Chat Set is a pilot project geared at facilitating professional exchange and cultivating creative relationships between Austria-based artists and international curators. Through a match-making process, a curator has been introduced to two artists or artist collectives each. Their encounters manifest in either a live talk, an online studio visit, podcast or text which you can read, watch and/or listen below. To learn more about them individually, click in the middle for curators, and left or right for the artists and artist collectives.&nbsp;
Chat Set has been made available with the kind support by the Federal Ministry of Arts and Culture, Civil Service and Sport (BMKOES).&nbsp;

Valentina Bruschi

Website

Instagram

Max Freund

Max Freund & Valentina Bruschi: Studio Visit

Lukas Hochrieder

Interview between Lukas Hochrieder & Valentina Bruschi

**_Preface_**

It is difficult to define Lukas Hochrieder’s artistic practice as his research can hardly be related to predefined categories. Indeed, he moves fluidly across several genres, from sculpture to drawing, in a constant conversation with the environment and the architecture that contain the works. In his installations the features of the sculptures are often called into question and are sometimes inverted. Instability and transformation are characteristics of this artist’s work that explores the quality and duration of the material he uses that can expand and contract in space via works that change and thrive. Using clay, ceramics, natural and found materials, Lukas Hochrieder creates sculptures and installations that explore temporality and space. The artist is interested in ceramics as a medium because of its past and the different layers of state it can hold: it can be transformed from soft to hard, from delicate to resistant and it has been used by artists throughout history and in different cultures of the world. In recent installations, a line of clay attached to the gallery walls at mid-height has often been created by the artist (unfired and very fragile at the beginning), and used as a pipe or vessel containing paprika or turmeric powder – chosen for their color qualities – but also holding ears of wheat to connect the outdoor world with the exhibition space.
His series of works dedicated to the exploration of the potential of blue synthetic “straw ribbons” is a work in progress, dedicated to the relationship between materials and the anthropocentric gaze. As described by the artist himself, he discovered this particular material (blue baling twine) during a walk in the countryside and picked up this residue of our society: “They are left behind, no longer serving their function. They don’t have to hold together anything anymore – their strength dissolves. They merge with the environment – it absorbs them. Time leaves visible traces. Colors fade, the fabric falls apart and merges with other materials. They are pressed into the earth, the road, into their surroundings. Traces of dissolution, a transformative process.” This description, dedicated to the use of old plastic ribbons in his work is explicative of how Lukas Hochrieder continues his aesthetic exploration of the human being’s perceptive system, and examines the comprehension of the qualities of matter by way of its reduction and “concentration” into artworks. 

Valentina Bruschi
<figure>
	<img alt="a white gallery with porcelain sticks on the wall" src=https://cockpit.dwhx.space/storage/uploads/images/1200/1.jpg />
 <figcaption>Linie MUSA,Exhibition view, Zwischen hier und dort, vorher und jetzt, MUSA Startgalerie at Wien Museum, Vienna, 2021. Credits by Maria Noi.</figcaption>
</figure>

**_Interview_**

**VB: Your studies include a diploma in theater, film and media studies at the University of Vienna. How do film and media studies reflect in your work?**

LH: Yes, that’s interesting for me. When I look back I more and more realize the relationship of these fields of interest and how these studies somehow influenced my artistic practice. I was always interested in theater – I guess as a possibility to watch changing atmospheres. 

I was always more curious about theater as a medium and its non-verbal aspects than the spoken language, dialogs, and narration. Therefore, the concept of the “postdramatische Theater” attracted me a lot. Concerning theater, it is also interesting what Synne Genzmer wrote about my work: 


“Lukas Hochrieder works […] on an aura of the spatial, which can be understood as a counterpoint to classical theater, where the staging is based on a distant view and the overall picture within the stage box for an audience seated in the somewhat distant and separated auditorium. He plays on the stage of the exhibition space in a completely different way, namely with the sensory effect of closeness instead of the effects of distance, with fine materiality instead of rough contours.
1 

I also think about my thesis, questioning photography as a medium of memory. It’s interesting that memories are something fluid, in the sense that they are always changing, depending on the context in which they arise. “Fluidity” and “transformation” are terms which still affect me. 

<figure>
<img alt='A closeup of a stick out of porcelain' src='https://cockpit.dwhx.space/storage/uploads/images/1200/3.jpg'>
 <figcaption> Linie MUSA, Detail. Credits by Maria Noi.</figcaption>
</figure>

**VB: You work with a variety of media, from drawing to sculpture, with a certain preference for site-specific installation. Can you tell us about these layers of different languages within your work?**

LH: I always understood drawing as working with material in space. For example, drawing with watercolors means to me that you water the pigments to get them fluid, so you can bring that material to the paper. From this approach, it was not that far to leave the paper and go into the space itself. I still like thinking within drawing, I like its possibility of delicate lines. I think in my ceramic work one could see this affinity to the line. Of course, it’s also about sculpture and installation and its possibilities. Exploring material, its specific qualities, formabilities and process options is important. Working with space is often a starting point and I’m very interested in the concept of atmosphere – as a way of understanding spaces – or how one can see, understand, feel, think them. 

<figure>
 <div class="columns-2 items-center">
 <img alt='5 images hanging ont a white wall' src='http://cockpit.dwhx.space/storage/uploads/images/1200/5.jpg'>
 		<img alt='Closeups of a stick out of porcelain' src='https://cockpit.dwhx.space/storage/uploads/images/1200/2.jpg'>
 </div>
 <figcaption>
 
 Left: 	untitled (blue ribbon),
 Exhibition view, Zwischen hier und dort, vorher und jetzt, MUSA Startgalerie at Wien Museum, Vienna, 2021. Credits by Maria Noi.
 </figcaption>
 <figcaption>
 
 Right: 	Linie MUSA, Detail.Credits by Maria Noi.</figcaption>
</figure>


**VB: How is your studio organized? How do you develop your projects?**

LH: The starting point for new projects is quite often the space itself. For me this means the possibility to work with different spaces, like always having a new paper which you can draw on. I really like to observe spaces and to think about qualities, materials, possibilities and then “draw” into them. 
Or, sometimes, the material is the starting point for new projects. Like the blue strings that I found in the countryside.
As these projects are different, my studio is also a kind of fluid – it changes for the projects depending on what I need. 


**VB: You were born in Vienna, studied there and in Paris and participated in residencies and exhibitions throughout Europe, especially in Germany, and the rest of the world. Which experiences made during your residencies have left traces in your works?**


LH: Yes, it was a great chance to get the opportunity to study abroad or go on residencies. It’s always interesting to see different places, landscapes and to get to know different cultures and approaches to art. Right now, I’m in Nida, Lithuania, where I´m living close to the sea. This is quite a different landscape for me. 

