CMRK openings in Graz, Austria

Markus Krottendorfer At New Moon Tomorrow
Camera Austria
September 25–November 20, 2016
www.camera-austria.at

Yes, but is it performable? Investigations on the Performative Paradox
Künstlerhaus
Halle für Kunst & Medien
September 25–November 20, 2016
www.km-k.at

New Graz: Narratives from the Arrival City
< rotor >
September 25–November 26, 2016
www.rotor.mur.at

Beatrice Gibson
Grazer Kunstverein
September 25 – December 18, 2016
www.grazerkunstverein.org

CMRK is a network of four independent institutions for contemporary art based in Graz: Camera Austria, Künstlerhaus, Halle für Kunst & Medien (KM–), < rotor >, and Grazer Kunstverein.

In his new project at Camera Austria, Markus Krottendorfer shows interest in the manipulative moments of pictorial regimes, in questions related to artifice, invention, fabrication, and deception. An invented mountain range in Africa and a falsified skull found in Great Britain play a pivotal role here. Two seemingly unrelated circumstances that nonetheless share a common history: describing and classifying them, verifying their origins, and drafting their future, all from the center of a fictional world. Instead of being motivated to set right against wrong, Krottendorfer seeks to reconstruct the power inherent to establishing the undecidability of this question. He avails himself of a manner of deception, remaining fragmentary, essayistic, associative, while employing the seductive power of aesthetics. In the context of other projects of recent years, the impression arises of a certain revival of the futility of occupying that place from which origins or certainty for the future can be viewed.

The exhibition is accompanied by a homonymous publication in the Edition Camera Austria, with texts by Reinhard Braun, Anette Freudenberger, Bernhard Kellner, and Thomas Wisser, and 32 color illustrations by Markus Krottendorfer.

The Künstlerhaus, Halle für Kunst & Medien is very pleased to announce the group exhibition Yes, but is it Performable? Investigating the Performative Paradox, as an elaborate experiment that will be in a continual state of development. The Künstlerhaus has invited artists to come to Graz and devote themselves to various examinations of current issues revolving around the performative. Throughout the festival, two to three works will be added to the exhibit every Wednesday, while the live settings and objects for all of the performances will also remain in the exhibition space after they have taken place. Not until the last of the four openings, on October 12, will the exhibition be on display in its entirety. Only from then on, no further changes will be made. In this ongoing series of openings, the performances conceived and given by Sarah Mendelsohn / Fred Schmidt-Arenales, Karl Karner / Linda Samaraweerová, Nezaket Ekici, and, finally, Marie Karlberg, urgently convey performance’s timeless, key attraction for artists of every generation as an immediate vehicle for ideas and action.

With Renate Bertlmann, Stuart Brisley, Nezaket Ekici, VALIE EXPORT, Joan Jonas, Regina José Galindo, Marie Karlberg, Karl Karner / Linda Samaraweerová, Katalin Ladik, Sarah Mendelsohn / Fred Schmidt-Arenales, Alex Mlynárčik, Stefanie Seibold

The Annenviertel district—where the city’s new residents, migrants, and asylum seekers find a host of networks that help them find their way around and settle in Graz. Numerous shops, run by migrants, political and cultural associations, sports clubs, religious gathering places, as well as educational and social facilities, allow them to keep up their native cultural and language traditions.

New Graz at < rotor > brings together a number of artistic initiatives curated and designed in a collective process and aimed at investigating the conditions met by new arrivals in districts such as Annenviertel and cities such as Graz. Artist Jun Yang, for example, explores the experiences and motives of Chinese migrants, while artist Moira Zoitl deals with the question of how West African women cope with the manifold ways of life in Graz and their native countries. In various ways, New Graz provides a stage for people who at some point in the past set up home here and their narrations of how they were welcomed by the Arrival City.

Thus Narratives from the Arrival City takes a clear stance on the current political situation. Despite all efforts to temporarily seal off the country’s borders, there is no denying that Austria has always been a country of immigration. The emergence of urban spaces and the growth of cities in particular are dependent on foreign migration, and the project draws on a wide variety of artistic media to remind us once again of this fact.

With Severin Hirsch, Maryam Mohammadi / Joachim Hainzl, Škart, studio ASYNCHROME, Jun Yang, Moira Zoitl

In response to the leitmotif of this year’s steirischer herbst, the Grazer Kunstverein presents an elaborate solo exhibition by British artist and filmmaker Beatrice Gibson (born 1978, United Kingdom), who in her recent works has explored the structural parallels between pedagogy, avant-garde music, and contemporary economics.

Gibson’s films are composite collages, blending social modes of working with a diverse range of references, from the experimental compositions of Robert Ashley and Cornelius Cardew to the modernist writings of William Gaddis and Gertrude Stein. Her exhibition at Grazer Kunstverein aims to bring together an array of her films from the past ten years. It is the first of its kind, with the artist presenting at The Members Library an additional selection of films by artists and filmmakers that inspire her practice, such as Mary Helena Clark, Ben Russell, Laida Lertxundi, Leslie Thornton, Mati Diop, and Mark Leckey.

In her work, Beatrice Gibson engages with a broad range of themes, but most are concerned with modes of production culled from modernist musical composition. Her primary sources are the avant-garde composers of the 1950s and 1960s, such as Cornelius Cardew, John Cage, and those linked to the Fluxus movement. Gibson’s projects are almost always participatory, incorporating co-creative and collaborative processes and ideas.

Beatrice Gibson is the last exhibition under the directorship of Krist Gruijthuijsen and the last within the 30th anniversary program at Grazer Kunstverein.