Antarctica. An Exhibition about Alienation
25 Oct 2018 - 17 Feb 2019
Installation view: Antarctica. An Exhibition on Alienation, Kunsthalle Wien 2018, Photo: Jorit Aust
Installation view: Antarctica. An Exhibition on Alienation, Kunsthalle Wien 2018, Photo: Jorit Aust
Installation view: Antarctica. An Exhibition on Alienation, Kunsthalle Wien 2018, Photo: Jorit Aust
Installation view: Antarctica. An Exhibition on Alienation, Kunsthalle Wien 2018, Photo: Jorit Aust: Isabella Fürnkäs. In Ekklesia, 2015, Courtesy the artist
Installation view: Antarctica. An Exhibition on Alienation, Kunsthalle Wien 2018, Photo: Jorit Aust: Ian Wallace, At the Crosswalk VI, 2008, Courtesy Hauser & Wirth, Zurich
Installation view: Antarctica. An Exhibition on Alienation, Kunsthalle Wien 2018, Photo: Jorit Aust: Jan Hoeft, I Feel You, 2018, Courtesy the artist
Installation view: Antarctica. An Exhibition on Alienation, Kunsthalle Wien 2018, Poto: Jorit Aust: Isabella Fürnkäs. Blind Land, 2018, Courtesy the artist; Andrzej Steinbach. Untitled (Sequenz #1 & #4) from the series: Gesellschaft beginnt mit drei, 2017 Courtesy private collection, Hamburg, the artist & Galerie Conradi, Hamburg/Brussels
Installation view: Antarctica. An Exhibition on Alienation, Kunsthalle Wien 2018, Photo: Jorit Aust: Joanna Piotrowska. I, Frowst, 2013–2014; V, Frowst, 2013–2014; Untitled, 2015; Untitled, 2016, Courtesy Southard Reid, London & Dawid Radziszewski Gallery, Warsaw
Installation view: Antarctica. An Exhibition on Alienation, Kunsthalle Wien 2018, Photo: Jorit Aust: Viltė Bražiūnaitė / Tomas Sinkevičius, Afterwork, 2016, Courtesy the artists
Installation view: Antarctica. An Exhibition on Alienation, Kunsthalle Wien 2018, Photo: Jorit Aust: Jeroen de Rijke & Willem de Rooij. I’m Coming Home in Forty Days, 1997, Courtesy Willem de Rooij & Galerie Buchholz, Berlin/Cologe/New York; Jana Schulz. Golden Boys. Iğdır. Maravilla. Monterey Park, 2018 Courtesy the artist
ANTARCTICA. AN EXHIBITION ABOUT ALIENATION
25 October 2018 – 17 February 2019
In a sketch for a film, Michelangelo Antonioni notes: “The Antarctic glaciers are moving in our direction at a rate of three millimeters per year. Calculate when they’ll reach us. Anticipate, in a film, what will happen.”
Metaphorically speaking, to feel cold means to feel deeply alienated. Alienation was already a dominant concern for sociologists around 1900: the alienation of man from society through individualization, alienation from nature through urbanization, alienation from work through mechanization. For philosophers like Theodor W. Adorno, alienation thus turns into a key concept in terms of the role art plays in and for society: Without alienation there is no art, and ultimately it is only art that prevents total alienation.
Ironically, it is the countercultural protest against “social coldness” and against the “rigidification” of middle-class society in the 1960s that anticipates the ideologemes of flexible Capitalism 2.0. This move, in fact, paves the way for a new type of alienation – one which reverses the metaphorics: Coldness and rigidity are replaced by liquefaction, start-up and dynamics – social alienation, however, continues even as people now strive for self-optimization.
Antarctica looks at the pattern underlying alienation – this “relationship based on the absence of a relationship.” Showing numerous contemporary artworks; the exhibition explores how the term “alienation” functions in our world today. In doing so, it also addresses the following question: What other forms of relationship to the self and to the world do we need? Before we can even begin to create something like a space supportive of self-determination and self-realization?
The exhibition is preceded by a symposium on the subject.
Artists: Viltė Bražiūnaitė / Tomas Sinkevičius, Burak Delier, Buck Ellison, Isabella Fürnkäs, Eva Giolo, Thibaut Henz, Jan Hoeft, Hanne Lippard, Joanna Piotrowska, Jeroen de Rijke / Willem de Rooij, Jana Schulz, Andrzej Steinbach, Ingel Vaikla, Peter Wächtler, Ian Wallace, Tobias Zielony
Curators: Vanessa Joan Müller, Nicolaus Schafhausen
25 October 2018 – 17 February 2019
In a sketch for a film, Michelangelo Antonioni notes: “The Antarctic glaciers are moving in our direction at a rate of three millimeters per year. Calculate when they’ll reach us. Anticipate, in a film, what will happen.”
Metaphorically speaking, to feel cold means to feel deeply alienated. Alienation was already a dominant concern for sociologists around 1900: the alienation of man from society through individualization, alienation from nature through urbanization, alienation from work through mechanization. For philosophers like Theodor W. Adorno, alienation thus turns into a key concept in terms of the role art plays in and for society: Without alienation there is no art, and ultimately it is only art that prevents total alienation.
Ironically, it is the countercultural protest against “social coldness” and against the “rigidification” of middle-class society in the 1960s that anticipates the ideologemes of flexible Capitalism 2.0. This move, in fact, paves the way for a new type of alienation – one which reverses the metaphorics: Coldness and rigidity are replaced by liquefaction, start-up and dynamics – social alienation, however, continues even as people now strive for self-optimization.
Antarctica looks at the pattern underlying alienation – this “relationship based on the absence of a relationship.” Showing numerous contemporary artworks; the exhibition explores how the term “alienation” functions in our world today. In doing so, it also addresses the following question: What other forms of relationship to the self and to the world do we need? Before we can even begin to create something like a space supportive of self-determination and self-realization?
The exhibition is preceded by a symposium on the subject.
Artists: Viltė Bražiūnaitė / Tomas Sinkevičius, Burak Delier, Buck Ellison, Isabella Fürnkäs, Eva Giolo, Thibaut Henz, Jan Hoeft, Hanne Lippard, Joanna Piotrowska, Jeroen de Rijke / Willem de Rooij, Jana Schulz, Andrzej Steinbach, Ingel Vaikla, Peter Wächtler, Ian Wallace, Tobias Zielony
Curators: Vanessa Joan Müller, Nicolaus Schafhausen