I had the chance to be part of an exhibition in Japan and the opportunity to go there was very important to me as I’m interested in its culture and the tradition of ceramics. I think there is a different awareness of delicate things and different philosophical concepts, which is appealing to me. 

**VB: When we started our online conversations this summer you were just about to open a joint exhibition with fellow artist Carolin Israel at GOMO Art Space, an artist-run space in Vienna. Can you tell us how you developed an active dialog with Carolin Israel and what you decided to present to the public?**

LH: For the exhibition at GOMO I picked the exposed brick wall at the entrance of the exhibition space to think about materiality and physical decay. In an “installation moment”, the ceramic material of the brick is picked up and used in a sculptural gesture. Therefore, I used old bricks, which I ground and took the dust for a kind of site-specific drawing. In another work, lines made of clay serve as a display for different materials and at the same time as independent objects. Here the ceramic used reflects its historical use in the fabrication of vessels. 

GOMO Art Space invited Carolin Israel and me to develop a joint exhibition. It was an interesting approach to find moments that bring our work together such as the examination of the basic conditions of the materials and their attributed form and context. This interweaving of different layers of meaning can already be seen in the almost surreal title: *The desert has three layers, two of fruit and one of cream.* 

As Carolin is living in Germany we had a lot of online meetings, sharing ideas, talking about possibilities, sending photos, and writing text in line with a kind of “ping-pong” principle – where one starts, the other one re-writes or commends and so on. 


 <figure>
 <div class="columns-2 items-end">
 <img alt='5 images hanging ont a white wall' src='https://cockpit.dwhx.space/storage/uploads/images/1200/6.jpg'>
 		<img alt='Closeups of a stick out of porcelain' src='https://cockpit.dwhx.space/storage/uploads/images/1200/7.jpg'>
 </div>
 <figcaption>The Desert has Three Layers, Two of Fruit and One of Cream, GOMO Art Space, Vienna, 2021. Credits by Bastian Schwind.</figcaption>
</figure>

 <figure>
 <div class="columns-2 items-end">
 <img alt='5 images hanging ont a white wall' src='https://cockpit.dwhx.space/storage/uploads/images/1200/8.jpeg'>
 		<img alt='Closeups of a stick out of porcelain' src='https://cockpit.dwhx.space/storage/uploads/images/1200/9.jpeg'>
 </div>
 <figcaption>The Desert has Three Layers, Two of Fruit and One of Cream, Detail. Credits by the artist.</figcaption>
</figure>



**VB: As we are speaking, you are participating in a new residency in Lithuania. Do you already know what you would like to research in this period?**

LH: Yes, I am currently working at Nida Art Colony in Lithuania. I'm going to work on a project that deals with the sounds of ceramics. I'm interested in sounds that are produced by the material itself and sounds that can be produced with ceramics. Working with ceramics means working with the elements. Clay from the earth contains water that is dried by air, and burned by fire. These elements are reflected in nature. Therefore, I want to record acoustic elements in Nida’s landscape beside the sound of ceramics and connect both sound levels. 

<figure>
	<img alt='5 images hanging ont a white wall' src='https://cockpit.dwhx.space/storage/uploads/images/1200/4.jpg'>
 <figcaption> Linie MUSA, Detail. Credits by Maria Noi..</figcaption>
</figure>


Thanks!



 1 Synne Genzmer,Von Erde, Wachs, Bändern und Gewürzen. Text on the exhibition between here and there, before and now at MUSA Startgalerie (free translation).

Kari Conte

Katharina Aigner

Website 

The artist Katharina Aigner and the curator Kari Conte meet online to talk about queer, lesbian narratives, visibility and a feminist-critical revision of an established canon and scene.

Event was part of „Vienna Art Week”. 

Live talk via @dasweissehaus instagram.

Katharina Aigner & Kari Conte: Live Artist Talk

Fanni Futterknecht

Fanni Futterknecht & Kari Conte: Studio Visit

Avi Lubin

Yoshinori Niwa

Yoshinori Niwa & Avi Lubin: Studio Visit

Aldo Giannotti

Instagram 

The artist Aldo Giannotti and the curator Avi Lubin talk about the playfulness of contemporary art, public art interventions and different audiences.

Live talk via @dasweissehaus instagram. 

Aldo Giannotti & Avi Lubin: Live Artist Talk

Cory John Scozzari

Larissa Kopp and Florian Aschka

Larissa Kopp Website

Florian Aschka Website

Larissa Kopp and Florian Aschka & Cory John Scozzari: Podcast + Photos

Michail Michailov

Michail Michailov & Cory John Scozzari: Studio Visit

Julia Greenway

Nika Kupyrova

Nika Kupyrova & Julia Greenway: Studio Visit

Otto Krause and Milan Loviška 

Otto Krause Website

Milan Loviška Website

Otto Krause and Milan Loviška  & Julia Greenway: Studio Visit

Cindy Sissokho

Elodie Grethen

Sara Lanner

Interview between Sara Lanner & Cindy Sissokho

**Body Language(s):\
a conversation with Sara Lanner,\
an interview by Cindy Sissokho.**


This interview is presented as an ‘in conversation’ with Vienna based artist Sara Lanner whom I’ve had the chance to meet in Vienna in September 2021. Our exchanges delve into the socio-political questions that are central to some of her series of works through a multidisciplinary practice that genuinely intersects dance, performance, sculpture and installation. I selected specific performances: *MINE, Mother Tongue* and *Etiquette of Tongues* for the urgency of the discourse around extractivism on one side and the collective questions about the politics of language and notions of identity and belonging on the other. 

**Cindy Sissokho (CS): Who is Sara Lanner? And how do you describe your artistic practice?**

Sara Lanner (SL): That’s always a big question! The conventional answer is 'a choreographer and visual artist' or 'a dancer and performance artist' - you may choose! But a more poetic answer would be that she is someone who likes to observe the world around her, someone who regularly gets lost in evening-long conversations about it with friends and someone who is particularly good at translating these impressions into kinesthetic experiences for an audience. 

My practice always relates to my background as a contemporary dancer combined with the interest for aesthetic concepts and material studies deriving from the visual arts. Observing the performativity of the body, of objects or language will thus always be part of my approach. Some of my works seem to start directly with and from the body. However, many of them start from observing the performativity of objects (which I might build by myself), a specific material or philosophical concepts. By touching them and interacting with them, understanding which associations, movements, memories and images they evoke by embodying and performing them in the space, I create my choreographies, installations, photography or video works. 

