Contingency Plan

23.06.2017 - 08.07.2017

studio das weisse haus, Wien / Österreich

In a context of social struggles, the growth of the art residencies in the last years is not a matter of chance. They have an important role not only as organizations providing the opportunity for artists to connect, research and experiment in different contexts, but also to promote collaboration as a response to individualism and intolerance.

While working with the local artists of studio das weisse haus many links have appeared. With different strategies, these artists respond and open new questions about a common concern: how to deal with everyday reality....

Many of them challenge everyday objects, questioning aesthetics, trying to dismantle and recycle them to unveil the meaning behind. Anita Witek erases any trace of communication of a message in the images of posters and photography; what is left is the texture or the edges, the multiplication of layers and the absence of meaning. Alexandra Baumgartner also subverts the original use of appropriate photographs using the back of the images, using what cannot be seen. Also, Luka Jana Berchtold works with the leftovers –though in this case of furniture production– creating new living forms and useless objects. Researching the negative form of both luxury and cheap packaging, David Meran makes what contains our desires visible, and Lukas Hochrieder investigates through photographs, sculptures, and installation how architecture structures our everyday life. Photography is also the medium for Lisa Großkopf, who is documenting the architecture, landscapes, and objects of desire. The relationship with the body is also present in the work of Nina Herlitschka, who uses the body as a tool, thinking it as a commodity/object.

A more political approach and the use of humor are present in the work of others, who try to attack these issues in a more direct way. As in many of their works, oellinger/rainer use humor to deal with reality: they filmed in Tijuana a version of Titus, where the dwellers of the city played with their roles and their actual circumstances. Another collective, joechlTRAGSEILER, work with the idea of utopic/dystopic places, real estate developments and the role of museums. With minimal subversive actions, they extrapolate documentation and icons to give visibility to the absurdity of capitalism. Barbara Palomino invents impossible machines that produce pseudo-anthropological discourses, questioning the occidental approach to other cultures. Christiana Perschon is revisiting the works of important local feminist artists of the 70’s, and this mirror (this gaze of the Other) shows an image of what we are doing today, what our position is, and what we are doing now.

Contingency Plan is curated by Pablo Caligaris as part of his residency at studio das weisse haus. The exhibtion tries to propose a dialogue between different artistic practicies and proposes collaboration as a way to deal with future emergencies.


[Quelle: https://w.studiodwh.at/ (13.02.2018)]