topic

One more Question

Insights into processes, background experiences and the structures and challenges behind projects at AIL

Follow up conversations (in German and English)

TOPIC CONTENT:

AIL broadcasts the research landscape of die Angewandte and is a connecting point to other fields of knowledge and sciences. The projects in AIL’s program investigate current societal issues and encourage the development of new ideas and concepts.

Which tools can artistic practices develop to cope with the challenges our society faces today? What can artists, designers, activists, teachers, farmers and everyone else offer to create a well-functioning present and a future worth living?

AIL facilitates a wide range of formats, such as multidisciplinary exhibitions, curated talks and discussions, symposia, lectures, concerts and performances as well as public experiments.

With the range of subjects, knowledge and players residing at AIL we try to dig deeper from time to time, and therefore give you more insights in processes, background experiences and the structures and challenges behind projects.

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Follow Up: Suchart Wannaset

Q&A with former Alumni in Residence

Suchart Wannaset is alumni of the department of Transmedia Art and worked at AIL from February till March 2025

Within his artistic practice Suchart Wannaset explores the multi-faceted relationship between culture and nature. The shaping of natural landscapes by humans has far-reaching consequences regarding the relationship to each other as well as changes and preservation. The search for nature and so-called ‘border zones’ is an essential part of Wannaset’s artistic work. His works address social, cultural, queer and ecological phenomena, the concepts of which he implements transmedially with the help of video, sculpture, performance and photography.

During his AIL residency, Suchart Wannaset continued developing his art project Pressure, which sits at the intersection of art and science. Combining kinetic sculptures, video, and sound works, Pressure artistically explores and contributes to the little-known research on the effects of noise on insects – highlighting the harmful effects of noise and light pollution, along with habitat loss caused by suburban expansion in Vienna. In the video, the artist searches for the pure insect sounds of his childhood, only to find that much has changed. His kinetic sculptures – anthropomorphic insects – add a heavy, imposing presence, symbolizing the exhaustion imposed on these creatures and their environment by human activity. A sound database, compiled during his field recordings, documents the seemingly endless search for undisturbed natural sounds.

Dear Suchart, tell us briefly what you have been working on during your residency at AIL?

I was working on an interactive experience for a future exhibition. Visitors can scan a QR code and play sounds I recorded from the outskirts of Vienna. They can then click through my web database while walking through the exhibition with their smartphone. This adds sounds to the existing soundscape. This idea is that when we are somewhere, we leave a trace of our presence. This adds to the overall noise of that place, and makes it feel as though we are intruders there.

To create the soundscape, I was trying out the recordings and trying to use them as background noise for the exhibition.

I put all the big moth sculptures on display for the first time. I also tried out the flickering LED-Neon light in the space, which makes it more dramatic. I added the finishing touches to the textile, sewing and stitching. I can see everything that is displayed and the video that is shown at the back. This helps me to see what is missing and what I should work on or finish. The final step was taking photos and videos of the works for use later.

By combining sculpture, sound and interactive elements, your project shows how sensitive ecosystems are to change and how quickly biodiversity and natural soundscapes can be lost. In your video, you go in search of the insect sounds of your childhood, which have changed since then.

How does this personal experience shape your artistic work and your view of the relationship between memory, loss and artistic documentation?

The act of searching for the lost became an integral aspect of the artistic practice. The foundation for this artistic research was laid prior to graduation from the Angewandte Transmediale (Brigitte Kowanz) with a one-hour, three-channel video work filmed in Thailand in 2020. The title of this work is Chasing Nature into Abstraction, and it deals with the search for nature and the changing of habitats and landscapes.

The experience of being raised in Thailand at my grandparents' house, which was surrounded by lotus-filled wetlands that have since disappeared, has had a profound impact on my personal development and artistic practices.

Were there any encounters or aha experiences that inspired you during your residency? Can you briefly describe them?

Yes, this project isn't finished. The aha effect is that I can walk around every part of Vienna to make a sound database, which could be a big project in itself. The other option is to use the recordings to make new pieces of music that can also be shown as artwork on their own. People who visit my studio gave me a list of books to read and to learn more about insects and nature.

How is the project progressing now?

I added some recordings and updated some audio files to make the sound database on my website bigger. I am going to build boxes to transport the sculptures in my studio. I started cutting a video from the documentation and editing the pictures taken in the AIL studio. I did this to prepare for Open Calls and exhibition applications, as well as for my portfolio and website.

