Reflecting on the politics and practices of queer and feminist art curating, this symposium invites presentations from an international line-up of artists, curators and critics to address a set of key questions: how do feminist and queer projects emerge as art exhibitions? Can queers and feminists get along with the institutional art world? And can they get along with each other?

Your conference ticket also allows free entry to the Axe Grinding Workshop on 18 May. Workshop places are limited and will be allocated on a first-come, first-served basis.

This is the final event in the Leverhulme Foundation Feminism and Art Curating International Research Network.

Programme

10.30  Welcome by Marko Daniel
10.35  Introduction to morning session by Lara Perry
10.45  Keynote Maura Reilly Toward a Curatorial Activism
11.20  Q&A with Maura Reilly and Lara Perry

Panel One: Queer Visual Strategies

11.40  FAG: Feminist Art Gallery, Toronto, Allyson Mitchell and Deirdre Logue CAN’T/WON’T
12.00  Lisa Metherell Queer Encounters with Art: (Dis)Orientations Beyond Representations of Sexual Bodies
12.20  Q&A with FAG and Lisa Metherell chaired by Helena Reckitt

13.00  Lunch break
13.55  Introduction to afternoon session by Lara Perry

Panel Two: Queer Collections

14.00  Suzana Milevska Staging the Transgression
14.20  Matt Smith Embedding Queer into Collections
14.40  Q&A chaired by Patrik Steorn

15:10  Tea break

Panel Three: Queer Contexts

15.40  Introduction to final session by Emily Pringle
15.45  Michael Petry, Corporate Queers: suits, ties and pin-striped shirts. Curating in a business environment;
16.05  Pawel Leskowicz, Queering the National Museum of Poland
16.25  Elke Krasny, Queering Memory: Morzinplatz, Vienna
16.45  Q&A chaired by Emily Pringle

17.15  Closing Remarks

HANDS-ON URBANISM 1850-2012. THE RIGHT TO GREEN. Interview with Elke Krasny (curator) and Alexandra Maringer (scenographer). Exhibition graphic design: Alexander Ach Schuh. Video by CastYourArt.com, Eva Stern, Natalia Daukszewicz. Vienna 2012.

http://occupyeverything.org/
POSTED ON SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 11TH, 2012 AT 1:32 PM.

Hands-On Urbanism 1850 – 2012
Vom Recht auf Grün

Veranstaltungsort: Architekturzentrum Wien – Alte Halle
Ausstellung: 15. März 2012 – 25. Juni 2012
Öffnungszeiten: täglich 10-19 Uhr

Kuratorin/Curator: Elke Krasny
Szenographie/Scenography: Alexandra Maringer
Ausstellungsgrafik/Exhibition graphics: Alexander Schuh

Eröffnung/Opening: Mi 14. 03.2012 / Thu, March 14, 2012

Zur Eröffnung sprechen:
Dietmar Steiner, Direktor Az W
Elke Krasny, Kuratorin der Ausstellung
Maria Vassilakou, Stadträtin für Stadtentwicklung, Verkehr, Klimaschutz und BürgerInnenbeteiligung

Hands-on urbanism, bottom-up urbanism, and irregular urbanization are not the exception to the rule – they are the driving forces behind the evolution of cities and often behind changes in urban policy. From the onset of industrialization, first in Europe and North America and then in the Southern hemisphere, to today’s neoliberal, developer-driven global city, the history of urban development unfolds as a sequence of critical situations. Gardening and informal settling are indicative of these crises. Taking root from below, these self-organized, self-help practices are dynamic and inspiring agencies of change.
Elke Krasny

Hands-On Urbanism, Bottom-up Urbanism und ungeplante Stadtentwicklung sind nicht die Ausnahme von der Regel, sondern treibende Kräfte der Stadtentwicklung, oft Auslöser offizieller Planungsstrategien. Seit der Industrialisierung in Europa und Nordamerika, gefolgt von der in der südlichen Hemisphäre, bis zur neoliberalen, developergetriebenen, globalen Stadt heute ist die Geschichte der Stadtentwicklung eine Abfolge von Krisen. Das Gärtnern und informelles Siedeln sind deren Seismografen. Vielmehr noch sind sie jedoch auf Selbsthilfe und Selbstorganisation setzende Handlungsmacht, die die Veränderung von unten in Gang setzt.
Elke Kransy

