As a manifestation of the artistic production that deconstructs the logic of the dominant distribution of the sensible, The Organism [1] releases the potential of the curatorial to live the institutional critique through its practice. The Organism does not reflect upon the predictable niches, suspicious borders nor usual suspects. It is not envisioned to illustrate or reproduce the existing hegemony.

The Organism no 1: Nowhere [2] addresses the role that art plays in mediating the specific temporality and related emerging complexities in the context of our global, but not globalized society. It proposes an ambivalent perspective of nowherness – “nowhere=now+here” [3] - by transferring it, through four artistic positions, from an assumed immaterialist non-location to the Open Systems gallery as a specific location. It acts as a field of visibility for those forces that most often remain at the position of nowhere (Société Réaliste) due to the fact that they remain in the “unconsciousness” (immateriality) of the (art) world: the necessity to focus on a specific in-situ production (Ramujkić/Kruglanski); the representation of the hermetic procedures and protocols whose results are incomprehensible and invisible (Ilić); the correlation between neuroplasticity and materiality (Neidich).

The Organism no 1: Nowhere is a curatorial attempt of the institutional critique that accommodates these particular questionings of to the crisis of the present in the institution of art. This being said, the revealing is a process of unfolding that produces knowledge of the ability to become outside of the dominant cognitive frames by the means of manual production. It aims to cross-over the existing gaps by addressing a cognitive infrastructure that is both a representation and a critique of the immaterial labor.

As most of the examples of the institutional critique, The Organism falls into its own paradox by complementing the institution of art with the temporality and immateriality that might otherwise remain invisible or underrepresented.

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[1] The Organism is a series of three collective shows that will emerge over the next couple of years: no 1. Nowhere; no 2. Rerouted Viruses; and no 3. Rejuvenated Mt. Verità.
[2] While the numbers are a conduct with the “standardized self-centered position” of a curator, this The Organism indirectly evokes the history of curating, particularly the practice of Clementine Deliss, which was inspired by the organ (see the magazine Oncurating number 14.)
[3] Following the similar line of taught with William Morris’s utopian ideas from the book News from Nowhere.

Siniša Ilić

Precarious

Series of Drawings on the wall, 2011-2012

Precarious is a cycle of works focused on the economic and social systems we are facing in everyday life activities: a confused narrative, repetition, a spiral of different social rituals, problems in representations of catastrophes, hidden or open pressure and exploitation, invisible politics lost in the mess and chaos of daily routines and survival strategies… thinking again, it is about an unbearable structure of obstacles, demands and standards that characterize what at first glance seems to be a messy space, but later reveals itself to be the extremely strict and exclusive atmosphere of late capitalism. This atmosphere is presented as the only way to survive in contemporary society.

Vahida Ramujkić / Aviv Kruglanski

Real-time Documentary Embroidery (selected works)

Embroidery, 2008-ongoing

In the midst of the growing expansion of digital media and communication technologies we find embroidery to be the most accurate technique for documenting reality. With no sketches and previous planning, documentary embroidery presents a challenge in the field of drawing. The restrictions imposed by the technique: the slowness of constructing a line, one stitch at a time, forces us to economize and abstract, limiting our choices, making us consider and select the most important thing to represent. The slowness of the proceedings is considered an advantage, being that it gives us the opportunity to spend some time together, where the events which are the object of our interest take place. Together we experience a new/old way of observing and interacting. The documentary embroidery technique has been promoted and practiced since 2008 in very different occasions always with a group of people, in the bars, streets, offices of Cairo, Bristol, Belgrade, Warsaw, Lodz, Kassel, Barcelona’s suburbs...

Warren Neidich

Rehearsing the Drawing

Performance, 2012

"The diagram is indeed a chaos and a catastrophe but it is also a germ of order and rhythm… As (Francis) Bacon says it unlocks areas of sensation." - Francis Bacon, The Logic of Sensation, Gilles Deleuze, p.102

As part of his residency at IASPIS in Stockholm in 2009 Neidich constructed a wall diagram in his studio with paint sticks, graphite pencil and magic markers. The drawing snaked its way upon the ceiling and floor and represented the current state of his thinking concerning the link between Cultural and Cognitive Capitalism. Specifically how in the age of immaterial labour and the financialisation of capital an intimate relationship between the changing conditions of the general intelligence and the mind-brain interface developed. That in fact he was calling for a new kind of materialism, in which the performative virtuosic aspects of labour created the conditions for the sculpting of the brains neural plasticity. That drawing became the backdrop for a series of blindfolded performances/lectures, in which the contents of the drawing which were replicated as memory networks in the brain were recited in front of a live audience in Open Systems as part of the exhibition… Neidich has redrawn the original drawing in a reconfigured site-specific form. He has also added new research to the drawing and will once again perform it blindfolded.

Société Réaliste

Nowhere

Inscription, 2010

At the core of their practice are the structural and spectral inquiries or the critical re-assemblage of futurological fossils. Their miscellaneous artworks (maps, ensemble of signs or installations) could provoke video neuronal sporogenesis, but also point to the territory of different interpretations of social signifiers. On this occasion Now! Here! rhymes with "nowhere", which is a reference to "utopia" that triggers the apparent confusion between the Greek for "no place" and "good place": "utopia" is a compound of the syllable ou-, meaning "no", and topos, meaning "place". But the homophonic prefix eu-, meaning "good" also resonates in the word, with the implication that the perfectly "good place" is really "no place".

supported by:

BM:UKK
ERSTE Foundation
MA 7 - Interkulturelle und Internationale Aktivitäten
Ministry of Culture, Media and Information Society - Republic of Serbia

In collaboration with the VIENNA ART WEEK