UNCANNY MATERIALS
FOUNDING MOMENTS OF ART EDUCATION (2016)

A curatorial exhibition, research and education project

Opening | March 10, 2016, 7.00 p.m.
Exhibition dates | March 11–May 16,  2016
Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, x hibit, Schillerplatz 3 1010 Vienna

Opening hours Tue–Sun, 10.00 a.m.–6.00 p.m., admission free
Special opening hours March 28 and May 1, 5, 16, 10.00 a.m.–6.00 p.m.

Curators | Elke Krasny and Barbara Mahlknecht

Historical Research | Ina Markova, Rosemarie Burgstaller and Sophie Bitter-Smirnov, Assistance | Eva Maria Eisner, Exhibition Graphics| Alexander Ach Schuh

With contributions by Tal Adler/Friedemann Derschmidt/ Elisabeth Samsonow/Karin Schneider/ Anna Szöke/Niko Wahl, Anna Artaker, Eva Blimlinger, Ramesch Daha, Zsuzsi Flohr/Benjy Fox-Rosen/Eduard Freudmann/Eva Reinold/Luisa Ziaja, Lena Rosa Händle, Minna L. Henriksson, Belinda Kazeem-Kaminski, Gila Kolb, Martin Krenn, Ina Markova/Rosemarie Burgstaller/Sophie Bitter-Smirnov, Verena Pawlowsky, Birgit Peter, Sabine Plakolm-Forsthuber, Suely Rolnik, Dirk Rupnow, Hansel Sato, Anna Schürch, Sekretariat für Geister, Archivpolitiken und Lücken (Nina Höchtl and Julia Wieger), Bernadette Settele, Nora Sternfeld, Imayna Caceres/Pêdra Costa/Verena Melgarejo Weinandt from Wer hat Angst vor dem Museum?

Elke Krasny und Barbara Mahlknecht, Unheimliche Materialien. Gründungsmomente der Kunsterziehung, 2016

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On 9 July 1941, the decree of the Reich Ministry of Science, Education and Culture in Berlin went out to the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna to establish the “Master School for Art Education and the Training of Secondary School Art Teachers.” 75 years later, the history of the founding of today’s Institute for Education in the Arts remains largely inscrutable. This is the starting point for the curatorial exhibition, research and education project, Uncanny Materials: Founding Moments of Art Education. The exhibition shows how historians, artists and curators work with archival materials and raise questions of the politics of history and memory.

During the rectorate of Alexander Popp (Nazi Party member since 1935), teacher training at the Master School for Art Education under the leadership of Ernst August Mandelsloh (Nazi Party member since 1932) was based upon the ideological foundations of Nazism. Philosophy and ideology were required examination subjects. The formation of Nazi art education is documented in the following materials from the University Archives of the Academy: personal status sheets, lists of students, course syllabi, examination regulations, minutes of professorial council meetings, budgets, master school prizes and material procurement lists.

Study at the Master School for Art Education included artistic subjects, electives, crafts and academic subjects. Subjects included painting, graphic arts, drawing and watercolor landscapes, general history, history of German literature, crafts and needlework, as well as the didactics of drawing, art history and art apprecia­tion. The Seminar Kunst­betrachtung (“Art Appreciation Seminar”) stamp makes it clear that the magazine Die Kunst im Dritten Reich (“Art in the Third Reich”), part of the holdings of the Academy library, had been used in the “training of art educators.” The editor of this magazine, which was published by the Nazi Party publishing house for the “monitoring of the entire spiritual and ideological training and education of the NSDAP,” was Alfred Rosenberg.

Based on 1941 documents of the University Archives of the Academy, the archival installation by curators Elke Krasny and Barbara Mahlknecht shows the personnel, physical, structural and ideological institu­tionalization of art education.

In 1941, the Nazi regime began planning the “Final Solution” and the systematic murder of Jews, Roma, Sinti, prisoners of war and political opponents. The German Luftwaffe attacked British cities. German troops marched into Greece and Yugoslavia. The German Wehrmacht invaded the Soviet Union. Theaters of war like Libya, Egypt, Tunisia, China, Japan, Thailand, Burma, Indochina and the Philippines, as well as the Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran, the entry of the USA into the war and the war declarations by Latin American countries illustrate the global dimen­sion of World War II in the year 1941.

