News and Events

A book presentation in the context of the exhibition Wenn der Wind weht.

Liddy Scheffknecht, Ernst Strouhal (eds.): When the Wind Blows.
Book catalog for the exhibition of the same name at KUNST HAUS WIEN
De Gruyter, Edition Angewandte, Vienna 2022

The exhibition When the Wind Blows is a cooperation with the University of Applied Arts Vienna.

Air encloses the earth like a membrane. It is the medium of weather and the carrier of odours, sounds and aerosols that influence both climate and health. Air flows into our bodies with our first breath and with death we exhale our last breath. In the context of the current climate crisis, air pollution and storms as well as wind power as a renewable energy source play a role. The invisible element connects living beings, plants and places. The works of the selected international and Austrian artists of different generations aim to make this elementary, yet invisible element visually tangible. They deal with the most diverse aspects and meanings of air, wind and breath and examine their manifestations in ecology, science, politics, culture and mythology. From the life-giving air we breathe to the destructive power of the wind, art makes the great invisible visible in many different ways.

Emily Parsons-Lord installs a complex work that takes us on a journey through time. In The Confounding Leaving (2017) we can experience the individual physical sensations accompanying the intake of air. The composition of air on Earth changed over time: 300 million years ago, the oxygen content in the air was almost twice as high as it is today. At the end of the Paleozoic Era around 250 million years ago, more than ninety percent of Earth’s species became extinct, while the carbon dioxide content in the air increased. For her interactive installation, the artist has had air from different eras prepared according to special recipes. “Carboniferous air,” “Air of the Great Dying,” and “Future Air” can be tasted in the exhibition. What does air taste like? Are there different tastes of air? How is air changing through climate change, and how do we treat the air we need to live and survive?
Artists: Hoda Afshar, Bigert & Bergström, Julius von Bismarck, Olafur Eliasson, Karin Fisslthaler, Ana Grilc, Isabelle Ha Eav, Jana Hartmann, Ayumi Ishii, Sophie Jung, Sjoerd Knibbeler, Ulrike Königshofer, Eduardo Leal, Emily Parsons-Lord, Peter Piller, Werner Reiterer, Roman Signer, Lydia Simon, Ulay/Marina Abramović, Nadim Vardag, Niina Vatanen, Susan Walsh

Curators: Verena Kaspar-Eisert (KUNST HAUS WIEN) und Liddy Scheffknecht (University of Applied Arts Vienna)

Duration: 12.03.-28.08.22

On 23 May 2021, 6 pm, the first “Border Crossers” performance will be broadcasted live from Naco, Arizona / Naco Sonora.

This is the first in a series of “Border Crossers” performances organised in collaboration with the Stanlee and Gerald Rubin Center for the Visual Arts in El Paso. The Rubin Center will present a series of “Border Crossers” performances on the El Paso-Ciudad Juarez border in October 2021. A solo exhibition of drawings and other works by Chico MacMurtrie will open at the Rubin Center in El Paso on 16 September 2021.

One of these two, US-Mexico Border Fence Crossing Robotic Sculptures, was developed and made by students from the Art and Communicative Practice (kkp), Design, Architecture and Environment (dae), Digital Art, and Site-Specific Art departments in collaboration with artist Chico MacMurtrie as part of his 2018/19 residency and visiting professorship at the Angewandte. This is the first time the Border Crossers have been used on a border from both sides. There will be another performance on 16 September this year in the context of an exhibition by Chico MacMurtrie at the Rubin Center in El Paso at the border fence between El Paso and Ciudad Juarez.

Link to the Life Stream: amorphicrobotworks.org

Youtube-Link

More information about the project in the course of Chico MacMurtries Residency at the Angewandte

Kurzfilm zu den Objekten und zur Performance

This performance, curated by Bronwyn Lace and Basak Senova, is the first collaboration with the Centre for the Less Good Idea and the Octopus Programme. It will take place simultaneously at William Kentridge’s studio in Johannesburg and the university gallery in the Heiligenkreuzer Hof, Vienna; it will be streamed and recorded.

The Octopus Programme is a guided research-based educational programme, encourages artistic research and production-based collaborations across academies and art institutions; students and professionals; diverse presentation modes; and processes of research and documentation in different geographies. As an initiative of the University of Applied Arts in Vienna and Kamel Lazaar Foundation in Tunis, the first chapter of the programme is designed as a two-semester course “Spectral Encounters”. Led by Basak Senova, Visiting Professor at Art and Communication Practices and Barbara Putz-Plecko, Vice-Rector for Research and Diversity, it takes place both at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna and B7L9, Kamel Lazaar Foundation in Tunis as a pilot application in 2020/2021. While the Octopus Programme functions as a support mechanism for emerging artists, the main objective of the programme is to accumulate experience-based collective and creative output by taking geopolitical, social, ecological, and educational urgencies and diversities into consideration.

The Centre for the Less Good Idea, based in Johannesburg, South Africa is founded by artist William Kentridge, the Centre aims to find the less good idea by creating and supporting experimental, collaborative and cross-disciplinary arts projects. Since its inception the Centre has hosted IN CONVERSATION, often leveraging off existing opportunities and identifying remarkable individuals and fellow artists/thinkers in to spontaneous conversations with Kentridge. In this connection Ponger and Kentridge will speak to one another from their respective cities and spaces of work about their approaches to generating work and the points where their work coincides.

CASE ACTIVITIES + INPUT

The Octopus Programme presents a lecture performance by Egle Oddo in conversation with Leonardo Caffo—as an iteration of the research-based project Performative Habitats (12.11.2020-30.09.2021). The artist Egle Oddo and the philosopher Leonardo Caffo will stage a conversation about the implications between artistic and philosophical research.

Registration is required: https://eu01web.zoom.us/meeting/register/u5Irdu-oqzwpHdZkJkIWVc-a2SpGU0K47Fli

Lecture Performance: Egle Oddo in conversation with Leonardo Caffo
Live VJ: Random Doctors
Photo archive and camera: Antti Ahonen
Sound: Timo Tuhkanen

Performative Habitats includes a series of exhibitions, actions, events, and lectures in Zagreb, Palermo, Rome, Vienna, Tunis, Mänttä and Helsinki, culminating with an installation en plein air at the XXV Mänttä Festival of Visual Arts, held in Finland in June 2021.
The project is curated by Lori Adragna and includes several creative moments which will be rendered as a monographic publication produced in collaboration with postmediabooks publishing house, Milan. The project is supported by Italian Council edition 8, the Arts Promotion Centre Finland, and the Finnish Cultural Foundation.

Performative Habitats merges biology, botany, and natural sciences with the varied languages of artistic disciplines. At a historical moment that sees climate change among our primary emergencies, the artist aims to convert everyday practices and establish new production methods that are sustainable for the environment.