From time to time other approaches in my practice disappear and reappear such as singing and drawing but the basis of it remains a somatic and performative approaches.

**CS: How did contemporary performance, working through and with body movements come about for you? You also talk about ‘the self as social choreography” and work within a diverse range of contexts, could you tell us more about this?**

SL: As much as we are co-creators of the world that surrounds us, we are being shaped by it too. I believe that all our experiences are saved as memories in our bodies and furthermore that these embodied stories manifest in our habits, the way we move, think or talk. In my choreographic work I try to deconstruct story by story, layer by layer, so I can unfold and refold my/other personality/personalities and look at it/them from many different angles. It is a state, which is never ultimately fixed but in a constant movement (choreography) of reshaping itself.

In my artworks this idea reappears in my movement language that sometimes looks like a collage of many different bodies. You can also find it within the foldable objects that I create that are made of textile, wood or cardboard, and finally how I work with language and its repetition, variation and fragmentation. 

**CS: Collaboration and making space with others are essential within your performative practice, and as an artist, you are also involved with pedagogy by teaching others. How do your creative processes differ when producing a solo or a collective piece? And how does one or the other become essential when thinking about a new piece of work?**

SL: Before I started working with performance, I felt the need to be by myself, alone in a dance studio for a year and a half. It is only then that I was ready to work with or for others. I enjoy how collaborations make me delve into topics I would not come about by myself and the work within artistic research labs makes me feel high sometimes; while in projects where I am the artistic lead, I have the possibility to make the most precise decisions according to my own convictions. I seem to prefer the latter as it seems to be easier but really it is also lonelier and the power of a group or collective is not to be underestimated. 

I am glad that my way of working offers this variety to me. Furthermore, I also enjoy being a performer and dancer for others, to be part of enabling an artwork by offering your skills and thoughts. 

<figure>
 <img alt='MINE_Sara Lanner_Foto (c) eSeL.at - Lorenz Seidler.jpg'src='https://cockpit.dwhx.space/storage/uploads/images/1200/MINE_Sara-Lanner_Foto-c-eSeL.at---Lorenz-Seidler.jpg'> 
 
</figure>

<figure>
<img alt='MINE_Sara Lanner_Credits_eSeL.at - Lorenz Seidler (3)'src='https://cockpit.dwhx.space/storage/uploads/images/1200/MINE_Sara-Lanner_Credits_eSeL.at---Lorenz-Seidler-3.jpg'>
</figure>

 <figcaption>
 
 Sara Lanner: MINE, Performance, Kunstraum Niederoesterreich, Wien, 2021. Credits by <a href="http://https://esel.at">eSeL.at</a> - Lorenz Seidler.
 
</figcaption>
 
 <figure>
 <img alt='MINE_SARALANNER_Foto (c) Elsa Okazaki.jpg 2' src='https://cockpit.dwhx.space/storage/uploads/images/1200/NEW-MINE_SARALANNER_Foto-c-Elsa-Okazaki.jpg-2.jpg'>
 </figure>
 
 <figcaption>
 
 Sara Lanner: MINE , Performance, Kunstraum Niederoesterreich, Wien, 2021. Credits by Elsa Okazaki. 
 
</figcaption>
 
 
 
**CS: In this body of work, you re-appropriate the word 'mining' as an extractive (body) language where the information is purely communicated from the contact from body to body: yours and of your collaborator. The bodies move from being tightly linked together to detachment. They are also generating an intimate connection as they are in contact with a range of objects that were made, found, or modified - all reflecting upon the ethical implications of global mining processes as a collective responsibility. How did you grow your relationship with the subject of extractivism as part of your own context and artistic practice too?** 

SL: 'Mining' interest me from a material, immaterial or even metaphorical perspective. The term 'mining' is connoted with materiality, resource usage and wastage, often with violent appropriation and over-dimensional transformations. But it is also incorporated into our immaterial world - data mining, for example, where our information and decisions have become 'mined' resources. 

All these products, processes and experiences do not only shape our personal and individual identity but even more our cultural identity. Therefore, from a performative perspective, I am interested to see how this manifest in our behaviours and mindsets. One could say that I am 'mining' for this information located within our bodies. In the performance my co-performer Costas Kekis and me approach the body neither as a romantic storyteller nor as being violent towards each other. Our approach was to try to understand how a very deep kind of touch can happen without harming, hurting or cutting the body open. And perhaps by doing so we can learn something about the ethical implications of using each other as a resource and how to deal with the ambivalence that comes about the whole topic of 'mining'. 

**CS: Could you tell us more about the hierarchy of these objects and the bodily experience you anticipated and didn’t anticipate as you encounter them during the performance?**
 
SL: I wanted to translate the observations (mentioned in the previous response) into a choreography for two performers as a way to show notions of dependency and collaboration which are connected to mining. One can see the performers pushing or pulling each other, sometimes protecting each other or protesting together. 

But actually I began by getting in touch with the objects and 'raw' materials appearing in *MINE* - I started by 'mining' displays from old mobile phones, copper wires from old WIFI cables, collected stones in Chinese landfills or salt mines in Salzburg. Later on, this material also informed our movement. Furthermore, we also looked at archival photography from miner’s protests or photographic works by artists, taken in mines. There is no hierarchy for me between the different materials, may it be movement, objects or images. They all become performers which tell their own stories. 

However, something I did not expect was the slowness of our movements. Throughout the performance we seem to be moving in slow motion, balancing on shaky objects that make loud noises, or you see us slowly melting, freezing or hugging, grabbing and pulling each other with a high physical tension. I guess it is due to the dramaturgical tension that is needed for these very somatic choreographies to become tangible for an audience.
 
**CS: As the performance ends - and this is also the case for other performance work - you allow for the objects to have an afterlife within the location of the performance, and can somehow be looked at with new meanings, by themselves. How do you negotiate the medium of performance and visual arts within this specific body of work and within your practice too?**
 
SL: I believe that when you observe a certain selection of objects and their materiality, they start telling their own stories, as much as the performing bodies do. Later this year I performed the work *Mining Minds* at brut Vienna, a full-on dance piece on a conventional black box stage. And still, the space concept and the objects are being handled almost as performers of their own and I spent a lot of time creating the space concept in relation to the dance and choreography, also asking what imprint our performance leaves on some of the material, after we walked on it or performed with it. 