For the artworks, the year 1941 is an essential reference point. Many of the activists and artists in this exhibition are former students of the Academy or work here today as instructors. The works articulate interventions in the memory of institutions, make reference to the normalization and disciplining of bodies through education, trace lesbian life during the Nazi regime, show the political involvement of women with Nazism and reflect current changes in “multidirectional memory” (Michael Rothenberg) as well as the importance of “migrants’ situated knowledge” (Ayşe Güleç) for the politics of history.

Artists: Anna Artaker, Ramesch Daha, Zsuzsi Flohr/Eduard Freudmann mit Benjy Fox-Rosen, Lena Rosa Händle, Minna L. Henriksson, ­Hansel Sato, Sekretariat für Geister, Archivpolitiken und Lücken (Nina Höchtl und Julia Wieger) und Imayna Caceres/Pêdra Costa/Verena Melgarejo Weinandt von Wer hat Angst vor dem Museum?

Anna Artaker, KOMMENTIERTES JAHRBUCH 1941, 2016  (detail) 

Lena Rosa Händle, Mädchen unter Bäumen, 2016

Ramesch Daha, Unlimited History, 2013 (Installation view) 

Zsuzsi Flohr und Eduard Freudmann, Ein Stein steht hier. Formationen des Erinnerns 1949–, 2016 (Installation view, detail)

Hansel Sato, Parallaxe, 2016 (Installation view, detail)

Minna L. Henriksson, Hidden, 2012/2013 (Installation view, detail)

[All photographs by by Lisa-Rastl © Akademie der bildenden Kueste, Wien]

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On April 20 and 21, 2016, an international symposium with lectures, talks, and workshops will explore issues of institutional memory, National Socialist educational policy, the connections between politics of remembrance and artistic practices and question critically hegemonic histories in the field of art education.

Program

Wed, March 16, 2016, 4:00 p.m., x hibit
A Look Back into the Museum
Performance lecture with Imayna Caceres/Pêdra Costa/Verena Melgarejo Weinandt from Wer hat Angst vor dem Museum? (English)

A performative reflection on the role of the museum, its relation to historical wounds, othering, and dehumanization; and what is the role that the art education institution can have in breaking with historical continuities?

Tue, April 5, 2016, 1:30 to 5:30 p.m., x hibit
In Haunted Archives: (Post-)National Socialist Times, Decolonial Futures
Secretariat for Ghosts, Archival Politics, and Gaps (Nina Höchtl and Julia Wieger) Workshop (English)

By addressing the archive as a medium we attempt to work through its im/materiality. We invite participants to question the currency of National Socialism, colonialism and (de)coloniality in relation to specific archival materials from two rather different archives: the Archive of the Austrian Association of Women Artists VBKÖ and the University Archives of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, both haunted by National Socialism and coloniality. These archives hold documents evincing the institutions’ national socialist involvements as well as pointing towards traces of coloniality. At the same time, they bear omissions that make it necessary to read into their gaps. The workshop aims to address questions such as: How could we engage with the archival materials in order to examine the constellations between National Socialism, colonialism and coloniality? Could the analysis of said constellations help to explore possible forms of decolonial futures? In combination with decolonial studies, what do queer, feminist and postcolonial practices and theories bring to archival research? How could visual arts become a resource for decoloniality of archives? How could (de)coloniality question the meaning and method of comparativity and archival politics?

Symposium
Wed, April 20, 2016, 9:30 a.m. to 9:00 p.m.
Thur, April 21, 2016, 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.
Studio Building of the Academy, Lehargasse 6–8, 1060
Vienna Turning (to) the Archive. Institutional Histories, Educational Regimes, Artistic Practices, and Politics of Remembrance (German/English)

