Krasny, Elke. “Die Wohnfrage. Von den Maßstäben der Sorge.” 2021

Krasny, Elke. “Die Wohnfrage. Von den Maßstäben der Sorge.” Arch+ 54/244 (2021): 52-55

Wohnen ist für das menschliche Leben unerlässlich. Dabei bezeichnet das Verb „wohnen“ im engeren Wortsinn keine Tätigkeit, und es würde vielen wahrscheinlich sogar ziemlich schwer fallen, geeignete Worte zu finden, um all das zu fassen, was sie eigentlich tun und womit sie beschäftigt sind, wenn sie wohnen. Es besteht ein Bewusstsein dafür, dass das Wohnen eine Vielzahl von verschiedenen Tätigkeiten beinhaltet, die zur alltäglichen Aufrechterhaltung des menschlichen Lebens notwendig sind. Dieses Bewusstsein hat nicht zuletzt auch Eingang in die 1948 von den Vereinten Nationen formulierten Menschenrechte gefunden: „Jeder hat das Recht auf einen Lebensstandard, der seine und seiner Familie Gesundheit und Wohl gewährleistet, einschließlich Nahrung, Kleidung, Wohnung …“2 (≥ Beitrag Jakob Holzer / Constanze Wolfgring). Über eine Wohnung zu verfügen und wohnen zu können, gilt daher als eines der menschlichen Grundbedürfnisse und wird in rechtlicher, rechtsphilosophischer und ethischer Hinsicht als Daseinsnotwendigkeit aufgefasst. Grundbedürfnis und Daseinsnotwendigkeit sind hehre Begriffe für all jene Tätigkeiten und Aktivitäten, die im Alltag eher als repetitiv, selbstverständlich, mitunter auch banal wahrgenommen werden. In den als die „eigenen vier Wände“ bezeichneten Räumen wird das Grundbedürfnis gelebt, das Daseinsnotwendige verrichtet. Dazu zählen etwa Schlafen, Kochen, Essen und Körperreinigung. Im allgemeinen Sprachgebrauch erscheint es selbstverständlich, dass mit „wohnen“ nicht nur all das mitgemeint ist, sondern auch die Orte, die diese Tätigkeiten räumlich organisieren und vor allem deren Ausübung überhaupt erst möglich machen: die Wohnungen und Häuser.

Caption: Woman Reading a Possession Order, 1997 Persons Unknown, Fotoserie von Tom Hunter

Krasny, Elke. ‘Radicalizing Care: Feminist Futures for Living with an Infected Planet.’

Krasny, Elke. ‘Radicalizing Care: Feminist Futures for Living with an Infected Planet.’ In Radicalizing Care. Feminist and Queer Activism in Curating, edited by Elke Krasny, Sophie Lingg et al, 28-35, Publication Series of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna vol 26

To take care means to see the world and ourselves as in it together. Very often, thinking of care conjures images of the frail, the sick, the weak, the vulnerable, the newborn, the dying. Those who are most in need of care yet cannot take care of themselves define the commonly held notion of care. This overshadows the fact that humans are always in need of care; fundamentally, humans are defined by their natality, their mortality, and their need for care. While this makes care a matter of life and death, and therefore an ontological category, the way that care is being organized, produced, and distributed within any historical formation is, of course, a product of history, and therefore open to economic, political, and social transformation.

Krasny, Elke. ‘State of Anxiety: Hysterical Studies for Reproduction Struggles.’ 2021

Krasny, Elke. ‘State of Anxiety: Hysterical Studies for Reproduction Struggles.’ In Hysterical Methodologies in the Arts. Rising in Revolt, edited by Johanna Braun, 127-147. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021

Gaukele, Elke und Elke Krasny. ‘Von Figurationen der Verfolgung. Der Sklavenmarkt von Jean-Léon Gérôme (1886) im rechtsextremen Wahlkampf der AfD.’ 2021

Gaugele, Elke und Elke Krasny. ‘Von Figurationen der Verfolgung. Der Sklavenmarkt von Jean-Léon Gérôme (1886) im rechtsextremen Wahlkampf der AfD.’ In Rechte Angriffe – toxische Effekte. Umformierungen extrem Rechter in Mode, Feminismus und Popkultur, herausgegeben von Elke Gaugele und Sarah Held, 129-158, Bielefeld: transcript, 2021.

Krasny, Elke. ‘Architecture.’ 2020

Krasny, Elke. ‘Architecture.’ In Connectedness. An Incomplete Encyclopedia of the Anthropocene, edited by Marianne Krogh, 52-55, Copenhagen: Strandberg Publishing, 2020.

