has plenty in store for little exhibition visitors. Kids and families can enjoy special tours created especially with youngsters in mind. Besides being lots of fun, Family Art Day can also be a great stepping stone for developing aesthetic appreciation in the youngest art lovers.

Albertina

Kunsthistorisches Museum

Secession

21er Haus

Children’s guided tour of the exhibition “Seurat, Signac, Van Gogh. Ways of Pointillism”*

Guided tour for families: “The Beauty and the Beast”*

Guided tour for families through the Francis Alÿs and Avery Singer exhibitions*

In the Year of the Monkey*

Sun., 20 Nov. 2016 10:30 am In German

What makes a painting? Colors and shapes. When painters resolve to apply color only by means of dots, the result is a new art movement, Pointillism. We’ll be showing you “dot paintings” by famous artists such as Vincent Van Gogh, Georges Seurat and Paul Signac.

Join us for a wealth of challenging perception games and sensory conundrums in a one-hour guided tour for children aged six to twelve. * Limited number of participants.

Registration is required: call the Albertina art education team on T +43 1 534 83 540 or send an email to besucher@albertina.at

Sun., 20. Nov. 2016 12:00 noon Meeting point: Vestibule, Kunsthistorisches Museum In German

Our tour of the museum is not only about princesses and sublime landscapes; we shall also come across beastly creatures and disturbing paintings. Some of them are even more fascinating than beauties. What do we perceive as beautiful and how do artists depict beauty? Are all monsters ugly and dangerous?

Join us on a quest of beasts and beauties and decide for yourself which one you prefer. * Limited number of participants.

Registration is required: E viennaartweek@khm.at

Sun., 20 Nov. 2016 3:00 pm In German * Registration is required: T +43 1 587 53 07 or E kunstvermittlung@secession.at

Sun., 20 Nov. 2016 3:00–5:00 pm Is it possible to see the Great Wall of China from the moon?

What do rabbits, tigers and monkeys have in common?

And can tea also be art? Children aged three to twelve are welcome to join a tour of Ai Weiwei’s exhibition and unravel a number of mysteries about the Middle Kingdom. The tour is followed by a workshop where we will make our own dragon masks or indulge in Chinese handicraft. * Limited number of participants.

Registration is required: www.21erhaus.at/de/events, T +43 1 795 57 770 or E public@21erhaus.at

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Beauty, in the Eye of the Curator International curators take a stand

Photo: eSeL.at/Lorenz Seidler

VIENNA ART WEEK has invited five international curators to participate in the Curators’ Picks series. The idea is to promote international exhibition organizers and connect them with Viennese artists. This year’s focus is on the ambivalence of beauty in art and its significance for curators.

Titled “Seeking Beauty,” this year’s VIENNA ART WEEK is focused on the ambivalence of beauty in art.

What aspects of beauty are relevant to you?

“Beauty comes in many different forms – physical, formal, conceptual, to start with – all of which can bring pleasure to whomever perceives it. In contemporary practice, I don’t expect beauty to be an artist’s goal, but if a work of art seems beautiful to me, in any of the ways mentioned, I usually pay more attention to it.”

Susan Hapgood

Federica Chiocchetti is a writer and independent curator. She is the founding director of the photo-literary platform Photocaptionist. Currently she is also a PhD researcher on photography and fictions as well as image-text intersections at the University of Westminster, London. She works independently and for international institutions, collections, festivals and art fairs and has published widely. Her most recent projects include the exhibition “Feminine Masculine” for Photo50 as part of London Art Fair.

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Susan Hapgood is a curator and executive director of the International Studio & Curatorial Program in New York. Founding director of the Mumbai Art Room in India, and senior advisor to Independent Curators International, New York, Hapgood received her initial professional training at the Guggenheim Museum and the New Museum of Contemporary Art, and has curated exhibitions including “A Fantastic Legacy: Early Bombay Photography” and “Energy Plus” (2012 Shanghai Biennale). Author or editor of seven books and numerous articles on modern and contemporary art.

Julia Peyton-Jones, director and co-director of Serpentine Galleries, London, was responsible for the art gallery’s exhibitions and programs from 1991 to 2016 and for the summer program of 2016 (April–July).

She has announced her withdrawal from Serpentine Galleries this summer.

“The beauty of the everyday” Julia Peyton-Jones

PANEL DISCUSSION

“Seeking Beauty in Art. Five International Curators in Dialog”

“Beauty is a cultural thing. Beauty means an under­ standing of the relationship between the world and how we edit and depict it. Beauty implies an awareness of being and a sense of belonging to a wider flow of events.

But it always identifies a detail, a moment or an image.

Beauty is never universal or overarching. This is why beauty remains one of the most fragile elements of human experience.”

Gabriela Vaz-Pinheiro

“Beauty is in the unpredictable originality of an idea, object or person that is authentic to its purpose, thereby eliminating ambivalence.”

Lauren Prakke

Lauren Prakke is a lecturer, writer, advisor and curator of contemporary art. As founder of Prakke Contemporary, her work has focused on nurturing emerging artists.

She is chairwoman of The Whitechapel patrons and founded and chaired The Tate Young Patrons, the fastest-growing group at the Tate from 2007 to 2012. Lauren is founder of Restless Buddha Productions, a cooperation of cultural producers and prominent talent across a broad spectrum of arts aiming to raise social awareness and empower the community.

Photo: eSeL.at/Lorenz Seidler

“The aspects of beauty in art most relevant to me are psychoanalytical and ideological. I am intrigued by beauty’s relationship with the unconscious and propaganda. When I think about the ambivalence of beauty in art, beside its semantic challenge, the most immediate ideas that come to mind are beauty’s oscillations in relation to time and space, its intense and controversial link with its opposite, the ugly, its potentially degenerate drift in terms of, for example, the metamorphoses that notions such as ‘canon’ and ‘harmony’ have undergone in the age of internet-based art and artificial intelligence.”

Federica Chiocchetti

Gabriela Vaz-Pinheiro is an artist, researcher and curator. She has been a lecturer at the Fine Arts Faculty, University of Porto, since 2004, and lectured at Central St. Martins College of Art & Design, London, from 1998 to 2006.

Gabriela was responsible for the art and architecture program of Guimarães, Europe’s capital of culture in 2012.

Her work reflects on questions of identity and context and analyzes our notion of being an individual.

Thu., 17 Nov. 2016 5:30–7:00 pm Academy of Fine Arts Vienna Schillerplatz 3, 1010 Vienna In German

Beauty in art is characterized by ambivalence. It isn’t pure luxury, but the result of dialogue. Sometimes, there can be beauty in ugliness. Which criteria define beauty from a curatorial point of view, and which of them forged the canons of beauty we use today? Which aspects of beauty play a role for the curatorial practice?

International curators invited for Curators’ Picks address these questions and explain their curatorial approaches and visions.

Participants: Federica Chiocchetti, London, UK, and Lucca, Italy; Susan Hapgood, New York, USA; Julia Peyton-Jones, London, UK; Lauren Prakke, London, UK; Gabriela Vaz-Pinheiro, Porto, Portugal Moderation: Robert Punkenhofer, Artistic Director of VIENNA ART WEEK

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Program

“I guess we are guest workers, in a way” The Q21 artist in residence program at MuseumsQuartier Wien Photo: Alexander Koller

Text by Teresa Schaur-Wünsch

are responsible for the white cube that conceals the kitchen and bathroom. Other studios have also been designed by artists: Helmut and Johanna Kandl created local color with thrift shop furniture, while the latest studio was designed by Valentin Ruhry in cooperation with Galerie Christine König.

Nikola Knezˇevic´ has temporarily set up camp in the Zobernig room. The artist and architect actually lives in Amsterdam. He has come to Vienna for the “AJNHAJTCLUB” exhibition project commemorating the 50-year anniversary of the labor recruitment agreement between Austria and former Yugoslavia. Together with the exhibition’s curator, artist Bogomir Doringer, he wants to explore the phenomenon of so-called guest workers in more detail. From afar, you see only stereotypes, but “here, you can come into contact with the community,” says Knezˇevic´. He has just been to Simmering. “Your thinking changes when you return from that place.” The two artists are systematically trawling the city to find out whether the Yugoslav guest worker associations still exist today, and in what form. Their conclusion: they still exist, “and they may even be the only underground that Vienna has.”

But he also sees similarities to his own life as an artist.

“I guess we as artists are also guest workers, in a way.”

They never stay long, and yet they leave a mark: there are always several artists in residence living in Vienna’s huge artistic quarter. New studios are available to all kinds of artists.

White walls, white floor, white sofa. A white cube, a secret exhibition space in a hidden corner of the MuseumsQuartier? Not quite. In fact, this is the temporary home of Nikola Knezˇevic´. The lean red-head from Belgrade has already left his mark here: one wall of the large white cube built into the center of the room is covered with photographs. In a second, the door is open.

Behind it lies a small kitchen. “Tea or tomato juice?” asks Knezˇevic´.

The sun is shining in through the window, which looks out on Burggasse and the Volkstheater. This space is a studio, part of the MuseumsQuartier’s artist-in-residence program. Even sleeping is creative here; after all, Heimo Zobernig designed the bed. BEHF Corporate Architects 118

It is Bogomir Doringer’s second stint as curator in residence at Q21. In 2013 he attracted international attention with his exhibition “FACELESS.” It examined the phenomenon of media users being unable to avoid getting recongized in the media, and discussed resulting strategies employed by those media users to become “faceless.”

“Nobody wants to show their face anymore, privacy is becoming a luxury,” he says. None of the other curators were interested in the topic, which is why he curated the “FACELESS” show himself.

The residence program started in 2002 with four studios.

Now, there are nine apartments in the MuseumsQuartier area. More than 700 artists from 67 countries were residents here. And the number of studios could increase further. This is because the buildings along the Ring Road contain apartments with perfectly normal tenants.

Sometimes, when one of these apartments is vacated, an additional apartment is set up.