The symposium examines questions on institutional memory, the National Socialist education policies, the relation of the politics of remembrance and artistic practice as well as the archive and its materials within critical historical research and art. Lectures, discussions, and workshops with contributions by Tal Adler/ Friedemann Derschmidt/Elisabeth Samsonow/Karin Schneider/Anna Szöke/Niko Wahl, Eva Blimlinger, Zsuzsi Flohr/Benjy Fox-Rosen/ Eduard Freudmann/Eva Reinold/ Luisa Ziaja, Minna L. Henriksson, Gila Kolb, Elke Krasny, Martin Krenn, Barbara Mahlknecht, Verena Pawlowsky, Birgit Peter, Sabine Plakolm-Forsthuber, Suely Rolnik, Dirk Rupnow, Anna Schürch, Bernadette Settele, Nora Sternfeld

Tue, May 3, 2016, 3:00 to 5:30 p.m., x hibit
Visiting Uncanny Materials. Founding Moments of Art Education.
Visit of the exhibition in the context of the course Kunst, Öffentlichkeit und Geschichtspolitik by Belinda Kazeem-Kaminski (German)

As part of the seminar on the didactics of art, the public and political history, the students will visit the Uncanny Materials: Founding Moments of Art Education exhibition and reflect on the work on and with the archive, including the associated politics of history and their inclusions and exclusions.

Tue, May 10, 2016, 5:00 p.m., meeting point: x hibit
1941: A Politics-of-History Walk through Vienna 
With students from the course Kunst und Öffentlichkeit taught by Elke Krasny (German)
The walk visits and discusses sites connected with the Nazi regime and the founding of the Master School for Art Education.

Wed, May 11, 2016, 11:00 a.m., x hibit
The Missing Monument – Commemoration in Progress
Workshop as part of Zsuzsi Flohr’s course Commemoration in Progress (English)
The seminar starts off exploring the different concepts of a “monument” and “memory;” it approaches the monument as a common knowledge and memory rather than only a physical object in space. The course deals with a specific historical event related to the very institution we are working at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna: In 1938, Jewish staff, students and professors were expelled from the Academy and additionally, in the same year Jews were expelled from Schillerplatz – on the initiative of the Academy. Schillerplatz had been of one the few public spaces that remained open to Jews until then. Although the traces of their histories have been made accessible there is no monument or manifestation to commemorate the expelled.

Fri, May 13, 2016, 4:00 p.m., x hibit
Curators’ tour (German/English)

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Download Exhibition Booklet + Program, english

Download Ausstellungs Booklet + Veranstaltungsprogramm, deutsch

Suzanne Lacy’s International Dinner Party
in feminist curatorial thought

Venue | Gallery, Toni-Areal, ZHdK Zurich University of the Arts,
Level 4 + 5, Pfingstweidstrasse 96
Time | March 21–April 13, 2015
Opening | March 20, 2015, 7 p.m.

Organized by Eleonora Stassi, a collective dinner commemorates Lacy’s International Dinner Party on the occasion of the exhibition opening.

Opening hours | Tuesday–Thursday, 3–6 p.m.

«The International Dinner Party» was a simultaneous worldwide dinner happening created by Lacy and Pruess to publicize networks of feminist and women’s development organizations around the globe on the eve of Judy Chicago’s «The Dinner Party» exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.The project with its over 2000 participants from all parts of the world, demonstrated the extent of feminist organizing in a pre-Internet era.

Taken together, the International Dinner Party’s messages constitute an instant archive of feminist practice and thought. The «Suzanne Lacy’s International Dinner Party in feminist curatorial thought» exhibition joins Lacy’s 1979 art project with four contemporary collectives: ‹Aktion Arkiv›, ‹Queering Yerevan›, ‹radical practices of collective care› and ‹Red Min(e)d›. These collectives use different artistic and curatorial methods to combine activism, feminism, friendship, transnational collaboration, and critically involved spatial practices. In different ways, these collectives produce emergent feminist and queer feminist archives.

Curated by Elke Krasny

Invitation PDF download

Installation view International Dinner Party by Suzanne Lacy and Linda Pruess (1979), Gallery, Toni-Areal, ZHdK Zurich University of the Arts, Zurich, 2015. . 

On March 14, 1979, «a simultaneous world wide dinner happened on the eve of Judy Chicago’s Dinner Party exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Suzanne Lacy together with Linda Pruess mailed thousands of postcards inviting women from around the world to participate in the art project. Over 2000 women responded. They were invited to host dinners on the same evening that would honor a woman in their own region (…) Because of time differences, the work constituted a 24-hour performance At each dinner women collectively drafted a statement and sent it via telegram to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, where the location of their dinner was marked by Lacy with a red inverted triangle on a twenty-foot wide black and white map of the world. The telegrams were displayed next to it. The project with its over 2000 participants from all parts of the world, demonstrated the extent of feminist organizing in a pre-Internet era.»

