Vienna Art Week 2022 / CHALLENGING ORDERS

by Alice Zucca

For the 18th consecutive year, Vienna’s reputation as a city of art was successfully brought to the forefront by the VIENNA ART WEEK. This year’s theme was “CHALLENGING ORDERS” and it encouraged artists to rethink the social and political status quo as well as existing norms and orders in their artistic practices, by challenging and replacing existing canons, criticizing institutions, or rethinking the status quo in terms of social norms and orders and more. As curators Robert Punkenhofer and Julia Hartmann stated: “The festival’s motto – Challenging Orders – opens a multiperspectival discourse on the departure from the political, social, cultural, economic, aesthetic, and personal status quo”. A very timely theme that opens up a universe of introspective possibilities not just regarding the art scene and the state of art, but also about our position as human beings, our life in society, the environment and the planet we inhabit. A theme that proves once again to be in line with the very spirit of the magnificent city of Vienna, a magical place that, strong in its important history and tradition, has always breathed the same vocation and propensity for the contemporary and has never shied away from challenging art and ideas in a hybrid cultural cohesion and a visual education that has always welcomed even the most controversial forms of art and thought.

The human being has an innate inclination to order – to catalog, classify, label anything, from the books on a shelf to the different tasks that are part of our daily schedule, to the objects placed on the top of a desk, even to put us as human beings in a category, our role in society and so omitting. Using the word “system” to indicate any portion of a material space, entropy, basically, represents the “degree of disorder” of said system. So: if the “disorder” increases we will have an increase in entropy as well, vice versa a decrease in “disorder” will result in a decrease in entropy itself. We tend to “put in order”!, to control Or rather, we try to reduce entropy! In information theory, entropy is intended as a measure of predictability of a “communication”, or indicates that a “message” is open to a plurality of unknown possible implications and interpretations making it difficult and not immediate to understand. If order is questioned therefore, the greater the disorder will be before eventual clarity – and, the greater the resulting disorder will be, the less informations will be available on the unknown in the making. So how can we immediately catalogue a change? How can we immediately label, identify and order a transformation? Starting from this premise, it’s easy to see how the reason why challenging orders can be a frightening act for today’s society. Nature, on the other hand, seems to follow a diametrically opposite pattern around challenge and risk: the wind and rain that crumble the rocks, reducing them to grains of sand, the earthquakes that destroy buildings are all events that obviously lead to an increase in entropy but are eventually regenerative processes leading to new forms of balance. So, does nature tend to chaos and disorder while we work to achieve order and precision? In reality, things are not quite like that. A radical perspective change is always needed in order to approach the analysis of concepts that escape any attempt at observation that is conditioned by self-referential criteria. The indispensable prerequisite is the conscious acceptance of the limits deriving from the intrinsic imperfection of the human being. Then, it becomes possible to understand that the disorder, to which the inevitable triumph of entropy seems to lead us, is in reality a sublime order of infinite degree that simply transcends our ability to understand. The myth of novelty and change, as often pursued in the past, has died. When there’s a feeling of losing control the human being is lost and tries to fight chaos by silencing it to ensure tranquility, familiarity, and physical and psychological stability. But what remains of this is the amusement that comes from an accumulation of static experiences and a conscience that is filled with educated quotes, which serves as a sterile setting of a lot of art of our time and implicitly is also a side effect that influences its access and the fruition of modern media which empowers – and guilty deforms – collective and individual memory. The innovative potential of art in the struggle against prevailing structures through creative strategies is therefore as much a topic of this year’s VIENNA ART WEEK as the general examination of social and cultural movements that challenge long-standing principles of order. The passive acceptance and categorization of reality takes place to achieve, through an elaborate analysis and synthesis process, a sort of measurement of the degree of disorder on the basis of which we define an acceptable equilibrium. But this inevitably leads only to a stagnant calm and there is no evolution, there is no creativity in that. We always must challenge orders, act more like nature and never forget that we are part of it. As time progressed, several artistic movements succeeded one another and reimagined the past. Long-standing concepts and practices were dismantled when a single period of dominance grew too ingrained; challenging orders and embracing change has always been the key to evolution in art, society, and every aspect that permeates our existence. Excitedly, artists produced new art forms, which usually resulted in new significant studies and introspection of the times, this is what artists have been invited to do in this edition of Vienna Art Week – and this is not only about art anymore or it is very much about it as what art talks about and ultimately investigates – is – life,  that’s the reason why art is able to provide in advance the means we need to have a more accurate view of the reality that surrounds us; and it is certain that in this edition of Vienna art week, viewers will be able to find more than one starting point for reflection on this front.