Hands-on: praktisch, auf Handlung und Partizipation aufbauend
Urbanism: Urbanisierung; Kultur und Lebensweise der Städterinnen und Städter

Die Frühjahrsausstellung im Architekturzentrum Wien widmet sich einer Ideengeschichte von Landnahmen im urbanen Raum. Seit dem Modernisierungsschock der Industrialisierung sind Städte weltweit mit schwierigsten Herausforderungen konfrontiert. In Krisensituationen finden StadtbewohnerInnen jedoch seit jeher eigene Lösungen, sie betreiben Stadtentwicklung von unten. Selbstbau und Selbstorganisation, Siedeln und Nutzgärten führen zu anderen Formen des Zusammenhalts, der Nachbarschaftlichkeit und der Verteilungsgerechtigkeit. Eine andere Welt ist pflanzbar, wie die heutigen GemeinschaftsgärtnerInnen betonen.

Auf Basis von mehrjährigen internationalen Recherchen präsentiert Kuratorin Elke Krasny historische wie gegenwärtige Fallbeispiele für Stadtentwicklung von unten in Chicago, Leipzig, Wien, Bremen, Amsterdam, New York, Paris, Hongkong, Istanbul, Porto Alegre, Havanna oder Quito. Sie gibt einen Überblick über selbstorganisierte, kollektive, informelle Bewegungen und über die Räume, die dadurch entstehen. Die Ausstellung zeigt, wie maßgeblich oft kleine Projekte zu großen Veränderungen führten und führen.

„Hands-On Urbanism“ stellt eine andere Stadtgeschichte vor, die dringliche Fragen an die Verantwortung von Gestaltung durch Architektur und Planung und an die Ressourcenlogik von Städten stellt. Wie agieren ArchitektInnen in diesen Prozessen und was lässt sich von dieser Stadtgeschichte von unten lernen? Ihre Rolle reicht von InitiatorInnen über AktivistInnen bis hin zu ForscherInnen. Wie reagiert die Stadtplanung auf diese Entwicklungen? Das Spektrum reicht von der Gründung eines Siedlungsamtes über verspätete Infrastrukturmaßnahmen und Duldung bis zu behördlich unterstützenden Maßnahmen, aber auch der Einführung neuer Gesetze und der Legalisierung in offiziellen Stadtplänen.

——

The spring show at the Architekturzentrum Wien is dedicated to the history of the idea of appropriating land in urban space. Since the shockwave of modernisation that accompanied industrialisation towns and cities worldwide have had to face some very significant challenges. City-dwellers have always found a number of solutions in crisis situations, they are involved in bottom-up urban development. Self-build and selforganisation, settlements and fruit and vegetable gardening lead to other forms of collective cohesion, neighbourliness and fair distribution. Another world can be planted, as today’s community gardeners are clearly showing.

Following many years of international research, the curator Elke Krasny presents 19 historical and contemporary case studies of bottom-up urban development in Chicago, Leipzig, Vienna, Bremen, New York, Paris, Hong Kong, Istanbul, Porto Alegre, Havana or Quito. They provide an overview of informal, self-organised collective movements and of the spaces that are created by them. The exhibition shows how decisively small projects have often led, and are still leading, to major changes.

‘Hands-On Urbanism’ introduces an alternative urban history, one that poses urgent questions about the responsibility of design for architects and planners, and the resource-logic of towns and cities. What do architects do in this process, and what can be learned from the bottom-up in this urban history? Its role ranges from initiative via activism to conducting research. How are urban planning authorities reacting to these developments? The spectrum ranges from the founding of a settlement regulatory agency, via infrastructural measures and tolerance, to measures of support from the authorities, but also the introduction of new laws and legal sanctioning in official urban plans.