Photo: Alexander Koller

The third Serb in the group this afternoon is Marko Stamenkovic´ – a theoretician who picks his words carefully and speaks in a polished style. He holds a scholarship from the studio program’s West Balkans initiative.

He is in his late thirties and has “a long history of artist residencies” behind him, “but this one is the most challenging and inspiring.” He has also dealt with the concept of displacement, the feeling of being alien or displaced. Voluntarily, as an artist in residence.

Or unwillingly, as a refugee.

Stamenkovic´’s topic is the current refugee crisis, which he is experiencing as a kind of witness, “from a special position that also includes my personal life.” He deals with longing, with economic imbalance, with the question of how to compensate for that imbalance on a personal level – and examines what Schiele, an artist Stamenkovic´ studied intensively at the Leopold Museum, has to do with all of this.

For that is also an aspect of the artist-in-residence program: residents of the MuseumsQuartier live not just among people with similar interests, but also with the legacy left by great predecessors. And the apartment that Stamenkovic´ lives in is next to the Leopold Museum, “this sanctuary for Schiele’s work.” Bogomir Doringer has also spent a lot of time here, finally finding a way to connect with abstract painting. “In Amsterdam, it just didn’t work, and here it suddenly did.”

Teresa Schaur-Wünsch holds a degree in English studies and in the combined studies “Stage, Film and other Media.”

She is editor with the daily newspaper “Die Presse” in Vienna.

Like the three Serbs, many guest artists have already experienced several residencies. They are nomads who have willingly decided to live out of a suitcase and come together every few weeks or months in new constellations to create art, alone or with others, and always under the influence of new impressions, even if it is not always easy to be away from home. In the past, Bogomir Doringer says, it was a privilege for an artist to be called to Italy.

Today, it is also a necessity, not just for artists, “but for cultural policy, for the respective artistic institution, the city, the country.” When everyone comes together in one place, we can create exhibitions that “would usually be impossible to create in that form, at least in such a short time.”

The apartment next door is currently inhabited by BJ Nilsen, a Swedish sound artist invited by Tonspur Kunstverein Wien. The MuseumsQuartier is also open to artists who rarely get the opportunity to take part in such programs. The range of artistic styles is broad, reaching from fine art to photography, film, fashion, design, literature, concept art and street art to theory, sound art, digital culture, game culture, comic art and media art.

This great variety is explained by the roughly 50 institutions based in Q21; together with partners such as tranzit.org/ERSTE Stiftung, they recommend artists in residence, take care of them, and profit from them. “It is exactly this open design and broad range of cultural practice, as well as the direct exchange with the local cultural scene, that form the basis for new projects and ideas,” says Elisabeth Hajek, artistic director of the artist-in-residence program.

Guest artists can also be experienced first-hand at frei_raum Q21. The exhibition space near the entrance to Mariahilfer Strasse is freely accessible and hosts inter­ national group exhibitions three times a year. In the summer of 2016, as mentioned before, curator Bogomir Doringer dedicated “AJNHAJTCLUB” to the topic of “guest workers.” The autumn exhibition usually runs into VIENNA ART WEEK. For this event, curators Gülsen Bal and Walter Seidl asked themselves “What is left?” – and migration once again plays a role. “The question is, what is the status quo after the financial, economic and migration crises, and how can we continue to live,” Seidl explains. Utopias existed well into the 1970s and 1980s, he says, but a lot has happened since then, and mistakes have been made. In the exhibition starting September 23, nine artists – some of them artists in residence – identify current failures and ask themselves: “What does the future hold?”

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Alternative spaces

Vienna as an art city owes its enormous diversity not only to the large exhibition halls, museums and art universities, but also and especially to the many small and as yet little-known initiatives. The unswerving commitment of Vienna’s many creative artists and those running independent art spaces makes the city a strong creative hub with its finger on the pulse of the times.

The following program points invite you to discover the many hidden but interesting parts of Vienna as an artistic city. Take your pick and enjoy the city’s creative diversity!

© Thomas Draschan, Safer weapon device

© © Frassl Frassl Studio / Reingruber

Apartment Draschan & Instant Edition

BILDETAGE

Exhibition: “Beauty Rules” 15–21 Nov. 2016 Opening: Tue., 15 Nov. 2016, 6:00 pm Apartment Draschan & Instant Edition Gumpendorfer Strasse 55/5, 1060 Vienna www.draschan.com www.instant-edition.at During VIENNA ART WEEK: 2:00–6:00 pm, daily

Exhibition: “Orpheus ’16”: Elisabeth Frassl and Josh Reingruber 19–27 Nov. 2016 Opening: Fri., 18 Nov. 2016, 6:00 pm BILDETAGE Barichgasse 6/1, 1030 Vienna www.bildetage.com During VIENNA ART WEEK: Fri., Sat. 5:00–8:00 pm, or by appointment

© Ilse Chlan, Bunuels Ei pfeifer/zimmerberger 2016

basement

Exhibition: “Phenomena – the other tenseness” 19 Nov.–4 Dec. 2016 Opening: Fri., 18 Nov. 2016, 7:00 pm basement Grundsteingasse 8/courtyard 2/ top 34–35, 1160 Vienna www.basement-wien.at During VIENNA ART WEEK: Thu., Fri. 5:00–8:00 pm, Sat., Sun. 3:00–7:00 pm

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flat1

Exhibition: “Mission to Mars” 16–20 Nov. 2016 Opening: Tue., 15 Nov. 2016, 7:00 pm flat1 U-Bahn Bogen 6–7 (U6 underground station Gumpendorfer Strasse), 1060 Vienna www.flat1.at During VIENNA ART WEEK: Thu. 4:00–7:00 pm, Sat., Sun. 3:00–6:00 pm

Alternative spaces

Fluc, exterior view © Alexandra Berlinger

Artist collective “Das graue b” © Peter Schaflechner

Fluc

Das graue b

Exhibition: “In the Cabinet’s Cubage: Falling apart, together” 16 Nov.–10 Dec. 2016 Opening and performance “Let’s keep it open” by DARK EUPHORIA (Malika Fankha & Alexander Kasses): Wed., 16 Nov. 2016, 9:00 pm

Audio-visual installation: “Fleece Art Fair” Opening: Tue., 15 Nov. 2016, 7:00 pm Venue: TBA (Info: www.facebook.com/ DasBbWarImmerGrau)

Fluc Praterstern 5, 1020 Vienna www.fluc.at Mon.–Sat. 8:00 pm–4:00 am

Das graue b www.facebook.com/DasBbWarImmerGrau During VIENNA ART WEEK: Wed.–Sun. 3:00–7:00 pm

© Josef Polleross, 2015

suddenly © aus.büxen

Hinterland Galerie at Spektakel

k48 – Projektraum Oliver Hangl

Exhibition: “‫ ناریو‬/ Decay” – photographs by Josef Polleross 8 Nov.–2 Dec. 2016 Conversation: Josef Polleross in a conversation with Dr. Negar Hakim Thu., 17 Nov. 2016, 7:00 pm

Installation: aus.büxen: “The presence of absence” Wed., 16 Nov. 2016, 7:00–9:30 pm k48 – Projektraum Oliver Hangl Kirchengasse 48/Lokal 2, 1070 Vienna www.olliwood.com/k48.html

In German Hinterland Galerie http://art.hinterland.ag Spektakel Hamburger Strasse 14, 1050 Vienna www.spektakel.wien

© Mario Blum

Neuer Kunstverein Wien

Peyman Shafieezadeh, On Migration

Hinterland Galerie Friday Exit

Project: “Pas de Faux” Opening: Fri., 18 Nov. 2016, 7:00 pm Friday Exit Place, events, duration, information: TBA www.fridayexit.at www.facebook.com/FridayExit Thu., Fri. 5:00–8:00 pm, Sat. 11:00 am–3:00 pm

Exhibition: Peyman Shafieezadeh, Homayoun Sirizi, Niko Wahl 13 Oct.–19 Nov. 2016 Closing event: Sat., 19 Nov. 2016, 11:00 am–3:00 pm Hinterland Galerie Krongasse 20, 1050 Vienna http://art.hinterland.ag Thu., Fri. 3:00–7:00 pm, Sat. 11:00 am–3:00 pm, or by appointment

© Eva Hradil, Verbundenheit

Kunstraum Nestroyhof

Conversation: Silvie Aigner, chief editor of “Parnass,” in a conversation with artist Eva Hradil Wed., 16 Nov. 2016, 7:00 pm In German

Guided tour: Curator Felicitas Thun-Hohenstein gives a tour of the exhibition “Painting Is Not the Issue” Mon., 14 Nov. 2016, 6:00 pm In German Neuer Kunstverein Wien Hochhaus, Herrengasse 6–8, 1010 Vienna www.neuer-kunstverein-wien.at During VIENNA ART WEEK: Wed.–Fri. 5:00–7:00 pm, or by appointment

Kunstraum Nestroyhof Nestroyplatz 1, 1020 Vienna www.kunstraum-nestroyhof.at During VIENNA ART WEEK: Mon.–Fri. 11:00 am–7:00 pm, Sat. 10:00 am–5:00 pm

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© mischertraxler, Limited fungi Photo: Rene van der Hulst

BeAutIes oF the NiGhT live @ ROSTFEST 2012 © Lupi Spuma

© Steven Mathewson

New Jörg

Schneiderei

Kunstraum SUPER

AAA – All About Art

Exhibition: Manuel Gorkiewicz 11 Nov.–2 Dec. 2016 Concert: BeAutIes oF the NiGhT (Vienna/Berlin), as part of the Manuel Gorkiewicz exhibition Mon., 14 Nov. 2016, 8:00 pm

Exhibition: “Between the Unreal and the Possible” – Steven Mathewson in collaboration with Post Brothers 19– 20 Nov. 2016 Opening: Fri., 18 Nov. 2016, 7:00 pm

Exhibition: “tentoone” 17 Nov.– 2 Dec. 2016 Opening: Wed., 16 Nov. 2016, 7:00 pm

Exhibition: “The Living Room” 16 Nov.–23 Dec. 2016 Opening: Wed., 16 Nov. 2016, 6:00 pm

Kunstraum SUPER Schönbrunner Strasse 10, 1050 Vienna www.supersuper.at During VIENNA ART WEEK: 4:00–8:00 pm, daily

AAA – All About Art Project Space Mario Mauroner Contemporary Art Weihburggasse 26, 1010 Vienna Tue.–Fri. 11:00 am–7:00 pm, Sat. 11:00 am–4:00 pm

New Jörg Jägerstrasse 56, 1200 Vienna www.newjoerg.at During VIENNA ART WEEK: by appointment

Schneiderei Krongasse 10/2–4, 1050 Vienna www.seeyounextthursday.com During VIENNA ART WEEK: Sat., Sun. 2:00–6:00 pm

© Moya Hoke

The world’s largest Diesel Submarine, Russia, Samara region

SWDZ – So Weit, die Zukunft © Pia Steixner

pinacoteca

Exhibition: Bernadette Anzengruber, Gabriele Edlbauer, Nastia Eliseeva and Susanne Richter 14–20 Nov. 2016 Opening: Mon., 14 Nov. 2016, 8:00 pm Closing event: Grand finale with a pyrotechnical sculpture

by Jakub Vrba Sun, 20 Nov. 2016, 7:00 pm pinacoteca Grosse Neugasse 44, 1040 Vienna pinacoteca22.blogspot.co.at During VIENNA ART WEEK: 4:00–6:00 pm, daily

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SIZE MATTERS .