Octopus Programme is a guided, research-based educational programme which encourages artistic research and production-based collaborations between academies, art institutions, students and professionals and includes diverse presentation modes, processes of research and documentation taking form within and from different geographies. By merging the viewpoints of academic entities and contemporary art institutions and utilizing their facilities and activities, the programme aims to develop an autonomous and progressive educational methodology. It is a unique partnership of University of Applied Arts Vienna with 11 international institutions from seven countries: Kamel Lazaar Foundation, Tunis; Konstfack University of Arts, Crafts and Design, Stockholm; Index – The Swedish Contemporary Art Foundation; The University of Pretoria; The Centre for The Less Good Idea, Johannesburg; Birzeit University, the Palestinian Museum, Birzeit; Khalil Sakakini Cultural Center, Ramallah; SAHA Association, Istanbul; Publics, Helsinki; and Saastamoinen Foundation, Helsinki.

theoctopusprogramme.uni-ak.ac.at

Through a unique partnership with 11 international institutions from seven countries, the Octopus Programme has selected 10 outstanding artists to take part in the programme during the academic years 2021/2022.
From a rigorous, multi-institutional application process with five interconnected evaluation committees, the winning candidates’ research-based proposals were selected from a pool of applicants from Austria, Finland, Tunisia, Palestine, South Africa, Sweden and Turkey.

The participating artists selected and appointed to the programme are Alina Rentsch (DE/SE), Bengü Karadumann (TR), Bochra Taboubi (TU), Els van Houtert (NL/AT), Jannis Neumann (DE/AT), Kim M. Reynolds (US/SA), Maarit Mustonen (FI), Nondumiso Lwazi Msimanga (SA), Noor Abed (PS), and Sofia Priftis (SE).

Octopus Programme is a guided, research-based educational programme which encourages artistic research and production-based collaborations between academies, art institutions, students and professionals and includes diverse presentation modes, processes of research and documentation taking form within and from different geographies. By merging the viewpoints of academic entities and contemporary art institutions and utilizing their facilities and activities, the programme aims to develop an autonomous and progressive educational methodology.

The programme intends to bridge and acknowledge social and cultural diversity in the targeted geographical regions—Europe, the Mediterranean, and Africa—and values the ambiguity between or among: socio-political realities and perspectives; interdisciplinary approaches; academic and non-academic intellectual models; forms of artistic research and practices; divergent perspectives on artistic production methodologies; individual and community-based approaches; top-down and grass-root organisation models; accessed and distributed resources and facilities; strategies of environmental sustainability; artistic challenges and opportunities; different funding possibilities; institutional and alternative curatorial practices; forms of engagement of artists, audiences and institutions; forms of innovative and technology-driven mindsets; and diverse knowledge production models.

The Octopus Programme was initiated in 2019 by University of Applied Arts Vienna and Kamel Lazaar Foundation with a pilot phase linking Vienna and Tunis. The current phase will be defined collectively by University of Applied Arts Vienna; Kamel Lazaar Foundation, Tunis; Konstfack University of Arts, Crafts and Design, Stockholm; Index – The Swedish Contemporary Art Foundation; The University of Pretoria; The Centre for The Less Good Idea, Johannesburg; Birzeit University, the Palestinian Museum, Birzeit; Khalil Sakakini Cultural Center, Ramallah; SAHA Association, Istanbul; Publics, Helsinki; and Saastamoinen Foundation, Helsinki

The programme was designed as a two-semester course “Spectral Encounters” that includes seminars, peer-to-peer educational sessions, online and class discussions, research fieldtrips, collaborative production-based workshops, and lectures. The course also incorporates guest lecturers and curated presentations, exhibitions and activities. The course is led by Assoc. Prof. Dr. Basak Senova, Visiting Professor at Art and Communication Practices, the University of Applied Arts Vienna and its dynamic content and design are generated collaboratively with all the curators and partners involved: Lina Lazaar, Moez Brabet, and Karim Sultan (curator) in Tunis; Barbara Putz-Plecko and Basak Senova (curator) in Vienna; Maria Lantz, Magnus Bärtås, Marti Manen (curator) and Anne Klontz (curator) in Stockholm; William Kentridge, Phala Ookeditse Phala, and Bronwyn Lace (curator) in Johannesburg; Johan Thom in Pretoria; Tina Sherwell (curator), Sandy Rishmawi, Inas Yassin in Birzeit; Renad Shqeirat in Ramallah; Çelenk Bafra (curator) in Istanbul; Paul O’Neill (curator) and Saastamoinen Foundation in Helsinki.

Throughout the spring and fall of 2021, the programme will focus on presentations, activities and exhibitions and will execute a diverse and intense practise-based agenda until the end of June 2022 which concludes with an extensive publication. Participating artists from the 2019 pilot phase, Férielle Doulain-Zouari (FR/TU), Julia Stern (AT), Marwa Manai (TU), Sophia Bellouhassi (DE/AT), and Younes Ben Slimane (TU) will also be integrated in the programme through different formats. The sister project, “Research of Doing,” initiated by the University of Pretoria and University of Applied Arts Vienna in collaboration with the Centre for the Less Good Idea in Johannesburg, is funded by OeAD Africa-UniNet and BMBWF, will provide further input to the Octopus Programme.
For additional information and updates please visit theoctopusprogramme.uni-ak.ac.at.

This call is open to all Diploma Students, Master’s and PhD students at University of Applied Arts Vienna and Konstfack University of Arts, Crafts and Design Stockholm. Two students from University of Applied Arts Vienna will be selected. The deadline of the submission of the applications is 08.03.2021, 17:00 (CET).

The Octopus Programme is a guided research-based educational programme that encourages artistic research and production-based collaborations across academies and art institutions; students and professionals; diverse presentation modes; and processes of research and documentation in the targeted geographical regions—Europe, the Mediterranean, and Africa. While the Octopus Programme functions as a support mechanism for emerging artists, the main objective of the programme is to accumulate experience-based collective and creative output by taking geopolitical, social, ecological, and educational urgencies and diversities into consideration. The programme is designed and attached to a two-semester course “Spectral Encounters” (a 3-credit course per semester, presented by the University of Applied Arts Vienna) that takes place simultaneously in different cities with a joint curriculum, designed and prepared by 8 institutions from Europe, The Mediterranean and Africa for 10 selected participants. The language of the course is English. The programme includes peer-to-peer educational sessions, talks and tutorials by guest lecturers, online and class discussions, research field trips and work groups, collaborative production-based workshops in Birzeit, Istanbul, Johannesburg, Helsinki, Pretoria, Stockholm, Tunis and Vienna. While the course is run by 7 curators, international guest artists and activities will accompany the programme.

For further information please visit the webpage of the project:
theoctopusprogramme.uni-ak.ac.at

Bronwyn Lace will talk about the Centre for the Less Good Idea, which she co-founded with William Kentridge in 2016, as a physical and immaterial space to pursue incidental discoveries made in the process of producing work. She will also contemplate on her position through the aspects of site specificity, responsiveness and performativity.

