Annual exhibition program 2019

What does it mean to live in an algorithmized world?
Kunstraum Niederoesterreich presents its annual exhibition program 2019, the first one under new artistic director Katharina Brandl. The red thread of the annual program are questions relating to the increasing influence of digital technologies and algorithms not only on our everyday lives, but also on our historical present. Ranging from pressing social issues as the technologization of care work (TechnoCare), over new forms of nature after the digital disruption (Nature \ nature), to queer-feminist utopias and sci-fi-esque projections of possible futures (Stone Telling), the exhibition program presents a trenchant investigation of our contemporary conditions of living, thinking and working. 

Kunstraum Niederoesterreich initiated the only price for performance art in Austria in 2007 and will also award the H13 Niederoesterreich Preis für Performance in 2019. For more information on the award, the deadline and the jury members click here. 

Beside a stipend of EUR 4000, the awardee will present a project in September 2019 at Kunstraum Niederoesterreich. 

Aside from the exhibition program, Kunstraum Niederoesterreich also offers an extensive public program, guided tours and the new format “Guerilla Girls,” a series of educational workshops on art, technology and empowerment for girls. 

TechnoCare
Opening: Thursday, April 4, 2019
Duration: Friday, April 5-Wednesday, May 15, 2019 

Care work is generally regarded as an annoying appendage to human existence: as a feminised low-wage sector in the realm of geriatric care, as a so-called career setback during maternity or paternity leave, or in the past as immoral sex work. Activities that fall into the field of care work are underpaid and disdained—nevertheless, they are something like an interpersonal glue that keeps our society together. In the exhibition TechnoCare the Kunstraum Niederoesterreich investigates the divide between the relevance of care work and its marginalisation. Such a divide provokes the question of how it can be overcome. In this spirit TechnoCare examines the technological and aesthetic mediation attempts of care, which have gained momentum in contemporary artistic practice. Can aesthetic experience cultivate caring conduct? Can artistic works themselves become protagonists of care? And how can care transcend spatial, temporal, or emotional distances—or is it as it seems, characterised mainly by closeness and direct contact?    
Curated by Katharina Brandl and Friederike Zenker, the exhibition presents artistic works in which the aesthetic, social, and ethical dimensions of care between people or people and animals intersect. The main focus is the technology-based building, cultivating, reviving, and criticising of relationships.

Artists: Alexa Karolinski & Ingo Niermann, Ines Lechleitner & Alice Chauchat, NEOZOON, Elisa Giardina Papa, Les Maintenants & Marlies Pöschl, Miriam Coretta Schulte, Axelle Stiefel & Camille Aleña, Marina Sula, Addie Wagenknecht.

Curators: Katharina Brandl & Friederike Zenker

With the friendly support of Pro Helvetia, Schweizer Kulturstiftung, Basel-Stadt and ABB.

Nature \ nature
Opening: Friday, June 7, 2019
Duration: Saturday, June 8–Saturday, July 27, 2019

A reverse solidus (backslash) is a typographical mark used in computing to indicate that the subsequent character has another meaning and shall be treated differently. It is one of the so-called “escape characters” that challenge the systematic interpretation of a character.

The exhibition Nature \ nature showcases works by local and international artists who reflect on the concept of nature and propose its up-to-date forms. They examine the ways in which technology crosses over to nature and—vice versa—how our biosphere and minds become increasingly shaped by technology. The artists consider mutations caused by ever growing amounts of waste and speculate about the future of nature under the influence of the all-consuming Internet. Can nature, with the help of technology, figure into the logic of human progress in such a way that both can profit?
The works in the exhibition evade the binary constraints of natural versus unnatural, while rendering visible a diversity of contested natures. Rather than attempting to capture nature as a totality, the exhibition postulates that nature is made up of parts without a whole. After all, nature is never merely natural; it is a human invention that is constantly in flux.

Artists: Agency of Singular Investigations, Anders Eiebakke, Thomas Geiger, Nicholas Hoffman, Daria Irincheeva, Diana Lelonek, Flaviu Rogojan, Omer Wasim & Saira Sheikh, Hui Ye, Julia Znoj

Curator: Mirela Baciak

Stone Telling
Opening: Wednesday, October 2, 2019
Duration: Thursday, October 3-Saturday, November 30, 2019

The exhibition project Stone Telling deals with the reception of feminist science fiction literature in contemporary art and the potential of queer-feminist, speculative storytelling. The title Stone Telling refers to one of the main narrators in the book Always Coming Home (1985) by the US American science fiction author Ursula K. Le Guin.
The selected works reflect upon science fiction as a possibility to think differently and formulate social utopias. Beyond binary modes of thought, feminist science fiction, in particular, offers potential approaches to the problems of our time and their causes—which are rooted in a patriarchal, colonial, and xenophobic narrative. As Donna J. Haraway writes in her Staying with the Trouble (2016): “It matters what matters we use to think other matters with; it matters what stories we tell to tell other stories with.” This could be quite applicable in the very near future: how can we survive in light of the advanced exploitation and devastation of our planet?

Curated by Daniela Hahn and Andrea Lehsiak based on an idea of Chantal Küng, this exhibition showcases feminist utopias, questions the hierarchical narrative, and simulates an “archaeology of the future” on the holodeck of the Kunstraum Niederoesterreich.

Curators: Daniela Hahn and Andrea Lehsiak