Raum für Kunst & Film

Exhibition: Philipp Fleischmann and Pia Steixner 18–19 Nov. 2016 Opening: Thu., 17 Nov. 2016, 7:00 pm SIZE MATTERS . Raum für Kunst & Film Margaretenstrasse 110, 1050 Vienna www.sizematters.club During VIENNA ART WEEK: Fri. 12:00 noon–5:00 pm, Sat. 12:00 noon–5:00 pm, or by appointment

Exhibition: Moya Hoke, “Nothing Gold Can Stay – golden notings” 10–25 Nov. 2016 Conversation: Artist Moya Hoke in conversation Thu., 17 Nov. 2016, 6:30 pm In German SWDZ – So Weit, die Zukunft Gärtnergasse 14, 1030 Vienna www.so-weit-die-zukunft.at 10:00 am–6:00 pm, daily

AnzenbergerGallery

Exhibition: “Danila Tkachenko: Restricted Areas” 4 Nov. 2016–31 Jan. 2017 Conversation: Breakfast and conversation with artist Danila Tkachenko* Sat., 19 Nov. 2016, 11:00 am–3:00 pm In German AnzenbergerGallery Absberggasse 27, 1100 Vienna www.anzenbergergallery.com www.anzenbergergallery-bookshop.com Wed.–Sat. 1:00–6:00 pm * Registration is required: E gallery@anzenberger.com

Special projects

Nina Rike Springer, Faltenleger, 2015

© Heribert C. Ottersbach and VG Bild-Kunst Bonn Photo: Carl-Victor Dahmen

Bernhard Cella, Kopie zur Sicherung, Fotogrammetrisches Panorama 1, 2016 © Bernhard Cella

bäckerstrasse4

Beck & Eggeling Vienna

Charim Events

Deloitte

Exhibition: Nina Rike Springer, “The Order of Things” 25 Oct.–2 Dec. 2016 Performance: Thu., 17 Nov. 2016, 5:00 pm

Exhibition: “On offer due to circumstances – pictures, drawing, marginalia” 18 Nov. 2016–14 Jan. 2017 Opening and talk: “Ungleiche Brüder!?

Kunst und Kunstbetrieb” Fri., 18 Nov. 2016, 6:00 pm

Exhibition: “Kopie zur Sicherung” Opening: Tue., 15 Nov. 2016, 7:00 pm Conversation: Artist Bernhard Cella in conversation Sat., 19 Nov. 2016, 2:00 pm

Conversation: Art Lunch & Talk “Tax Facts for Art Collectors”* Wed., 16 Nov. 2016, 12:00 noon–2:00 pm

Beck & Eggeling Vienna Margaretenstrasse 5, 1040 Vienna www.beck-eggeling.at During VIENNA ART WEEK: Thu.–Fri. 12:00 noon–7:00 pm, Sat. 11:00 am–6:00 pm

Charim Events Schleifmühlgasse 1a, 1040 Vienna www.charimgalerie.at Tue.–Fri. 2:00–6:00 pm, Sat. 12:00 noon–2:00 pm

bäckerstrasse4 Bäckerstrasse 4, 1010 Vienna www.baeckerstrasse4.at Tue.–Fri. 11:00 am–7:00 pm

In German and English

Thomas Thyrion, untitled, 2016

bechter kastowsky galerie

Exhibition: Thomas Thyrion 3 Nov.–24 Dec. 2016 Lecture | Panel discussion: “The beauty ideal through the centuries” Fri., 18 Nov. 2016 6:30 pm: lecture 7:15 pm: panel discussion In German bechter kastowsky galerie Gluckgasse 3/mezzanine, 1010 Vienna www.bechterkastowsky.com Thu.–Fri. 10:00 am–7:00 pm, Sat. 10:00 am–3:00 pm

© ORTHOCHROME © Rania Moslam

brut

Performance | Conversation: “Beauty Special”: Theater im Bahnhof ZU GAST im brut – a talk show concentrate Sat., 19 Nov. 2016, 8:00 pm In German brut Karlsplatz 5, 1010 Vienna brut-wien.at

EIKON – International Magazine for Photography and Media Art & ORTHOCROME

Discursive slide show: “Slides in Dialog. Subjects and Objects in Photography” Fri., 18 Nov. 2016, 6:00 pm Electric Avenue, Room D, Q21, MuseumsQuartier Wien In German EIKON – International Magazine for Photography and Media Art Q21 im MuseumsQuartier Wien Museumsplatz 1 / e–1.6, 1070 Vienna www.eikon.at

In German

In 2016, Deloitte published the fourth “Art & Finance Report,” which lays out current developments and trends on the international art market.

The results show that art and collector’s items are winning increasing clout among asset managers as an important type of investment. It goes without saying that the issue of tax is also becoming more and more important.

Hence Deloitte is inviting people to join the Art Lunch & Talk entitled “Tax Facts for Art Collectors.” Deloitte experts surrounding Gernot Schuster will be giving tips and tricks for the acquisition and sale of art objects and will cast light on topics such as income tax and VAT. After the lectures, participants have the opportunity at lunch to share knowledge with Deloitte experts and make interesting new contacts.

Deloitte Tax Wirtschaftsprüfungs GmbH Renngasse 1/Freyung, 1010 Vienna www.deloitte.at *R egistration is required: E anmeldung@deloitte.at

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Special projects

Manfred Wakolbinger, Fallen Sky

ELISABETH ZEIGT

Exhibition: Manfred Wakolbinger, “Fallen Sky” 14 Oct.–25 Nov. 2016 Gallery soiree: Wed., 16 Nov. 2016, 6:00–8:30 pm ELISABETH ZEIGT Lobkowitzplatz 3, 1010 Vienna www.elisabethzeigt.at Tue.–Fri. 2:00–6:00 pm, Sat. 12:00 noon–2:00 pm

Eyes On – Month of Photography Vienna

Guided tour: Managing Director Thomas Licek gives a tour of selected exhibitions at Brotfabrik Wien* Wed., 16 Nov. 2016, 4:00 pm Meeting point: Anzenberger Gallery, Brotfabrik Wien, Absberggasse 27, 1100 Vienna In German and English Eyes On – Month of Photography Vienna Festival office 2016 Gumpendorfer Strasse 10–12/15, 1060 Vienna www.eyes-on.at * Limited number of participants.

Registration is required: E office@eyes-on.at

In English ERSTE Stiftung Am Belvedere 1, 1100 Vienna www.erstestiftung.org Mon.–Fri. 9:00 am–5:00 pm

GPLcontemporary

Exhibition: “We is Beautiful” 16–26 Nov. 2016 Opening tour and performance Delicate Services by Hotel Butterfly Wed., 16. Nov. 2016, 7:00 pm Workshop & talk with Hubert Lobnig about socially engaged art Fri., 18 Nov. 2016, 7:00 pm Shared studio T/abor performance Sat., 19 Nov. 2016, 7:00 pm Children’s workshop* Sun., 20 Nov. 2016, 2:30–5:00 pm Detailed program at: www.flux23.net

Exhibition: “55 years GPL – looking forward” As of 16 Nov. 2016 Opening: Tue., 15 Nov. 2016, 7:00 pm

* Registration: E info@unos.at

© KURT KUBALL

Franz Josefs Kai 3

Exhibition: “The Sand from the Hourglasses” 2–22 Nov. 2016 Guided tour: “Ästhetik als Sprache” – a curator-guided tour of the exhibition “The Sand from the Hourglasses” Mon., 14 Nov. 2016, 5:00 pm In German FRANZ JOSEFS KAI 3 Franz Josefs Kai 3, 1010 Vienna www.franzjosefskai3.com Mon.–Sun. 11:00 am–6:00 pm

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flux23

flux23 im T/abor Taborstrasse 51, 1020 Vienna www.facebook.com/flux23 www.flux23.net Wed.–Fri. 4:00–7:00 pm, Sun. 2:00–6:00 pm, or by appointment

ERSTE Stiftung

Presentation | Conversation: “Art and Engagement” – Hajnalka Somogyi & What, How & for Whom/WHW Fri., 18 Nov. 2016, 5:00–6:30 pm

Photo: Renate Mihatsch

GPLcontemporary, room view (Room III) © Christian Stock

GPLcontemporary Sonnenfelsgasse 6, 1010 Vienna www.gplcontemporary.com Tue.–Fri. 10:00 am–6:00 pm, Sat. 10:00 am–4:00 pm