The talk will be streamed and recorded. Since the number of the audience is limited, please register in advance via basak.senova@uni-ak.ac.at

As one of the partners of the Octopus Programme, Centre for the Less Good Idea, based in Johannesburg, South Africa is founded by artist William Kentridge, the Centre aims to find the less good idea by creating and supporting experimental, collaborative and cross-disciplinary arts projects. The Octopus Programme is a guided research-based educational programme, encourages artistic research and production-based collaborations across academies and art institutions; students and professionals; diverse presentation modes; and processes of research and documentation in different geographies. As an initiative of the University of Applied Arts in Vienna and Kamel Lazaar Foundation in Tunis, the first chapter of the programme is designed as a two-semester course “Spectral Encounters”. Led by Basak Senova, Visiting Professor at Art and Communication Practices and Barbara Putz-Plecko, Vice-Rector for Research and Diversity, it takes place both at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna and B7L9, Kamel Lazaar Foundation in Tunis as a pilot application in 2020/2021. While the Octopus Programme functions as a support mechanism for emerging artists, the main objective of the programme is to accumulate experience-based collective and creative output by taking geopolitical, social, ecological, and educational urgencies and diversities into consideration.

Aboubakar Fofana is a multidisciplinary artist and designer, known for his work in preserving and reinvigorating West African textile and indigo dyeing techniques. His raw materials come from the natural world, and his artistic practises revolve around the cycles of nature, the themes of birth, decay and change, and the impermanence of these materials. He is currently resident at the University of Applied Arts Vienna.

What is the Caribbean? What does it mean to think OF / ABOUT / IN the Caribbean? The complexities of any discursive approach to the “region” rise a significant number of questions and uncomfortable certainties. In such a context it would be possible to think the Caribbean out of the Reason (Enlightenment, Modernist) paradigm? What if art, imaginative speculation (such as poetry, fiction or essay) give us a mental map to trace the coordinates of a Caribbean?
This lecture will focus on subaltern readings of both iconic intellectuals and displaced narratives of islanders concerned with social practices (migration, resistance, counter culturalism, hibridation), imagined communities (creole culture, indigenism, people of the sea, criollismo, afro descendants), or conceptual appropriations (transcultural society, repeating islands, relational poetics). From there emerges the non-stable soil of Caribbean, a framework that shifts or vanish once we move from island to island, from History to stories, from texts to discourse, from intellectual elaborations to social behavior.

La Habana is celebrating during 2019 the 500th anniversary of its constitution. A key spot involved in the process of constitution of modern capitalism through the colonial experience in the Americas; a city that was fed by the profits of slavery and the economic system of sugar Plantation; a dynamic melting pot of cultures and people coming from every corner of the world; an exemplary territory of U.S. contemporary expansion as an emergent imperialist force at the beginning of the XXth century; stronghold of a socialist and anticolonial revolution; a peculiar survivor of communism in a post-soviet era; this urban space constitutes the perfect example of overlapping and baroque accumulation.
How does art has responded to this complex scenario of social, cultural, economic, ethnic, symbolic mixing? To which extent artistic narrative provides the logics from where it has been possible (desirable, reasonable) to think about Cubaness? Which subjects and subjectivities has been historically authorized “To Represent” the notion of Cuba-Being Cuban? How these legacies are contested or legitimated by contemporary visual arts in the island? Here are some of the questions that will be revisited during a tour over two centuries of visual representations of La Habana.

This lecture aims to present some recent developments in the process of representing contemporary city in Latin America and the Caribbean. Departing from the stories of three novels (César Aira: La Villa; Patrick Chamoiseau: Texaco; Pedro Juan Gutiérrez: Trilogía sucia de La Habana), the conference will trace a symbolic map that moves over some of the most iconic urban representations witnessed during Havana Biennial of Arts (with the last three editions deeply involved with urban practices and dynamics) and popular music cultures like the ones represented in reggaetón and trap.
Some of the concepts and figures to examine are the notions of Capital Cities (within the logics of late colonial and/or poscolonial territories), Junkspaces (as defined by Rem Koolhas), Ruins of Modernity, Paradoxical Infrastructures, Politics of Citizenship-Identity (concerning social class, gender, ethnic or linguistic appropriation of space-place).

The exhibition In and Out, curated by Basak Senova, is part of the Angewandte Festival 2019 and shows works as well as (lecture) performances and interventions of students from the departments Art and Communication Practices; Design, Architecture and Environment for Art Education; Textiles – Free, Applied and Experimental Artistc Design at the Institute of Art Sciences and Art Education.

suture
noun
1a: … a stitch made with a suture
b: the act or process of sewing with sutures
2a: a uniting of parts
b: the seam or seamlike line along which two things or parts are sewed or united
3a: the line of union in an immovable articulation…also: such an articulation
…
suture
verb
sutured; suturing\ ˈsü-chə-riŋ , ˈsüch-riŋ \
transitive verb
to unite, close, or secure with sutures …(1)

Approaching and gathering artistic research, positions, and methodologies from a perspective that questions and experiments their relationship with the public —through the urgency of social, political and cultural issues— requires a combining and composing element. IN and OUT brings a variety of artistic responses that range from small scale interventions to performance series; from on-going projects to small scale interventions; from lecture performances to site-specific installations; from video screenings to riffs of experimental weaving techniques; from sound works to interactive objects by 20 students and a temporary collective from classes of KKP, DEX, DAE, and TEX. By being spread all over the buildings and the Oskar Kokoschka Square, they are all sutured together through content, form, methodology, and approach-based links that suggest various paths of reception and ways to suture them through IN and OUT’s scenography. In this respect, the curatorial approach of IN and OUT takes into account of “suture” (2) as the combining and composing element for exposing the relations between the works and its spectator according to the presentation modes of the works and their diverse methodologies of producing content. At the same time, this experience of viewing produces another form of content with the presentation of the supplementary material that belongs to their research phase.

When Kaja Silverman elaborated on the notion of “suture” in Hitchcock films, he underlined the relationship between the speaking subject [the art work] and the viewing subject [the public] as mediated by the camera [the exhibition and/or how it is being presented] (3). In this line of thinking, by also taking the notion of “lapses” into consideration, IN and OUT enables similar tidal dialogues and situations between the works and the public; the works and the venues; the exhibition and the festival; and among the works. The exhibition structure constantly sutures and then disconnects the works and their content in the exhibition in and out. Some repetitive design components such as nametags, stickers, and booklets also support the construction of suturing.

