Is the artist present? symposium

As soon as liveness enters museums, various challenges come to the fore. When presenting performance, dance, music or sound, very different considerations apply compared to the over centuries rehearsed mechanisms relative to artworks such as painting and sculpture using traditional materials. The common ‘material’ involved in liveness is the human body and most museums are not usually equipped for all the conditions this entails: Where, say, could a performer get changed, stash water, have a break or even shower? The complexities do not end there, for it is the interplay between the body (or bodies), the various objects (props or costumes), space (architectural setting, lighting, temperature), as well as the staff and audience (or participants) that require interlinked attention. Further issues arise when museums collect such works: How to document, conserve, exhibit, contextualise and, moreover, how to keep the work alive for future generations? What collection policies and (archival) practices exist to secure a wide range of performative works and facilitate their reiterations? 

On the occasion of the exhibition Marina Abramović curated by Bettina M. Busse (Bank Austria Kunstforum Wien) at ALBERTINA MODERN, the symposium “Is the artist present?” addresses these aspects in three moderated dialogues and in connection with the historical context of performance art in Eastern Europe; a context in which Marina Abramović and many other artists sought to develop artistic practices responding to and defying Western (European) ideas of modernism, representation and institutionalisation. The political implications and specific conditions for production of performance art in Eastern Europe will be discussed as well as its reception and connection with Western contexts. 

The event is accompanied by a reader conceived and produced by MA students of Expanded Museum Studies at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. 

Program: Friday January 23, 2026
University of Applied Arts Vienna, Auditorium, Vordere Zollamtsstraße 7, 1030 Vienna, Austria, Europe

2pm: Welcome by Rector Ulrike Kuch
Followed by an introduction by Bettina M. Busse (Bank Austria Kunstforum Wien) and Julienne Lorz (Expanded Museum Studies, University of Applied Arts Vienna)

Dialogues
2:30pm: Presenting performance in museums
Lisa Beißwanger (University Koblenz), Andrea Tarsia (Curator and writer, London), Moderated by Bettina M. Busse (Bank Austria Kunstforum Wien).

3:45pm: Contextualizing performance art in Eastern Europe
Seraina Renz (University Leiden), Felicitas Thun-Hohenstein (Academy of Fine Arts Vienna), Moderated by Bojana Piškur (Moderna galerija, Ljubljana).

5pm: Presentation of the reader by students of Expanded Museum Studies

5:30pm: Collecting performance in museums
Barbara Clausen (Städelschule, Frankfurt), Rosalie Doubal (Tate Modern, London), Moderated by Julienne Lorz (University of Applied Arts Vienna).

A collaborative event by Bank Austria Kunstforum Wien and the University of Applied Arts Vienna on the occasion of the exhibition Marina Abramović at ALBERTINA MODERN. With an accompanying reader by students from Expanded Museum Studies.