Zur Ausstellung erscheint im Verlag Turia + Kant
Hands-on Urbanism 1850–2012. Vom Recht auf Grün
Herausgegeben von Elke Krasny
356 Seiten, ca. 300 Abbildungen
ISBN 978-3-85132-677-2

in Englisch bei MCCM Creations in Hongkong unter dem Titel
Hands-on Urbanism 1850–2012. The Right to Green
Edited by Elke Krasny
356 pages
ISBN 978-988-15217-4-3

Beiträge von/Contributors: Phoebe Giannisi, Zissis Kotionis, Fallen Fruit, Anke Hagemann, Caterina Hildebrand, Una Steiner, Jane Addams, Lisa Heldke, Klaus Novy, Andrea Seidling, Kirsten Tiedemann, John F.C. Turner, Daniel Kerber, Ana Laura Ruesjas, Ingrid Sabatier, Stephan Schwarz, Bohn & Viljoen Architects, Felipe Hernández, Elke Krasny, Shu-Mei Huang, Chi-Ho Chung, Marjetica Potrc, Lucia Babina, Pablo Molestina, Catherine Venart, Françoise Fromonot, Obrat, Constantin Petcou und Doina Petrescu.

COMMUNICATON OF URBAN CURATORS | Lecture by Elke Krasny

Die Stadt als Spielmaterial, Lern- und Lehrort zu nutzen: Das war der Ausgangspunkt eines Projekts, um angehende KunsterzieherInnen der Akademie mit SchülerInnen zu vernetzen. Als Wissensspeicher und Anlaufstelle sollte das Wien Museum fungieren. Im Zuge des thematisch freien Projekts kristallisierten sich drei Schwerpunkte mit jeweiligen Arbeitsgruppen heraus.

WIEN MUSEUM | 1. Dezember 2011 bis 15. Januar 2012 | 1040 Wien, Karlsplatz
Dienstag bis Sonntag & Feiertag, 10 bis 18 Uhr
Samstag, 24. und 31. Dezember: 10 bis 14 Uhr
Geschlossen: 1.1., 1.5. und 25.12.

Projektleiterin | Elke Krasny

Die erste Gruppe beschäftigte sich mit historischen Stadtplänen aus dem Wien Museum und verglich sie mit Google Maps von heute: Welche topografischen Veränderungen gibt es? Was wird überhaupt in historische und heutige Pläne eingetragen? Genau untersucht wurde dabei das Gebiet zwischen Schule und Museum. Geplant ist, in der Ausstellung die Zweidimensionalität des Stadtplans in eine raumgreifende Installation zu transformieren.

Um den Weg ins Museum ging es auch bei der zweiten Gruppe. Sie entwarf eine U-Bahn-Linie (“U5″) zwischen Landstraßer Hauptstraße und Wien Museum Karlsplatz. Fotomontagen der möglichen U-Bahn-Stationen und ein Trickfilm, der reale Fundstücke aus der Stadt mit fiktiven Elementen verschmilzt werden in diesem Ausstellungskapitel gezeigt. Ein interaktives Spiel, das auf der fotografischen Vermessung der Schrift im öffentlichen Raum beruht, gibt den BesucherInnen die Möglichkeit, Stadtgeschichten neu zu schreiben.

Die dritte Gruppe setzte sich mit Museumsobjekten auseinander, die viele SchülerInnen faszinierten: die Modesammlung des Museums, in der sich der Alltag des Stadt besonders gut spiegelt. Krokohandtaschen und Fächer aus Adlerfedern wurden zum Anlass genommen, um zeitgenössische Gegenentwürfe herzustellen.

Kuratorinnen

Elke Krasny | Lehrbeauftragte der Akademie der Bildenden Künste
Eva Lausegger | Bildnerische Erzieherin des Borg 3
Christine Strahner und Isabel Termini | Wien Museum

November 17, 2011–February 25, 2012
Opening: Wednesday, November 16, 7:00 pm

Audain Gallery SFU Woodward’s
Goldcorp Centre for the Arts
149 West Hastings Street
Vancouver BC

info@audaingallery.ca
www.audaingallery.ca

Hours: Tuesday–Saturday, 12:00–6:00 pm

This process-oriented exhibition is a collaborative project between the Downtown Eastside Women’s Centre (DEWC), visiting artist Elke Krasny, the art collective desmedia, playwright and performer Marie Clements, the collective Coupe, students from the School for the Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser University, and the Audain Gallery.

Photos: Kevin Schmidt

The DEWC is a self-initiated and self-organized space. Emerging out of what is now known as second wave feminism, women in the neighbourhood founded the centre in 1978. In many ways, it is an example of bottom-up feminist urbanism. In its day-to-day operation, the centre primarily represents Indigenous and older Chinese women, as well as other women of the Downtown Eastside community. What the women of the centre have claimed—and are still claiming—addresses and embodies all of the larger social, political, and economic transformations that have challenged the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver. These claims in fact constitute a vivid and vital historical mapping of the neighbourhood. Cecily Nicholson, a coordinator of the centre, significantly enabled the involvement of the DEWC in this collaboration.

