Open Space - Zentrum für Kunstprojekte aims to create the most vital facilities for contemporary art in the city of Vienna on non-profit base, concerned with bringing the current developments of the enlargement of Europe to the fore through generating interconnected routes.

The initiation intends to bring diverse creative practice together as well as creating real and/or virtual collaborative forum and opening spaces to encourage joint projects. Among its main activities and productions we hope to develop an online publication; contemporary art exhibitions; film and video screening; artist talks and panel discussions.

Creative practice at Open Space - Zentrum für Kunstprojekte with its visual arts programme therefore will take an active role in securing a prominent place in the future culture of Europe towards inventing cultural specific conditions within the realm of underpinning the current structure.

Specific objectives are:

• Building and facilitating new forms of dialogue and cooperation;

• Creating network of networks, database and exchanges, a zone of communicative transfer;

• Highlighting the importance of cultural diversity and bringing the questions of cultural complexity into light;

• Promoting mobility through exchanges of people, expertise and best practices;

• Enforcing events combining different media of artistic expression within contemporary creative practice.

History:

By confronting geographical, political, social and cultural standpoint within a single “cultural specific conditions” the response and/or challenges inevitably involve in bringing forward issues of identification of territory and “imaginary geographies” to reflect cultural specific realities. As a result we look at both the “flows and the spaces of encounters” in order to find what inhabit the possible from which to look at Europe in different ways with the intention of thinking “otherwise” in regard to questions about precarious state of cultural complexity within an inter-disciplinary creative practice.

Strategy:

Open Space - Zentrum für Kunstprojekte would like to introduce an experiential framework derived from contemporary creative practice to the issue of intercultural dialogue to a new audience as a connecting link within the frame of new circulation in its multi layered stance that produces new crosses. This establishes itself by means of contributing a model strategy for cross-border and interregional projects on the basis of improving new approach.

Structure/co-ordination:

The following list shows who are who in the coordination team within its management structure:

Gülsen Bal

Director, Head of Development of Projects and Programmes

Gülsen Bal is the Director, Head of Development of Projects and Programmes at Open Space - Zentrum für Kunst Projekte in Vienna. Bal, the founder of Open Space, aims to create a facilities for contemporary creative practice concerned with contributing a model strategy for cross-border and interregional projects on the basis of improving new approach with its visual arts and educational program. She has also recently developed a new program Critical and Curatorial Investigations for Masters Degree at TU Wien.

Statement

Bal is a visual artist, theoretician and works as an intellectual worker discussing the differential structures within the ethico-aesthetic paradigm conceived in representational boundaries. Her practice/research hence has focused upon exploring the notions of the "difference of identity" and "difference," minority and exilic discourse and border phenomena in trans-local and/or trans-national location within cultural geography.

She has exhibited, curated, published articles and participated in talks in various places and venues in the U.K. as well as in Eu and Turkey.

Recently curated and co-participated

No Ifs, No Buts, DEPO, Istanbul 2010 | the truth worth to risk..., Underground City 21, Vienna 2010 | Ohne Wenn und Aber, Open Space - Zentrum für Kunst Projekte, Vienna 2010 | Visual Notes part of Communication Networks (Art institutions and New Publics) project, Mestna galerija in Ljubljana 2010 | A step to the right, Open Space - Zentrum für Kunst Projekte, Vienna 2009 | In curatorial team for the 28th Biennial of Graphic: The Matrix: An Unstable Reality, Gallery Škuc, Ljubljana 2009 | Arts5th Attitude Festival, Centre for Contemporary Public Art, Macedonia 2009 | Try, Live, Paton Gallery, Ljubljana 2008 | I MYSELF AM WAR!, Open Space - Zentrum für Kunst Projekte, Vienna 2008 | FOLDED-IN, Open Space - Zentrum für Kunst Projekte, Vienna 2008 | Stay here, Contemporary Art Festival: „product", Varna 2008 | Gone City, MAGAZINE4, Bregenz | The Temporary Zones, Open Space - Zentrum für Kunst Projekte, Vienna 2008 | Nobodies Story, :/ Seconds, Leeds 2007 | Semionauti II -produced by Border Crossing, Neon Gallery, Bologna 2007 | territories of Duration, Karsi Sanat, Istanbul 2006 | Semionauti I - produced by Border Crossing, Care/of, Fabrica del Vapore, Milan 2006 | Plateaux - out there / aus dort" Künstlerhaus MOUSONTURM(Archive), Frankfurt/Main 2005 | where It was, shall I be - wo es war, soll ich werden... , Diyarbakir 2005 | Border Crossing- Tur reTur… , Künsöffering, Oslo 2004 | Different/ciation, MiArt, Milan 2003 | Short & Sharp, Gallery 291, London 2003 | Border Crossing- Here and Somewhere else…, Gallery X, Istanbul 2003