IN and OUT has been shaped by internalizing the main reflections of the festival theme as “openings”, yet the exhibition also exposes some crosscutting themes and research strains processed by the participants: Nha NGO (KKP/TEX) and Johanna Folkmann (KKP/TEX) are both working on “memory re-construction” by using different research methods and media; Julia Stern (DAE/TEX) approaches “identity politics” through weaving techniques and cross-cultural exchanges in geo-political context; Markus Edelmann (KKP) questions the role of the artist in our highly politicized world through his performances; in her audio-visual compositions and social interventions; Junia Lahner (KKP) explores the relationships of the materials fur, leather and skin in aesthetic as well as material-oriented respect: to each other, inside space, to the beholder, within their connotations; Nina Kugler‘s (TEX/KKP) video essay of a dialogical intervention at the interface of language, politics and commemorative culture records emotional reactions at Sibirian Gulag sites; Sophia Widmann’s (KKP/DEX) artistic research is based on the experiences on perception; Milena Rosa Heussler (KKP/DEX) focuses on digital technology, cybernetics, social constructs, science fiction and the links in-between by producing a gender sensitive cyber wearable; Tina Krapfenbauer (KKP) works on data visualization; Helene Eisl (KKP/TEX/DAE) is working with a recognition software by questioning the assumptions of its algorithms for value systems; Lissie Rettenwander (KKP, DAE, TEX), who founded the Weltweit Erstes Stimmgabel Ensemble (The World’s First Tuning Fork Ensemble), conducts performances by using different frequencies; Monika Freyer-Luftensteiner (KKP/DEX) underlines the significance of our social coexistence in an increasingly digitized world; Sarah Pleier (DEX/KKP) conducts body-centered research on personal and private spaces; Stefan Fleischer (KKP/DEX) unfolds the processes of artistic research with performative actions; Ursula Pokorny (KKP/TEX) and Helene Heiss (KKP/TEX/DAE) experiment on image production by also speculating on seeing what is being seen; Moritz Columbus Dürauer (DEX) works on a site-specific installation and a series of photography which based on the shifting circumstances and challenges of migration; Rebecca Sternberg (KKP/DAE) contemplates on issues of intimacy in social relationships; Cornelia Kolmann (TEX/DAE) deals with the antagonism of the society and the individual and the space in between this antagonism; Mona Radziabari (KKP/DE) criticizes the overconsumption routine of the art world with exhibitions, activities, and art-fairs; Julia Rohn (KKP) questions the act of purchasing of “ethnographic merchandises” in museums as a continuation of colonialist attitudes; and Peter Moosgaard (KKP/DEX) is probing into “late capitalist ethnography” through his “hyper-real” objects and lecture performances.

STUDIO303® is a temporarily formed collective for the occasion of the festival. The collective is curating an exhibition within the exhibition by transforming a studio into an activity zone and exhibition space. Curated by Alexandra Rodriguez-Breña (KKP/DEX) and Eva Lucia Herrmann (KKP), the exhibition aims at detecting and discussing the mechanisms of consumer culture. The collective includes Maximilian Fink (KKP/DEX), Pauline Hosse-Hartmann (KKP), Agnes Mayböck (KKP/DEX), Sebastian Koller (KKP), Judith Raupp (KKP/DEX), and Sophia Widmann (KKP/DEX).

(1) Extracted from Merriam Webster Online Dictionary: https://www.merriam webster.com/dictionary/suture
(2) The Lacanian notion of “suture” was initially introduced by Jacques-Alain Miller in the field of psychoanalysis and later readdressed in cinematic discourse by many theoreticians such as Jean-Pierre Oudart, Kaja Siverman, Stephen Heath, Raymond Bellour, Daniel Dayan, and Slavoj Žižek.
(3) Silverman, Kaja. “Suture: The cinematic model” in du Gay P, Evans J, Redman P (eds) Identity: A Reader. London: Sage, 2000, 76.

The framework programme of the Angewandte Festival includes (lecture) performances and interventions by:
Sarah Pleier: Kreislauf, VZ7/OKP, 25.06.2019, 5-5.30 pm
Stefan Fleischer: Puzzle, VZ7/SR20, 25.06.2019, 4-4.30 pm
Markus Edelmann: Terror ist mein Lebensstil, VZ7/SR20, 26.06.2019, 4-4.30 pm
Lissie Rettenwander: WELTWEIT ERSTES STIMMGABEL ENSEMBLE, OKP, 27.06.2019, 4:30-5 pm
Julia Rohn: Ethnographic Shopping, OKP, 27.06.2019, 2-2:30 pm
Peter Schlager: SD Memory Carpets or global Fauxklore, OKP, 28.06.2019, 4:30-5 pm
Detailed information on the Festival-Website.

The students were guided and supported by their lecturers at the Institute of Art Sciences and Art Education: Barbara Graf, Daniel Aschwanden, Barbara Putz-Plecko, Christoph Kaltenbrunner, Katharina Heinrich, Konrad Strutz, Manuel Wandl, Martin Krenn, Nikolaus Gansterer, Ricarda Denzer, Tanja Widmann, and Veronika Hauer.

Download Exhibition Catalogue

For over a decade, Chico MacMurtrie has been researching and developing methodologies to create lightweight, soft robotic sculptures that can perform in the reflection of disempowering boundaries and physical borders. The genesis of the border-crossing idea intertwines with MacMurtrie’s childhood, growing up in towns along the U.S.-Mexico border. For him, the building process, which opens up conversations between the communities and designates a knowledge sharing activity, is the core of the project that results with a performative gesture of two robots connecting to each other over the fence by absorbing light and the dreams that surrounds them.

In 2018, MacMurtrie was the artist resident at the University of Applied Arts Vienna as well as visiting professor at the department of Art and Communication Practices. This year, he will be giving a presentation of the outcome of the robotics workshop with the students during the Angewandte Festival. Furthermore, on 21st June, he will be launching the Euro Border Crosser at Museum Quartier Wien. It is a timely artistic intervention which seeks constructive and fresh perspectives for facilitating the intersection points of technology, art, and individual political standpoints.

Basak Senova: The notion of temporality is embedded in the performative and choreographed activities of the robots, as well as the fact that these borders are always built up as temporary solutions, but always end up becoming permanent markers of human rights suppression in every sense. Could you expand on this?

Chico MacMurtrie: It’s a temporary gesture to oppose all of this separation of countries and people. I have three pieces of the wall that was put up during the first President Bush’s era. They were really sloppy and temporary and made from all the surplus landing mats from the Vietnam war with the idea of “We have to stop this surge of immigrants!”. The next generation fence was from the Obama era; and although the Obama administration wasn’t really involved these anti-immigration views, they implemented very harsh policies on the border with the immigrants. I think the people living in these communities never expected to have a permanent wall, but it continues to be more permanent and even more intimidating.

The robots in contrast to this harsh metallic world are really getting the ephemeral in and address the temporal. They are in danger crossing that wall because if something happened in the movement, it could shred them.

BS: Yes, the fragile look with the lightweight inflatable material contrasts with the scale and the act of trespassing a border protected by advanced and militarized surveillance technology. In this context, could you talk about the material and the mechanism of the robots?

CM: It is a high tensile fabric originally used for sails on hi-tech boats, hot air balloons, dirigible-flying ships, and high pressure inflatables among other things. It is extremely strong but vulnerable to puncture. When people see the inflatable, often they think it is made of aluminum because of the color and because it becomes so rigid and yet it can absorb light.

It is almost like a magical material because light is drawn to it and it lights up. In the sunset, in the desert when the sun goes down its grey colour literally turns to orange. I use servo controlled pneumatics to control the inflatable tubes, this gives me very precise repeatable movements. I like the way it gives this illusion of not being a machine because its movements are quite organic. When the tubes are fully inflated it has the ability to pivot and move like a mechanism.

BS: With this ability to perform fluidly, they arch into a bridge over the fence. In reference to many architectural and cultural connotations along with the symbolic gesture of illustrating an open gate, I would like to ask you about the “arch” form.

CM: It is a powerful form that has been repeated over and over in my works, such as Inflatable Architectural Growth (2010) or Organic Arches (Time Traveler) (2014). It is a notion of an organic form growing into architecture. It is a fascinating reference, in a sense; it indicates how nature creates this monolith form that have inspired architecture for centuries in different cultures.

