WELT KOMPAKT?

Curated by Ursula Maria Probst

The exhibition project WELT KOMPAKT? focuses on transdisciplinary artistic practices that have come into play along with our increasingly more direct access to information, communication tools, and social media. The use of social media channels such as Instagram and Facebook alters our sense of near and far, our awareness of intimacy and distance, of bodily presence, absence, and political mobility. What influence does social media have on how so-called “glocal” (global & local) projects and ways of living are organized?

Collective modes of work as well as advocacy on political, social, and ethnic issues comprise a major aspect of activities pursued by the artists participating in this exhibition—as do questions as to the ambivalences and dichotomies of artistic appropriation. They deal with a re-formulation of notions of democracy and a re-transfer of art into life, applying various methods of visualization with their inherent processes in media such as video, installation, sound or performance. What is at stake is the relationship of current artistic production vis-à-vis genealogies of cultural and medial forms of appropriation. Curator Ursula Maria Probst explores the relationship between contemporary artistic production and genealogies of the processes of cultural and media adoption.

WELT KOMPAKT? raises questions pertaining to how various social media change our view of the world and to which subliminal political dynamics are made visible by them. As a project, WELT KOMPAKT? deals with the interlacing of art and life in works by artists living at Brazil and artists based at Austria, including how they deal with local living conditions and engage in exchange with their colleagues. What genealogies, criteria underlying values, and lines of argumentation can be activated by art? WELT KOMPAKT? takes up discourses of decolonization, and expands on these with current artistic strategies and forms of communication that have emerged under the influence of social media. “Thinking out of the knowing body” was the title of a lecture held by Brazilian social psychologist Suely Rolnik in Vienna in 2016. According to Rolnik, we decipher the world as a cartography of forms associated with representations which we have stored in our cultural memory; that’s how we situate ourselves.

The artist Marie Carangi employs transdisciplinary technologies such as the handycam and theremin in her performances in order to articulate emancipatory demands through direct physical participation. One example is her protest against the ban on going topless currently in force in Brazil. In his video work S Luiz Roque deals intensively with science fiction. During his research, he met theoretician Jota Mombaca, who writes about science fiction and how it can transport a reality that can be dangerous and discriminatory into imaginary freedom. Remix Textures by Giseli Vasconcelos & Mateus Moura is a video production remixed from the cinematography of the Amazon. Ines Doujak has been assembling her project Loomshuttles/Warpaths, Eccentric Archive since 2010 through a critique of ethnographic image collections, which shape our perceptions of people from other cultures. She uses poster design to create alternatives to hegemonic forms of knowledge production.

Artists:
Elke Auer & Esther Straganz, Lucas Bambozzi*, Fabiane M. Borges*, Marie Carangi*, Libidiunga Cardoso, Simone Carneiro, Pêdra Costa, Kadija de Paula & Chico Togni*, Giovanna Graziosi Casimiro**, Miss G (a.k.a. Giorgia Conceição)**, Silvio De Camillis Borges*, Caetano Carvalho*, Maya Dikstein*, Ines Doujak, Fabiana Faleiros*, Female Obsession, Anna Jermolaewa, Jamie Lauriano*, Daniel Lie*, Roberta Lima, MARSSARES*, Christian Kosmas Mayer, Thais Medeiros*, Denise Palmieri, Dudu Quintanilha*, Camilla Rocha Campos*, Luiz Roque*, Juliana dos Santos, Axel Stockburger, Giseli Vasconcelos*, Antoinette Zwirchmayr
*Artists-in-Residence Q21/MQ
**Artist-in-Residence Austrian Federal Chancellery and KulturKontakt Austria

WELT KOMPAKT? is organized in cooperation with the Arts and Culture Division of the Austrian Federal Chancellery and the Federal Ministry for Europe, Integration and Foreign Affairs.

Admission free

Director of MuseumsQuartier Wien: Dr. Christian Strasser

Enquiries: Press, MQ: Irene Preissler, ipreissler [​at​] mqw.at

Artistic Director, frei_raum Q21 exhibition space: Elisabeth Hajek, ehajek [​at​] mqw.at

*Image above: Luiz Roque, S, 2017. HD video, black and white, sound, 5 minutes. Courtey: MASP, São Paulo; free adaptation of the text “Towards a disobedient redistribution of gender and anticolonial violence”, Jota Mombaça; Production: Groch Filmes WITH Félix Pimenta, Ivy Monteiro, Lucas Abe, Romario Monte e Vitor Nogueira (PIVET); Special Participaton/Choreograpy by Danna Lisboa; Executive Production: Camila Groch; Direction of Photography: Glauco Firpo; 10 Direction Assistent: Diego Martins; Production Direction: Filipa Gomes; Wardrobe: Alex Cassimiro; Makeup: Carlo Rosa; Edit: Juliana Munhoz; Original Sound Track: Márcio Biriato Cube Replicate Vazado (1951), von Franz Weissmann CriandoArte PLATÔ Erik Vitor 2a; Direction Assistent: Julia Ferreira; PLATÔ Assistent: Rubinho.