The exhibition “Ensemble of Relations“ assembles artistic projects that position themselves by means of discursive, analytical or activist confrontation against the predominating politics of neoliberal global Capitalism – against discrimination, ostracism and exploitation.

The hegemony of hetero-normative, racist practices as well as their increasing acceptance and normalisation in neo-liberal societies necessitates the formation of resistant oppositions, thus bringing about an alternative production of knowledge and historiographies as well as progressive modes of self-empowerment and self-determination. With regard to critical practices of art, this also means a permanent discussion of the threat of appropriation and instrumentalisation through conventional culture-production machineries.

The artistic positions represented in this exhibition, try to point out potentials of individual as well as collective models of action against the dominant capitalist system, to grasp processes of subjectivation and mobilisation, to develop strategies against normative identity constructions and to oppose the objectivation of minorities as well as the medialisation and normalisation of their discrimination.

LJUBOMIR BRATIć

BODY OF THE STATE …

installation, 2009

The work builds on the existing, on that which is left over for the archives, on that which remains after an act of violence legitimized by the state – if this action reaches the public, at all. It builds on the collected pieces of discourse, the newspaper articles, which all together refer to the violence of the state organs, the police, within the past ten years. The violence is an appearrance of every-day life, blood and thunder on the part of the state organs are a definite programme. The media are intended to give this violent process an aura of necessity and self-evidence. The public – referring to the body of migrant workers – is no civic public of exchange of free opinion, but a place where violence, taking place every day in numerous forms, is mythologized. A violent historical process becomes in this way the nature of the presence, something which cannot be different. The real behind it is eradicated. The receivers of this violence were and still are individuals who do not belong officially to the body of the state. Better to say, they are not allowed to be recognized members of it, since through their presence they already form part of it. A part, however, whose function is clear in the possibility to constitute through the violent destruction and mistreatment of their bodies the difference to those who belong to it. They appear as objects of description and serve as objects of the formation of further narratives. Thus, they are once again abused as untouchables, as part of this ideological complex, as the other side of the Western mythos, the best of all worlds. This work tries to explore this mechanism and thematize its relentless and distorting influence on everybody in the society – even though not with all of them with a deadly outcome.

In collaboration with Can Gülcü

LINA DOKUZOVIć

SOCIAL REGULATION UNDER MARKET DEREGULATION: “A SERIOUS GAME ON EQUILIBRIUM”

interactive game installation, 2009

The interactive project simulates and draws parallels on the current socioeconomic condition – one of instability and “crisis.” The ultimate goal of the capitalist system is to find ever-developing flexible means for maintaining the stability of an inherently unstable structure/market that makes profit through violence, slavery, appropriation and death. Therefore, the main premise of the game is the analysis of the exchange of resources – biological, living or dead labor.

As the game simulates infra- and superstructural elements, the “stability” between an increasingly deregulated economy and social regulation is shown and maintained. The theoretical proposal stands on the First Law of Thermodynamics (Rudolf Clausius, 1850) that “energy cannot be created or destroyed, only converted from one form to another,” using the interlinked elements of capital, finance and social roles. The Second Law of Thermodynamics (Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot, 1824), however, introduces entropy as a variable in energy production, stating that there is a perpetual tendency towards a condition of destruction increasing with time.

Therefore, a system which cannot ever be in equilibrium on its own, eventually reaches a limit – presented here as the limit to the resources of capital. Therefore, an inward-appropriation of the very modes of entropy result in order to make use of the very conditions of instability, exploiting entropy through “necrotrophy” – the parasitism of living resources resulting in death – posited here as “necropolitics” (Achille Mbembe).

The game exposes the perverse relationship between economic production and the production of modes of life. The choice for a “serious game” presents a critical analysis of an “equilibrium” which cannot be obtained. The interactive project should exist as a self-sustaining experimental learning platform. It consists of the game machine, the playing rules, playing cards and an accompanying reader.