BS: Despite the fact that it is an impossible option —and therefore reminds me of many challenges associated with the border— I am captivated with this idea of seeing them as permanent installations.

CM: I have been thinking about freezing them as real structures and doing some experiments at my family ranch in Arizona at the border that I use as my studio. While making them permanent is possible, It will have to be a different era to have them permanently arching over the fence.

BS: Speaking of challenges, how do you plan to install them at the other side? Do you ask permission from the border patrol units for the performances? And how do you envision the project to be realized?

CM: For this specific project and these issues, I am working with Kerry Doyle, the director of the Stanlee and Gerald Rubin Center for the Visual Arts in El Paso. She has extensive experience with immigrant communities and projects on border. My vision was to have three robots in Mexico and three in America and they travel with their teams and cross borders. At the moment, I already have four in progress, so I wish to create two more in Mexico, accordingly I am building a team willing to go to border crossings along the 2000 mile border. The robot and the tools for it are being built with the team in each country and the outcome depends on what kind of material and techniques that the community uses there.

My cousin is a lawyer with an immigrant background, I asked him some questions about the legal issues and technicalities. For instance if the robot is not touching the fence or the ground at the other side, is it still illegal? So, we are introducing an element that is not understood by law. We are sliding into this neutral zone where there is no definition of this action. If nobody physically climbs the fence, then it is not really trespassing. I have been thinking about these issues almost for 10 years now.
I am half Irish and half Mexican and I was born in New Mexico, I have relatives in Mexico and whenever I go there I meet with the group of people and try to figure out the politics and their opinion about it. It is mostly the jurisdiction of the border patrol; the politicians can only introduce their decisions. The border patrol has the sole authority to stop any kind of action. When I was at the San Diego – Tijuana border, I had a conversation with a border patrol agent at and he told me that as soon as it is in the art context, I should be able to get permission.

BS: The entire idea is based on a subtle narration that six robots are connecting over the fence and performing. The process of implementing the work will call out and articulate other narratives hovering around the robots. Could you elaborate on these possible future narrations that would be part of the entire project?

CM: When you are closer to the borders, there are many stories happening at the fence. In the 30s and 40s when my uncles from Mexico came over, there were no fences of that nature; people would go back and forth. When I was a child the fence was just a chain link fence. The Mexican kids could come to the American side to the border schools by passing through a hole for better opportunities and education. Now, because of the border wall the narrative involves technology, as they can’t commutate physically.

BS: What fascinates me about this project are these witty dichotomies that the project processes, such as soft and organic robots poetically resisting the militarized technology, or the act of producing technology bringing the communities together to share knowledge and experiences regarding their current conditions. So, my last question is how do you see the participatory aspect of the project?

CM: I see the technology as a kind of constructive element. It is complex and intriguing. I produce soft machines and it does not make sense in military terms to use a soft machine rather than a hard machine or does it?

I will also conduct workshops for students from both sides and my goal is to empower them by showing how to use technology through art. In Mexico there is this incredible tradition “Día de los Muertos” (the Day of the Dead) where they conceptually bring dead relatives to life to celebrate the day together with them. They build costumes and instruments working up to the event. My workshops would follow the same logic. I am interested in taking the border crossers into the community and involving them in the process to bring power to the action. Using technology is also a way of opening up a conversation with the students and with the community. As a result, it does not only open up this possibility for two communities to communicate, but also it gives them the opportunity to be able to create their own tools and realize their own dreams.

Photograph: Amorphic Robot Works

CrossSections is designed as an interdisciplinary platform for explorations into artistic research, dialogue, and production. The project employs an open format to reflect upon “process” with the intent to articulate critical reactions to the political, economic, and social disturbances facing us today. Over the course of three years (2017–2019), with the participation of 19 artists, diverse scholars and cultural workers, various meetings, workshops, exhibitions, performances, talks and book launches are being held in three cities: Vienna, Helsinki, and Stockholm.

Developed and curated by Basak Senova, CrossSections aims at discussing and sharing diverse realities, conditions, and strategies in different geographies. By placing the artistic production at the center of its research and plot, it is being shaped by the cumulative interdisciplinary input and data through meetings, residencies, performative presentations, and publications in the course of three year.

The partners of the project are Kunsthalle Exnergasse – WUK (Werkstätten und Kulturhaus) in Vienna; iaspis – the Swedish Arts Grants Committee’s International Programme for Visual and Applied Artists, Konstfack University College of Arts, Crafts and Design, and NFK – The Nordic Art Association in Stockholm; Nya Småland in different locations in Sweden; HIAP – Helsinki International Artist Programme and Academy of Fine Arts – University of the Arts Helsinki in Helsinki; Center for Contemporary Arts, Estonia in Tallinn; and Press to Exit Project Space in Skopje. CrossSections is primarily supported by its partners. The project and associated book are generously supported by the Saastamoinen Foundation.

CHAPTER 1

UNTERTAGÜBERBAU – PART 2
Nikolaus Gansterer
16’ 44”

Nikolaus Gansterers video work combines elements of animated film, cartoon films, live drawings, performance, and studio work. The hypnotic flow of images, like a maelstrom generates a dynamic temporo-spatial structure formed by poetical efficacies that dissolves the boundaries between the inner and outside world, between night and day, and unveils deeper layers of perception. Untertagüberbau # 2 (which is part of a 3 channel video work) is both model and ruin, a non-place and utopia – a drifting ground full of references and connotations.

THE OWLS, THE QUEEN AND THE MAQUETTISTE
Benji Boyagian and Behzad Khosravi Noori
22’ 47”

The project juxtaposes three clock towers in their territoriality’s, built between the late 19th and early 20th century in Tehran and Jerusalem, as subjects of comparative analysis. By means of collage and storytelling, the work narrates and fictionalizes the story of the three clock towers in relation to colonial history, architecture and middle eastern geopolitics. Factual and fictional historiography mesh into an absurd tale about the repetition of the patterns of history.

06.04.1945
Ramesch Daha
4’ 13”

Ramesch Daha designed 100 m long and 7.5 m high prison wall to seize this dark chapter of the detention center. She transferred excerpts from the prisoners’ registry entries dated from 1944 and 1945 as oversized blueprints on the wall.

In the 1940’s, it was common practice in Austria to cancel the names of those detained, after serving their sentences. The artist copied these pages with all the original colour of the blueprints. Daha magnified and painted them on the wall by applying a special technique.

ENCOUNTERS
Marcus Neustetter
7’ 47”

Through site-specific, visual inquiries Marcus Neustetter probes real world dynamics
such as forced migration and lost identities with intuitive, process driven artistic tools.

In this performative installation he draws and then scrambles a map to reconfigure
contested territories. Accompanied by the static sound of an FM radio, a visual map
of personal notes and a ladder, he attempts to reassemble his drawing and make
sense of his own perspective.

CHAPTER 2

RACISTS HALF-PRICE!
Otto Karvonen
6’ 37”

“Racists Half-price!” was a performance which required an exceptional engagement of the spectator in the public space. The performance took place at Granite Square in Riihimäki on 1st of July in 2017.