and at the same time has taken part in numerous group exhibitions

Xenophobia Redux, Open Space - Zentrum für Kunst Projekte, Vienna 2008 |Transmission, The Arts Gallery, London 2007 | Dialogues Méditerranéens, Saint Tropez 2007 | Looking to the Left, Contemporary Incheon Art Museum, Korea 2006 | Include me in/out, International Biennial Arts Festival, San Francisco 2005 | Blueprints, Berliner Kunstsalon, Berlin 2005 | einfache Gleichheit mit sich, prog:ME, 1st Festival of Electronic Media, Rio de Janeiro 2005 | where the streets have no names, MoNA, Third International Video Festival, Detroit 2005 | Balkan Malls, REX Cultural Center, Belgrade, 2004 and Casa Tranzit, Bucharest, 2004 | Screened Out, Liverpool Biennial 2004 - Independents section, Liverpool 2004 | The Self on the Screen, Art Beat: Battiti D'arte Sull'adriatico, Biennale Adriatica di Arti Nuove, San Benedetto del Tronto 2004 | disembodied Voice, Istanbul 2003

Recently published

A publication of an essay Nowhere to turn to?!??? in Communication Networks (Art institutions and New Publics) edited by Alenka Gregorič & Bojana Piškur, Ljubljana 2010 | A publication of an essay Life in/on the Moments of Encounters in Man to Man in All Creatures Great and Small, Wydarzenia 2010 | A publication of an essay Connection Zones in Tactics of Invisibilty edited by Daniela Zyman, Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König 2010 | A publication of an essay Mapping the Shifting Borders: Beyond “Point Zero” in New Media Technology, Science and Politics edited by Marina Grzinic and Tanja Velagic, a Loecker Verlag publication, Vienna 2008 | Insight: The Disputed Urge to Surge, Third Text, London 2008 | Settled in Mobility?, Toplumbilim, Istanbul 2007 | When Unavoidable Knocks on the Door, ARTMargins, NY 2007 | Strangers with Angelic Faces, Third Text, London 2007 | What I See in the Mirror, Hillsider, Istanbul 2007 | Uncompromising Hostility, Afterimage, NY 2006|A Piece of Sky Is Missing!, Mute, London 2006 | Global Doubt, /seconds, Leeds 2006 | Mapping the Shifting Borders, Mute, London 2006 | Subjects in space… , ISEA (the inter-Society for the Electronic Arts) Amsterdam 2006 | Imaginary Year - Turkish Cinema: Aesthetics, Culture, History, Chicago 2006 | Open Systems, Sanat Dünyam¦z, Istanbul 2005 | Interactive Integrated Media, Sanat Dünyam¦z, Istanbul 2005 | Revival of Essential Values, Rh+ Sanat, Istanbul 2005 | Rethinking of Everyday Life: Martha Rosler, Rh+ Sanat, Istanbul 2005 | Developing the Negative?, Sanat Dünyam¦z, Istanbul 2005 | I U She together, Sanat Dünyam¦z, Istanbul 2005

and numerous Conference & Seminars

System Errors, Institute für Kunst Space, Vienna 2010 | re:solutions – Intervention and Research in Visual Culture, IG Bilden Kunst, Vienna 2010 | Diasporic Viewpoints part of Tactics of Invisibility exhibition, Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Vienna 2010 | Communication Networks (Art institutions and New Publics), Mestna galerija in Ljubljana 2010 | Vienna Art Scene, Depot, Vienna 2009 | Video Vortex 3 Ankara Edition, Bilkent University, Department of Communication and Design in cooperation with the Institute of Network Cultures, Ankara 2008 | Focus on: I MYSELF AM WAR!, Depot, Vienna 2008 | The Creative Moment of Encounters - Curatorial Projects, the O.K Center for Contemporary Art, Transart Institute, Linz 2008 | The Bregenz Dialogues, Galerie Lisi Hämmerle, Bregenz 2008 | Spaces of Production: Open Space, Depot, Vienna 2008 | The Space of Min(d)field, Santral, Istanbul 2008 | Open Space, Open Systems…, Labfactory, Vienna 2008| The Philosophy of the Overlooked, ICA, London 2006 | The work of Gilles Deleuze, Greenwich University, London 2006 | Modus Operandi, Accademia Brera di Belle Arti, Milan 2006 | A Long Journey Eastward, ICA, London 2005 | Engaging Im-Possible, Central Saint Martins College of Art &Design, London 2005 | Dialogue: a journey towards Space/Place…, Diyarbakir 2005 | Performing 'Self' Reflexive Discourse, 1st International Visual Studies Conference - IFEMA, Madrid 2004 | Questioning The Effect of Inversion In The Subject/Object Relations In Art Practice, YKKM, Istanbul 2003| Eyeing the Other, The London Institute, London 2003