What has changed over the course of the residency, what process has been influenced?

The flickering light and the way the sound was changed added to the experience. During the residency, Nora [Mayr] introduced me to some people, including experts in the field where art and science meet. I got some ideas from the talks. It was good for my idea and I got ideas for some new artworks in the future. I found the answers to some of my questions.

One final question: What does interdisciplinary work mean to you? What significance does it have for your work?

The subjects of intersection, interdisciplinarity and the interface between art, nature and science have always been of interest to me. It is not possible to express something in one medium alone, as certain topics are very complex and can only be shown in many layers. This can be achieved through art disciplines, techniques or genres. In the context of my professional practice, the progression of one subject matter frequently gives rise to the emergence of another, thereby facilitating the exploration of diverse intellectual domains. The concept may be illustrated by means of a metaphor: that of a web which connects many dots, the benefit of which is mutual.

Born in Thailand, Suchart Wannaset moved to Vienna at the age of 7. After graduating from ‘die Graphische’ school of media and photography in 2010, he attended a photography masterclass in Paris with Oliviero Toscani in 2011. In 2014 Wannaset decided to apply to the University of Applied Arts in Vienna to study Transmedia Art after being inspired by the work of Professor Brigitte Kowanz, who was the head of the department. He graduated in 2020 with a 57-minute, 3-channel diploma film shot in his birthplace. Suchart Wannaset's collective works with the Mai Ling collective and individual works have been shown at the Secession Vienna, Brunnenpassage, Tanzquartier Vienna, Parallel, the Austrian Sculpture Park Museum Joanneum, Belveder 21 and Stadtgalerie Salzburg, among others.

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Follow Up: Ramiro Wong

Q&A with former Alumni in Residence

Ramiro Wong is alumni of the department of TransArts and worked at AIL from March till April 2025

Ramiro Wong’s artistic approach is interested in translation, representation and the politics of invisibilisation as an integral part and narrative of installations and performances. Both in its temporal iteration and in its object-based effects, Wong’s work is not intended to illustrate circumstances but to stimulate actions that lead to a conversation in which participants witness each other’s experiences.

Dear Ramiro, tell us briefly what you have been working on?

During the residency I was working in a new body of work which I titled Sonnet as it is intended to consist of 14 different parts which will compose an installation.

How is the project progressing now?

The project has since taken two routes, on the first I am on a research travel to find out more about the impact of that particular period of time on the people that survived the internal armed conflict in Peru and on the other hand I have been developing new pieces that can bring forward the concept.

What has changed over the course of the residency, what process has been influenced, where has it developed or not and why?

During the residency I was able to work on the physical ‘drafts’ of all the pieces at once and see how they can relate to each and create a narrative in terms of materials, illumination, dimensions, etc. 

In your work, the use of found and reused materials such as recycled car batteries is a metaphor for resilience and survival in broken systems. At the same time, the invisible plays a central role, especially in the political-social context. How do you manage to combine the material and the immaterial in your installations – or even bring them into a productive contradiction?

What interests me is precisely the tension between the visible and the invisible, the tangible object and the immaterial force it represents. A recycled car battery is heavy, toxic, and unmistakably physical, yet when connected to a light it becomes a channel for something unseen: electricity, memory, history. In my installations, this tension mirrors how political and social realities operate. Violence, fear, resilience – these are rarely visible on the surface, yet they shape how people live their everyday lives. By working with found and reused materials, I anchor the work in the real, in what you can touch and recognize. But the light they generate, the sounds that emerge, the absences they mark – these open a space for the immaterial: memory, trauma, hope. The contradiction is productive because it forces the audience to confront both dimensions at once: the material traces of survival, and the invisible systems – political, social, emotional – that are subjacent. 

What does interdisciplinary work mean to you? To what extent does it come into play in your work, why?

More than interdisciplinarity, I think of my work as transdisciplinary, meaning that at the beginning I try to create a coherent narrative by bringing in different sources of knowledge as addressed from the point of view of various disciplines but I contrast them with real experiences from the communities and peoples about whom I am talking with the intention of showcasing problems that are as contemporary as perennial and  have become invisible or ‘acceptable’ to the broader of society.

Ramiro Wong (born in Lima, Peru in 1987) is a transdisciplinary and research-based artist. His work addresses political and socio-cultural questions of identity construction. Local narratives and individual experiences serve as the starting point for what he calls dynamics of displacement: a process in which identity is formed, understood and deconstructed in different historical and geographical contexts. Wong’s current work explores how these processes have been sustained by seemingly innocuous habits of consumption, reproduction and rebranding over the course of a 500-year-old tradition that the artist calls Aesthetics of Othering.