Within my practice I love to challenge the conventional ways of handling ‘a stage‘ or an ‘exhibition space‘ - therefore some of my works are transitioning from black box to white cube or vice versa or even sometimes into a public space. It is not always possible but when it happens, I consider it as a further manifestation of the initial idea. What I also appreciate about it is to see how a work grows and seems to start breathing while you are further developing it. 

I often tried to understand what fascinates me about states of transition and one of my explanations is that I grew up bilingually - Italian and Austrian - and thus within two cultures. Even my father is an interpreter and collaborated with my mother as a translator. The idea of shifting or mediating between multiple contexts and confronting yourself with the ‘foreign’ has always been part of my reality and way of thinking. This is specifically reflected into one of my works untitled *Mother Tongue*.

<figure>
 <img alt='NEWEtiquette of Tongues_Sara Lanner und Klaus Spiess_foto (c) Raffaela Bielesch' src="https://cockpit.dwhx.space/storage/uploads/images/1200/NEWEtiquette-of-Tongues_Sara-Lanner-und-Klaus-Spiess_foto-c-Raffaela-Bielesch.jpg">
 <figcaption>
 
 Sara Lanner and Klaus Spiess: Etiquette of Tongues, Performance, Pathologisch anatomische Sammlung im Narrenturm - Naturhistorisches Museum/ORF Lange Nacht der Museen, Wien, 2017. Credits by Raffaela Bielesch.
 
 </figcaption>
</figure>
 <figure>
 <img alt='NEWMother Tongue_Sara Lanner_Foto (c) PRINZpod' src="https://cockpit.dwhx.space/storage/uploads/images/1200/NEWMother-Tongue_Sara-Lanner_Foto-c-PRINZpod-1.jpg">
 </figure>
 <figcaption>

 Sara Lanner: Mother Tongue, Performance, Ox Warehouse, Macau, 2019. Credits by PRINZpod.
 
</figcaption>
 
 
**CS: The common denominator of the two performances is the durational usage of the tongue in a repetitive manner and the imprint it leaves on the space. The tongue becomes a substitute muscle to express yourself non-verbally in the form of writing - it is a predominant metaphor within both bodies of work in exploring identity and belonging. What are the other forms of language and discourses, the unseen as one watches the performance, that are created, communicated and felt as you perform?** 

SL: Both performances develop an intimate link between the experience of the ‘now‘ in relation to a (collective) history, including our responsibilities towards each other. For me *Mother Tongue* is also about a silent protest, a tongue written graffiti or abstract tongue painting, speaking about gender stereotypes in society. Only some months after the performance was created, I realized I did it during a time when some populist and conservative parties started to gain an up-draft again in Austria and narratives such as of splitting schoolchildren into groups according to their mother tongues or cancelling the internal ‘I’ (an indicator for female forms of nouns in German language) in the Austrian military, were highly discussed topics in the media. 
 
What connects it to *Etiquette of Tongues* is the attempt to perform the gap between self and other - an attempt to find a language for that, in which I can only fail as it is an ongoing search. So, I guess it is also about how to integrate something that we perceive as foreign or uncanny but is still intimate in our understanding of reality.
 
When referring to the uncanny, *Etiquette of Tongues* - which is basically an amicable/friendly dialogue with a wet specimen, the tongue of a day worker - also speaks about the persistence of the body and the stories embodied within it. It makes me reflect not only on life and death but also on immaterial or metaphorical forms of ‘existing’ or to project myself into a more distant future. 
 
 
**CS: In *Mother Tongue* specifically, how do you convey the role of the audience in understanding the role of language within politics of identity and belonging?** 
 
In *Mother Tongue* the audience might serve as a representative body, talking about collective bodies, imagined communities, the foreign or alien - categories which are being conveyed strongly through the use of and identification with a specific kind of language, in its broadest sense. I am writing on a gallery wall for almost an hour with my tongue. Repeating the words mother tongue, that slowly drift into a poem with variation (*MOTHER TONGUE, MY OHTER TONGUE, OR HERE OR THERE, MY TONGUE, HER TONGUE, THEIR MASSIVE TONGUE…*); the letters turn into abstract signs or paintings. Sometimes I mirror the text or start writing from right to left. It is a quite precise dramaturgy in terms of what I am writing how and where. Given the fact that it takes time to write with your tongue and it takes patience to wait for the next word until it is fully written, gradually a very clear political but yet poetic narrative appears and stays like an imprint in the spectator’s mind, as everyone of us has some kind of experience with language or the absences of it.

Some audience members told me they would start asking themselves which languages the other audience members might speak or where they come from. And how they construct their reality based on the language(s) they speak or don’t speak or whether they really ‘know‘ their language. 
 
**CS: What are you working on at the moment, is there anything you would like to share that you are inspired/keen to work on in the (near) future?**

SL: To keep the tension something will be kept a secret! 
But - so much can be said - I will continue working on the topic of 'mining' for a little longer. One more approach will be a written thesis on my artistic and theoretical endeavour, including examples of related artworks by other artists. 
 
Also, I want to further develop a practice of fragmented speaking, which appeared already in 2018 in my solo performance *Guess What*. For the first time in a long time, I recently reconnected to texts written by A.I.s and performed parts of it within the group exhibition *connections unplugged, bodies rewired* at das weisse haus (2021), which dealt with topics of (post-)digital intimacies. 
 
Vienna & Nottingham | December 2021
 

 <figcaption>
 
 Portrait Sara Lanner (on the right), 2021. Credits by Elsa Okazaki.

Interview between Elodie Grethen & Cindy Sissokho

*Generating Intimacy*

I have had the pleasure to meet and exchange with visual artist Elodie Grethen in her studio at das weisse haus in Vienna. The interview started unconventionally - with an exercise, a performance, a gesture informed by one of Grethen’s most recent projects *Feeling Your Touch*, in which she invites a stranger to take a portrait with her, with the mandatory condition of body contact – therefore, blurring down the lines through intimacy, a core theme in her photographic practice.

**Cindy Sissokho (CS): How did photography come about for you?**

EG: I was initially working in the art field on a management level. Being an employee was too complicated for me, so I decided to leave quite spontaneously to study photography. I started using the camera as an excuse to explore places where I shouldn’t be and create a connection with people that I wouldn’t be meeting in the first place. This is how my practice started.

My first photography series *Tokyo Stories*, back when I was living in Japan, was about intimacy. The project turned into a photobook – the book being a metaphor of intimacy, something that you can open and close quite easily. 

I have since drifted away from classic photography to focus on the process of the image and the performative aspect of photography, even heading toward installation. I’m very interested in the construction of identity - how we interact as individuals and artists in parallel to the public space and how we construct our identities within it. 