Otto Karvonen and his assistant were selling strawberries in the market place of a small town in Finland. They offered a special campaign deal by selling half-price strawberries only to the customers that considered themselves as racists. Therefore, in order to buy half-priced strawberries, one had to declare her/himself publicly as a “racist”. It was an offer quite hard to resist…

THE CITY IS WAITING 2018
Isa Rosenberger
9’ 46”

How can we – from a contemporary perspective – recall and update the largely forgotten social reforming history of the VHS Ottakring? And in accordance with the interdisciplinary working method of Gertrud Kraus, how can we understand dance as a specific poetic space in which art forms, times and images can be recombined and new relations and cross-references created?

The starting point is a performance of the dance piece The City is Waiting by dancer and choreographer Gertrud Kraus on the – still existing – theater stage of the adult education center Ottakring in Vienna in 1933. Socio-politically interested and increasingly under pressure because of her Jewish background, Kraus developed as one of the few exponents of expressive dance choreographies that showed political commitment. Her choreography The City is Waiting, based on a fairy tale by Maxim Gorki, is re ecting both the fears and fascination of a boy – she herself dances – in the big city. The Volksheim Ottakring (today Volkshochschule Ottakring) was founded in 1901 and – using the slogan: The Knowledge for All – was of great cultural and political importance, especially in the interwar years.

Adult education centers were an important hub of education and knowledge transfer and played a unique role in the popularization of avant-garde art and culture beyond the bourgeois salons.Adult education centers were an important hub of education and knowledge transfer and played a unique role in the popularization of avant-garde art and culture beyond the bourgeois salons.

SCHWEBENDES (HOVERING)
Ricarda Denzer
17’ 53”

Schwebendes (Hovering) was realized as part of a series called Another Place’s Presence / Place of Another Presence and takes as its point of departure a series of photographs of the interior of the ruinous Istanbul Opera House at the time of the Gezi Park movement in 2013. The modernist cultural building—which has stood empty for years and is threatened with demolition—has become a symbol of the failed utopia of a secular society.

While thousands of demonstrators protest at the Taksim square, in front of the opera house against the repressive policies of their government, individual people are inside engaged in dialogues, activists are preparing political banners to be attached to the glass façades, or are photographing the masses of people through the windows.

This former stage functions as a spatial and historical interstice and the photographs of the scenes in the opera house are filmed and “staged” by young students of a multimedia school. Through their model-like character, the (image) materials utilized suggest a rehearsal, in which alternates between performance and demonstration.

The dialogue between the young people during the recordings form the actual speech act of this work, as a possible collective meaning-making in which the separation of private/subjective and political/societal is suspended.

RELOCATING THE MEDITERRANEAN
Operation Sunken Sea
Heba Y. Amin
19’ 15”

Invested in the power of technology to generate a new future for humankind, Operation Sunken Sea initiates a large-scale infrastructural intervention unparalleled in scale: a new era of human progress will be initiated through the draining and rerouting of the Mediterranean Sea to converge Africa and Europe into one supercontinent. The operation promises to bring an end to terrorism and the migration crisis, provide employment and energy alternatives and confront the rise of fascism, all of which pose profound existential threats to our future. The project instills a fervent movement towards technocracy which take a proactive stance towards the reparation of Africa and the Middle East by relocating the Mediterranean Sea within the African continent.

Referencing and expanding upon early twentieth century techno-utopian visions, Operation Sunken Sea is an ongoing research project and intervention by Heba Y. Amin that investigates significant transformations in territorial constructs and their impact on new geopolitical alliances and global politics. By shifting the paradigm in a time of neo-fascist necropolitics, the project responds to the contemporary moment of political uncertainty in Europe, the unrest and collapse of nationstates in the Middle East and the neo-liberal failure of globalization in Africa. The operation — mimicking languages of fascist regimes — instigates a new vision for Africa and the Middle East by pinpointing what could be attained by and for those most affected by the wars waged for oil, resources and power in the last century.

CHAPTER 3

SONIC INDEPENDENCE
A living forest. 2018-2099
Timo Tuhkanen
3’ 46”

Sonic Independence is an artwork where a living forest is planted at the border of Finland and Russia with the intention of teaching the growing plants how to play music.

I want to discover a way to enable all the plants in a forest to participate in social construction and political decision making. We humans easily condition animals and plants to answer some questions about their likes and dislikes, but we have so far never seriously asked them how they think we should organize society together? How they feel that they should participate in the construction of society and civilization and the creation of a legal and moral framework with us humans.

In the process of teaching plants how to play music I am constructing several different musical instruments that work on this line that reveals the transfer of decision making power between myself, a human, and the forest.

DIAGRAM OF TRANSFER NO. 1
Lina Selander
Oscar Mangione
9” 18”

The film presents a series of images and occasional sounds; there are sets of images, correspondences, movements that resemble each other. The words Nostalgia, Violence and History, or (corresponding) Memory, Hope and Technology are intersected and interrupted by their own dreams, or mutations and deformations, the images of the destruction of books and other memory devices, and the twin practice of piecing together again the fragments, in search of a redeeming knowledge, a kind of soul, that would be a past turned inside out, a sun that never set.

The film originally was made as a comment, a kind of stop button, on an earlier work, “When the Sun Sets It’s All Red, Then It Disappears” (from 2008), which, in its turn, took Jean-Luc Godard’s “La Chinoise” (from 1967) as its starting point to examine the dreams and hopes and misfortunes related to the 1968 student revolt and its representation and present significance for the “left”. Regarding the role of the images and the way they are regarded or presented as constituting a whole — between the system of discipline and that, advancing, of control — one can detect a link to Gilles Deleuze’s “Postscript on the Societies of Control” in the film.

TRANSITIONAL MAGNETISM
Inma Herrera
10’ 41”

Transitional Magnetism verses about the sense of touch and the need of getting a grip with the hands. Exploring the ways of making visible the necessary skills to be acquired to engrave an image on a copper plate, the pieces interrogate the obscure nature of the trace left by the hands and tools looking back to the work of master printers such as Jean Cousin, Abraham Bosse and José Ribera. Inspired by the statement of Charles Bell which says that “the brain receives more trustworthy information from the touch of the hand than from images in the eye”, the artist questions whether touch furnishes the brain a different kind of sensate information than the eye, hence the urge of using them. The project is displayed in the format of installation combining prints and different elements that relate to the basis of the etching technique.

TIMES OF DILEMMA
Barbara Holub
3’ 24”

“Times of Dilemma” makes use of the tradition of Għana for creating contemporary Għana dialogues addressing current conflicts. In July 2017 transparadiso organized two workshop sessions, for which we launched an open call for participation. They invited authors, Għana-singers (Għannejja), activists and experts from diverse backgrounds to discuss the contradictory interests between economical prosperity and regaining communal values and how to rediscover qualities, (hidden) potentials and poetics for living together.

For the performances by the Għannejja transparadiso conceived two large megaphone-sculptures, offering a dialogical sound transfer of 320 meters between St. Michael’s Counterguard, next to St. Roche Chapel and the only public land on the mostly privatized Manoel Island, which will be transformed into an exclusive new urban development for the rich. The dialogue from the two locations now addresses a plague of today, namely uncontrolled urban development in Malta.