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Follow Up: Verena Tscherner

Q&A with former Alumni in Residence

Verena Tscherner is alumni of the department of Digital Arts and worked at AIL from January till February 2025

Verena Tscherner experiments with the idea of the vacuum as a way to capture a moment, as a delay of decay, as ‘holding one‘s breath.' The aspects of air and vacuum are increasingly gaining new, expanded meanings in her artistic process. Inhale. deflate marked the beginning of her engagement with the genre of sculpture and spatial installation. In her diploma thesis entangle. deflate she combined 3D-printed objects with a large-scale deflateable and a sound installation. This large-scale deflateable is sculpturally placed in the space. It takes on an organic character as air is repeatedly added or removed from it using a timer.

Dear Verena, tell us briefly what you have been working on?

I produced a new installation for my exhibition at Frau* schafft Raum. I experimented with different breathing patterns of the deflateables. At the same time, I worked further with directional speakers and tried different texts, voices, atmospherical sounds and music to see how these sounds may alter the room they are placed in. I also brought my first deflateable inhale. deflate and set it up at my temporary studio at AIL.

I have been working on a lot. And maybe not much at the same time. Put a lot of effort in many different things. Finishing them all together to one new art piece: detach. deflate. Shown at Frau* schafft Raum afterwards for over three months.

How is the project progressing now?

The project is finished with the exhibition at Frau* schafft Raum. The reception of the audience was as empowering as the work itself was intended to be. It will be exhibited again this year in the LEMU (Museum Langenzersdorf, NÖ) in a group exhibition of the Bildhauer:innen Verband Österreich.

What has changed over the course of the residency, what processes has been influenced?

To imagine big installations was definitely inspired by the residency, alone because I had such a big studio space. It was nice to fill the space with all my ideas.

What does interdisciplinary work mean to you? To what extent does it come into play in your work, why?

Interdisciplinarity is a diverse form of mixing media in a honest and indeed complex way. It is more about finding the right media / or mediums for the topic and letting the artwork intuitively come to life, and see what it requests and how it may manifest itself. It’s a playful form of experimentation, that may resonate on several levels and on multiple layers with the observer.

Were there any encounters or aha experiences that inspired you during your residency? Can you briefly describe them?

Yes there were quite a few I have to say. I especially want to mention the visit from Petra Gruber from the Architecture Department of the Angewandte. I invited her for feedback on my work, as she has never seen any or my artworks so far. I was really curious to meet her and I fully enjoyed the conversation we had about so many things. I felt really inspired and it certainly opened a new perspective to me.

I also enjoyed the visits from two classes. One was my former department, the digital arts class, in the framework of a lecture held by Wolfgang Fiel. Most of the students in this group were quite young and their interest in my way of operating and creating art was truly adorable and also brought me out of my comfort zone, which is always important for any kind of progress.

Later Peter Kozek from the APL (Angewandte Performance Lab) came to visit me with some students as well. This visit was very delightful and charming at the same time. The students were really eager to learn about my work in progress of the project I created and produced during my residency at the AIL.

What happens to the idea of sculpture as a static object when – as in your case – it breathes and moves? Your sculptures deal with the topic of violence against women, i.e. a social problem that usually happens in secret within relationships. What new meanings does this create, especially with regard to empathy?

First of all, the topic is not part of my handwriting. It just happened that my first two big sculptural works dealt with a similar issue. My medium of choice, the so called Deflateables, are breathing objects, that mimic the human breathing patterns.

Therefore it appears that the audience starts to somehow interact / connect intuitively with the sculpture (object) itself and that indeed opens up a place in their consciousness that I would describe as empathy. In my opinion this brings another layer to the work and to art itself. The layer of how to engage and immerse the audience in the created atmosphere of the artwork. The layer of connecting to something more universal, yet being perceived by the individual in their own way.

Born in Tyrol, Verena Tscherner came to Vienna shortly after graduating from high school. She studied at the University of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna (MDW), where she graduated in 2014. Afterwards she studied at the Friedl Kubelka School, School for Artistic Photography in Vienna, which she graduated in 2019 with a diploma. Then she studied digital art  with Univ.-Prof. Mag.art. Ruth Schnell and UBERMORGEN at the University of Applied Arts, Vienna, and graduated in June 2024. She lives and works as a freelance artist in Vienna.