© Profil No. 11/2016, Markus Hanakam & Roswitha Schuller

Hanakam & Schuller

Conversation | Book presentation: Markus Hanakam & Roswitha Schuller in a conversation with Angela Stief; and presentation of the book “Trickster” Tue., 15 Nov. 2016, 6:30 pm Place: TBA In German Markus Hanakam & Roswitha Schuller www.hanakam-schuller.com www.dieangewandte.at

Special projects

Kilophot poster, around 1920 © Kilophot

G.R.A.M. re-enactment, 2015/16 painted by ˙Ibrahim Enez

Willy Puchner, Liebe im Alter, 2008–2010 © Willy Puchner

HERR LEUTNER

Jewish Museum Vienna

Christine König Galerie

Kro Art Contemporary

Book presentation: “Park Noir” Wed., 16 Nov. 2016, 7:00 pm

Lecture: Julie M. Johnson, “Inside the ‘Memory Factory’: Women as Professional Artists in Vienna 1900” Tue., 15 Nov. 2016, 7:00 pm

Conversation: From the “CONVERSATION” series: Salvatore Viviano, “Darkish De(Light) – a playful comment on G.R.A.M.’s new exhibition of their time in Istanbul” Sat., 19 Nov. 2016, 1:00 pm

Exhibition: “Drab everyday life with a touch of youthful recklessness” 20 Nov. 2016–9 Jan. 2017 Opening: Sat., 19 Nov. 2016, 5:00 pm

HERR LEUTNER Westbahnstrasse 27–29, 1070 Vienna www.herrleutner.at Mon.–Sat. 10:00 am–6:00 pm

In English Jewish Museum Vienna Dorotheergasse 11, 1010 Vienna www.jmw.at Sun.–Fri. 10:00 am–6:00 pm

In German, English and Italian Christine König Galerie Schleifmühlgasse 1A, 1040 Vienna www.christinekoeniggalerie.com Tue.–Fri. 10:00 am–7:00 pm, Sat. 11:00 am–4:00 pm

Kro Art Contemporary Getreidemarkt 15, 1060 Vienna www.kroart.at Tue.–Fri. 2:00–7:00 pm, Sat. 12:00 noon–5:00 pm

Günter Brus, action “Ana”, 1964 Photo: Siegfried Klein (Khasaq),

Galerie Hummel

Exhibition: “Informel II” Günter Brus, Felix GonzalezTorres, Heidi Harsieber, Man Ray, Otto Muehl, Hermann Nitsch, Miroslav Tichy, Franz West, among others 23 Sep.–23 Dec. 2016 Exhibition: “CAPTURING INFORMEL” as part of “Eyes On – Month of Photo­ graphy Vienna” 4–30 Nov. 2016 Event: “Franz Koglmann informel” with trumpet / flugelhorn Thu., 17. Nov. 2016, 8:00 pm

© golif © Alexandra Berlinger

KMG Art Gallery

Guided tour: Viewing of the work “Der Beobachter” by Golif* Wed., 16 Nov. 2016, 2:00–4:00 pm Open-air site Neu Marx, Karl-Farkas-Gasse 18, 1030 Vienna In German

Jannis Varelas, blue house, 2016 Courtesy Galerie Krinzinger and the artist

Galerie Krinzinger

Exhibition: Jannis Varelas, “A Duck and a Crutch” 13 Oct.–20 Nov.2016 Conversation: Artist Jannis Varelas in conversation Thu., 17 Nov. 2016, 7:00 pm In English

KMG Art Gallery Mariahilfer Strasse 103, 1060 Vienna www.kulturundmedien.at *

Warning: The viewing takes place 50 meters above ground from the platform of a crane. Only recommended to people free from giddiness!

Registration is required: E info@kmg-art.com, M +43 664 739 74 399

KulturKontakt Austria | Federal Chancellery | Fluc

Exhibition: “Transcultural Emancipation” 16 Nov. 2016 –12 Jan. 2017 Opening: Wed., 16 Nov. 2016, 9:00 pm Fluc Praterstern 5, 1020 Vienna www.fluc.at

Galerie Krinzinger Seilerstätte 16, 1010 Vienna www.galerie-krinzinger.at Tue.–Fri. 12:00 noon–6:00 pm, Sat. 11:00 am–4:00 pm

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Special projects

Filipa César, Cacheu, 2012, film still

© Camila Lobos

Linda Berger, Stricheraum II Friday Exit, 2016 © Linda Berger

Kunsthalle Exnergasse

Kunstraum Niederoesterreich

Loft 8

masc foundation

Exhibition: “search form” 10 Nov.–17 Dec. 2016 Lecture: Lecture with Birgit Hein and Filipa César as part of the exhibition “search form” Fri., 18 Nov. 2016, 3:00–8:00 pm

Exhibition: “Touch the Reality” 21 Oct.–3 Dec. 2016 Performances: Masha Dabelka, lecture / sound performance “Music On Ribs,” and Pêdra Costa, performance “de_colon_isation part 2: The Southern Ass” Thu., 17 Nov. 2016, 7:00 pm

Exhibition: Linda Berger, “Triggered to silence” 11 Nov.–3 Dec. 2016 Conversation: Curator Günther Oberhollenzer and artist Linda Berger in a conversation on “Triggered to silence” Thu., 17 Nov. 2016, 7:00 pm

Exhibition: Michaela Bruckmüller, Maria Hanl, “… eigentlich mein favorit” 17–19 Nov. 2016 Meet the artists: Michaela Bruckmüller and Maria Hanl Thu., 17 Nov. 2016, 6:00–8:00 pm

Kunstraum Niederoesterreich Herrengasse 11, 1010 Vienna www.kunstraum.net Tue.–Fri. 11:00 am–7:00 pm, Sat. 11:00 am–3:00 pm

Atelier Loft 8 Wassergasse 19, 1030 Vienna www.loft8.at During VIENNA ART WEEK: Wed.–Sat. 1:00–6:00 pm

In German and English Kunsthalle Exnergasse Währinger Strasse 59, 1090 Vienna http://kunsthalleexnergasse.wuk.at Tue.–Fri. 1:00–6:00 pm, Sat. 11:00 am–2:00 pm

KunstQuartier

Open studio: The artists of KunstQuartier open their studios Sat., 19 Nov. 2016, 12:00 noon–6:00 pm Tasting: Lena Wiener “Malerei und Pfefferminztee” “Printing – Bellezza & Semplicità” 2:00–6:00 pm “Wie lose Fasern Schönheit hervorzaubern” 4:00 pm Film projector performance 6:00 pm KunstQuartier Aichholzgasse 51–53, 1120 Vienna

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© Maria Hanl

In German masc foundation Grundsteingasse 40, 1160 Vienna www.masc.at During VIENNA ART WEEK: Thu.–Sun. 5:00–8:00 pm

Chongqin © PRINZpod 2015

Ein Ort aus Jetzen © Oliver Jiszda

Medienwerkstatt Wien LOCOMOT Contemporary Art

Marcello Farabegoli Projects

Room installation: Stephanie Pflaum, “Zwischenraum der Wahrheiten,” on the subject of “Seeking Beauty” The artist is present Thu., 17 Nov. 2016, 6:00 pm

Site-specific installation: “KUCSKO: The Beauty of Intellectual Property” 16–20 Nov. 2016 Studio Kucsko, Marc-AurelStrasse 2/staircase 5/9th floor (UK 8th), 1010 Vienna Opening: Tue., 15 Nov. 2016, 7:00 pm

LOCOMOT Contemporary Art Seilerstätte 7, 1010 Vienna www.locomot.at

Marcello Farabegoli www.marcello-farabegoli.net Studio Kucsko www.kucsko.com During VIENNA ART WEEK: Wed.–Sun. 11:00 am–7:00 pm

Installation: PRINZpod, Lampalzer/Oppermann, “Still Beautiful” 14–20 Nov. 2016 Opening: Mon., 14 Nov. 2016, 7:00 pm Round table: “Still Beautiful” Tue., 15 Nov. 2016, 7:00 pm In German and English Medienwerkstatt Wien Neubaugasse 40a, 1070 Vienna www.medienwerkstatt-wien.at During VIENNA ART WEEK: Mon., Fri., Sat. 2:00–6:00 pm

Special projects

Self-portrait: birdirbir, 2015 © Oguz Karakütük

Untitled, 2015 © Ute Müller / One Work Gallery

© Julien Valmes

Cinema Hall#2, 2016 © Stephan Rindler

Mekân 68

One Work Gallery

Tr@nsmission

Produzentengalerie Wien

Exhibition: Baydu, “birdirbir” 20 Oct.–23 Nov. 2016 Musical evening: “MekânMorgen” Mon., 14 Nov. 2016, 7:00 pm

Guided tour: One Work Gallery – Ute Müller Mon., 14 Nov. 2016, 2:00 pm

Presentation: “Tr@nsmission” – Works by Julien Valmes 15–20 Nov. 2016 Opening: Mon., 14 Nov. 2016, 5:00 pm Lecture: “Transhumanism: Opportunities and Risks” – Lecture by Swiss philosopher Armin Risi Tue., 15 Nov. 2016, 5:00 pm

Exhibition: “Jam Factory” 16 Nov.–1 Dec. 2016 Opening: Tue., 15 Nov. 2016, 7:00 pm

Mekân 68 Neustiftgasse 68/1, 1070 Vienna www.mekan68.com Mon.–Sat. 3:00–6:30 pm

In English One Work Gallery Getreidemarkt 11, 1060 Vienna instagram.com/oneworkgallery During VIENNA ART WEEK: Mon.–Sat. 11:00 am–7:00 pm

Produzentengalerie Wien Radetzkystrasse 4, 1030 Vienna www.produzentengalerie.wien Wed.–Fri. 12:00 noon–6:00 pm, Sat. 11:00 am–5:00 pm

In German Palais Schwarzenberg Schwarzenbergplatz, 1030 Vienna During VIENNA ART WEEK: Tue.–Sun. 2:00–6:00 pm

