"The Territorial Complex" questions modes of how cities are constructed in terms of their architectural settings and the inherent social and economic dynamics. How do past modes of living influence current conditions or views on urban territories and the changes that have or have not taken place? Utopias and desires, which in a Lacanian sense always come close to reality, but in the end cannot be fulfilled, are at the basis of imaginary forces, which determine people’s thinking and living.

The works in the exhibitions take specific urban topographies as the starting point to reflect on the changes, which these social units were meant to bring about and the sometimes dead-end scenarios in which people had to find themselves. How do utopian concepts survive in the long run, or, how do people’s beliefs in a certain system get overthrown after time? Aesthetic values versus social use or political thinking are some of the issues raised by the artists in the exhibition, who work in different thematic fields but here raise the question to which extent urban territories were conceived in terms of their functionality and how their original functions have not survived the demands of present-day economic and social conditions.

How has our late capitalist system overthrown some of the beliefs of the 1960s, including architectural and societal issues, which declined due to the ever-changing post-globalist and post-democratic demands on the individual? Aesthetic and idealistic beliefs in an improvement of Foucault’s conception of governmentality lead to a reflection of territorial issues, which the artists in the exhibition examine from an intermediary perspective, gauging the effects specific urban structures of the past have had on the present. The functionality of these entities might have been visionary in the past, yet has to be questioned in terms of present conditions of cohabitation and working structures.

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supported by:

bm:ukk
ERSTE Foundation
MA 7 – Interkulturelle und Internationale Aktivitäten
Stadt Wien - Film, Kino, Neue  Medien