PREDICTING MEMORIES: VIENNA ART WEEK 2012
– Performance by Suzy Leger at Predicting Memories Exhibition (Vienna Art Week 2012)
Different venues, Monday, 19th November to Sunday, 25th November 2012The Vienna Art Week 2012 opens with a preeminent programme of exhibition openings, panel discussions in museums and art institutions, gallery and studio tours, performances and alternative space projects. The motif of this year’s edition is ‘Predicting Memories’, alluding to how contemporary art practices analyse history in order to reclaim a utopian future.
It is a fact that history and memory increasingly permeate the present, and also provide artists with a vision for the future to actively intervene and dream of a better world.Initiated by the Dorotheum and designed by Art Cluster Vienna, the festival has become a unique set-up to explore art practices and meet international and Vienna based artists and art professionals. Robert Punkerhofer, Artistic Director of the Vienna Art Week, states: “This year’s agenda includes more than a hundred special events and exhibitions in more than seventy institutions, artist-run spaces and galleries. It is the perfect opportunity to connect with the dynamic art scene of Vienna and beyond”.
Some of this year’s highlights:
– Predicting Memories exhibition view
– Predicting Memories exhibition view
– Predicting Memories exhibition view
Special exhibition – Predicting Memories
Robert Punkerhofer and Ursula Maria Probst have curated the show Predicting Memories which opens at the former K. K. Telegraph Palace on Börseplatz. Related to this year’s festival thread, the show will look at the concept of memory and future predictions in contemporary art.
For the cultural practices of today, it is imperative to presuppose possible futures and to speculate and be critical. Artists analyse biased historical perceptions and react to the reconfiguration of memory and how memory spaces tend to disappear.The featured artists include Horst Ademeit, Julieta Aranda, Anna Artaker, Jennifer Baichwal, Sophie Calle, D-Fuse, Doug Fishbone, Agnes Fuchs, D-Fuse, Terence Gower, Fariba Hajamadi, Yao Jui-Chung, Klub Zwei, Rosmarie Lukasser, Anja Manfredi, Christian Mayer, Jakob Neulinger, Hans Op de Beeck, Patricia Reinhart, Simona Rota, Maria Serebriakova, Katerina Shapiro-Obermair, Fiona Tan, Joëlle Tuerlinkx, Kara Walker, Ai Weiwei and Sislej Xhafa.Activities related to the exhibition were a series of performances by Doug Fishbone, Anna Mitterer & Katherina Olschbaur, Lilo Nein and Suzie Léger; several artists’ talks, a film screening and a panel discussion “About the role of the curator” lead by Robert Punkerhofer with Bettina Leidl, Director of Departure and “curated by Vienna”, Princeton Professor Ruben Gallo and the independent curators Martha Kirszenbaum (Paris) and Moritz Küng (Barcelona).
New exhibitions also open at Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary: Sharon Lockhart / Noa Eshkol; BAWAG Contemporary: Michaël Borremans; Essl Museum: New. New York; Sigmund Freud Museum: Archivaria by Michael Huey; among other events.
Open Studio Day
One of the main new events of this Vienna Art Week is the first Open Studio Day. More than a hundred artists open their studios in Vienna on Saturday 24th November. Visitors of the Vienna Art Week are welcome to compose their individual studio tours and listen to talks between curators and artists in some of the studios.
– Panel discussions at Dorotheum
Panel discussions, symposia, lectures and conversations
Some special events include:– The 19th Vienna Architecture Congress: “Soviet Modernism 1955-1991. Unknown Stories” at Architekturzentrum Wien.– “Dildo Anus Power. Queer Abstraction”, a three-day conference at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, a performance programme at brut Theater im Künstlerhaus, a film programme at top Kino Vienna, and an exhibition at the Academy of Fine Arts.– The conference “Body and Art – The Image of Hysteria in the 21st Century” at the Freud Museum.– A series of panel discussions on the dynamics of an ever more global art world at Dorotheum on the 22nd and 23rd November.
– Panel discussion moderated by Robert Punkerhofer with Barry Lord, Berta Sichel, Axel Haubrok and Kenny Schachter.
Vienna Gallery Weekend
The Vienna Gallery Weekend will once more take place in the gallery quarter around Schleifmühlgasse and Eschenbachgasse. Each gallery has arranged its own program, which clearly is a sign of great diversity, increasing pluralism, and the differentiated structure of Vienna’s gallery scene. Participating galleries include: Krinzinger, Gabriele Senn, Christine König, Hilger, Lisa Ruyter, Meyer Kainer, Emanuel Layr Knoll, and dozens more.
Other events include the opening of three new Wiener Werkstätte showrooms as part of the redesign of the MAK permanent collection by Pae White, a focus on film and photography with a series of screenings of acclaimed filmmaker Jack Smith at the Austrian Film Museum; a workshop by Argentinian artist Ricardo Basbaum at the Generali Foundation and numerous more interdisciplinary projects at artist led initiatives.
– Workshop with Ricardo Basbaum at the Generali Foundation