© Atelier Nitsch

Palais des Beaux Arts Wien © Palais des Beaux Arts Wien

Bernhard Cella, untitled, 2016 © Bernhard Cella

Nitsch Foundation

Palais des Beaux Arts Wien

Exhibition: “the architecture of the orgies mysteries theatre. subterranean architecture” Opening with Hermann Nitsch: Thu., 17 Nov. 2016, 7:00 pm

Guided tour: Palais des Beaux Arts Wien – Claire Tolan Fri., 18 Nov. 2016, 5:00 pm

Bernhard Cella Salon für Kunstbuch

Nitsch Foundation Hegelgasse 5, 1010 Vienna www.nitsch-foundation.com Tue.–Fri. 11:00 am–6:00 pm, Sat. 12:00 noon–3:00 pm, the entrance is free

In German and English

Plate Parmigianino

Palais des Beaux Arts Wien Rudolf-von-Alt-Platz 1, 1030 Vienna www.palaisdesbeauxarts.at 24 hours a day

Augarten Porcelain Museum

Exhibition: “Round & Colourful” 15 Nov. 2016–25 Feb. 2017 Opening attended by Daniel Spoerri: Mon., 14 Nov. 2016, 6:30 pm*

Cocktail performance: “wildcard” Wed., 16 Nov. 2016, 6:30 pm In German and English Bernhard Cella www.salon-fuer-kunstbuch.at Salon für Kunstbuch 21er Haus Arsenalstrasse 1, 1030 Vienna Wed., 11:00 am–9:00 pm, Thu.–Sun. 11:00 am–6:00 pm

Augarten Porcelain Museum Obere Augartenstrasse 1, 1020 Vienna www.augarten.at Mon.–Sat., 10:00 am–6:00 pm * Registration requested: E porzellan@augarten.at

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Special projects

Teresa Mar, The Wanderer, 2015

Stable Gallery im Palais Brambilla

Exhibition: Teresa Mar, “outside / in” 17 Nov. 2016–29 Jan. 2017 Opening: Wed., 16 Nov. 2016, 7:00 pm Stable Gallery im Palais Brambilla Dr. Markus Swittalek Franz Josefs-Kai 43, 1010 Vienna www.moment-home.com by prior appointment

Sinisˇa Labrovic´, Flame, 2013 Camera: Boris Cvjetanovic´ © Galerie Michaela Stock/Sinisˇa Labrovic´

Marko Lulic´, Total Living, 2014 Courtesy Sculpture Project / Viertel Zwei, Photo: Iris Ranzinger

Thomas Hörl, Matthias Photo: Andrew Phelps © Salzburger Kunstverein

Galerie Michaela Stock

VIERTEL ZWEI – Sculpture Project

Austrian Museum of Folk Life and Folk Art

Guided tour with Manisha Jothady Sat., 19 Nov. 2016, 11:00 am

Exhibition: “‘Matthias’ dancing.

Tresterer of Salzburg on stage” 18 Nov. 2016–19 Feb. 2017 Opening: Thu., 17 Nov. 2016, 7:00 pm

Exhibition: “luminous perception” 18 Nov. 2016–7 Jan. 2017 Galerie Michaela Stock, UNTERER STOCK galerie Opening and performance: Sat., 19 Nov. 2016, 8:00 pm NEXT DOOR galerie michaela stock

In German VIERTEL ZWEI – Sculpture Project Stella-Klein-Löw-Weg 8, 1020 Vienna www.skulpturenprojekt.at

Volkskundemuseum Wien Laudongasse 15–19, 1080 Vienna www.volkskundemuseum.at Tue.–Sun. 10:00 am–5:00 pm

Galerie Michaela Stock Schleifmühlgasse 18, 1040 Vienna www.galerie-stock.net Tue.–Fri. 11:00 am–7:00 pm, Sat. 11:00 am–4:00 pm

Julian Turner, Installation Courtesy: VIN VIN Gallery © studio das weisse haus

Clemens Wolf, Parachute Painting 2016 © Clemens Wolf

VIN VIN Gallery

Conversation: Julian Turner Sat., 19 Nov. 2016, 4:00 pm

Galerie Steinek

Exhibition: Clemens Wolf, “Parachute Paintings / Sculptures” 20 Oct.–23 Nov. 2016 Conversation: Artist Clemens Wolf in conversation Fri., 18 Nov. 2016, 4:00 pm In German Galerie Steinek Eschenbachgasse 4, 1010 Vienna www.steinek.at Tue.–Fri. 1:00–6:00 pm, Sat. 11:00 am–3:00 pm

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Thomas More, Utopia

In English

Gerald Straub

VIN VIN GALLERY Bartensteingasse 14, 1010 Vienna http://vinvin.eu Tue.–Sat. 11:00 am–6:00 pm

Performative space installation: “Found Beauty” Creating a song and music video in one week In collaboration with Raumteiler 14–18 Nov. 2016 In German and English Raumteiler Ungargasse 1, 1030 Vienna During VIENNA ART WEEK: 6:00–10:00 pm, daily

das weisse haus

Event: “Call & Response // Dialogue & Exchange.

The Market Calls For Emancipatory Responses” Tue., 15 Nov. 2016, 5:00 pm In English

das weisse haus Hegelgasse 14, 1010 Vienna www.dasweissehaus.at

PROGRAM OVERVIEW VIENNA ART WEEK 2016

PROGRAM OVERVIEW VIENNA ART WEEK 2016 MON, 14 Nov.

5:00 pm GUIDED TOUR Special Project / FRANZ JOSEFS KAI 3 1., Franz-Josefs-Kai 3 “Ästhetik als Sprache” – a curatorguided tour of the exhibition “The Sand from the Hourglasses” OPENING Special Project / Tr@nsmission 3., Palais Schwarzenberg, Schwarzenbergplatz Presentation: “Tr@nsmission” – Works by Julien Valmes

6:00 pm

GUIDED TOUR DOROTHEUM 1., Dorotheergasse 17 Preview of the auctions “Modern Art” and “Contemporary Art”

GUIDED TOUR Alternative Space / Neuer Kunstverein Wien 1., Hochhaus, Herrengasse 6–8 Curator Felicitas Thun-Hohenstein gives a tour of the exhibition “Painting Is Not the Issue”

10:00 am–8:00 pm

6:00–10:00 pm

10:00 am–6:00 pm

SOUND INSTALLATION Q21/MuseumsQuartier Wien 7., MQ, Museumsplatz 1, TONSPUR_passage TONSPUR 72: Artist in residence Charlemagne Palestine

PERFORMATIVE SPACE INSTALLATION Special Project / Gerald Straub 3., Raumteiler, Ungargasse 1 “Found Beauty”

10:00 am–10:00 pm

PANEL DISCUSSION Wien Museum 4., Karlsplatz “Science for the City. The issue of diversity in the working environment and health policy”

EXHIBITION | PROJECT Q21/MuseumsQuartier Wien 7., MQ, Museumsplatz 1, Electric Avenue | Room D / Q21 | social media “SeekingBeautyQ21”

2:00 pm GUIDED TOUR Special Project / One Work Gallery 6., Getreidemarkt 11 One Work Gallery – Ute Müller

4:30 pm GUIDED TOUR Belvedere 3., Upper Belvedere, Prinz-EugenStrasse 27 Curator Markus Fellinger gives a tour of the exhibition “Tina Blau”

6:30 pm

OPENING Special Project / Augarten Porcelain Museum 2., Obere Augartenstrasse 1 Exhibition “Round & Colourful”

TUE, 15 Nov. 10:00 am–6:00 pm GUIDED TOUR DOROTHEUM 1., Dorotheergasse 17 Preview of the auctions “Modern Art” and “Contemporary Art”

10:00 am–8:00 pm SOUND INSTALLATION Q21/MuseumsQuartier Wien 7., MQ, Museumsplatz 1, TONSPUR_passage TONSPUR 72: Artist in residence Charlemagne Palestine

10:00 am–10:00 pm EXHIBITION | PROJECT Q21/MuseumsQuartier Wien 7., MQ, Museumsplatz 1, Electric Avenue | Room D / Q21 | social media “SeekingBeautyQ21”

10:30 am GUIDED TOUR Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien 1., Maria-Theresien-Platz, meeting point: Vestibule General Director Sabine Haag and artist Zenita Komad give a tour of the Kunstkammer

2:00–8:00 pm INTERVIEW MARATHON VIENNA ART WEEK 1., MAK, Stubenring 5 “Seeking Beauty”

7:00 pm

4:00 pm

MUSICAL EVENING Special Project / Mekân 68 7., Neustiftgasse 68/1 “MekânMorgen”

CONVERSATION Austrian Frederick and Lillian Kiesler Private Foundation 6., Mariahilfer Strasse 1b Exhibition talk with curators Jill Meißner and Gerd Zillner

OPENING Special Project / Medienwerkstatt Wien 7., Neubaugasse 40a Installation: PRINZpod, Lampalzer/ Oppermann, “Still Beautiful”

8:00 pm CONCERT Alternative Space / New Jörg 20., Jägerstrasse 56 BeAutIes oF the NiGhT (Vienna/Berlin), as part of the Manuel Gorkiewicz exhibition OPENING Alternative Space / pinacoteca 4., Grosse Neugasse 44 Exhibition “Bijou”

GUIDED TOUR Wien Museum 4., Karlsplatz Wien Museum curator Martina Nußbaumer gives a tour of the exhibition “Sex in Vienna”

6:00 pm DISCUSSION | PERFORMANCE Künstlerhaus 1050 5., Siebenbrunnengasse 19–21/ building D/5th floor “A romANTIc evening – seeking beauty in Margareten” GUIDED TOUR MAK 1., Stubenring 5 Eva Schlegel searches the MAK Collection for “most beautiful things” OPENING Alternative Space / Apartment Draschan & Instant Edition 6., Gumpendorfer Strasse 55/5 Exhibition “Beauty Rules”

6:00–10:00 pm PERFORMATIVE SPACE INSTALLATION Special Project / Gerald Straub 3., Raumteiler, Ungargasse 1 “Found Beauty”