Taken together, the telegram messages constitute a world wide feminist archive of March 1979. The statements drafted by the women are an expression of international feminism. Their telegrams and letters reflect both specific local struggles and international networks of collaboration and exchange.

Installation view Aktion Arkiv, Gallery, Toni-Areal, ZHdK Zurich University of the Arts, Zurich, 2015.

«Aktion Arkiv (…) furthers participatory history writing. Unlike traditional archives, the association’s archive acts on site.» Helena Mattson, Meike Schalk and Sara Brolund de Carvalho initiated Aktion Arkiv, a not-for-profit association, in 2013. Starting from shared experiences of the restructuring of the Swedish model of the welfare state, the implementation of austerity measures, and the divide running through the contemporary immigrant Swedish society, they saw the need for a mobile archive.

Aktion Arkiv was invited by curator Maria Lind to contribute to the exhibition Tensta Museum: Reports from New Sweden on show at Tensta konsthall from October 2013 through May 2014. Tensta konsthall is located in a suburb of Stockholm that was built with the Swedish Million Program, an ambitious social housing program between 1965 and 1974. Today, many of the suburbs are identified negatively with the large late modernist housing ensembles and their mostly immigrant populations. Today, between 85-90% of the 19.000 residents of Tensta have immigrant background. For the exhibition Aktion Arkiv’s ambulant archive vehicle took off to Tensta. During the exhibition, the vehicle served for the exchange of information. It contained a library with books, photos, films, maps, a time line, a guest book, and archival material. It also housed a foldable table and seats, and functioned as a generator for discussion.»

Helena Mattson, Meike Schalk and Sara Brolund de Carvalho identified the year 1989 as a turning point, both globally and locally in Tensta. They connected the end of the cold war, the beginning neoliberalisation in Sweden, and the shift from labour migration to a global refugee migration with a 1989 international housing conference that had taken place in Tensta. Protagonists of the 1989 international housing renewal conference were invited to a witness seminar at the Tensta konsthall. It resulted in an intense dialogue and heated debates between the foreign guests and the public.

Installation view Queering Yerevan, Gallery, Toni-Areal, ZHdK Zurich University of the Arts, Zurich, 2015.

Queering Yerevan is self-described as «a collective of artists, writers, cultural critics and activists queering and using Yerevan as an experimental space.»

Starting from shared experiences of transitionality from the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, USSR, to the Republic of Armenia marked by post-Soviet globalization, exchanges with the Armenian diaspora, conditions of prevailing homophobia and patriarchy and the influence of the Armenian Orthodox church, the Queering Yerevan originally active under the name WOW, Women Oriented Women, began to work in 2007.

In addition to their own artistic and theoretical work, the three core members Arpi Adamyan, Shushan Avagyan, and lusine talalyan organize and provide infrastructures for artistic production and public exchanges. They put together events, exhibitions, happenings, film screenings, workshops, find funding, crowdfound, run a blog, and publish books. In 2008, they opened the garden of Zarbuyan 34 in Yerevan to host exhibitions and performances. The garden was a gathering space for exchanges with other artists, activists, curators, theorists, and with a wider audience. The garden was the site of producing, performing, exhibiting, exchanging, reading, translating, discussing, and playing.

In their first published book Queered: What’s To Be Done With Xcentric Art they combineexperimental, poetic, and theory-based writing with the e-mail correspondence that both instituted and constituted the formation of the loose local and diasporic network of queer and feminist Armenian artists and intellectual producers active around the QY collective. Filled with debates, conflicts and emotions, it also makes public the work of funding and the complex processes around funding applications. Different formats of writing meet and mix. So do the languages and alphabets of Armenian and English. «A two-year conversation» amongst different Qeering Yerevan members that took place on a listserver via e-mails was also included. Therefore, the book functions as an open-ended archive.