MUZAFFER HASALTAY

“CAN WE SPEAK TO EACH OTHER?“

video, 2009

In the film “Can We Talk to Each Other?“, ‘migrant‘ is the category of a socio-scientific study. As object of a study on the theme “Constructions of Masculinity of young Turkish Migrants”, the artist is interviewed by a sociologist and thus classified as ‘migrant of the 2nd, 3rd, etc. generation’. After the first interview in the year 2004, the request for a further interview follows.

In order to make the experience of the categorisation as ‘the other’ on the part of the sociologist, who does not define himself further, and to break through this classification, Hasaltay makes the following interview the subject of his own work. He directs the camera onto the sociologist, while he appears himself in a mirror during this process, which is employed as deciding element of design of the situation: the mirror is aimed at showing both speakers on their ‘search after the search’; its use is the attempt to dissolve the subject-object separation of such a questioning and to transform the situation into a conversation between ‘equals’. The encounter of the speakers is marked by the incompatibility of both intentions – the sociologist tries to conduct his interview while the filmmaker aims towards a conversation on the interview. The recording of this conversation constitutes the raw material of the video work, whose title refers to Gayatri Spivak’s text “Can the Subaltern Speak?“.

ANA HOFFNER

MOVEMENT, PRIVATIZED.

A Re-enactment, 2009

In the video performance “Walking in an exaggerated manner in the parameters of a square”, Bruce Nauman explores the relationship between body and space. His movement along the perimeters of a square takes place within the closed boundaries of his studio and is only accessible for the audience through the medium.

In the form of a re-enactment of this work from the 1968, the attempt is undertaken to re-articulate the relationship of body and space for the present time. This time, Nauman’s movement takes place with direct involvement of the audience and approaches questions that are shifted off into a depolitized private area. The square is symbolic of a system that makes any social movement impossible through privatisation. Using the example of sexual-political movements that are absorbed in neo-liberal capitalism and brought to a standstill, it becomes visible how a self-explained capitalist and hetero-normative centre overspills its edges and undermines possibilities of opposition. Inside and outside, but also public and private disappear in this process in an indistinguishability, in which there is only a tranquilised private anymore.

Characteristic of this state is the creation of a naked life which in its invisibility cannot access any form of identity politics that constitutes the basis of social movement. Movement, Privatized - a Re-enactment tries to draw attention to possibilities of action within this invisibility, particularly because these have not yet been assigned to the political sphere. From this position, it is necessary to ask for forms of the public beyond the identity-political model of representation.

MARTIN KRENN

IN BETWEEN THE MOVEMENTS

video, 2008/2009

The project is concerned with the phenomenon of global networking of anticapitalist movements and their effects on theory and practices of left-wing resistance. The conversations held with the activists are starting points of short films and posters. The latter refer to the contents of the respective short films. The visual translation of the poster and the design of the films when shot and cut are created together. The cooperation with the persons involved from different geographical and activist contexts allows for insights into different perspectives of resistance and represents an example of collaborative production of knowledge.

“Snip...Snip...Bang, Bang: Political Art Reloaded”, created with Gregory Sholette in New York (2008/2009), thematizes the uneven distribution politics in the art system by means of the comparison of invisible art-and culture work with the phenomenon “Dark Matter” in astrophysics. The history of political art actions in New York City in the 1980s and 1990s presented by Sholette in the video and their influences on current activist and artistic practices shows in addition, possibilities of action outside of the art market. The second video was shot in 2009 together with Ronen Eidelman in Holon near Tel Aviv. It thematizes the special situation of Israelian activists within the movement of globalisation and the role, which can be ascribed to Israelian artists in post-nazi countries. The paternalistic attitude, which may be taken in this process by public German institutions, is shown by the censorship of Eidelman’s thesis at the Bauhaus University in Weimar. Thus, the establishment of an office “Medinat Weimar” (a movement for a Jewish state in Gemany) on the university premises was prohibited, and this with the argument to protect him from the neonazi-attacks.

“In Between the Movements“ is also shown on a website, the images of the posters and short films can be seen there online. http://www.in-between-the-movements.net

kindly supported by:
BM:UKK
ERSTE Stiftung
akademie der bildenden künste wien