Elke Krasny is a project-based artist and curator concerned with counter-hegemonic and feminist strategies of intervening in historical narratives, and with creating new constellations in the exchange of different forms of knowledge. The collaboration between the DEWC, Krasny, and the Audain Gallery centers on a research-based mapping that draws from the archival materials from the DEWC. Presented as a text-based “horizon line” spanning the walls of the gallery, the exhibition offers a visual map of the demands and aspirations of the DEWC community. These demands, both current and historical, address issues of poverty, violence and insecurity, social exclusion, the deferral of rights, and the legacy of colonialism. Although describing specific challenges, these claims are also expressions of conviviality and solidarity. These expressions exist between women, between women and their neighbourhoods, and between the women of the centre and their global context.

Beginning their practice in the early 2000s, desmedia provided access to the tools and training necessary for members of the Downtown Eastside community of Vancouver to self-produce their own media representations. As part of this practice, desmedia collected a large archive of interviews on digital video and other kinds of artwork. On the occasion of this exhibition, Krasny and the Audain Gallery have invited members of desmedia to reassemble their archive and to publicly debate its future.

Playwright and performer Marie Clements has a history of collaboration with the DEWC. Based on a series of workshops with the women of the DEWC, she will produce a new performance work for the exhibition that explores the potential of fiction to express critical truth. Like Krasny, Clements explores writing as both a collective process and a process of collectivization formed by way of an expressive multitude of subjectivities.

By initiating this collaboration, Sabine Bitter, the curator of the Audain Gallery, is expanding and changing the institutional parameters of the position, function, and mode of operation of a contemporary art gallery. This important, necessary form of “self-challenging of the institution” (and perhaps also “institutional self-challenging”) reacts to a setting defined by rapid urbanization, gentrification, and the all-inclusive yet reductive scope of neo-liberal economics, a setting in which the Audain Gallery is ultimately situated.

During the exhibition, the gallery will function as a platform and meeting ground for the production and exchange of different forms of knowledge. The “horizon line” will be a framing device and backdrop for a series of events, performances, and projects that aim to build neighbourhood constellations that go beyond familiar exchanges. They also provide opportunities for direct community participation and the fostering of critical dialogue, while also challenging the conventional expectation of what constitutes a gallery exhibition. As part of the events, women from the DEWC will teach a series of hands-on workshops, including instruction on cedar weaving and the sewing of button-blankets, to share their knowledge of traditional artistic practices.

For a full schedule of the events, performances, and projects, please go to www.audaingallery.ca.

Working closely with the women of the DEWC, Elke Krasny, and our other collaborators, Mapping the Everyday examines the possibilities for and consequences of community-based political activity as articulated in relationship with contemporary artistic and institutional practices.

Mapping the Everyday: Neighbourhood Claims for the Future is realised in partnership with the Downtown Eastside Women’s Centre with support from the City of Vancouver’s 125th Anniversary Grants Program; the Austrian Federal Ministry for Education, Arts, and Culture; the Vancity Office of Community Engagement as part of Simon Fraser University Woodward’s Cultural Unit; and the English Department of Simon Fraser University.

About the Audain Gallery

The Audain Gallery serves as a vital aspect of the Visual Arts program at Simon Fraser University’s School for the Contemporary Arts. The gallery’s mission is to advance the aesthetic and discursive production and presentation of contemporary visual art through a responsive program of exhibitions and to support engaged pedagogy. The gallery encourages conceptual and experimental projects that explore the dialogue between the social and the cultural in contemporary artistic practices.

The Audain Gallery is curated by Sabine Bitter, working with gallery assistant Brady Cranfield.

Projektraum k48 – Offensive für zeitgenössische Wahrnehmung
Kirchengasse 48/Lokal 2, 1070 Wien

Walking and reading. Walking and sharing. Walking and talking. The personal, the political, the collective, the urban and its transfers intersect along the walk. The traces we find tell their own stories. The traces we add add a new layer. Reading the city becomes a manifesto of the elsewhere.