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Close Up Research: Multispecies Soundscapes

In conversation with reasearchers and artists Klaus Spiess, Ulla Rauter and Emanuel Gollob

Next Laser Talk

In November, AIL will host the next Laser Talk* Sonophagia – Eating Sound. On this occasion we sat down with Klaus Spiess, who is part of the team behind the Laser Talk project, and his colleagues Ulla Rauter and Emanuel Gollob, to give us more insight into their work and research. Elisabeth Falkensteiner (Head of AIL) was leading the conversation.

Klaus Spiess, Ulla Rauter, and Emanuel Gollob collaborate by integrating their expertise in medicine, media art, and artistic AI to investigate the interplay between human vocalization, the oral microbiome, and artificial intelligence. Spiess brings his background in medicine, anthropology and performance to explore the conceptual frameworks that challenge traditional human-centered communication, particularly focusing on the microbiome’s role in language and identity. Rauter, a media artist and researcher in transmedia arts, leads the investigation into how specific sounds and vocal expressions can influence microbial communities, creating experimental soundscapes. Gollob, working in creative robotics, develops and implements Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) models to enable real-time interaction between AI, human voices, and microbial behavior, emphasizing a dynamic cross-species dialogue. Together, they create interactive installations that blend science, art, and speculative design, inviting audiences to engage with and contribute to these evolving multispecies soundscapes.

This collaboration aims to explore the interactions between the human voice, artificial intelligence, and the oral microbiome, creating a multispecies soundscape where human and microbial agents collaboratively shape auditory experiences. By examining how different sounds and linguistic expressions impact the microbiome, they highlight the co-authorship between humans and non-human entities in creating vocal and phonetic outputs. Through installations like Chronolalia and Sonophagia, audiences engage in a spatial experience where their voices interact with AI and microbial cultures, fostering a sense of shared agency across species and technologies. The project seeks to rethink the human-centered notion of language, authorship, and identity, dissolving traditional boundaries between human and non-human contributions. Ultimately, it combines art and scientific inquiry to propose a posthuman commons.

Since 2023, Paul Gründorfer, an electronic composer experienced in transdisciplinarity, Mehrta Shirzadian, a PhD in molecular biology and current student in the Art & Science department at the Angewandte, and Jürgen Ropp, a PhD in Interface Culture at the University of Arts in Linz, have contributed their expertise to the project.

Klaus, you are a trained internist and psychoanalyst and you have spent the last ten years fostering collaborative partnerships between medicine, art and performance. What fuels your interest in language and/or sign systems, especially with regard to your medical/psychoanalytical background?

[KS] I have a personal history of speech impediments and have therefore always regarded speech acts as existing between a loss of control and desire to create. I used to experience psychosomatic complaints – the very same issues I would later treat in my patients. These complaints are characterized by an inability to translate emotions such as anger, grief, or anxiety into coherent pre-linguistic or linguistic symbols, manifesting instead as physical symptoms. In contrast to this inability, the eminent child psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott demonstrated how a (lonely) child can use its imagination to animate inanimate objects, from teddy bears to individual sounds, and thereby console itself. He referred to this process as ‘primary creativity’.

This conflation of both the inability and ability to animate inanimate (sound) objects led me to question the creative relationship between nature and culture in terms of signs and symbols. I was less interested in Peirce’s semiotics or Saussure’s notion of arbitrariness, and more drawn to Nabokov, who emphasized the mutual entanglement of natural and cultural symbols. Nabokov was fascinated by the fact that a butterfly displays such aesthetic forms as eyes on its wings, which serve no functional purpose other than the aesthetic. Elsewhere, Michel de Certeau referred to this deception (mimicry) as a pure, functionless luxury afforded by nature.

I thus began focusing on theories related to the collapse of signification, which refers to situations where specific conditions cause the conflation of sign and signifier. For example, as hunger intensifies to an extreme degree, the word for a particular food can come to represent the experience of hunger itself, until the two become indistinguishable. Psychoanalyst Dana Amir demonstrated this through recollections of life in concentration camps. In her book Poetics of DNA, linguist Judith Roof discusses the collapse of signifiers in relation to DNA, exploring its dangerous potential for commercialization. Margaret Atwood also engages with this idea in her dystopian novel Oryx and Crake, where genetically modified humans can survive on feces but lose the ability to create linguistic symbols, becoming capable only of naming things they can physically touch.

