TOMORROW IS CANCELLED
Opening: 25 October 2018, 7 – 10pm
KRINZINGER PROJEKTE
Schottenfeldgasse 45
1070 Vienna, Austria
Duration: 26 October – 6 November 2018
Wed – Fri: 3 – 7pm / Sat: 11 – 2pm
Artists:
Maximiliane Leni Armann / Nicoleta Auersperg / Marie Yael Fidesser / Lisa Großkopf / Elizaveta Kapustina / Gašper Kunšič / Marlene Lahmer / Anna Lerchbaumer / Esther Martens / David Meran / Darja Shatalova / Peter Várnai.
Curators:
Melody Chuan (Taiwan, 1984) / Camilla Cole (UK, 1985) / Jo Ferly (Guadeloupe, French Caribbean, 1970) / Sania Galundia (India, 1991) / John Kenneth Paranada (UK/Philippines, 1988) / Sayori Radda (UK/Austria, 1992) / Nina Rokvic (Australia, 1993) / Nia Tabakova (Bulgaria, 1983).
Curatorial supervision and guidance:
Anamarija Batista
Tomorrow is Cancelled is the exhibition realized in the framework of the Curators’ Agenda, an annual curators-in-residence program organized by BLOCKFREI association in partnership with the University of Applied Arts Vienna.
The challenge of the show lies in the input and collaboration of a group of international curators developing and producing the exhibition together during the six-week program.
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the renowned 1968 protests: The global rise of social collisions, largely distinguished by popular rebellions opposing bureaucratic elitism and the military, who in turn counteracted with the application of political repression. The protests allowed for countless socialist movements to prosper, to realize actions and make an impact within Europe, while simultaneously, social movements were spreading in the USA, Europe, Mexico, and Brazil. 50 years later, the memories of 1968’s riots and revolts spur pressing concerns as political climates once again veer towards a growing inclination of right-wing fascism.
The global rise of right-wing populism tactically incorporates mystification generated through post-truth prevalent in fake news, propaganda, and corruption. Such a precarious masking of the real, which has made a substantial return in politics and elsewhere, can be understood as the spectacle seen through Guy Debord’s 1967, “Society of the Spectacle”. Not being a “collection of images, but a social relation among people, mediated by images,” the spectacle slithers into every crevice of life by commodifying it, creating collective alienation, and drowning any possibility for authenticity.
Today the moment of alienation has been shifting to the phenomena of complacency. The pleasant state of complacency brought many to secretly wish for a comfortable, illiberal, authoritarian, corporately maintained society where one does not need to think and dream about the future because tomorrow is cancelled. The provoking element of this exhibition can be summarized in the polemic question: “Are we just secretly yearning for a fascist illiberal society that never changes? A dictatorship crystallised in time and space, basking in memories of past glories haunting us like ghosts from a Cambodian Hell.” The exhibition “Tomorrow is Cancelled” looks into the edges of this discourse, anchoring it in the notions of fear and complacency. The exhibited artworks consider the collective complacency in a world where the degradation of knowledge bleeds into a blindness towards critical thought and where everything turns into homogeneous robotic feelings of numbness and political ambivalence.
PUBLIC PROGRAM:
25 October:
– Exhibition opening, 7pm
– Performances by Darja Shatalova at 7:30pm
– Performance by Marlene Lahmer at 8:30pm
27 October:
– We invite everyone to join us for tea and an exhibition walk led by the curators at 11:30 am, followed by an artist talk held by Lisa Großkopf
In the framework of the symposium “FORGOTTEN DREAMS IN FOREIGN LANDS: LEGACY OF ‘68 — ART PRACTICES AND PRESENT-DAY UTOPIAS” that took place in November at the University of Applied Arts Vienna we had the opportunity to discuss the exhibition “Tomorrow is Cancelled” with one of their curators, one of the artists included in the show, and an art critic who was asked to write a critique about the show.
We are bringing you here the video of the panel entitled “Curating New Utopias: 1968 as an incentive in the case of the Curators’ Agenda Exhibition”
The program Curators’ Agenda is supported by the City of Vienna and the Seventh Viennese District.
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