**CS: I was moved by the intimate exercise that we have done, capturing a moment in time, between us both, even though we haven’t met before. You explore intimacy quite deeply within your work. How did the series *Feeling Your Touch* come about? Your presence and this intimacy with the bodies of strangers are central. How come you suddenly wanted to be at the core of the work, and with strangers too?**

EG: When exploring the topic of intimacy, being behind the camera always creates a distance. So, this project is very much about including myself at the core of the photograph as part of the process and giving control away to a stranger with the shutter release. The only condition to the work is that some physical contact must take place – how long and where is up to the guest, so the person decides on what happens and when. 

I wanted to see what happens between two people, what it does to you to be close, to touch, to be looked at. It is a performance that exists just for the two of us and it is translated into the image. This is why I use analog: I am interested in the image on the film that’s created but we can’t see at the moment. 

I refer a lot to bodies as a surface of projection as well as self-portrait as a feminist practice. It is a way of reclaiming control over your life and your body. I approach it in that sense, circling back to the question of the gaze in photography - who is allowed to be seen and to see? 

**CS: There has been a recent resurgence of conversations about what we refer to as the history of photography - how it all started as a colonial project, how the medium was violently used until today, how contemporary practices are subverting the camera and the gaze in the work of Tina Campt and Mark Sealy, for example – a discourse that is still quite forgotten and silenced in an world that constantly mass produces images and looks at images, specifically when referring to Black and people of color, queer, women, or when looking at able-bodiedness, etc. So in this regard, how do you select your subject?**

EG: Yes, photography absolutely embodies dynamics of domination, maybe even more than painting ever did. Janes Gaines talks about how certain groups have historically had the licence to 'look' openly while other groups have looked illicitly. At the moment, I advertise only on social media, therefore I reach mostly people my age and my circle, but I want the project to become transgenerational and work with younger and older generations. The power of touch is interesting in itself, too; we need this cognitively, as do newborns and the elderly. The ones that crave touch the most are the ones who are the most deprived of it.

**CS: We’re all deprived of touch, affection, creating intimacy and this love language that we use every day - being in the street and in contact with other people. That is more and more lost. I guess it is about creating those bonds again, innocently – something that has considerably and most recently shifted with the pandemic. What was the outcome you wanted through this collective process and for yourself, too?**

EG: I wanted to feel and explore vulnerability. The collective process is very enriching, and I learnt so much from it, trying to build a discourse where it isn’t only my approach or the way I look at things. 

**CS: To draw a parallel with your project, *Women Appear*, you are representing the body of a woman of color, highly exposed – a project which reflects on the depiction of women’s body within classical painting. Could you tell us more about the performing body in this project? What were your initial intentions with the work?**

EG: The focus lies on the nude, female body in classical painting and how this depiction influenced our collective consciousness and how we look at ourselves as women. I looked at the poses and how the female bodies were displayed for the pleasure of the male consumer, usually showing the genitals and the breasts at the same time. I ask what it means to look at something that is physically not possible to hold as a position. The participant in my work is trying to reproduce the poses and see what happens to the body when you try to do so. 

**CS: You collaborate a lot with people, friends and artists in your projects. You are constantly in a visual dialog. With *Women Appear*, what was the energy during the filming in producing images that are highly collaborative?**

EG: I didn’t want to be the particular focus of that story about art history as a white and able bodied woman because the reference images always depicted white women even in “exoticized” settings, such as *Le Bain Turc* (The Turkish Bath) by Ingres, where you see two women of color who are not the main protagonists of the work. 

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 <img alt='Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres_Le bain turc2'src="https://cockpit.dwhx.space/storage/uploads/images/1200/Jean-Auguste-Dominique-Ingres_Le-bain-turc2.png">
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 <figcaption>
 
 Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres: The Turkish Bath, 1862. 
 
</figcaption>

My friend was interested in taking part in the project specifically because of this and also wanted to experience it for herself, as a non-professional performer. Our dialog also
revolved around nudity, the outfit should evoke it but shouldn't put her body on display as something to consume. This is why it was on purpose baggy, to remind of the nudity. Therefore, she stays in control and is not for the eye of the consumer. 

**CS: How did you feel the gestures and movements were contradicting that gaze? It is a sensual way of moving in the film through her poses. The choice for a total absence of sound also creates a specific atmosphere to the work.**

EG: The poses she tried to reproduce are all from classical paintings or influential images, but she keeps falling and shaking. The idea was to mimic these poses and show the absurdity of this representation that doesn’t take into account the actual physicality of the body. This is why the performer is bound to fail. If you take *L’Odalisque* (The Odalisque) by Ingres, the woman was painted with five extra vertebrae. This is why her back is so elongated - it is purely the fantasy of white males. 

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<img alt='TheGrandOdalisque' src="https://cockpit.dwhx.space/storage/uploads/images/1200/8_Jean_Auguste_Dominique_Ingres_-_The_Grand_Odalisque_-_WGA11841.jpg">
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 <figcaption>
 
 Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres: The Grand Odalisque, 1841. 
 
 </figcaption>
 
**CS: How come you were interested in painting specifically, too, and which ones were the most influential for the work?**
 
EG: I am revisiting art history and I started with classical painting since we inherited the gaze from the painting. It hasn’t changed with the arrival of photography. This representation and these poses can still be found in pop culture or superhero posters for example.

 
 
**CS: I could also identify that there is a slight humor to the film, too.**

EG: The work was a way to display the absurdity behind the representation of female bodies. Viewing these poses as a template she tries to replicate and the fact that she is failing underlines this irony. The performer stays in control of it, without being sexual. That’s why she has light skin-colored clothes, as a comment on the omnipresence of stereotypical white female bodies. We’re talking about nudes, but she is wearing oversized pajamas – a twist.

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 From left to right: Jan Sanders van Hemessen: Judith, 1540. Dwigth Hooker: Lena Forsén for Playboy, 1973. Pictorial Press Ltd: Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow, Alamy Stock Photo, 2020. 
 
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**CS: Finally, I was also intrigued by your series *O.T The Gaze*, and your continuous work around this idea of the gaze and this power dynamic that takes place between you and your collaborator - the photographer Laura Stevens, also present in the series. What were you exploring through this project?**

EG: This series was very much about the process, and the performance aspect of photography. We were interested in confronting our two gazes, mine and hers in both images. In this work, we’re both subjects and photographers - gazed at and gazing at. With one camera each pointed at the other, we looked each other in the eye for an hour without speaking. The images aren’t simultaneous, you’re not seeing the same exact moments. The images are working as mirrors but there is a discrepancy. 

