New artistic director, program, research, & open call for artists

New artistic director
With the exhibition Bostanorama by Christoph Schäfer, Hemma Schmutz’s tenure as curator at Kunstraum Lakeside came to an end as of January 2018. Effective immediately, the author, publisher, and curator Franz Thalmair assumes the position of artistic director for the program period 2018 to 2020. Thalmair’s work in Klagenfurt will focus on the question of how artists today explore the fundamentals, possibilities, and limits of knowledge production.

Artistic research
In a program scheduled to run for three years, Kunstraum Lakeside will look at the fields of endeavor that can be subsumed under the term “artistic research.” Thematic links with the activities in Lakeside Park will carry forward the sociopolitical dimension the exhibition venue has cultivated to date. Artistic research, like art in general, allows us to gain aesthetic experience. In addition, however, it also offers artists an opportunity within their respective art practice to contemplate the implications of their own activities. Embedded in social, historical, and cultural interpretation contexts, artistic research therefore also allows us to respond to the constantly changing realities of our society.

Agnes Fuchs featured in first exhibition
The Vienna- and Berlin-based artist Agnes Fuchs (b. 1965 in Austria) is in charge of the first exhibition for the new program. Under the title Robustesse et perfection, Fuchs explores in an installation developed specially for Kunstraum Lakeside the visual context of technological and scientific apparatus at the interface between analogue and digital worlds. In painting, videos, and spatial interventions, the artist analyzes not only visual aspects but also the conceptual worlds that grow up around the functions, mechanisms, and logic of such instruments. The exhibition opens on March 15, 2018, 7pm, also kicking off the new program.

Open call for “statements”
In addition to solo and group exhibitions Kunstraum Lakeside invites artists, cultural practitioners, and researchers to participate in the 2018 program by submitting their own “statement.” These performative pieces will take the form of one-day events relating to the annual topic as well as experimenting with modes of representation in the visual arts in the context of an institution at the interface between art, science, and technology. A total of four “statements” will be presented in the first year under the new director. All material for the open call can be downloaded at the website of Kunstraum Lakeside.

About Kunstraum Lakeside
Kunstraum Lakeside is a place for the production and presentation of contemporary art with the aim of provoking critical discussion about aspects of the economy relevant to society. Based at the Lakeside Science & Technology Park close to the University of Klagenfurt, the art space operates at the interface between economic, scientific and cultural research, practical input and forms of discourse. Through its various exhibitions, public art projects, talks, discussions, film evenings, and cooperation with university and other institutions, the art space aims to trigger an interdisciplinary debate around the issues of the day.

Curator
Franz Thalmair (b. 1976 in Austria) works as an author, publisher, and curator in Vienna. Since 2016 he has been co-director of the arts-based research project originalcopy—Post-Digital Strategies of Appropriation at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. From 2010 to 2014, he was managing curator of the Association of Visual Artists Vienna Secession, and from 2007 to 2010, head of the culture desk and visual arts editor at the online newspaper derStandard.at. Thalmair has been publishing regularly since 2007 in media including springerin—Hefte für Gegenwartskunst, Kunstforum International, and artforum.com.