Edited

Open Space - Mapping contemporary creative practice / Open Space - Schnittpunkte Aktueller Kunstpraxis, Divus, Vienna 2009 | A special issue on Turkey, The Space of Min(d)field', Third Text Magazine - a Routledge publication, London 2008 | Türkiye'de “Dün-Bugün” Dönüsümleri, a Taylor & Francis Inc. publication, Istanbul 2008 | Gone City: re-reading “cultural turn” in mobility, a Bucher Verlag publication, Bregenz 2008

Membership of Professional Associations and Institutes

Susanne Lummerding

Advisory board

Susanne Lummerding, PhD, art historian, venia legendi for art theory and media studies certified coach / supervisor,visiting professor for intermediality at the Institute for Theatre, Film and Media Studies at the University of Vienna; visiting professor for Gender Studies at the University of Klagenfurt and at the University for Music and Applied Arts Vienna teaching at universities in Austria, Germany, and the USA; focuses of research: the analysis of representation as hegemonic processes of constructing reality and as processes of negotiation; the analytical interrelation of a critically revised notion of mediality with that of the political; the analysis of the structural preconditions of subject constitution, the construction of difference, and agency; founder of the international research platform ‘Visuelle Kultur im Feld des Politischen / the visual as political.’

Elisabeth Mayerhofer

Advisory board

Elisabeth Mayerhofer is a free-lance researcher and lecturer in Vienna/Austria. Her main research interests are Creative Industries, cultural labour markets and gender equality in the cultural field. Currently she is managing director of IG Kultur Österreich, a lobby organisation for independent cultural centers in Austria. She is member of the Austrian Society of Cultural Economics and Policy Studies (FOKUS). In this context she is actually tackling the question of political representation of creators.

Suzana Milevska

Advisory board

Suzana Milevska, Prof. Dr., is an art and visual culture theorist and curator based in Skopje, Macedonia. Currently she teaches Art History at the Faculty of Fine Arts - the University “Cyril and Methodius”- Skopje. Her research and curatorial interests include: postcolonial critique of hegemonic power in art, the complex relations between gender theory and feminism(s) in art practices, socially engaged and participatory projects, etc.

She holds a Ph.D. in Visual Cultures from Goldsmiths College in London where she taught from 2003 to 2005. She was the Director of the Centre for Visual and Cultural Research at the Euro-Balkan Institute in Skopje (2006 to 2008) where she taught Visual Culture and Gender. In 2004, she was a Fulbright Senior Research Scholar. Since 1992 she curated over seventy exhibitions, mostly committed to searching for new curatorial formats and models of presenting critical curatorial discourses and socially and politically engaged art practices. She was a national curator for the Macedonian artists’ participation at the Istanbul Biennale (1995, 1997 and 1999) and for the exhibition Cosmopolis - Thessaloniki Biennale (2004). In 2005, she curated the project The Workers’ Club, at the International Contemporary Art Biennial at the National Gallery in Prague.

In 2010 she published the book Gender Difference in the Balkans (Saarbrucken: VDM Verlag) and her critical texts and chapters are included in publications as: Continuing Dialogues (Vienna: JRP/Ringier, 2008); Manifesta Companion (Milano: Silvana Editoriale, 2008); New Feminism: worlds of feminism, queer and networking conditions (Vienna: Löcker Verlag, 2007); Conversations with Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (London: Seagull Books, 2007); Is Art History Global? (London: Routledge, 2007); East Art Map, ed. Irwin (London: Afterall, 2006).

Helge Mooshammer

Advisory board

Helge Mooshammer, PhD, is director of the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) research projects Other Markets (2010-2013) and Relational Architecture (2006-2009) at the School of Architecture and Urban Planning at Vienna University of Technology. In 2008 he was Research Fellow at the International Research Center for Cultural Studies (IFK) Vienna and currently teaches at Goldsmiths, University of London. His research is concerned with new forms of urban sociality arising from processes of transnationalisation, transient and informal land use, and newly emerging regimes of governance.

