EXHIBITION: IS THIS INTIMACY?
Opening: Thursday, 24 October, 7– 10pm
KRINZINGER PROJEKTE
Schottenfeldgasse 45
1070 Wien
On view: 25 October — 2 November 2019
Guided tour and artist talk: 26 October, 12 – 2pm
Working hours: Wed – Fri: 3 – 7pm / Sat: 11 – 2pm
In the framework of the 5th edition of Curators’ Agenda in collaboration with the University of Applied Arts Vienna, BLOCKFREI presents a mutual group exhibition Is This Intimacy? taking place at Krinzinger Projekte.
Artists:
Alfredo Ledesma Quintana, Anna Lerchbaumer, Anne-Clara Stahl, Bernadette Anzengruber, Darja Shatalova, Eva Rybářová, Laura Stoll, Maximiliane Leni Armann, Mona Radziabari, Paula Flores, Veronika Abigail Beringer.
Curators:
Anna Mikaela Ekstrand, Carlota Mir, Chiarina Chen, Katrina Longo, Lina Romanukha, Valeria Schiller.
Curatorial supervision and guidance:
Anamarija Batista
Is This Intimacy? aims to explore intimacy in our hypermediated present through its ambiguity and its diversity. The exhibition emerges from the exchanges, desires and experiences of a group of millennial artists and curators from across the globe. Is This Intimacy? borrows its title from a meme that circulated heavily online in 2018, whose original image features the protagonist of a 1990s Japanese anime TV series, The Brave Fighter of Sun Fighbird, an android who mistakes a butterfly for a pigeon, asking himself ‘Is this a pigeon?’Transformed into a viral meme that turned the original question into a thousand others, (‘Is this a therapist?’ / ‘Is this a cure to my lifelong depression?’/ ‘Is this hell?’ ‘Is this my life?’ / ‘Is this a hacker?’) the image and its transformations illustrate a viral, current state of emotional confusion globally.
How will future art historians treat memes? Probably similar to letters and soap boxes of eras bygone. A subtle reference to the seminal 1956 exhibition This Is Tomorrow, which marked the beginning of late Western capitalism through its relationship to pop culture, Is this Intimacy? is an exercise in translation of some of its key concerns and consequences into the era of global hypercommunication.
Understanding translation as “the ultimate intimate act”, as Gayatri Spivak states in “The Politics of Translation”, the exhibition explores how we produce, seek, or avoid intimacy through language, flows of affect, communicational modes, capital, love, heritage, and technology. Rather than making monolithic claims, it presents a collage of ideas (artworks, performances, talks, and texts) that investigate the tensions and challenges that we face in our relations today, as well as our relationship to an ambivalent affective and political environment. How do we form intimate moments with ourselves and others? How do we create distance or intimacy with our personal histories, and how do we create new intimate publics in an environment dominated by affective capital and ‘successful’ images of public intimacy?
In short,
Is This Intimacy?
“RAPPORT, 2019” A PERFORMANCE BY Laura Stoll (30 mins.)
Saturday, 19 October, 21h
Villa Schapira
Max-Emanuel-Strasse 17
1180 Vienna
As a prelude to the exhibition “Is This Intimacy?” Curators’ Agenda/ BLOCKFREI hosts this performance and gives its audience the opportunity to ponder the question: Can intimacy be learned, unlearned, or trained?
In her new participatory performance Rapport (2019) Stoll uses IRI (Interpersonal Reactivity Index) to explore cognitive and emotional empathy. The work is part of Stoll’s questionnaire series in which she deconstructs the scientific methods she used to research schizofrenia, meta-cognition, and social cognition as a researcher at the Excellence Cluster at the MindBrainBody Institute at Charité and the Max Planck Institute.
Empathy is a building block for intimacy – come find out if you have any!
Curatorial Walk-through and Artist Talk with Bernadette Anzengruber
Saturday, 26 October, 12 h
Partners of the Curators’ Agenda: Vienna 2019 program are the die Angewandte (University of Applied Arts Vienna), the Ukrainian Institute and KRINZINGER PROJEKTE. This year’s program is supported by the City of Vienna.
Exhibition ‘Is This Intimacy?’ Installation View
Exhibition opening ‘Is This Intimacy?
