Sarah Pierce, Material Voices, Feminist Storytelling

March 23–September 3
Sarah Pierce: Scene of the Myth
Irish Museum of Modern Art, guest-curated by European Kunsthalle
The expansive solo exhibition consists of performances, videos, installations, and archives. Sarah Pierce, who lives and works in Dublin, relocated to Ireland from the US in 2000. The exhibition brings together twelve works, spanning twenty years, to highlight patterns of making and thinking that define Pierce’s art practice. Borne out of sticky relationships between the narratives we reproduce and those we wish to leave behind, Scene of the Myth asks what it means to gather, reflect, and act in community.

Friday, May 12, 2023, 7pm
Material Voices: Thinking Exhibition-Making through Voice, Body and Space
Lectures by Leire Vergara and Miren Jaio, Bulegoa z/b and a sonic contribution by Anxxxious_t & Landa

Material Voices came into being after hearing the stories of a number of female curators about their personal archives which are generally sparse, scattered and fragmented. Their vulnerable status somehow made us aware of the ephemeral nature of the exhibition format, and also of the fragility of practices that are usually carried out under independent conditions. In this sense, Material Voices started from the desire to give attention to this precariousness and to find other ways of conceiving the medium of the exhibition, as well as to move from the female voice to gender diverse narratives.

Saturday, May 13, 2023, 11am–5pm
Material Voices: Feminist Genealogies of the Work of Making Exhibitions
Workshop with Leire Vergara, Miren Jaio (Bulegoa z/b) and European Kunsthalle

Material Voices, a project initiated by Bulegoa z/b (Bilbao) in 2021, asks, among others, the following questions: What does it mean to make exhibitions from a feminist perspective? What kinds of genealogies will emerge from studying these ways of working? Will these genealogies be able to unravel other established genealogies? What are the limits encountered by curatorial practice as an independent practice in relation to institutional frameworks? And what is it in an exhibition that turns it into an exceptional testing ground for the putting into practice of situated ways of doing things? This workshop intends to share these questions and even new ones to reflect on the potentialities of collective research on the work of making exhibitions from a feminist perspective.

Monday, May 15, 2023, 8pm 
Landscapes of Resistance, 2021
Screening and conversation with Marta Popivoda

Landscapes of Resistance traces a journey through the memories of antifascist fighter Sonja (97), one of the first Partisan women in Yugoslavia, who was also among the leaders of the Resistance movement at Auschwitz. As Sonja speaks, we travel through the landscapes of her revolutionary youth as they exist in the present time – the Serbian forests and mountains and the muddy terrain of Auschwitz – as well as her tiny Belgrade home, where she lives with her husband and cat. Since Sonja is a great storyteller, capable of telling about past events without hindsight, she brings us directly into that peculiar atmosphere and mindset, which gave birth to antifascist resistance. We make her story travel through time towards the bodies of a new generation of antifascists, bespeaking that it is always possible to think and practice resistance. Screening followed by a conversation with Marta Popivoda and European Kunsthalle. Free admission. Tickets @ admiralkino.at

Tuesday, May 16, 2023, 7pm
Feminist Storytelling
Lecture by Ana Vujanović

The lecture will analyse and examine storytelling, which is in European culture traditionally seen as a discursive practice of women. Starting from Adriana Cavarero’s account of the socio-historical reasons for that, I will revisit historical storytelling spaces such as kitchens and markets, as well as their epistemological differences from the discourses of philosophy and politics. Then I will foster us to ponder on how a practice of women can become a feminist practice, where ‚the female’ becomes a political process that transverses sexual and gender binaries, as well as public and private domains.

Wednesday, May 17, 2023, 11am–5pm
The Carrier Bag
Workshop by Ana Vujanović and Marta Popivoda

The workshop is an homage to storytelling as a choice or fate. The morning session is dedicated to close reading of Ursula K. Le Guin’s seminal essay The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction. In order to foster a transgenerational learning process, in the afternoon we will organize a group visit and collective interview situation with a few Viennese feminists who tell stories. We will learn not only their stories but, above all, how to listen deeply.