6:30 pm CONVERSATION | BOOK PRESENTATION Special Project / Hanakam & Schuller Place: TBA Markus Hanakam & Roswitha Schuller in a conversation with Angela Stief; and presentation of the book “Trickster”

7:00 pm OPENING KUNST HAUS WIEN 3., Untere Weissgerberstrasse 13 Peter Dressler and Nasan Tur exhibitions GUIDED TOUR MAK 1., Stubenring 5 Constantin Luser searches the MAK Collection for “most beautiful things” LECTURE Sammlung Friedrichshof Stadtraum 4., Schleifmühlgasse 6 / courtyard Yasumasa Morimura on his œuvre OPENING Special Project / Charim Events 4., Charim Events, Schleifmühlgasse 1a Exhibition “Kopie zur Sicherung”

5:00 pm

OPENING Special Project / GPLcontemporary 1., Sonnenfelsgasse 6 Exhibition “55 years GPL – looking forward”

LECTURE Special Project / Tr@nsmission 3., Palais Schwarzenberg, Schwarzenbergplatz “Transhumanism: Opportunities and Risks” – lecture by Swiss philosopher Armin Risi

LECTURE Special Project / Jewish Museum Vienna 1., Dorotheergasse 11 Julie M. Johnson, “Inside the ‘Memory Factory’: Women as Professional Artists in Vienna 1900”

EVENT Special Project / das weisse haus 1., Hegelgasse 14 “Call & Response // Dialogue & Exchange. The market calls for emancipatory responses”

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PROGRAM OVERVIEW VIENNA ART WEEK 2016

OPENING Special Project / Marcello Farabegoli Projects 1., Studio Kucsko, Marc-Aurel-Strasse 2 Site-specific installation “KUCSKO: The Beauty of Intellectual Property” OPENING Special Project / Produzentengalerie Wien 3., Radetzkystrasse 4 Exhibition “Jam Factory” ROUND TABLE Special Project / Medienwerkstatt Wien 7., Neubaugasse 40a “Still Beautiful” OPENING Alternative Space / Das graue b Place: TBA Audio-visual installation “Fleece Art Fair” OPENING Alternative Space / flat1 6., U-Bahn Bogen 6–7 (U6 underground station Gumpendorfer Strasse) Exhibition “Mission to Mars”

8:00 pm GUIDED TOUR MAK 1., Stubenring 5 Sofie Thorsen searches the MAK Collection for “most beautiful things”

8:30 pm SCREENING Sammlung Friedrichshof Stadtraum 6., Top Kino, Rahlgasse 1 Yasumasa Morimura – films and videos

9:00 pm GUIDED TOUR MAK 1., Stubenring 5 Franz Graf searches the MAK Collection for “most beautiful things”

WED, 16 Nov. Open Gallery Night DIE GALERIEN 10:00 am–6:00 pm GUIDED TOUR DOROTHEUM 1., Dorotheergasse 17 Preview of the auctions “Modern Art” and “Contemporary Art”

10:00 am–8:00 pm SOUND INSTALLATION Q21/MuseumsQuartier Wien 7., MQ, Museumsplatz 1, TONSPUR_passage TONSPUR 72: Artist in residence Charlemagne Palestine

10:00 am–10:00 pm EXHIBITION | PROJECT Q21/MuseumsQuartier Wien 7., MQ, Museumsplatz 1, Electric Avenue | Room D / Q21 | social media “SeekingBeautyQ21”

12:00 noon CONVERSATION Special Project / Deloitte 1., Renngasse 1/Freyung Art lunch & talk “Tax Facts for Art Collectors”

2:00 pm GUIDED TOUR Special Project / KMG ART Gallery 3., Open-air site Neu Marx, Karl-Farkas-Gasse 18 Viewing of the work “Der Beobachter”

by Golif

4:00 pm GUIDED TOUR Albertina 1., Albertinaplatz 1 Curator Heinz Widauer gives a tour of the exhibition “Seurat, Signac, Van Gogh. Ways of Pointillism” GUIDED TOUR Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien 1., Maria Theresien-Platz Jasper Sharp gives a tour of the exhibition “Edmund de Waal: during the night” GUIDED TOUR Special Project / Eyes On – Month of Photography Vienna 10., Absberggasse 27 Managing Director Thomas Licek gives a tour of selected exhibitions at Brotfabrik Wien

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5:00 pm GUIDED TOUR mumok 7., MQ, Museumsplatz 1 Eva Chytilek and Jakob Neulinger give a tour of the exhibition “We Pioneers.

Trailblazers of Postwar Modernism”

GUIDED TOUR Galerie Jünger / DIE GALERIEN 4., Paniglgasse 17a Artist-guided tour of the exhibition “Maria Hahnenkamp” and “Zwiegespräche”

5:30 pm

OPENING Knoll Galerie / DIE GALERIEN 6., Gumpendorfer Strasse 18 Exhibition Klára Rudas, “solo show”

GUIDED TOUR 21er Haus 3., Arsenalstrasse 1 Curator Axel Köhne gives a tour of the exhibition “The Language of Things.

Material Hi/Stories from the Collection”

CONVERSATION Galerie Kandlhofer / DIE GALERIEN 4., Brucknerstrasse 4 Talk with artist Rodrigo Valenzuela and curator Luca Lo Pinto as part of the exhibi-tion “LANDMARK”

GUIDED TOUR Belvedere 3., Lower Belvedere, Rennweg 6 Curator Sabine Grabner gives a tour of the exhibition “Is that Biedermeier?”

OPENING | PRESENTATION Galerie V&V / DIE GALERIEN 1., Bauernmarkt 19 Exhibition Stella Bach and Peer Bach, “Wald,” and presentation of the book “Ins Holz. Zur Andacht”

6:00 pm

OPENING | PERFORMANCE Special Project / flux23 2., T/abor, Taborstrasse 51 Opening tour of the exhibition “We is Beautiful” and performance Delicate Services by Hotel Butterfly

PERFORMANCE Q21/MuseumsQuartier 7., MQ, Museumsplatz 1, frei_raum Q21 exhibition space Katarina Zdjelar, “By Burning We Obtain One Gram of Powder” OPENING Special Project / AAA – All About Art 1., Weihburggasse 26 Exhibition “The Living Room” GALLERY SOIREE Special Project / ELISABETH ZEIGT 1., Lobkowitzplatz 3 Exhibition Manfred Wakolbinger, “Fallen Sky”

6:00–10:00 pm PERFORMATIVE SPACE INSTALLATION Special Project / Gerald Straub 3., Raumteiler, Ungargasse 1 “Found Beauty”

6:30 pm COCKTAIL PERFORMANCE Special Project / Salon für Kunstbuch 21er Haus 3., 21er Haus, Arsenalstrasse 1 Bernhard Cella, “wildcard”

7:00 pm PANEL DISCUSSION 21er Haus 3., Blickle Kino, Arsenalstrasse 1 “The Contemporary Museum: An experiential destination or archival institution?”

GUIDED TOUR Q21/MuseumsQuartier Wien 7., MQ, Museumsplatz 1, frei_raum Q21 exhibition space Curators Gülsen Bal and Walter Seidl give a tour of the exhibition “What is left?”

CONVERSATION FIVE PLUS Art Gallery / DIE GALERIEN 4., Argentinierstrasse 41 Artist talk & making of the exhibition “Resurrected” as part of the opening

BOOK PRESENTATION Special Project / HERR LEUTNER 7., Westbahnstrasse 27–29 “Park Noir” OPENING Special Project / Stable Gallery im Palais Brambilla 1., Franz-Josefs-Kai 43 Exhibition Teresa Mar, “outside / in” CONVERSATION Alternative Space / Kunstraum Nestroyhof 2., Nestroyplatz 1 Silvie Aigner, chief editor of “Parnass,” in a conversation with artist Eva Hradil OPENING Alternative Space / Kunstraum SUPER 5., Schönbrunner Strasse 10 Exhibition “tentoone” INSTALLATION Alternative Space / k48 – Projektraum Oliver Hangl 7., Kirchengasse 48/Lokal 2 aus.büxen: “The presence of absence”

8:15 pm SCREENING | TALK Austrian Film Museum 1., Augustinerstrasse 1 “The Last Machine” VIENNA – School Friedl Kubelka: screenings and talk with Philipp Fleischmann

8:30 pm OPENING | PERFORMANCE Aa collections / DIE GALERIEN 7., Burggasse 68 Exhibition Žarko Aleksic´, “Homunculus.

States of Mind,” and performance

9:00 pm OPENING Special Project / KulturKontakt Austria | Federal Chancellery | Fluc 2., Fluc, Praterstern 5 Exhibition “Transcultural Emancipation” OPENING | PERFORMANCE Alternative Space / Fluc 2., Praterstern 5 Exhibition “In the Cabinet’s Cubage: Falling apart, together” and performance “Let’s keep it open” by DARK EUPHORIA

GUIDED GALLERY TOUR DIE GALERIEN Meeting point: 1., Galerie V&V, Bauernmarkt 19 Guided tour with curator Christina Werner

7:00 pm

5:00 pm

GUIDED TOUR Leopold Museum 7., Museumsplatz 1 Curator’s guided tour of the exhibition “The Poetics of the Material”

PERFORMANCE Special Project / bäckerstrasse4 1., Bäckerstrasse 4 Performance

5:30 pm

THU, 17 Nov. 10:00 am–6:00 pm

PANEL DISCUSSION VIENNA ART WEEK 1., Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Schillerplatz 3 “Seeking Beauty in Art. Five International Curators in Dialog”

GUIDED TOUR DOROTHEUM 1., Dorotheergasse 17 Preview of the auctions “Modern Art” and “Contemporary Art”

6:00 pm

10:00 am–8:00 pm

GUIDED TOUR Leopold Museum 7., Museumsplatz 1 Curator’s tour of the exhibition “Foreign Gods”

SOUND INSTALLATION Q21/MuseumsQuartier Wien 7., MQ, Museumsplatz 1, TONSPUR_passage TONSPUR 72: Artist in residence Charlemagne Palestine

10:00 am–10:00 pm EXHIBITION | PROJECT Q21/MuseumsQuartier Wien 7., MQ, Museumsplatz 1, Electric Avenue | Room D / Q21 | social media “SeekingBeautyQ21”

3:00 pm GUIDED GALLERY TOUR DIE GALERIEN Meeting point: 4., 12–14 contemporary, Schleifmühlgasse 12–14 Guided tour with independent art critic Manisha Jothady

4:00 pm GUIDED TOUR Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien 1., Burgring 5, side entrance Inspection of a work by Peter Paul Rubens in the Picture Gallery’s conservation studio GUIDED TOUR Wien Museum 4., Karlsplatz QWIEN curator Andreas Brunner gives a tour of the exhibition “Sex in Vienna”

4:30 pm GUIDED TOUR 21er Haus 3., Arsenalstrasse 1 Curator Alfred Weidinger gives a tour of the exhibition “AI WEIWEI. trans­ location – transformation”

PANEL DISCUSSION DOROTHEUM 1., Dorotheergasse 17 “Art venues Vienna–Rome.