The climate crisis has also sparked my curiosity about ‘semiopollution’, which refers to pollution through pure signs. Although little research has been conducted in this field, this form of pollution encompasses a range of phenomena, from the acceleration of speech to the pollution caused by social media.

Ulla and Emanuel, your interdisciplinary artistic research project focuses on the interaction between the human voice and the oral microbiome. What do you hope to find out?

[UR] In 2022, while I was working on the project, we started to establish, question and investigate the interaction between the human voice and the oral microbiome on an artistic-speculative basis. Our primary focus was on the tonal qualities of the human voice and its linguistic transformation processes: How can different sounds, words, verbal and phonetic expressions affect the microbiome?

Based on multiple studies that illustrate the real effects of acoustic vibrations on yeast and other microorganisms, we established this relationship with the human voice. Through speech acts, the voice creates a variety of noises and sounds. From the hissing sibilants to the high overtones of vocals and diphthongs, there is a lot of sound material to affect the mouth's microbes in different ways.

What is the specific role of AI?

[EG] If you think about human speech as the product of a collaborative process between human agents and the oral microbiome, you start to wonder which other co-authors might be involved in our modes of verbalization. The role of technology in all its different forms should therefore not be overlooked. AI voice generators or speech-to-text transcription software illustrate the back-and-forth between AI and human speech, even if there are temporal or spatial lags compared to our current oral articulation techniques. Similarly, the reproductive cycle of our microbial cell cultures takes place on a different temporal scale, about 3 to 4 hours.

For this reason, we specifically decided to use Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) for its performative qualities and algorithmic open-endedness instead of other, more common AI speech generators. A Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) network, which has been trained on our lab data, is able to predict the microbial reproductive potential of different sounds and formulate performative responses to these projections and to current data from the microbial sensors – and thus mediates between microbial and human timescales.

With Chronolalia, a performance installation we presented at Ars Electronica in 2023, we sought to translate the ongoing process of oral co-authorship into an open-ended spatial experience, allowing visitors, the oral microbiome, and AI to become co-authors in the synthetic language of the space. Through this process, a visitor's language input, microbial reproductive needs, and the DRL's pattern preferences combine to create dynamic verbal expressions.

We technically constructed a feedback cycle that is both auditory and vibratory–tactile: Visitors are encouraged to mimic the synthetic voice articulator while standing on a whole-body vibration plate, providing more data for the continuous learning loop. In doing so, they explore new sounds with altered voices that may be beneficial for the reproduction of the microbiota growing in a bioreactor onsite. This echolalic speech investigates a potential space of unknown phonemes intersecting with the oral microbiota's needs, resulting in a polyphonic, vibrating, hybrid chorus of cross-species intelligence that operates in both microbial and vocal interests. When a visitor hears their voice and vibration distorted and alienated due to the microbiota's temporal growth, they perceive and understand the influence of the microbiota on their voice. In this moment, they experience themselves as a relational subject, whose singularity dissolves into a diffuse resonance or sound event. This experience addresses a polytemporal community with subjective components distributed among all actors: the speaker, former speakers, and the community of oral microbes with reproductive interests.

Here, AI approaches a practice of animism, which is increasingly relevant, as pattern recognition in unknown forms has often been regarded as a form of new animism. Michel de Certeau, elaborates on the animistic qualities of glossolalia, which informed another focus of our installation: the glossolalia-like multiple repetitions of sounds required to induce a change in cell structure.

Image by ©Chronolalia, Spiess/Gollob/Gründorfer, Installation View, Ars Electronica 2023 © Spiess/Gollob/Gründorfer
Image by ©Chronolalia, Spiess/Gollob/Gründorfer, Installation View, Ars Electronica 2023 © Spiess/Gollob/Gründorfer
Image by ©Chronolalia, Spiess/Gollob/Gründorfer, Installation View, Ars Electronica 2023 © Spiess/Gollob/Gründorfer
Image by ©Chronolalia, Spiess/Gollob/Gründorfer, Installation View, Ars Electronica 2023 © Spiess/Gollob/Gründorfer
Image by ©Chronolalia, Spiess/Gollob/Gründorfer, Installation View, Ars Electronica 2023 © Spiess/Gollob/Gründorfer
Image by ©Chronolalia, Spiess/Gollob/Gründorfer, Installation View, Ars Electronica 2023 © Spiess/Gollob/Gründorfer

Klaus, you also organize LASER Vienna Talks, co-hosted by Angewandte’s department of Media Theory, which focus on human sign systems as animate materials (signoids) and signifiers in terms of language, patterns or algorithms. You hosted four of these events at AIL. At the last event in November, ‘Making Souls – Making Bodies: Amerindian Cosmologies, AI, and the Microbiome’, you seemed keen to dismantle Western epistemic systems of knowledge production. What can we learn from indigenous ontologies or cosmologies about non-human intelligence, such as microbiomes and artificial intelligence? What specific challenges does the microbiome pose? What is so fascinating about them?