Exhibition in the House of CHALLENGING ORDERS 

Wiedner Haupstraße 140, 1050 Vienna (19–25 NOV, 1–7 pm)

The VIENNA ART WEEK main show takes place in a soon-to-be-demolished office building, which becomes a one-of-a-kind platform for artistic experimentation. On three levels, covering a total of 1,000 square feet, about 40 artists and performers from throughout the country and the world encourage us to reconsider our own beliefs and prejudices. Among the artists the Guerrilla Girls, Christa Joo Hyun D’Angelo, Coco Fusco, Shepard Fairey, Regina José Galindo, Pipilotti Rist, Roberta Lima, Manu Luksch, The Yes Men, Oliver Ressler, Jenny Marketou, and Lisl Ponger. Curated by Robert Punkenhofer + Julia Hartmann.

A total of 140 events by 70 program partners and much more

Around 140 events in institutions, independent spaces, exhibition spaces and galleries ensure a varied and exciting program throughout the week and in the coming months. Here is a selection of some of the most interesting realities that I had the pleasure to visit – there is the need to move to Vienna at least for a month as Vienna Art Week approaches as the program is so rich and meaningful that everything worth a visit – check the full program > https://www.viennaartweek.at 

Mumok

Mixed up with others before we even begin on view until 10.04.2023

This exhibition explores ways of thinking and doing that unite modern visual culture’s many, sometimes conflicting elements. In order to highlight the hybrid as a successful principle, not only in the creative but also the sociological and political spheres, this exhibition brings together pieces from the mumok collection and objects from the Natural History Museum of Vienna in conversation with current artistic perspectives. Creolization is celebrated in “mixed up with others before we even begin” as a historical and transcultural method of generating the world. The works on display provide new perspectives on such diverse subjects as molecular boundaries of the human body and its entanglements with science and technology, queer folklore and collective feminist rituals. W/ artists: Leilah Babirye, Mariana Castillo Deball, Anetta Mona Chişa & Lucia Tkáčová, Nilbar Güreş, Nicolás Lamas, Slavs and Tatars.

Q21 / MuseumsQuartier Wien

Q21, at Vienna’s Museums Quartier, takes up an area that is around 7000 square meters in size. At its core, this idea revolves primarily on the concept of “creation.” Q21 in fact houses a variety of cultural organizations, groups, agencies, and editorial offices. This creative area adds a new dimension of “creativity” to what is already one of the most significant art and cultural districts in the world. In 2002, parallel with the launch of Q21, an artist-in-residence program was initiated in the city of Vienna. As part of this initiative, visiting artists from across the world are given the opportunity to research and create their work in Vienna. 

Here are some of the artist currently in residence at Q21 and their meaningful researches

The Kyiv-based producer, director and rave hero Koloah significantly impacted the Ukrainian electronic scene. For more than a decade, his musical path has taken him through a cross-section of underground, famous clubs and parties such as Closer, Схема, ∄, Tresor, Berghain, and more. Artist also strongly connected to the film and theatre industry, having film directing background, Koloah working with moviemakers and visual artists. In 2021 he released an audiovisual collaboration and virtual reality project “Inertia” on Standard Deviation and wrote music for a folk-improvisational film ballet by Apache Crew “Vodurudu.” 