Krasny, Elke. ‘Architecture and Care.’ 2019

Krasny, Elke. ‘Architecture and Care.’ In Critical Care. Architecture and Urbanism for a Broken Planet, edited by Fitz, Angelika, Elke Krasny, and Architekturzentrum Wien, 33-43. Boston: MIT Press, 2019.

Architecture in its broadest sense provides shelter indispensable tothe continuation of human life and survival. This is evidently a form of care. Yet historically, architecture has not been considered a form of caring labor. Despite this fundamental function of archi-tecture to provide protection for humans from sun, wind, snow orrain, and to give the support necessary for maintaining the vitalfunctions of everyday living, the idea of the architect is linked toautonomy and independent genius rather than connectedness,dependency, social reproduction and care giving. While the idea of the architect being an artist, traditionally gendered male, has beenmost influential over centuries, the notion of the architect being acarer, traditionally gendered female and considered menial laborperformed by racialized others, has been completely absent fromthe discourse on architecture.

Krasny, Elke. ‘Divided We Share: On the Ethics and Politics of Public Space.’ 2019

Krasny, Elke. ‘Divided We Share: On the Ethics and Politics of Public Space.’ In Shared Cities Atlas. Post-socialist Cities and Active Citizenship in Central and Eastern Europe, edited by Helena Doudová, 126-133. Rotterdam: nai010, 2019.
#unteilbar was the motto of a mass rally that took place on 13 October 2018 in Berlin. #indivisible was used to demonstrate unity against the surge of right-wing populism and against racism and xenophobia. In German, just like in English, un- is a negative prefix which means not. The suffix bar translates into the English -able or -ible meaning capable of being or able to be done. The centre syllable teil interests me the most here. The verb teilen has two meanings: to share and to divide. Public space is both shared and divided, and people are divided over how to share and divide it.

Krasny, Elke. ‘Queering Yerevan: A Feminist Materialist Analysis.’ 2018

Krasny, Elke. ‘Queering Yerevan: A Feminist Materialist Analysis.’ In Queering Visual Cultures, edited by Subashish Bhattacherjee, 15-41. Montreal: Universitas.

THE SALON MODEL: THE CONVERSATIONAL COMPLEX

The second half of the 1990s witnessed a conversational turn in curating. Ranging from small discussion circles to blockbuster- like marathons, conversations abounded in museums, art galleries and exhibitions. The very same period witnessed an increasing number of publications dedicated to museum studies, including the history and theory of curating. Whereas the questions raised by museum scholarship were very much concerned with exhibitions, the same cannot be said about conversations. That conversations are neglected subjects in museum histories betrays a long history of the feminisation of conversation as an intellectual, artistic and political practice, whose signifi cance my essay attempts to understand and restore while keeping in mind the gendered and other politics that pervade contemporary curatorial practice.

Elke Krasny: ‘The Salon Model: The Conversational Complex’ in: Feminism and Art History Now. Radical Critiques of Theory and Practice, edited by Victoria Horne and Lara Perry, I.B. Tauris 2017, p.147-163

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Feminism and Art History Now. Radical Critiques of Theory and Practice, edited by Victoria Horne and Lara Perry, I.B. Tauris 2017

‘This exciting book… is bound to expand the field of feminist art history, curatorial and museum studies in significant and lasting ways, and to generate extensive debate and further scholarship.’ — Helena Reckitt, Senior Lecturer in Curating, Goldsmiths, University of London

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Release date: 26 Jun 2017

Hardback: 288 pages
Publisher: I.B. Tourist
Language: English
ISBN-13: 978-1784533250
ISBN-10: 1784533254
Product Dimensions: 216 x 138 

Krasny, Elke. ‘For Us Art is Work. In♀Akt – International Action Community of Women Artists.’ 2017

Krasny, Elke. ‘For Us Art is Work. In♀Akt – International Action Community of Women Artists.’ In All-Women Art Spaces in Europe in the long 1970s, edited by Agata Jakuba and
Katy Deepwell, 96-118. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2017.

They used the artistic strategy of appropriating found objects to support compositions based on formal seriality. In 1978 they used bedsheets and continued with handkerchiefs in 1984. The bedsheets represented domestic labour, sexuality, intimacy, power and religion. Again, this became a method of democratic art making, navigating both collective formation and individual expression. And they chose objects with domestic references which seemed particularly meaningful for feminist appropriations.

Caption: Leintücher – Künstlinge & Findlinge [Bedsheets – Artlings & Foundlings], bedsheet installation, Steirischer Herbst, invitation, 1979, IntAkt Archive Vienna