For the exhibition «Suzanne Lacy’s International Dinner Party in contemporary feminist thought» Queering Yerevan contributes a new film based on the experiences of the three years of the garden of Zarbuyan 34. Making use of documentary videos shot during exhibitions, performances, discussions, lectures, and presentations, the film, like their book, can be understood as a site of experimentation and exchange. The film, like the book, constitutes a complex, open-ended, queer feminist archive.

Installation view radical practices of collective care, Gallery, Toni-Areal, ZHdK Zurich University of the Arts, Zurich, 2015.

radical practices of collective care is self-described as a «collective research process investigating collective practices of care, reproduction and mutual aid as related to social movements.» It was initiated by Manuela Zechner, Julia Wieger and Bue Rübner Hansen in 2012. Starting from shared obsvervations «that the impact of the 2008 financial crisis could be felt strongly especially in Spain, Greece, Portugal and that austerity politics started to take effect, further dismantling the social institutions once provided by the (welfare)state throughout Europe» the three began their practice of a useful archive on «autonomous self-reproduction». Their collaborative work is based upon shared interests in «care, social reproduction/reproductive labor and, related to these questions, forms of organizing, food production and housing.» The first year their work was hosted and supported by the VBKÖ, the Austrian Association of Women Artists. The VBKÖ Vereinigung Bildender Künstlerinnen Österreichs was founded in 1910. Today, the VBKÖ exists as a space for fostering contemporary feminist artistic agendas, offering a space for experiments and promoting political and activist work, in order to establish a new and vital connection between historical debates and contemporary queer, feminist art production.

In 2014, following an invitation by Katharina Morawek and co-curator Manuela Zechner they conducted a workshop with Territorio Doméstico at the Shedhalle Zürich in the framework of the exhibition How we want to live. Madrid-based domestic worker’s group Territorio Doméstico, is a collective of mostly migrant women working in private homes. Territorio Doméstico has been a powerful voice in defending the rights of domestic workers and a key reference for creative and community-based methodologies of organising.

Their blog: http://radicalcollectivecare.blogspot.co.at is a growing and open-ended archive. Here, they share knowledge on «autonomous, collective practices that enable us to create alternative structure of care; alternatives to those options offered by the state and its capitalist logics that determine our daily lives; practices that allow us to imagine a different everyday, and offer us tools to escape the effects of austerity politics.» For the exhibition «Suzanne Lacy’s International Dinner Party in contemporary feminist thought» radical practices of collective care contributes a new text-based work offering a reflection of their practice. Responding to questions posed via e-mail by Elke Krasny, radical practices of collective care collectively authored About the Radical Collective Care Practices Project – an interview text. It is presented in the form of two posters using black type on a red ground.

Installation view Red Min(e)d, Gallery, Toni-Areal, ZHdK Zurich University of the Arts, Zurich, 2015.

Red Min(e)d is self-identified as a «feminist curatorial group» active with(in) and beyond the post-Yugoslav space. The four members are Jelena Petrović and Katja Kobolt, Danijela Dugandžić Živanović, and Dunja Kukovec. Starting from shared experiences of transitionality from the Socialist Federalist Republic of Yugoslavia to post-socialist globalization and based upon shared beliefs in curating feminist knowledge, friendship, and solidarity, the group started Red Min(e)d and their ongoing Living Archive project in 2011. The Living Archive produces and shares knowledge on the intersections of feminism and contemporary art in the post-Yugoslav context.

«We have been working on the basis of solidarity and consensus. We are four and we are constantly shifting power between us (…) we have been building a truly safe space of belonging. Living Archive editions took place in Zagreb, Vienna, Stockholm, Sarajevo, and Ljubljana.» The Living Archive is an exhibition laboratory and a public interactive archive with several (non)working stations such as: a Audio/Video booth that documents and presents live artists talks, discussions, and interviews, the Perpetuum Mobile with a growing collection of video and other media art, and the Reading Room where one can fill out the feminism and art Questionnaire, and since the Sarajevo edition there is also the Curatorial Forum.

«What we have known since the first edition of the Living Archive is that most artists, curators, and authors, just like each one of us, have no salaries, no health insurance, have no savings, have no studios, no security and no plans for future. They produce hungry, tired, love sick, home sick, lonely, with friends, using the equipment and skills of their friends and giving their lives, time and energy to produce art knowing that most of the people around them believe that art is just a commodity.»

