Annual program 2023

Kunstraum Niederoesterreich presents its annual exhibition program 2023.

Sensing the Heat
The crises of late are arguably just the beginning—harbingers of a disaster of even greater extent. Melting glaciers, collapsing ecosystems, migration driven by drought and floods—it’s getting hotter, tangibly hotter, and the planetary boundaries of our ability to act are becoming increasingly visible. With our annual program 2023 Sensing the Heat we go in search of phenomena that point beyond the catastrophic status quo. Where can we already spot the seeds of new terrestrial modes of coexistence? What other avenues of care for our material and spiritual livelihoods are possible? And what role can art play in these inquiries?

Sensing the Heat, conceived by Frederike Sperling, the new artistic director of Kunstraum Niederoesterreich, starts with the group exhibition Matrix Bodies. In Matrix Bodies, we dive into the various entanglements between body and environment, into the secret realm of the virosphere. The summer is dedicated to the worldmaking potentials of the digital: in their immersive installation T(())mb, the collective Omsk Social Club take a critical look at the phenomenon of gamification. Our third exhibition is a meditation on pleasure and sensuality as strategies of healing: In Quiet Storm Blowin’ Soñ Gweha presents a multisensory environment that is at once a stage, resting zone, meeting and learning place.

Complementing the exhibitions, the Kunstraum offers a multifaceted and free-of-charge art mediation program.

Furthermore: As each year Kunstraum Niederoesterreich will award the annual H13 Lower Austria Prize for Performance, the only prize for performance art in Austria. For the first time, the prize endowed with 5000 EUR will be awarded in partnership with an international institution, the Bergen Kunsthall in Norway. The selected performance premieres at the Kunstraum on September 1, 2023 and is accompanied by an exhibition. For more information please click here.

Matrix Bodies
March 24–May 13, 2023
Opening: March 23, 2023

In the pandemic, we painfully experienced the destructive power of viruses, yet life on Earth remains impossible without these organic entities. Viruses are a crucial part of various eco systems. The group exhibition Matrix Bodies takes the worlds of the virosphere as a starting point for a speculative exploration of the diverse, visible and invisible interdependencies between humans and nature. In doing so, Matrix Bodies also asks what possible other—transcorporeal—relationships between humans and non-human beings could look like.

Artists: Eglė Budvytytė, Caterina Gobbi, Nona Inescu, Josèfa Ntjam, Sophie Utikal and more
Curator: Frederike Sperling         

T(())mb
June 7, 2023–July 29, 2023
Opening: June 6, 2023

World(s) emerge by being put into words, namely through a continuous flow of “language-games,” as Ludwig Wittgenstein put it. How language, worldmaking, and gaming intersect can be observed every day in the arenas of social media. Cancelling, platforming, in-feed censorship—all these techniques follow the principles of gaming yet can transform into grave realities. In response to this condition, Omsk Social Club presents T(())mb, an immersive and participatory installation constituting a “linguistic crash-course survival kit.” In T(())mb, visitors are invited to become participants in a game, to work through riddles and critically unmask the techniques of gamification.

Artists and curators: Omsk Social Club

Quiet Storm Blowin’
October 6, 2023–December 2, 2023
Opening: October 5, 2023

The healing of the Earth is inextricably linked to the healing of the racialized body. Thinking and working from within this premise the artist, DJ, poet, and activist Soñ Gweha articulates strategies for inscribing queer eroticism and pleasure as tools for entering the “healing body.” Their first solo exhibition in Austria, Quiet Storm Blowin’ unfolds as an archipelagic ecosystem composed to accommodate the rhythms and needs of this restorative mode. A public program hosted by the artist transforms the show throughout its duration.

Artist: Soñ Gweha                                  
Curator: Frederike Sperling