Marlies Pöschl: Technologies of Togetherness

The more our awareness of the approaching climate crisis as a life-threatening ecological catastrophe increases the louder the calls for change in society and concepts for designing life sustainably become. The question of how we can take care of one another today and in the future is becoming more and more explosive in this context: a lack of equal opportunities, the permanently overwhelmed care system, or the ongoing lack of a climate contract between the generations are only a few of the seismographs of the so often inconsistent social balance. With her multi-perspectival films and installations, Marlies Pöschl frequently develops a picture of such fractures in a conflict-prone reality within the open formats of educational exchange and collective work. Urgent questions about the future resonate again and again in her works, also including questions of how the infrastructures necessary for life, such as the production of food and care work, might be altered as a result of technological progress. The exhibition Technologies of Togetherness at the Kunstverein Ludwigshafen is the first solo institutional presentation by the Austrian artist in Germany.

Pöschl’s filmic narratives transport their viewers to sceneries that are often concealed and present stunning fusions of myth, documentation, and science fiction. They focus again and again on places situated on the periphery of social life and function according to their own inner logic. Her film Evernormal Granary (2022), which was newly produced for the exhibition, also focuses on a closed organism: the state granary on the bank of the Rhine in Ludwigshafen is presented as a self-regulating architecture that—as the premise goes—is supposed to compensate for fluctuations in supply and demand. This new film essay by Marlies Pöschl addresses questions regarding economics, food security, botany, and food speculation as well as logistics, and contrasts industrial food production with indigenous ecological perspectives. For Evernormal Granary, the artist collaborated with the US-American choreographer Amelia Eisen. The choreography performed by the “guards” of the granary makes reference to the book Braiding Sweetgrass (2013) by Robin Wall Kimmerer and processes the reciprocal relationships between human beings and nature in a dance in the dust and to the sound of grain processing.

Dance, music, performance, language, and poetry are just some of the expressive possibilities that the artist utilizes. Collective work is also a central connective methodology in Marlies Pöschl’s artistic examinations. In her process, she frequently involves other artists, but also amateur actors and individuals from various social milieus. Pöschl frequently initiates formats of educational work or direct exchange with her counterparts, based on which artistic works are subsequently produced. Simple Whistles (2020), for instance, is a HD video based on a choir performance developed with members of the French choir La Clé des Chants and residents of a senior citizens’ home. A collectively composed poetic composition about their future retirement home was created in reference to the machine noises that surround the senior citizens in their day-to-day life.

Marlies Pöschl’s films imagine the possibilities of a digitized, sustainable, and caring future in the face of a present that is under threat and has lost its equilibrium. Technologies of Togetherness presents a broad cross-section through the artist’s creative work until today. With this project, the exhibition would like to sensitize visitors to the Kunstverein Ludwigshafen to the process-oriented character of social developments in connection with current questions in society. Pöschl’s art represents the constant back and forth of our progress, in which the needs of the individual and of society, as well as objectivity and emotionality, sustainability and economic efficiency are balanced out. She advocates for science and sensuality to an equal extent and again and again calls the sole solution to our dilemma: coexistence.

Curated by Jana Franze-Feldmann

The project is supported by Stiftung Kunstfonds within NEUSTART KULTUR, BASF SE, and by the Federal Ministry of Arts, Culture, the Civil Service and Sports of the Republic of Austria.