Open call for artists and program 2020

15 years of Kunstraum Lakeside
In 2020, Kunstraum Lakeside celebrates its 15th anniversary. Founded and established in 2005, it is a place for the production and presentation of international contemporary art with the goal of provoking critical discussion about aspects of the economy relevant to society. Based at the Lakeside Science & Technology Park close to the University of Klagenfurt, the art space operates at the interface between economic, scientific, and cultural research, artistic practices, and multifaceted forms of discourse. The permanent installation of the art space has reinforced the public nature of the art program and extended and enriched the region’s art institutes with a unique location that promotes critical discussion at an international level. The aim of Kunstraum Lakeside is to convey and confront divergent perspectives on shared social relations.

Format
The artistic program 2020 at Kunstraum Lakeside looks at the fields of endeavor that can be subsumed under the term “artistic research.” Kunstraum Lakeside devotes itself each year to a specific theme derived from the special features of this exhibition space. After investigations into the term “research” in 2018 and “process” in 2019, the 2020 program will be dedicated to the concept of “format” (David Joselit), a fluid working hypothesis that is marshaled against the notion of fixed content: “Formats are nodal connections and differential fields; they channel an unpredictable array of ephemeral currents and charges. They are configurations of force rather than discrete objects. In short, formats establish a pattern of links or connections. […] what now matters most is not the production of new content but its retrieval in intelligible patterns through acts of reframing, capturing, reiterating, and documenting.”

Program 2020
With a thematic focus on webs, entanglements and configurations, as well as the network as a horizon and carrier of meaning, Kunstraum Lakeside will present solo exhibitions by Maria Anwander & Ruben Aubrecht, Peter Downsbrough, and Lone Haugaard Madsen. Maria Anwander & Ruben Aubrecht (both b. 1980 in Austria, live and work in Berlin), who work both as individual artists and as a duo, make forms of collaboration and its potentials and consequences the subject of their art. In minimalist installations, Peter Downsbrough (b. 1940 in the USA, lives and works in Brussels) relates linguistic, typographical, and graphic elements to the architecture of the respective exhibition space to create geometries and rhythms that not only influence the perception of the space but also speak to its background conditions and structure. Lone Haugaard Madsen (b. 1974 in Denmark, lives and works in Vienna) by contrast not only navigates in her practice a never-ending cycle of artistic production/reproduction and presentation/representation but also helps to shape that cycle. Using both sculpture and painting in what are always installations in space, she calls into question artistic production itself.

Open call for “Statements”
In addition to the scheduled solo exhibitions, Kunstraum Lakeside invites artists, cultural practitioners, and researchers to participate in the 2020 program by submitting their own “Statement.” These performative pieces will take the form of one-day events relating to the annual topic as well as experimenting with modes of representation in the visual arts in the context of an institution at the interface between art, economy, and technology. The goal for the contributions is to open up Kunstraum Lakeside more than ever before to participation by local and international artists. A total of four “statements” will be presented in 2020. All material for the open call as well as the application requirements can be downloaded at the following link: www.lakeside-kunstraum.at/en/opencall2020

Curator
Franz Thalmair