In 2013, Red Min(e)d were nominated as October Salon curators. Initiated in 1960 by the City of Belgrade, the Salon is the oldest and most prestigious institution of contemporary visual art in Belgrade. «We searched for a public museum or a gallery in Belgrade that would be big enough to host over 40 artistic positions, have at its disposal an operating license to be able to welcome the public, be open and available in autumn and have heating and electricity in the whole building.» They found neither a museum nor a gallery. They decided that the 54th October Salon would take place in the former KLUZ department store and factory, originally built as a military salon, currently owned by Zepter. The exhibition No One Belongs Here More than You appropriated the precarious space of a so-called private-public partnership afforded within the conditions of neoliberal predatory capitalism. During the October Salon exhibition they made manifest «the labor of art and the labor of curating.»

For the exhibition «Suzanne Lacy’s International Dinner Party in contemporary feminist thought» Red Min(e)d contributes a new work demonstrating their curatorial methodology. Their contribution comprises the following elements: Perpetuum Mobile Screening Act of Instinct by Elin Magnusson, video documentations of the two Living Archive Forums, No One Belongs Here More Than You and Creating The Feminist Archive Means Facing The Real To The Most Extent, and a wall paper based upon Saša Krekoš original visual identity developed for the 54th October Salon: No One Belongs Here More Than You integrating quotes from The Living Archive Questionnaire.

Installation view Lecture Installation. On Epistemology and Historiography. Critical Curatorial Feminist Practice. (2014) by Elke Krasny, Gallery, Toni-Areal, ZHdK Zurich University of the Arts, Zurich, 2015.   

This lecture addresses epistemology and historio­graphy with regard to a feminist historiography of curating, a history of feminist curating, and a feminist critique of the hegemonic history of curating.

The first part of the lecture constellates a number of key publications on feminist art history, feminist art theory, women’s history, and feminist political theory. Looked at together, the grouping of these publications allows an understanding for the changes and shifts with regard to key issues of concern for feminist scholarship. The publications chosen reflect a special interest in the politics of material conditions and artistic production in relationship to the politics of feminist appropriation, transgression, and transformation.

The second part of the lecture brings together a number of key exhibitions dedicated to women’s art and feminist art over a period of 99 years, beginning in 1910. The constellation clearly demonstrates a feminist curatorial project within curating’s history.

The third part of the lecture examines a number of key publications relevant to the emerging project of curating’s historiography. The mapping of these recent publications clearly demonstrates that there is one strand of curating’s historiography and another strand of curating’s feminist historiography. These two strands run in parallel, yet they rarely intersect or overlap. One could argue that the publications do in fact share the same past, yet they produce a very different historiographical account of this past. The past finds diverse uses in both feminist critique and feminist alliances.

The fourth part of the lecture describes and theorizes Suzanne Lacy’s «International Dinner Party» as a key moment in feminist curatorial thought. The «International Dinner Party» project links issues of feminist organizing, and networking with issues of the archive and future change.

This lecture was held in the frame of the Research Platform for Curatorial and Cross-disciplinary Cultural Studies, Practice-Based Doctoral Programme; A co-operation of the Department of Art at the University of Reading (UK) with the Postgraduate Programme in Curating at the Zurich University for the Arts, Institute Cultural Studies, Department Cultural Analysis (CH). Gasthaus zum Bären/ Museum, Zurich, March 7, 2014.

HANDS-ON URBANSIM 1850-2012. THE RIGHT TO GREEN

Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst Leipzig
08.06.2013 – 08.09.2013, GfZK-2
Opening 07.06.2013, 7 pm

curated by Elke Krasny

an exhibition of the Architekturzentrum Wien

The research-based exhibition 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. 

Hands-on Urbanism 1850 – 2012. The Right to Green was initiated and curated by Elke Krasny forArchitekturzentrum Wien.