A comparison”

CONVERSATION Secession 1., Friedrichstrasse 12 Artist Francis Alÿs in conversation SPACE INSTALLATION Special Project / LOCOMOT Contemporary Art 1., Seilerstätte 7 Stephanie Pflaum, “Zwischenraum der Wahrheiten,” on the subject of “Seeking Beauty”

6:00 pm–8:00 pm MEET THE ARTISTS Special Project / masc foundation 16., Grundsteingasse 40 Michaela Bruckmüller and Maria Hanl

6:00 pm–10:00 pm PERFORMATIVE SPACE INSTALLATION Special Project / Gerald Straub 3., Raumteiler, Ungargasse 1 “Found Beauty”

OPENING Academy of Fine Arts Vienna 1., xhibit, Schillerplatz 3 Exhibition “Living On | In Other Words on Living”

SCREENING mumok 7., mumok cinema, Museumsplatz 1 Video by Darja Bajagic´ PANEL DISCUSSION MUSA 1., Felderstrasse 6–8 “Eyes On” talk: “This Beast Called Beauty” OPENING Secession 1., Friedrichstrasse 12 Exhibitions: Francis Alÿs and Avery Singer PERFORMANCE | LECTURE 12–14 contemporary / DIE GALERIEN 4., Schleifmühlgasse 12–14 Performance by Boštjan Drinovec & Primož Oberžan and lecture on cymatics by Primož Oberžan CONVERSATION zs art Galerie / DIE GALERIEN 7., Westbahnstrasse 27–29 Artist talk as part of the exhibition “Das Verborgene im Augenscheinlichen” with Claudia Aigner, “Wiener Zeitung” CONVERSATION Special Project / Galerie Krinzinger 1., Seilerstätte 16 Artist talk with Jannis Varelas PERFORMANCES Special Project / Kunstraum Niederoesterreich 1., Herrengasse 11 Masha Dabelka, “Music On Ribs,” and Pêdra Costa, “de_colon_isation part 2: The Southern Ass” CONVERSATION Special Project / Loft 8 3., Wassergasse 19 Curator Günther Oberhollenzer and artist Linda Berger in a conversation on “Triggered to silence”

6:30 pm

OPENING Special Project / Nitsch Foundation 1., Hegelgasse 5 Exhibition “the architecture of the orgies mysteries theatre. subterranean architecture”

CONVERSATION Albertina 1., Albertinaplatz “Too beautiful to be true?” Konrad Paul Liessmann, Kia Vahland and Klaus Albrecht Schröder in conversation

OPENING Special Project / Volkskundemuseum Wien 8., Laudongasse 15–19 Exhibition “‘Matthias’ dancing.

Tresterer of Salzburg on stage”

CONVERSATION Alternative Space / SWDZ – So Weit, die Zukunft 3., Gärtnergasse 14 Artist Moya Hoke in conversation

OPENING Alternative Space / SIZE MATTERS .

Raum für Kunst & Film 5., Margaretenstrasse 110 Exhibition Philipp Fleischmann and Pia Steixner

CONVERSATION Alternative Space / Hinterland Galerie at Spektakel 5., Hamburger Strasse 14 Josef Polleross in a conversation with Dr. Negar Hakim

8:00 pm EVENT Special Project / Galerie Hummel 1., Bäckerstrasse 14 “Franz Koglmann informel”

8:15 pm SCREENING | TALK Austrian Film Museum 1., Augustinerstrasse 1 “The Last Machine” BERLIN – LaborBerlin: screenings and talk with Linn Löffler

FRI, 18 Nov. CONGRESS Architekturzentrum Wien 7., Museumsplatz 1 20th Vienna Architecture Congress

10:00 am–6:00 pm GUIDED TOUR DOROTHEUM 1., Dorotheergasse 17 Preview of the auctions “Modern Art” and “Contemporary Art”

10:00 am–8:00 pm SOUND INSTALLATION Q21/MuseumsQuartier Wien 7., MQ, Museumsplatz 1, TONSPUR_passage TONSPUR 72: Artist in residence Charlemagne Palestine

10:00 am–10:00 pm EXHIBITION | PROJECT Q21/MuseumsQuartier Wien 7., MQ, Museumsplatz 1, Electric Avenue | Room D / Q21 | social media “SeekingBeautyQ21”

12:00 noon CONVERSATION Sigmund Freud Museum 9., Berggasse 19 “The two sides of one coin: Freud Museum London & Sigmund Freud Museum Wien”

1:00 pm STUDIO VISITS VIENNA ART WEEK Meeting point: 7., MQ, Staatsratshof, Courtyard 7 (entrance across from Volkstheater) Studio visit artist-in-residence program Q21 / MuseumsQuartier Wien with art and cultural mediator Wolfgang Brunner

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PROGRAM OVERVIEW VIENNA ART WEEK 2016

1:45–6:00 pm STUDIO VISITS Architekturzentrum Wien Meeting point: 7., MQ, Az W-Shop, Museumsplatz 1 Az W in the field: tours of selected architecture studios

3:00 pm STUDIO VISITS VIENNA ART WEEK Meeting point: 12., Korbergasse 15 Studio visit artist-in-residence program studio das weisse haus with cultural journalist Alexandra Matzner GUIDED TOUR Secession 1., Friedrichstrasse 12 Guided tour by and dialog between Avery Singer and curator Annette Südbeck GUIDED GALLERY TOUR DIE GALERIEN Meeting point: 4., Charim Events, Schleifmühlgasse 1 Guided tour with independent art critic Manisha Jothady STUDIO VISITS Federal government-sponsored studios – Prater studios Meeting point: 2., Meiereistrasse, across from Ernst-Happel-Stadion Guided tour with curator Christine Maria Holter LECTURE Special Project / Kunsthalle Exnergasse 9., Währingerstrasse 59 Lecture with Birgit Hein and Filipa César as part of the exhibition “search form”

4:00 pm PANEL DISCUSSION DOROTHEUM 1., Dorotheergasse 17 “Space for New Ideas. Art and Urban Development” CONVERSATION Special Project / Galerie Steinek 1., Eschenbachgasse 4 Artist Clemens Wolf in conversation

4:30 pm GUIDED TOUR The Winterpalais of Prince Eugene of Savoy 1., Himmelpfortgasse 8 Curator Maike Hohn gives a tour of the exhibition “Johann Georg Pinsel”

5:00 pm CONVERSATION MAK Branch Geymüllerschlössel 18., Pötzleinsdorfer Strasse 102 Conversation with artist Martin Guttmann as part of “MAK ART SALON #01: Clegg & Guttmann. Biedermeier reanimated” PRESENTATION | CONVERSATION Special Project / ERSTE Stiftung 10., Am Belvedere 1 “Art and Engagement” – Hajnalka Somogyi & What, How & for Whom/WHW

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GUIDED TOUR Special Project / Palais des Beaux Arts 3., Rudolf-von-Alt-Platz 1 Palais des Beaux Arts Wien – Claire Tolan

6:00 pm PANEL DISCUSSION DOROTHEUM 1., Dorotheergasse 17 “Creative City Vienna. Challenges and potentialities for art institutions” CONVERSATION Galerie Crone / DIE GALERIEN 1., Getreidemarkt 14 Artist talk as part of the exhibition ”Proxemia – Another Co-Creation of Space”

OPENING Alternative Space / Schneiderei 5., Krongasse 10/2–4 Exhibition “Between the Unreal and the Possible” – Steven Mathewson in collaboration with Post Brothers

8:30 pm SCREENING | TALK Austrian Film Museum 1., Augustinerstrasse 1 “The Last Machine” PARIS – L’Abominable: screenings and talk with Nicolas Rey

SAT, 19 Nov.