At the beginning, we were laughing a lot, it was hard not to be conscious about the other, being looked at, with the strobes.... Then we shifted into something calmer and stronger. You can’t stay focused for an hour and then the body starts to ache and you become conscious of what happens to you, so you go back to the person. It shifted quite fast during the hour. 

 
Vienna, September 2021 

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<img alt='Elodie Grethen_Feeling your touch_Cindy 2' src="https://cockpit.dwhx.space/storage/uploads/images/1200/Elodie-Grethen_Feeling-your-touch_Cindy-2.jpg">

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 <figcaption>
 
 Elodie Grethen: Feeling your touch, 2021. (on the top and right)
 
 </figcaption>

Helmut Batista

Sophie Hirsch

The artist Sophie Hirsch and the curator Helmut Batista meet online to discuss the role of materiality, sculptural abstraction and the importance of adaption. 

Live talk via @dasweissehaus instagram. 





Sophie Hirsch & Helmut Batista: Live Artist Talk

Markus Hanakam & Roswitha Schuller

Markus Hanakam & Roswitha Schuller & Helmut Batista: Podcast

Viktoria Draganova

Tatjana Hardikov

Lavinia Lanner

Ângela Berlinde

Viktoria Schmid

Peter Garmusch

Johannes Gierlinger

Hanna Husberg and Agata Marzecova

Interview between Viktoria Schmid & Ângela Berlinde

Interview between Peter Garmusch & Ângela Berlinde

Interview between Lavinia Lanner & Viktoria Draganova

*What’s Moving*

**Viktoria Draganova (VD): Your practice, lately, shows you are more and more interested in space. What is your notion about space – as private space, or the space of the studio?**

Lavinia Lanner (LL): My thoughts on space start with very simple measurements – being myself. For my big drawings, for instance, I consciously choose 170cm high formats, just as my body height. The width is just the span of my arms. This way, I do not only make sure I am able to handle the papers by myself but create an imprint of myself which is then filled with what I do – drawing.

One of my recent series is called “Your secret, perched in ecstasy” and its works deal a lot with what is not shown, as you see only their wrapped version. Thoughts on what to disclose, what to share and what not are recurring in my artistic practice. For this series, analogously to my body measurements, I used my studio as measure for the paper, utilising the maximum height of 340cm. In a way, the studio has become somewhat of an extension of my limbs, my shell and cocoon.

**VD: I also observe you transform space through structuring, interrupting, layering it. When did you start working with such strategies, and how do you see them further developed**

LL: The first work using space in its integrity was an installation I created for an art festival in an old factory complex in Salzburg two years ago. The installation consisted of 21 paper webs of a very thin, almost see-through kind. On it, drawn elements of expressive strokes, which in theory would add up to a concrete lettering, which isn’t fully disclosed, as they were fragmentarily assembled. Visitors moved through this maze in very slow speed, as the fragility of the material was so present in the room. The papers were also moving with every tiny movement or even a breath around them. This is something I would like to work on further. Involving the audience in a way to make the work complete. Letting them perform a choreography without them even consciously knowing.

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 JEIN, Exhibition views/Video stills, Szenarien der Imagination, kunstraum pro arte, Hallein, 2020. Credits by Lukas Gwechenberger.
 
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**VD: It occurs to me that it's not just about space, but how we move through it. How is our movement through space - as individuals but also as a community – choreographed through your drawings?**

LL: It has a lot to do with a collective experience. In the aforementioned installation, movement took place at an unconsciously chosen and agreed upon pace - a mindful state. The tension in the room is held up by each individual, common agreement and common coordination, i.e. moving at a certain speed through the shared space. It is no longer about a single work or an individual, but – and yes, this might sound cheesy – it all becomes one. In slow-motion! Talking about it makes me instantly want to install it again. I am currently working on a quite similar intervention where I develop this thought of motion further, to be shown in spring.

Another, very early manifestation of time, speed and slowness, is my series of drawn brushstrokes. Expressive gestures are meticulously reconstructed by single pencil lines. The result might seem similar at first sight, but the closer you look, the more the layers of time peel off. A dilatation and expansion of time as we know it. Even though the act of drawing is the repetition of only a very small movement of my hand and wrist, the imagination of my whole body making the gigantic strokes is very present. This physical element – being it executed or hypothetical is a very idiosyncratic one in my drawing practice.

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 Brushstrokes, Exhibition view, '3B or not 3B', Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna, 2010. Credits by Thomas Freiler.
 
</figcaption>

**VD: I also think about the work “NOW” where a word appears as a still and makes us curious for things and appearances beyond the paper. What type of practice of looking at art are you interested in?**

LL: By creating surfaces, structure, bundles of lines, including geometrical shapes, sharp angles and outlines, I am very well aware about leading other’s gazes. What interested me in the work NOW was to outsource parts of the perception of the work to beyond the format as such. The letters are cut, what you see is only the very centre of the word. Undoubtedly, there is something preceding this moment of perception of the work now and more will follow. I am interested in encapsulating time, in reducing it to its solidified version of itself, as I am interested in it passing. Oftentimes, the drawn shapes are floating, almost in a vacuumized or frozen state. I very much like works that get something like a pause or a deep breath going and create an intimate moment between myself and its physical presence in front of or around me.

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 <img alt='NOW Foto Lavinia Lanner' src='https://cockpit.dwhx.space/storage/uploads/images/1200/NOW-Foto-Lavinia-Lanner.jpg'>
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<figcaption> 
 NOW from the series Not Long Now. Credits by the artist.
 
</figcaption>

**VD: In one of your last projects, you included performance in the installation. What was your aim, what type of experience did you want to create, and how does performance relate to your practice in general?**

LL: In this particular project with the title AS OF NOW, the aim was to add an ephemeral element to my rather static works of the past. Not only did the performer set the exhibition up during the course of the performance, she also rearranged it several times to the point where she completely dismantled it again. When is the exhibition an exhibition? Is there a peak or is what we see a sequence of a variety of possible exhibitions? These questions and many more were at the core of this project. The concept of the whole was elaborated in close collaboration with the performance artist, leading to extensive conversations about complex correlations and expectations we have of different genres, to find out that even if certain attributions (performance = movement, drawings = static - to break it down) are no longer (or have never been) carved in stone, but still are very present. Pushing these boundaries or, let’s say, allowing a certain fluidity, was our main focus.

Another difference to my installation mentioned earlier is that in the performance piece the element of movement was a very planned and conducted one. The elaborate choreography served a distinct function, leading through the parcours of our dialogue and our results at that time.