“Times of Dilemma” was part of “The Island is What the Sea Surrounds” curated by Maren Richter in the frame of Valletta 2018 – European Capital of Culture.

FORMER CITY
Yane Calovski
2’ 40”

Every time we experience loss of something associated with our collective history, whether a document, a building or a person, we feel that we’ve lost our footing both in the present and the future. It is a disconcerting, disorienting and ultimately, debilitating experience.

‘FORMER CITY’ formed the basis of ‘UNDICIPLINED: CONSTRUCTION OF AN ARCHIVE’ (2017-), a research project focusing on the potential future of the physically destroyed archive of the former Institute for Town Planning and Architecture in Skopje (ITPA) in April 2017.

It captures the actuality of archive’s absence framed by its own fragmentation, discontinuity, contingency and multiplicity of possible associations.

SPARE FACE
Tamsin Snow
7’ 19”

Spare Face is guided by research into such topics as modernist architecture, science fiction and cryogenics. The video is a montage composed largely of stock footage and juxtaposes existing free and bought architectural models with imagined and built virtual environments. The animation looks at the material structure of digital video and the technological possibilities of new media.

Spare Face considers the shift in notions of mortality as technology advances. Organ processing leads to the commodification of flesh away from the united body. Through cryogenics death becomes a process not a terminal event, ‘an extension of consciousness’. It is this boundary, on the knife-edge of death and the keen-edge of technology that the artist uses to blur the line between medical innovation and speculative fiction.

MIRROR MIRROR
Bronwyn Lace
5’ 56”

Mirror Mirror is a timelapse video piece created in the basement of the Natural History Museum in Vienna in mid-2016. Over a period of 5 days a photograph was taken every minute capturing Dermestes maculatus (carrion beetle) frenetically feasting on the flesh of a gasping Tyto alba (barn owl). Manipulation of this footage has resulted in video piece together with a sound component, created collaboratively by meditating on the sounds of humans mourning by South African composers and vocalists Nhlanhla Mahlangu and Xolisile Bongwana.

Mirror Mirror explores relationships between body and mind, the body of the owl and its relationship to flesh eaters, a process of flesh-devouring flesh. Lace’s observations of nature continue to feed into her fascination with processes and mysteries of life, death, destruction, and seduction. This installation conjures up the lunacy of hunger and entrapment – even desire and highlights the dank underbelly of gestation simultaneous to decomposition. Antithesis is always a certainty – as daunting as the human condition. And these transient and transitional carriers of life culminate in altars for the dead. Lace is centrally concerned with the theme of transition, giving form to mired and illuminated thresholds. Neither complex nor simple, she attempts to strip her thoughts of ‘flesh’ thereby intensifying the material and the void.

Cross Sections

Image: Basak Senova
Poster Design: Peter Putz

In conjunction to Basak Senova’s curatorial activities during her residency at Angewandte, there will be a talk on her latest curated exhibition: “Climbing through the Tide” at B7 L9 in Tunis and the Kamel Lazaar Foundation. Lina Lazaar, the Vice President of the Kamel Lazaar Foundation and Petra Swais, the Programme and Exhibitions Manager of B7L9, will also participate in the talk.

B7L9 is an experimental art space imagined and developed by the Kamel Lazaar Foundation (KLF) in Bhar Lazreg, a rural land whose landscape has morphed organically amidst the political vacuum in the revolution aftermath. B7L9 is conceived as a laboratory for KLF to connect, interact and expand upon its activities to date and trigger a regional dialogue with contemporary global developments in visual culture.

Curated by Basak Senova, the inaugural exhibition of B7L9, “Climbing through the Tide” is designed to initiate dialogues and encounters among the works by suggesting various paths of reception through its scenography. Works in the exhibition connect to each other through spontaneously formed content; form; methodology; and approach based links. By taking the condition-based and geographical inputs into account, the exhibition operates as the prompter of a new interrogations and the instigator of multiple perceptions leading to a more layered reading of our current situation and to different ways to cope with it.

Climbing through the Tide brings together 5O artists from 21 countries including Adel Abidin, Afif Saâdane, Aicha Snoussi, Ali Cabbar, Ali Cherri, Ali Tnani, Almagul Menlibayeva, Bahar Behbahani, Behzad Khosravi Noori, Benji Boyadgian, Bronwyn Lace, Egle Oddo, Etel Adnan, Farah Khelil, Fares Thabet, Fatih Aydogdu, Ghada Amer, Gulsun Karamustafa, Hatem El Mekki , Heba Amin, Hera Büyüktaşçıyan, Inci Eviner, Inma Hererra, Jawad Al Malhi, Joana Hadjithomas & Khalil Joreige, Jumana Manna, Kader Attia, Larissa Sansour, Lina Selander, Malek Gnaoui, Marcus Neustetter, Negar Tahsili, Nermin Er, Nicène Kossentini, Nilbar Gures, Ramesch Daha, Raqs Media Collective, Ricarda Denzer, Susan Hefuna, Wael Shawky, Walid Raad, Yasmine Ben Khelil, Younes Ben Slimane, Youssef Nabil, Yto Barrada, Ziad Antar, and Zineb Sedira. “Annotations” section of the exhibition presents Centre for Less Good Ideas, Apartment Project, Mahatat, Mophradat, Ashkal Alwan, L’Atelier de l’Observatoire, Egle Oddo and Centre de Biotechnologie, Technopole Borj Cédria, Fares Thabet, Muhammed, Future Lab, and the CrossSections Project.

While being anchored in the Mediterranean and global artistic landscape, B7L9 responds to KLF’s commitment to social impact in underprivileged areas through art and culture and aims to promote exchange of knowledge and visions by encouraging guest artists to interact with local communities through workshops, seminars, events and an extensive outreach programme.

Since its inception in 2005, the Kamel Lazaar Foundation for Art and Culture has initiated several cultural and artistic actions and projects whose local and regional effects put forward the vitality and diversity of the cultural scene in the MENA region. The foundation supports research, publication and exhibition initiatives and organizes scientific conferences and seminars as well as artistic creation residencies and workshops. KLF’s backbone is the largest contemporary and modern art collections in North Africa and the Arab world. In 2011 the Kamel Lazaar Foundation launched the online platform Ibraaz – the largest forum for critical exchange on visual culture in the Arab region, followed shortly by the first installment of Jaou – an annual event bringing together artists, thinkers and change-makers to exhibit works of art and fostering a dialogue about contemporary creative practices in the Arab region. In 2017 KLF was the commissioner of Tunisia’s Pavilion titled ‘The Absence of Path’ at the Venice Biennale after almost 6 decades of absence. KLF is looking forward to fostering its actual partnerships and building new ones in order to carry on its mission and rally structures, institutions and cultural actors around a common goal: to develop, promote and support art and culture in Tunisia and lay the foundation of a future where they play a central role in personal and social growth.

Lazaar is the Vice President of the Kamel Lazaar Foundation. Specialized in contemporary art, she has an MA degree in Statistics from London School of Economics, and an MA in Art History from Sotheby’s Institute of Art. Throughout her career in Sotheby’s, London, she supported the emergence of contemporary Arab art on the international scene. She is the co-editor-in-chief of the online magazine Ibraaz.