OPENING | CONVERSATION Special Project / Beck & Eggeling Vienna 4., Margaretenstrasse 5 Exhibition “On offer due to circumstances – pictures, drawing, marginalia” and talk “Ungleiche Brüder!? Kunst und Kunstbetrieb”

Open Studio Day

OPENING Alternative Space / BILDETAGE 3., Barichgasse 6/1 Exhibition “Orpheus ’16”: Elisabeth Frassl and Josh Reingruber

6:00 pm–10:00 pm PERFORMATIVE SPACE INSTALLATION Special Project / Gerald Straub 3., Raumteiler, Ungargasse 1 “Found Beauty”

6:30 pm SCREENING | TALK Austrian Film Museum 1., Augustinerstrasse 1 “The Last Machine” PARIS – L’Abominable: screenings and talk with Nicolas Rey LECTURE | PANEL DISCUSSION Special Project / bechter kastowsky galerie 1., Gluckgasse 3/mezzanine “The beauty ideal through the centuries”

7:00 pm WORKSHOP | CONVERSATION Special Project / flux23 2., T/abor, Taborstrasse 51 Workshop & talk with Hubert Lobnig about socially engaged art OPENING Alternative Space / basement 16., Grundsteingasse 8 / courtyard 2 Exhibition “Phenomena – the other tenseness” OPENING Alternative Space / Friday Exit 7., Döblergasse 2/16 Project “Pas de Faux”

GUIDED TOUR Vienna Business Agency Meeting point: TBA “departure tour” GUIDED TOUR Special Project / VIERTEL ZWEI – Sculpture Project 2., Stella-Klein-Löw-Weg 8 Guided tour with Manisha Jothady

11:00 am–3:00 pm

OPENING Galerie Slavik / DIE GALERIEN 1., Himmelpfortgasse 17 Opening of the exhibition “Winter Journey” to mark the 25th anniversary

DISCURSIVE SLIDE SHOW Special Project / EIKON 7., MQ, Q21, Museumsplatz 1 “Slides in Dialog. Subjects and Objects in Photography”

GUIDED TOUR The Winterpalais of Prince Eugene of Savoy 1., Himmelpfortgasse 8 “Unique Winterpalais”

CONGRESS Architekturzentrum Wien 7., Museumsplatz 1 20th Vienna Architecture Congress

9:00 am–5:00 pm GUIDED TOUR DOROTHEUM 1., Dorotheergasse 17 Preview of the auctions “Modern Art” and “Contemporary Art”

10:00 am–8:00 pm SOUND INSTALLATION Q21/MuseumsQuartier Wien 7., MQ, Museumsplatz 1, TONSPUR_passage TONSPUR 72: Artist in residence Charlemagne Palestine

10:00 am–10:00 pm EXHIBITION | PROJECT Q21/MuseumsQuartier Wien 7., MQ, Museumsplatz 1, Electric Avenue | Room D / Q21 | social media “SeekingBeautyQ21”

11:00 am STUDIO VISITS VIENNA ART WEEK Meeting point: 7., Schottenfeldgasse 45 Studio visit artist-in-residence program Krinzinger Projekte with cultural journalist Alexandra Matzner OPEN STUDIO DAY Albert Mayr / Hans Weigand 15., Märzstrasse 111/1A Sound installations and conversation between Felicitas Thun-Hohenstein and artists Albert Mayr and Hans Weigand GUIDED TOUR TBA21 2., Scherzergasse 1A Curator Cory Scozzari gives a tour of the exhibition “An Arrival Tale”

CONVERSATION Special Project / AnzenbergerGallery 10., Absberggasse 27 Breakfast and conversation with artist Danila Tkachenko FINISSAGE Alternative Space / Hinterland Galerie 5., Krongasse 20 Exhibition Peyman Shafieezadeh, Homayoun Sirizi, Niko Wahl

12:00 noon STUDIO VISITS VIENNA ART WEEK Meeting point: 9., Währinger Strasse 59/stairway 2/1st floor Studio visit artist-in-residence program Kunsthalle Exnergasse with art and cultural mediator Wolfgang Brunner

12:00 noon–6:00 pm OPEN STUDIO Special Project / KunstQuartier 12., Aichholzgasse 51–53 The artists of KunstQuartier open their studios

1:00–6:00 pm OPEN STUDIO DAY & ARTIST TALKS VIENNA ART WEEK Around 70 artists open their studios to the public OPEN STUDIO DAY Veronika Burger / Christina Werner 7., Lindengasse 61–63/2/14 Screenings and “Genius femininus” round of talks

1:00 pm OPEN STUDIO DAY TOUR VIENNA ART WEEK Meeting point: 15., Studio Alfred Mayr / Hans Weigand, Märzstrasse 111/1A Artist Nika Kupyrova gives a tour of selected studios OPEN STUDIO DAY: OPEN TALK VIENNA ART WEEK 4., Galerie unttld contemporary, Schleifmühlgasse 5 Curator Anne Faucheret in an open talk with Paul Leitner CONVERSATION Special Project / Christine König Galerie 4., Schleifmühlgasse 1A Salvatore Viviano, “Darkish De(Light) – a playful comment on G.R.A.M.’s new exhibition of their time in Istanbul”

2:00 pm

5:00 pm

GUIDED TOUR KÖR Kunst im öffentlichen Raum Meeting point: 4., Südtiroler Platz 2 Competition winners Michael Sailstorfer and zwoPK give a tour of Südtiroler Platz

OPEN STUDIO DAY: OPEN TALK VIENNA ART WEEK 1., University of Applied Arts, Hohenstaufengasse 9 Curator Eva-Maria Stadler in an open talk with Henning Bohl

GUIDED TOUR Belvedere 3., Lower Belvedere / Orangery, Rennweg 6 Harald Krejci, chief curator of 21er Haus, in a conversation with artist Hubert Scheibl

OPEN STUDIO DAY Ana Hoffner / Katrin Hornek 16., Lorenz-Mandl-Gasse 33/2 Bar conversations between the artists

GUIDED GALLERY TOUR DIE GALERIEN Meeting point: 7., Galerie Raum mit Licht, Kaiserstrasse 32 Guided tour with curator Lucas Cuturi STUDIO VISITS Federal government-sponsored studios – studios on Wattgasse Meeting point: 17., Wattgasse 56–60 Guided tour with curator Christine Maria Holter

2:30 pm OPEN STUDIO DAY Simon Iurino 3., Hafengasse 13 Artist talk with curator Victoria Dejaco on blurring boundaries between art genres

3:00 pm OPEN STUDIO DAY: OPEN TALK VIENNA ART WEEK 4., Galerie Jünger, Paniglgasse 17a Curator Walter Seidl in an open talk with Maria Hahnenkamp OPEN STUDIO DAY TOUR VIENNA ART WEEK Meeting point: 7., Atelier Veronika Burger / Christina Werner, Lindengasse 61–63/2/14 Artist and art theorist Gerald Straub gives a tour of selected studios

4:00 pm OPEN STUDIO DAY transparadiso (Barbara Holub/Paul Rajakovics) 2., Grosse Mohrengasse 34/3 Artist talk with curator Gabriela Vaz-Pinheiro CONVERSATION Wien Museum 4., Karlsplatz “Queer Aesthetics” – Matti Bunzl in conversation with historian George Chauncey CONVERSATION Special Project / VIN VIN Gallery 1., Bartensteingasse 14 Julian Turner

OPEN STUDIO DAY Ellen Semen 15., Salon Braunhirschen, Braunhirschengasse 24/14 “schön befremdlich – neue Bilder,” artist talk with art historian Simone Christl STUDIO VISITS Federal government-sponsored studios – studios on Westbahnstrasse Meeting point: 7., Westbahnstrasse 27 Guided tour with curator Christine Maria Holter, followed by drinks (around 7:00 pm) PERFORMANCE MAK 1., Stubenring 5 Actress Susanne Sachsse performs as part of the exhibition “JOSIAH MCELHENY. The Ornament Museum” OPENING Special Project / Kro Art Contemporary 6., Getreidemarkt 15 Exhibition “Drab everyday life with a touch of youthful recklessness”

6:00 pm CONVERSATION Kunsthalle Wien 7., Kunsthalle Museumsquartier, Museumsplatz 1 “The Experiment as Method”: Nicolaus Schafhausen in a conversation with Beatrix Ruf

7:00 pm

SUN, 20 Nov. Family Art Day CONGRESS Architekturzentrum Wien 7., Museumsplatz 1 20th Vienna Architecture Congress

10:00 am–8:00 pm SOUND INSTALLATION Q21/MuseumsQuartier Wien 7., MQ, Museumsplatz 1, TONSPUR_passage TONSPUR 72: Artist in residence Charlemagne Palestine

FAMILY ART DAY Secession 1., Friedrichstrasse 12 Guided tour for families through the Francis Alÿs and Avery Singer exhibitions

7:00 pm CLOSING EVENT Alternative Space / pinacoteca 4., Grosse Neugasse 44 “Bijou”: Grand finale with a pyrotechnical sculpture by Jakub Vrba

EXHIBITION | PROJECT Q21/MuseumsQuartier Wien 7., MQ, Museumsplatz 1, Electric Avenue | Room D / Q21 | social media “SeekingBeautyQ21”

10:30 am FAMILY ART DAY Albertina 1., Albertinaplatz 1 Children’s guided tour of the exhibition “Seurat, Signac, Van Gogh. Ways of Pointillism”

12:00 noon FAMILY ART DAY Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien 1., Maria Theresien-Platz Guided tour for families: “The Beauty and the Beast”

2:00–5:00 pm GUIDED TOUR DOROTHEUM 1., Dorotheergasse 17 Preview of the auctions “Modern Art” and “Contemporary Art”

8:00 pm

2:30 pm

OPENING | PERFORMANCE Special Project / Galerie Michaela Stock 4., Schleifmühlgasse 18 Exhibition “luminous perception” and performance by Siniša Labrovic´

FAMILY ART DAY 21er Haus 3., Arsenalstrasse 1 “In the Year of the Monkey”

10:00 am–10:00 pm

PERFORMANCE Special Project / flux23 2., T/abor, Taborstrasse 51 Shared studio T/abor Performance

PERFORMANCE | CONVERSATION Special Project / brut 1., Karlsplatz 5 “Beauty Special”: Theater im Bahnhof ZU GAST im brut – a talk show concentrate

3:00 pm

WORKSHOP Special Project / flux23 2., T/abor, Taborstrasse 51 Children’s workshop and adult care by unos

Edited by Art Cluster Vienna, Spiegelgasse 16, 1010 Vienna Idea and concept Martin Böhm, President of Art Cluster Vienna; Robert Punkenhofer, Art & Idea Project management and editorial office Anja Hasenlechner, Christina Hein, Barbara Wünsch / hasenlechner—artconsult Press relations Susanne Haider / art:phalanx, kunst- und kommunikationsagentur Translation and copy-editing scriptophil. die textagentur Graphic design Josef Perndl, Aleksandra Gustin / Perndl+Co Front cover artwork Perndl+Co; photo by Georgianna Lane Back cover Shutterstock Printed by Druckerei Gerin For further information, please get in touch with hasenlechner—artconsult: T +43 1 402 25 24, F +43 1 402 54 86, E info@viennaartweek.at, www.viennaartweek.at © Art Cluster Vienna, 2016