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Rebecca Chesney’s practice examines our complex relationship with the natural world, by engaging with issues of culture, politics and power. Weather, water quality, air pollution, land ownership, sea level rise, habitat loss and decline of species are all subjects her work reflects, taking the form of installations, interventions, sound works, habitat creation, drawings, maps and walks.

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Neil Mendoza’s work combines sculpture, electronics and software to bring inanimate objects and spaces to life. By combining found objects with technology in unexpected ways, the different elements of his work can be looked at from a new perspective. He explores themes of the absurd, the humorous, the futile and the surreal. He has exhibited work and talked at conferences around the world, taught classes on art and technology at UCLA and Stanford and co-founded the art collective “is this good?”.

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Born in Zanzibar in 1954, Lubaina Himid is a British painter who has dedicated her four-decades-long career to uncovering marginalised and silenced histories, figures, and cultural expressions. She studied Theatre Design at Wimbledon College of Art and went on to receive an MA in Cultural History from the Royal College of Art. Himid currently lives and works in Preston, UK, and is a professor at the University of Central Lancashire. She was the winner of the Turner Prize in 2017.

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This section will be expanded soon with a series of interviews so stay tuned.

Secession 

Jean-Frédéric Schnyder on view until 05.02.2023

In his exhibition at the Secession, Swiss painter Jean-Frédéric Schnyder displays work spanning almost four decades (1983–2021). Schnyder has been producing artwork since the late 1960s, and his body of work includes paintings, photography, sculptures, objects, and installations. His fundamental openness as an artist has led to a wide range of styles and subjects throughout his oeuvre. When examining Schnyder’s oeuvre as a painter from the 1970s forward, however, one finds a startling continuity alongside breaks. Schnyder bases his selection of themes and motifs on preexisting and established practices, and then plays them through in a manner that is both consistent and skillful. For example, still life, nudity, and landscape are the three motifs that appear the most frequently in art history, but his works maintain a very diverse range of stylistic approaches. It depicts views of humanly produced, self-made environment rather than sustaining the idealized paradigm of Swiss Alpine imagery, such as when motorways and roads appear in the forefront of the picture. The artist creates works in his studio that combine abstract and representational themes and techniques. He uses a pixel system that is reminiscent of both an early digital aesthetic and the color field painting that was popular at the turn of the 20th century for a series of flower paintings, which is another timeless subject matter. Schnyder’s sculptural works are often made from commonplace items and scraps of material. For instance, the work Empire State Building, which was created in 1971, is made out of Lego bricks, chewing gum, and a light source that is concealed within. (Banana) boxes that were once used as moving cartons may also be recycled, particularly the areas of the box that have handles that have been punched out to a regular pattern. The artist painstakingly creates new items by adhering them together with brown paper tape, such as the piece Durchbrochen (2015) that is shown in the exhibition. The second piece in the show is titled “Kafig (2008),” and it is a hollow chamber constructed from the branches of a hazelnut tree.

Das Weisse House / DWHX 

“And so on” / with Ana de Almeida, Caroline Garcia, Rami George, Na Mira, Rebeca Romero and agustine zegers, curated by Kathy Cho. 

In collaboration with Vienna Art Week, Das weisse haus presents Ana de Almeida’s work in the group exhibition, “and so on” organized by Kathy Cho. The artists of the exhibition provide guidance towards ways of moving through personal and cultural bereavement rooted in the loss of relationships and knowledge that is inevitable. “And so on” considers sites of loss as a space for creation, immeasurable to producing living archives. For the exhibition, Ana de Almeida focuses on her in-depth research into the architecture of das weisse haus’ current location and the former uses of the building, particularly when it was a female Teacher’s Training College (1885-1962). The motif on the tiles in her installation, of the ‘Flying Dogs’ or ‘Fliegende Hunde’, as the work is named, was a colloquial term that referred to the women who attended the Teacher’s Training College. The students had to work unpaid for a mandatory two years between finishing their studies and starting their official position as teachers. The juxtaposition of industrial materials in the das weisse haus space highlights de Almeida’s ongoing interest in intertwining the immateriality of gendered labor with attempts to materialize a glitching modernism.