Petra Swais is a researcher and facilitator of art projects in the MENA region. Working at the Kamel Lazaar Foundation (KLF), she is Programme and Exhibitions Manager of B7L9. Prior to her position at the KLF, she completed an MA in Arts Management at Birkbeck, London and worked at Darat al Funun in Amman and MASS in Alexandria.

Kamel Lazaar Foundation

Photograph: Basak Senova
Poster Design: Peter Putz

The Angewandte hosts one of the PUBLIC Meetings of the CrossSections project in Vienna. The meeting will be a conversation between the curator of the project Basak Senova and some of the participating artists of the project including Ricarda Denzer, Barbara Holub, Isa Rosenberger as well as Andrea Löbel and Klaus Schafler (Kunsthalle Exnergasse, WUK).

CrossSections is designed as an interdisciplinary platform for explorations into artistic research, dialogue, and production. The project employs an open format to reflect upon “process” with the intent to articulate critical reactions to the political, economic, and social disturbances facing us today. Over the course of three years (2017–2019), with the participation of 19 artists, diverse scholars and cultural workers, various meetings, workshops, exhibitions, performances, talks and book launches are being held in three cities: Vienna, Helsinki, and Stockholm.

Developed and curated by Basak Senova, CrossSections aims at discussing and sharing diverse realities, conditions, and strategies in different geographies. By placing the artistic production at the center of its research and plot, it is being shaped by the cumulative interdisciplinary input and data through meetings, residencies, performative presentations, and publications in the course of three year. Its research process involves different focus groups, institutions and educational bodies engaging with re-positioning perspectives by giving priority to the production. CrossSections provides various types and lengths of research and production based residencies for project participants, which are affiliated with the partner institutions.

The partners of the project are Kunsthalle Exnergasse – WUK in Vienna; iaspis – the Swedish Arts Grants Committee’s International Programme for Visual and Applied Artists, Konstfack University College of Arts, Crafts and Design, and NFK – The Nordic Art Association in Stockholm; Nya Småland in different locations in Sweden; HIAP – Helsinki International Artist Programme and Academy of Fine Arts – University of the Arts Helsinki in Helsinki; Center for Contemporary Arts, Estonia in Tallinn; and Press to Exit Project Space in Skopje. CrossSections is primarily supported by its partners. The project and associated book are generously supported by the Saastamoinen Foundation.

Up to this point, the project has been a discursive act by accommodating the range of activities that support the on-going researches of artists with the aim to observe and record their methodologies. Furthermore, CrossSections goes one step further in to rendering these researches by discussing and exhibiting how these wide-range of methodologies are come to surface.

The project is not overarching any debates about the validity or reception of artistic research. By taking all possible approaches –with their similarities and divergences of the artists’ working processes, the artists of the CrossSections Project will talk about how the project communicated the potentials of the research along with the end product as the artwork. In this talk, the role of the audience in shaping the modes of presentations of the project will also be discussed.

CrossSections

Image: Basak Senova
Poster Design: Peter Putz

The Angewandte hosts the book launch of Pass, the inaugural issue of the International Biennial Association’s (IBA) journal with Basak Senova in Vienna.

Pass, which is an annual publication, aims to bear witness to the critical and experimental role of contemporary art biennials around the world. Pass presents diverse approaches and divergent perspectives on biennials as institutions, curatorial endeavours and public projects. It examines the biennial as an actively evolving form that mobilizes relationships between artists, sites and audience on varied scales and in different contexts. It explores the issues and challenges arising in the perennially shifting field of biennial-making. Pass also aims to serve as a tool for learning, debate and advocacy while shaping the public profile of biennials.

Launched in 2018 as a public program of the International Biennial Association, Pass was originally proposed and confirmed at the IBA’s 3rd General Assembly in Milan, Italy. This new program was conceptualized and produced by Editorial Board of IBA—Anne Barlow, Sylvie Fortin, Bige Orer and Basak Senova—with support from the membership of the association.

The development of this publication reflects the biennial field’s shared and acutely perceived need: a self-determined platform to consciously examine the biennial as an active, critical and evolving form, and a forum to define our own measures of accountability. Biennials often capture the imagination of social scientists and humanities scholars. Their cosmopolitan allure, local embeddedness and public engagement make biennials a darling subject of curatorial studies. As exhibition history takes its place in the art historical canon, biennials, which have long been privileged sites of experimentation, gain pride of place. We laud this attention while recognizing that a crucial voice is still missing: the critical assessment of biennial makers. This publication seeks to fill this gap and to become the vehicle for biennial makers to share their knowledge and experience, to present their challenges and to chart ways ahead.

Pass 1 (2018) contributors:
Adelina Cüberyan von Fürstenberg, Basak Senova, Bose Krishnamachari, Claire Tancons, Gabriel Pérez-Barreiro, Gerardo Mosquera, Iara Boubnova, Jens Hoffmann, Jochen Volz, Jonatan Habib Engqvist, Kitty Scott, Natasha Ginwala, Nav Haq, Nevenka Sivavec, Richard Ibghy & Marilou Lemmens, Sylvie Fortin, Xenia Kalpaktsoglou

Editor
Sylvie Fortin

Editorial Committee
Anne Barlow
Basak Senova
Bige Orer

Design
Studio Gusto

Photograph
IBA

Poster Design
Peter Putz

International Biennial Organisation

This talk will trace the evolution of MacMurtrie’s kinetic sculptures and robotic “soft machines”, and recount his creative journey and process of constant reinvention, experimentation and refinement. Today MacMurtrie/Amorphic Robot Works are widely recognized for their innovative “Inflatable Architectural Bodies” series. Designed and built at increasingly large scales, these “inflatable bodies” or “soft machines”, inflate and deflate through an articulated series of movements exploring the underlying essence of organic and nonorganic bodies.

For the last 30 years, Chico MacMurtrie has created metaphors with machines exploring the intersection of robotic sculpture, new media installation and performance. MacMurtrie and Amorphic Robot Works (ARW), an interdisciplinary collective he founded in 1991, have received numerous awards for their experimental new media artworks, including five grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Andy Warhol Foundation Grant, the Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship, VIDA Life 11.0 and Prix Ars Electronica. Chico MacMurtrie was awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship in 2016.
MacMurtrie/ARW’s works have been presented in major museums and venues around the world including the National Art Museum of China (NAMOC), Beijing; Hayward Gallery, London; Museo de la Reina Sofia, Madrid; Cité des Sciences et de l’Industrie, Paris; Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporá neo (MUAC), Mexico City; Pioneer Works, Brooklyn, NY; Shanghai Biennale; Tri Postal, Lille, (retrospective exhibition); Muffatwerk, Munich; Ex-Dogana, Rome and ZHI Art Museum, Chengdu. Upcoming exhibitions include: Mundos Alternos, Art and Science Fiction in the Americas, Queens Museum, New York in 2019.

Please notice: After the talk, at 4pm, Chico MacMurtrie will present his robotic work „Border Crosser“ in action at the Atrium of the University of Applied Arts Vienna, Vordere Zollamtsstraße 7, 1030 Wien.

amorphicrobotworks