**VD: If we move from space to time, we could notice that time for you is related to deceleration. This is the contrary to the acceleration of the neo-liberal economy, would you think of your practice as a response to something you observe more generally about the current state of society? Do you try to translate your notion of time into movement, and how?**

LL: I am convinced that, as a part of society at a certain time, in my practice I reflect phenomena that are present on a collective level. Of course, with a magnifying lens on the points of my interest – being it personal or as a professional artist. Yes, maybe there is a subliminal collective wish for deceleration and analogue, tactile experience. I might be expressing something in representation for many others or even anticipating it – but isn’t that what art has always been about?

Repetition and a certain ritualised procedure accompany my daily work in the studio. The urge of putting things, material, pencils, lines in order and sorting them, is probably a thing many people know. So yes, when the outside is somewhat chaotic and a loss of control is imminent, a possible reaction is bringing one’s direct environment in order. What seems pleasing and aesthetically satisfying in my drawings though, is often only the appearance of the graphite surface – being shiny and smooth. The overall shape isn’t necessarily. Unknown, frightening objects are not uncommon in my imagery. How these two opposite conceptions come together and provoke something in the viewers, is what interests me most.

The connection of time and movement you mention is probably an attempt of embodying time by means of movement. The translation of time into movement helps me making time comprehensible and concrete through that bodily experience. The body as transformation tool of our perception. Wow, has drawing always been that complex? *[laughs]*


<figcaption>
 
Portrait Lavinia Lanner (on the right). Credits by Simon Krimplstätter.

Interview between Tatjana Hardikov & Viktoria Draganova

**Viktoria Draganova (VD): In parallel to your artistic practice, you’ve initiated many exhibitions in different venues in Vienna over the years. What prompted you originally to start doing this, and how did this practice based on collaboration evolve over time?**

Tatjana Hardikov (TH): I started working with other artists when I was a student. We were a good and active class community with a lot of vigor and willingness. Our professor, Franz Graf, always encouraged and supported us. We quickly learned to work on our own initiative. In the beginning, everything was very wild and funny. It was about gaining experience, mistakes were allowed. This is partly still the case today. Nevertheless, there has been a lot more seriousness. It is now much more about a concept, the homogeneity of the artists, the organization before and afterwards and longer-term benefits. Of course, that also takes time and effort: press work, being present during opening hours, funding reports... For me, as an artist, there is not always potential for this work. That's why I'm always happy when a new project comes about.

**VD: What is the process you and your colleagues create, and what makes it different from other initiatives?**

TH: I work closely with Claudia Schumann and together we choose people who we would like to work with. Sometimes, we come across vacant rooms that are available free of charge, sometimes we rent an exhibition space to be involved. Any funding received is passed on to the artists. For me it's exciting to work with artists who seem interesting to me. We create a dynamism that cannot be achieved alone. But it's not about offering something that I believe would not exist without us. I just think that standards in the institutional framework are much more tied to specifications, guidelines and successes.


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 from nowhere to nowhere, Installation views, interim use Mariahilferstrasse, Vienna, 2020. Credits by Philipp Hardikov.
 
</figcaption>

Structurally, the beginning of every project is the definition of a concept that currently seems important to us. Then we consider which artists have already had experience with the topic concerned in their work and ask them to participate. Most of them agree. I think it is always interesting for artists to enter into a discourse with other artists. You gain experience, make new contacts and exhibit. When Claudia and I organize exhibitions, we expect a lot of independence from the artists. When you organize an exhibition as an artist, you still work primarily as an artist and not as a curator. Curatorial work is much more than just organizing an exhibition. Therefore, we work differently and much more practice-oriented. We do not define any specifications. On the contrary, there should be space for experimentation where artists get involved with other artists. It is always very interesting for Claudia and me to see how different artists act during this process and what they get out of it. Some are good at it and others cannot do it at all, which has nothing to do with the quality of their work, but with their habits or methodology. 

**VD: Why do you think that artists decide to participate?** 

TH: Personally, I suffered a lot more due to specifications and influences in the gallery business than in free work where you are not bound to salability and competitive pressure. Of course, you are always under pressure when you want to please someone. It's hard to get this out of your head. We're all in a competition and also work for an audience and not just for ourselves. But at least you have the freedom to decide how you think even if you are wrong or unappreciated. That took me forward. I saw that artists who kept working in similar ways had developed very interesting working strategies and a very special relationship with their art and work.

**VD: Can you name a few collaborators/platforms involved in building a shared critical space in Vienna?**

TH: Half a year ago, Claudia went one step further and gave her initiative a name: “Schumann 02”. During the “ParallelVienna” art fair in autumn, for example, she used her own space for a cooperation project with painters, performers, musicians and writers. This year Anna Petelenz took part with her AP Kunst Art Fund from Poland.

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 <img alt='WIR' src='https://cockpit.dwhx.space/storage/uploads/images/1200/WIR.jpg'> 
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 Wir, Exhibition view with works by Fabian Seiz, Tatjana Hardikov, Kristjan Björn Thordarson and Luise Cibulka Kubelka (from left to right), Garage Grande, Vienna, 2020. Credits by Tatjana Hardikov.
 
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 parallel 21, Exhibition view with works by Claudia Schumann, Anna Wantuch, Tatjana Hardikov and Sevda Chkoutova (from left to right), Semmelweisklinik, Vienna, 2021. Credits by Tatjana Hardikov.
 
 </figcaption>
 
 
I know some colleagues who work in a self-organized manner and even run exhibition rooms (“sehsaal”). There are also many project rooms in Vienna that are not commercial and give space to underrepresented positions (“aacollections”). When you look at “ParallelVienna”, the art fair that runs parallel to viennacontemporary and meanwhile has become such a large and successful format, you can see that the institutional cultural scene is not the only one in charge and that there is an enormous underground space. It starts with the students and ends with every artist who deals proactively with their own work.
 
**VD: What about the situation of artists? Why do artists decide to work in Vienna?**

TH: I believe that relying on a gallery or another institutional body is no longer possible. Today every artist, including successful ones, has to act on their own initiative and creatively in self-marketing. There are so many options that make this possible today and it also makes artists more independent. There are different strategies to work as an artist in Vienna. Some colleagues have already given up and others just keep going and getting better and better. Still others have quickly achieved incredible success with bland art. You can see that anything is possible and that's good. There is a good scene in Vienna that doesn't stop moving. There are many groups in this scene that support themselves and work very consistently. Perhaps it is because there are always opportunities to get projects, grants and other options. Perhaps it is also the intellectual and formal freedom that is usually given. That gives you strength and motivates you to keep going. In the end, it's a lot about having fun.