His books include Visuelle Kultur: Körper-Räume-Medien (ed., Böhlau, 2003), Cruising: Architektur, Psychoanalyse und Queer Cultures (Böhlau, 2005), Networked Cultures: Parallel Architectures and the Politics of Space (NAi Publishers, 2008), Netzwerk Kultur: Die Kunst der Verbindung in einer globalisierten Welt (transcript, 2010) and the forthcoming Bauarten von Sexualität, Körper, Phantasmen: Architektur und Psychoanalyse (co-ed., 2011).

Peter Mörtenböck

Advisory board

Peter Mörtenböck is professor of Visual Culture at the Vienna University of Technology and Visiting Fellow in the Department of Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London, where he has initiated the Networked Cultures project (www.networkedcultures.org), a global research platform focusing on translocally connected spatial practices. His current research explores the potential of networked ecologies and collaborative forms of knowledge production vis-à-vis the dynamics of geopolitical conflict and urban transformation. He has recently authored or co-edited Die virtuelle Dimension: Architektur, Subjektivität und Cyberspace (Böhlau, 2001), Visuelle Kultur: Körper-Räume-Medien (ed., Böhlau, 2003), Networked Cultures: Parallel Architectures and the Politics of Space (NAi Publishers, 2008) and Netzwerk Kultur: Die Kunst der Verbindung in einer globalisierten Welt (transcript, 2010). His essays on contemporary art, architecture and visual culture have appeared in international journals such as Grey Room, Architectural Research Quarterly and Third Text.

Nada Prlja

Advisory board

Nada Prlja was born in Sarajevo, moving at an early age to Skopje, Macedonia. Since 1999 she has been living and working in London. She graduated from the National School of Fine Art (A Levels) and from the Academy of Fine Arts, Skopje, Macedonia and consequently received an MPhil research degree from the Royal College of Arts, London, UK.

Nada Prlja’s work deals with the complex political and sociological situations of the contemporary world. Prlja is an artist, working predominantly in installation and video art medium. Prlja occasionally writes for art magazines and curates exhibitions.

Selected solo exhibitions: Lakeside Kunstrum, Klagenfurt, MC Gallery, Zagreb, The Museum of City Vzigalica, Ljubljana, Museum of Contemporary Art, Skopje, etc. Selected group exhibitions: Manifesta 8, David Roberts Art Foundation, London, Skuc Gallery, Tina B - Prague Contemporary Art Festival, Prague, Hong-Gah National Museum, Taipei, Zacheta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw, etc.

Walter Seidl

Advisory board

Walter Seidl, was born in Graz, Austria and is based in Vienna. He earned a PhD in Contemporary Cultural History and studied in Austria, France and the U.S. Seidl works as curator, critic and artist. As a critic, Seidl writes for various international art magazines such as Camera Austria, contemporary, springerin or život umjetnosti. His curatorial work has included projects in Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Switzerland and the U.S. Since 2004, Seidl has been in charge of the art collection of Erste Group.

Mira Turba

Managerial/Administrative Assistant

Mira Turba worked in the fields of production, documentation, editorial and research in various video-and media-productions or documentary shorts. She studied film and media, focused on cultural studies and visual cultural history / Institute for contemporary history and TFM, University of Vienna.

Dörte Eliass

Translator/Editor

Dörte Eliass, born in Hannover, lives and works as translator and editor in Vienna. She is specialised on the translation of art- and cultural scientific texts and has been awarded several translation prizes by the BMUKK.
Info: www.eliassuebersetzungen.at

Coelestine Engels

Duty Managing: exhibition display, installation

Coelestine Engels born in Salzburg and lives in Vienna and Berlin since 1998. Engels is artist of different fields/disciplines.
2001-2006 she studied at akademie der bildenden künste wien, operates fine arts in the fields of painting, graphics, photography, video, aside from set-up of exhibitions, event technique, outfitting, film equiping and stagemanaging.

tresdelinquentes

Design & Programming

Robert Schwieger and Alexander Stern are tresdelinquentes, a studio for visual communication based in Vienna & Hamburg.

Insurance

Insurance is provided by myadvantage in partnership with K1 Vermögensberatung.

Book keeping

by Seçkin Daşdemir, MBA

Previous engagement

Stefania Del Sordo - Managerial/Administrative Assistant, December 2010 - May 2011

Michael Kargl - Managerial/Administrative Assistant, September 2010 - November 2010

Lisa Bolyos - Managerial/Administrative Assistant, October 2009 - July 2010

Can Gülcü - Managerial/Administrative Assistant, December 2008 – September 2009

Okşan Svastics - Exhibition Assistant, January 2009 – April 2009

Fatih Aydogdu -Visual Media Development, January 2008 – March 2009

Mira Turba - Management/Co-ordination, April 2008 – December 2008