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Exhibition View: radical ⇌ matter

When Materialism is No Longer Enough

Jan / Feb 2024

radical matter: When Materialism is no Longer Enough offers a rigorous, playful, interdisciplinary approach to our contemporary real. Set against the hyperpolished atmospheres of robotically automated knowledge systems (RAS), generative and distributive intelligences, and wildly proliferating deep-fake narratives, this exhibition invites you to experience the infinite world of folds, psychedelic/neural sensory camouflaging, machinic aliveness and synthetic encounters – all part and parcel of our 21st century forms of agency, ethics, collective responsibility and new imaginaries.

Space 1

Image by ©
Image by © Please note not all exhibited artworks are visible here or shown below.
Image by © Planetary Skins, Sylvia Eckermann and Gerald Nestler. A performative mixed-reality art project, 2023
Image by © Zoe, Noor Stenfert Kroese and Amir Bastan. Installation and documentation, 2023
Image by © (front) Just One Word After Another, Mukul Patel. Deck of cards, 2023. (back) Fashion of Resistance, Manu Luksch. Concept costume, digital video, 2023
Image by © (left) Charcot Flowers, Selina de Beauclair. Digital prints, 2023 / (right) Index Cards, Ivonne Gracia Murillo. Installation, 2023
Image by © Planetary Skins, Sylvia Eckermann and Gerald Nestler. A performative mixed-reality art project, 2023 (Detail)
Image by © AF 1138/3, 13945/1, 13945/4, 13945/5 and 13945/8, Tina Lechner. One gelatin silver print and four pigment prints, 2020-22
Image by © In the Vertigo of Translations, Dario Srbic. 3D-printed platonic solids, photography, 2022

Space 2

Image by © (back) Atlas of the Liminal: From Matter To Data, Manu Luksch. Giclée prints, 2021-23
Image by © (front) Color Inventory, Bernhard Cella. Artbook installation, 2023 / (back) Candid 1571 and Candid 2391, Julian Palacz. UV printing on acrylic glass, 2020
Image by © ...presemic utterances and undulations... , Jonathan Boyd. Asemic Animation and installation, 2023
Image by © The Sight of Clouds, Gerhard Lang. Three drawings, 2023
Image by © Three Acrylic Paintings on Stands, Ashley Hans Scheirl

Dancing ever closer to strangely alive and deeply compelling humanmachineinterspecies co-evolutions, we find ourselves moving away from the old materialist canons of method, rationality and reason that asked: “supposing it could be otherwise, what would your otherwise look like” towards a slightly more graphic, urgent, raw, re-think: “supposing it already is ‘otherwise’”– how does this ‘otherwise’ enable new forms of agency, aliveness, and responsibility in the face of multi-modal generative Ai, non-conscious cognitions, TouchDesigner?

Our initial answers demanded a full ‘stripping-off’. A radicalmatter that demands: Strip away the old metaphysics of materialism! Strip off the speculative, object-oriented, historical or idealist well-past-their-sell-by-date wine in new bottles! Strip off these old knowledge systems which for so long have occluded new imaginaries, different forms of resistance, poetics, and libidinal economies. Take a walk with us on the wild side – a wild side that is already here, shape-shifting and proliferating.

Image by © Color Inventory, Bernhard Cella. Artbook installation, 2023

Artists:

Amir Bastan, Sonia Bernac, Yasmine Boudiaf, Jonathan Boyd, Bernhard Cella, Clarissa Leonie Cohausz, Selina de Beauclair, Sylvia Eckermann, Maximilian Gallo, Johnny Golding, Ivonne Gracia Murillo, Tonica Hunter, Ajamu Ikwe-Tyehimba, Ameera Kawash, Jeremy Keenan, Gerhard Lang, Tina Lechner, Thandi Loewenson, Manu Luksch, Gerald Nestler, Jannis Neumann, Harold Offeh, Julian Palacz, Mukul Patel, Maggie Roberts, Ashley Hans Scheirl, Linn Phyllis Seeger, Dario Srbic, Noor Stenfert Kroese, Tanja Traxler, Shira Wachsmann, John Wild, Julia Wolf

Curatorial Team:
Johnny Golding, Martin Reinhart, Tanja Traxler

The Radical Matter exhibition and symposium is part of a PEEK artistic research project hosted by the Art & Science department at the University of Applied Arts Vienna in cooperation with the Royal College of Art London. We would like to thank the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) and all our project partners.

Photos: Lea Dörl