 <figcaption>
 
 Tatjana Hardikov (on the right): Hochhaus, Installation view, from nowhere to nowhere, interim use Mariahilferstrasse, Vienna, 2020. Credits by Philipp Hardikov.
 
 </figcaption>

Interview between Hanna Husberg and Agata Marzecova & Niyati Dave

Interview between Johannes Gierlinger & Niyati Dave 

**Niyati Dave (ND): What led you into your current practice, which I see as spatially rooted, a nearly stratigraphic unearthing of histories from place and time?**

Johannes Gierlinger (JG): There has always been a great deal of interest in history, especially in the history of the 20th century. As I started to make art and work intensively with film, this interest in the impact of historical events on the present solidified - a kind of digging in the sense of archeology, although this excavation must be understood through the camera, through the montage, the interweaving of archives with current images. My work strongly deals with struggles and forms of resistance and works around themes like collective memory and remembrance. It is also strongly influenced by writings such as *On Collective Memory* by Maurice Halbwachs as well as Walter Benjamin's *On the Concept of History*.

**ND: Can you talk a little more about your process? In your work everything is imbued with a trace of the past. Do you begin from events or archives or do you begin from space and place? The reason I ask is because of how wonderfully tactile so much of your footage seems (for example in *Past Futures*) - it is very embodied and very much of place. Can we then talk of your process as you enter into a new idea - what it begins with and how it unfolds?**

JG: Every entering is relatively different. For my last film project, *Past Futures*, I filmed protests in Vienna for years, initially without knowing where this material will ever find a place. As I got interested in the March Revolution of 1848, the film project became a kind of starting point from which the various questions and topics arose. For this purpose, archives were interfaces that linked events, achievements, and ideas of this past revolution with the present. 
For this revolution, we looked at archives, outlines of a time, lithographs or texts that were created without a camera. I wanted to connect this photography-less past with the present. The ideas, developments, breaks and tendencies were in the foreground for me. If there is something tactile about it, so much the better.

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Johannes Gierlinger: Stills. Credits by the artist.
 
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**ND: I am also interested in your articulation of your practice as “essayistic.” To me, this brings forth many questions about form - cinematic form, a narrative form, but also the manner in which your installation and film practices speak to each other and how the “essayistic” manifests itself in both.**

JG: I think the form of the essay allows other questions to be asked, topics to be viewed differently and the incorporation of 'examining', 'trying out' and 'weighing up', with awareness of the personal perspective. And this personal perspective should perhaps not be confused with a 'private' one. As Hanno Möbius writes in *Das Abenteuer "Essayfilm"*, without factual argumentation and without consistent action, this attempt becomes an adventure of the spirit in the world of the senses that is accessible to viewers through their eyes and ears. This adventure opens up many artistic possibilities, as my sometimes documentary approach shifts to fictional forms and vice versa. For me, filmic work is the starting point from which I deal with a wide variety of other forms ranging from video installations and photography to collage-like works. 

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<figcaption>
 
 Johannes Gierlinger: A subsequent fulfilment of a pre-historic wish, Film, 2015. Credits by the artist.
 
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 Remapping the origins – a history of ideas, Exhibition view, Über das Neue, Belvedere21, Vienna. Credits by the artist.
 
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**ND: In many of your works there is a frisson between the image onscreen and the words that accompany it. I am curious about what work the image does for you in this regard.**

JG: Perhaps the question follows on from the previous ones. The diversity of the essay film also allows language(s) to be used differently. The spoken word is definitely of enormous importance for my films, especially because I can use it to relate documentary and fictional things, or break documentary conventions with poetic means. In my work, however, I see different languages such as sound, montage, collage and voice-over that interlock, complement each other and also go in opposite directions.

**ND: In a moment when time and space seem warped by the hyper-archive of the internet and an increasingly fragmenting notion of shared reality, with social media echo chambers creating isolated bubbles of information and relationalities, how do you situate your work into unpacking memory and resistance?**

JG: Social media, with its flood of information, and the internet itself as a constantly changing hyper-archive are naturally ambiguous achievements, as successful as their history is, as useful as they are, these platforms can also turn quickly. The current situation around the corona crisis illustrates that very well. The chance for artists is to deal with this paradox, to ask about the form of content, narrative forms, but perhaps also about what an archive should be able to do, for whom it is accessible, for whom it isn't.

For me, my work is about creating a narration from the flood of archives, recordings, images, texts, etc., finding a form, creating a narration, steering a direction, sorting it out for a topic and visualizing it. In the end, the artistic work may not become a hype on social media, but rather reaches its audience in a cinema, at a festival or in an exhibition. In any case, I am more interested in the attention tension of cinemas, exhibitions and any other physical spaces.

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<figcaption>

 Johannes Gierlinger, a history of ideas, ZETA Center for Contemporary Art Tirana, Albania, 2021. Credits by Mira Klug.
 
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<img alt='_MAM1208_' src='https://cockpit.dwhx.space/storage/uploads/images/1200/_MAM1208_.jpg'>
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<figcaption>

 Johannes Gierlinger, Die Ordnung der Träume, Installation/Film, 2017. Credits by the artist.

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<img alt='BJ_Preis' src='https://cockpit.dwhx.space/storage/uploads/images/1200/BJ_Preis.jpg'>
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 Birgit Jürgenssen Prize Show 2017, Exhibition view, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Vienna, 2017. Credits by Maximilian Anelli-Monti.
 
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**ND: There is a certain ambulatory feeling to your work - where the street is still an important site for remembering, experiencing, formulating collective memories and experience. I would just like to know more about this.** 

JG: You may come back to the question of what a virtual space and a physical one can do. I still see the street as a place of protest that makes things more visible. This first visibility can be sure to reach further ones via virtual paths. In my latest film I was also interested in the question of how a protest is formed, what a mass can do, what it visualizes, which dynamics unfold, which images arise, which groups meet, which concept of the enemy emerges. A current case in India shows what protests can do. In the end, the peasant protests were successful and the agrarian reform was withdrawn. Of course, negotiations took place in backrooms, but without the pressure from the farmers blocking the streets for almost a year that would certainly not have happened.
Currently I work on a video installation that includes 3D renderings, a work that also revolves around the March Revolution. 

<figcaption>

 Portrait Johannes Gierlinger (on the right). Credits by Paula Tschira.
 
</figcaption>

Niyati Dave

dwhX - chat set