Horizons of Possibility

Over 260 international students will be joining the Salzburg International Summer Academy’s artistic course programme in 2021. The public art education programme invites reflection on a transformative time in exhibitions, films, performances, lectures and talks. 

Using concepts of commonality, coexistence and collectivity, the programme explores new forms of solidarity and connectedness beyond binaries such as nature/culture, subjectivity/objectivity or human/machine, analogue/digital. Based on queer feminist thinking and action, courses at the Academy seek to contribute to current conversations and practices that foreground structures of inequality through a focus on new materialisms, and political movements.

In recent years, increasingly visible artistic practices and related research paradigms propose that art is not so much a representation of social forms as it is the infrastructure of, and in, social practices.

The programme Horizons of Possibility (Möglichkeitshorizonte) detours through queer feminist thought, engaged as a form of resistance; understands the collective appropriation of exhibitions and libraries as a strategy to multiply access to knowledge; and, in making public, its entanglement with planet Earth, investigates desire beyond normative structures.

Decentring Perspectives, Molecules, Strategies and Forms (Act 1) is a collaboration of Sophie Goltz (Director, Salzburg Summer Academy) and Marina Fokidis (curator, writer, founder, editor-in-chief South as a State of Mind magazine, Athen).

Exhibitions:

Leon Kahane: Les Drancéens
July 20–August 28, Traklhaus gallery

Rossella Biscotti: Clara and other Specimens
July 26–September 30, Zwergelgarten gallery

Die Sonne um Mitternacht schauen. 33 Years of Graphic Editions of the Summer Academy
August 2–28, Hohensalzburg Fortress

Conversations (selection):

Thursday, July 22, 7pm, Traklhaus/livestream*
“Display as Dispositif,” artists talk in German language
Leon Kahane (artist, Berlin) and Verena Dengler (artist, Vienna)

Monday, July 26, 7pm, Traklhaus/livestream*
“Reappraisal and Resistance of History: What to do with remembrance?,” forum-studio talk I in English, 
Eduard Freudmann (artist, Lecturer, Vienna Academy of Fine Arts), Sashi Turkhof (artist, President Jewish Austrian Students, Vienna), moderated by Leon Kahane (artist, Berlin)

Tuesday, July 27, 12pm, Traklhaus/livestream*
“Reappraisal and Resistance of History: What to do with remembrance?,” forum-studio talk II in English
Robert Obermair (historian, Salzburg coordinator for erinnern.at) with Fabian Bechtle (artist, Berlin)

Thursday, July 29, 7pm, Traklhaus/livestream*
“Geographies of In-Betweeness,” artists talk in English
Flaka Haliti (artist, Munich/Priština) and Markus Miessen (architect, Berlin, Professor, Institute of Urban Renewal, University of Luxemburg)

Monday, August 2, 12pm, online
“Apart, We Are Together: Thinking about Exhibitions,” curators talk in English
Cosmin Costinaş (Director Para Site, Hongkong, Artistic Director Kathmandu Triennial), Léuli Eshrāghi (artist, curator TarraWarra Biennial, Melbourne), Inti Guerrero (curator, Hongkong/Manila, Episōdo 04/Yokohama Triennial), Shubigi Rao (artist, Singapore, curator Kochi Biennial), moderated by Sophie Goltz (Director Salzburg Summer Academy)

Thursday, August 5, 7pm, online
“Assuming the Ecosexual Position: The Earth as a Lover,” lecture performance
Annie Sprinkle (performance artist, San Francisco) and Beth Stephens (film maker, performance artist, San Francisco, Professor, University of California, Santa Cruz). In celebration of the same-named publication (Minneapolis, 2021).

Monday, August 9, 7pm, Traklhaus/livestream*
“The Perpetual Constructing of Oneself,” artists talk in English
Anna Daučiková (artist, Prague) with Ana Hoffner (ex-Prvulovic*) (artist, Vienna, Professor Artistic Research, Mozarteum Salzburg)

Monday, August 16, 7pm, Traklhaus/livestream*
“Documenta as a Common,” curators talk in English
ruangrupa (artists collective, Jakarta, Artistic Directors, Documenta 15) and Adam Szymczyk (curator, Athens, Artistic Director, Documenta 14) with Nora Sternfeld (art educator, curator, Vienna, Professor Art Education, University of Fine Arts Hamburg)

Wednesday, August 18, 7pm, Zwergelgarten gallery/livestream*
“Leaving Buru: Aesthetics of Ecology,” artists talk in English
Rossella Biscotti (artist, Brussels) with Sophie Goltz (Director Salzburg Summer Academy)

Friday, August 20, 7pm, online
“Unsetting the Universal: Really Useful Commoning,” lecture in English
Dubravka Sekulić (architect, Assistant Professor, Institute for Contemporary Art, TU Graz)

Monday, August 24, 7pm, online
“Feminist Antifacism: Counterpublics of the Common,” lecture in English
Ewa Majewska (philosoph, activist, lecturer, University Warsaw, fellow ICI Berlin).  In celebration of the same-named publication (London, 2021).

Open studios and studio talks: 

July 30, 4–8pm, Hohensalzburg Fortress
Classes by Louisa Elderton/Klaus Speidel, Flaka Haliti, Leon Kahane

August 13, 4–8pm, Hohensalzburg Fortress
Classes by Cosmin Costinaş/Inti Guerrero (online), Anna Daučiková, Ho Tzu Nyen with Jan Gerber/Sebastian Lütgert, Francis Ruyter, Shubigi Rao (online)

August 14, 10am–2pm, Kiefer quarry Fürstenbrunn
Class by Cäcilia Brown/Anna Hofbauer/Mikkel Holm Torp

August 27, 4–8pm, Hohensalzburg Fortress
Classes by Rossella Biscotti, Shezad Dawood (online), Christina Dimitriadis, Nadira Husain/Flora Klein, Christian Nyampeta (online)

All events are free of charge. Further events, information, and online registration under: summeracademy.at.
*Livestream under: www.youtube.com/user/summeracadoffinearts