Exhibition graphic: Alexander Schuh
Scenography: Alexandra Maringer

COUNTER-PRODUCTION Performing Counter-Productions

Ein Kunstvermittlungsprojekt Freitag, 7. Dezember 2012, 19 Uhr   Ausgangspunkt für die Zusammenarbeit von angehenden Kunsterzieher_innen und Schüler_innen bildet die aktuelle Ausstellung der Generali Foundation, Counter-Production. Continue reading…

Le Corbusier’s Voyage Re-orient-ed 1911:2011

Le Corbusier’s Voyage Re-orient-ed 1911:2011 Ein Reisebericht von Elke Krasny und David Bergé Eröffnung am Freitag, 23. November 2012, 19 Uhr kunsthaus muerz Wiener Straße 35, 8680 Mürzzuschlag Ausstellungdauer  : 24.11.2012–27.1.2013 Continue reading…

HANDS-ON URBANISM AT THE BIENNALE DI VENEZIA

Hands-On Urbanism 1850-2012 by Elke Krasny, curator, and Alexander Schuh, graphic designer, is part of the exhibition Common Ground curated by David Chipperfield Padiglione Centrale, 13. Mostra Internazionale di Architettura, La Biennale di Venezia 2012, 29. 8.–25. 11. 2012

Mapping the Everyday: Neighbourhood Claims for the Future

Audain Gallery — Simon Fraser University

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.

2 OR 3 THINGS, WE´VE LEARNED

PENSER TOUT HAUT / FAIRE L’ARCHITECTURE

Architektur beginnt im Kopf. The Making of Architecture

Architekturzentrum Wien
Eröffnung 15. Oktober 2008 bis 4. Februar 2009
Kuratorin und wissenschaftliche Leiterin seit 2006.

Ausgestellt werden eine wissenschaftsgeschichtliche Aufarbeitung der Werkzeuge der Architekturproduktion im dialektischen Zusammenspiel mit den individuierten Entwurfsmethodologien und Werkzeugverwendungsweisen folgender Ateliers und Büros:

Alvar Aalto, Lina Bo Bardi, Bow-Wow, Hermann Czech, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Edge Design Institute, Yona Friedman, Antoni Gaudí, Lux Guyer, Steven Holl Architects, Lacaton & Vassal, Rudolf Olgiati, Charlotte Perriand, R&Sie(n), Schwalm-Theiss, Karl Schwanzer, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP SOM, The Jerde Partnership, UNStudio, VSBA Venturi Scott Brown & Associates

Architektur beginnt im Kopf
The Making of Architecture

Architekturzentrum Wien – Old hall
October 16.2008 – February 02.2009

“Architects even resort to guns when it comes to firing their creative genius.” Falter, 21.11.08

Whereas in one Parisian architect’s studio shots are fired at a clay block, in another orchids are raised. In Zurich an architect reclined in her bed with a wooden set-square, in Hong Kong thoughts are crystallised with pieces of Lego. This exhibition tells about the very different ways in which architects use their various tools, from the pencil to the computer.
Alvar Aalto / Lina Bo Bardi / Atelier Bow-Wow / Hermann Czech / Diller Scofidio + Renfro / Edge Design Institute / Yona Friedman / Antoni Gaudí / The Jerde Partnership / Lux Guyer / Steven Holl Architects / Lacaton & Vassal / Rudolf Olgiati / Charlotte Perriand / R&Sie(n) / Theiss & Jaksch/Schwalm-Theiss / Karl Schwanzer / SOM Skidmore, Owings & Merrill / UNStudio / Venturi Scott Brown & Associates: these 20 offices were researched over a period of more than two years. Documentary photographs show the way things really look there, and each studio presents the development of one project by means of sketches or models. Statements by the architects themselves about their design methods and sources of inspiration deepen these un-usual insights in the working world of architecture.

The catalogue ’The Force is in the Mind. The Making of Architecture’ is published in German and in English: Birkhäuser Verlag, ISBN : 978-3-7643-8980-2, Paperback, 188 S. – 24,0 x 19,5 cm, Einband – flex.(Paperback), Erscheinungsdatum : 1. Aufl. 17.10.2008

Curator: Elke Krasny
Project coordination, research assistance: Gudrun Hausegger
Research assistance: Robert Temel
Scenography: Alexandra Maringer, Assistent: Bernadette Krejs
Setting: Dietlind Rott
Exhibitiondesign: Thomas Kussin, buero8