[KS] For a long time, I have incorporated ethnographic and medical-anthropological approaches into my research practice because I felt it was necessary to move beyond the hierarchical Western understanding of the nature-culture bind through an indigenous reading of this relationship. While our working group's installations are still largely based on Western thought—principles of cause and effect, scientific understandings of nature, linear time, and the great divide between human and non-human—I find it fascinating how Brazilian anthropologist Eduardo Viveiros de Castro challenges this system in his descriptions of Amerindian culture. The people of Amerindia regard animals as reincarnated humans and see humans as sharing a culture with animals, but not their bodies. In contrast, Western natural science tells us that humans share the same physiological body with animals but lack their culture.

This leads to an entirely new (ethical) understanding of our world when we consider the implications of killing animals that were once humans. This is especially true in the case of the microbiome, as its practical scientific achievements dissolve any clear boundaries between human and non-human. The microbiome attests to the fact that non-humans are part of us and outnumber our own human cells. Since indigenous peoples learn to alter their vocal melodies, pitches, and tonal patterns for new songs through communication with 'outsiders,' such as birds or other non-humans, we can consider learning tonal sounds to communicate with our microbiomes. This strange conflation of Amerindian and natural scientific imagination holds for me great yet untapped potential for new inquiries in the fields of cultural theory, natural science, and the arts.

We aimed to access and showcase this potential in our latest installations at Ars Electronica 2024 and ISEA 24 in Melbourne, the latter of which was solely dedicated to the relationship between electronic arts and indigenous culture.

The performance installation Sonophagia highlights, in a more literal form, the exploitation of Amazonian microbiomes by modern industries as an echo of the 19th-century rubber trade. We contrast Amazonian speakers, whose extremely biodiverse microbiomes and endangered low-phonetic tonal languages stand in stark contrast to European speakers, who exhibit poor microbiome diversity and high-phonetic speech. In the performance, a tenor representing Caruso from Werner Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo appears to float in a double-walled cylinder of his own salivary microbiome while attempting to sing Massenet’s dream aria. However, the aria is dramatically altered by the diversity needs of his salivary microbiome.

His counterpart, a phonograph made from a local Amazonian newspaper that critiques environmental destruction, plays the voice of an endangered local speaker, asking Caruso to perform his Italian aria in their native language, which typically incorporates whistling, humming, and whispering. The tenor’s aria becomes a tonal composition dictated by the microbial growth needs and the tonal structure of the endangered language. Real-time sound data and laboratory data algorithmically inform the system, which evolves throughout the exhibition. By the end, a kreol aria is created that considers both endangered microbiomes and diverse languages.

Image by ©Sonophagia, Spiess/Gollob, Installation View, 2023 © Ars Electronica
Image by ©Sonophagia, Spiess/Gollob, Installation View, 2023 © Ars Electronica
Image by ©Sonophagia, Spiess/Gollob, Installation View, 2023 © Ars Electronica
Image by ©Sonophagia, Spiess/Gollob, Installation View, 2023 © Ars Electronica
Image by ©Sonophagia, Spiess/Gollob, Installation View, 2023 © Ars Electronica

Klaus Spiess is associate professor at the Centre for Public Health at the Medical University of Vienna where he is heading a working group on Art & Science. Alongside Ulla Rauter and Ruth Schnell (former professor and director of the department of Digital Arts, University of Applied Arts Vienna), he also has been working on the PEEK (AR 687) research project 'Semiotic Sympoiesis for the Posthuman Commons' together with the Angewandte. Media artist Ulla Rauter studied Transmedia Arts and is a lecturer at the department of Digital Arts at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. External research partner and media artist Emanuel Gollob studied Design Investigations at the University of Applied Arts Vienna and is currently university assistant and PhD candidate at the department of Creative Robotics at the University of Arts Linz. In addition to several other collaborators, Mehrta Shirzadian, a PhD in microbiology and a student in the Angewandte Art&Science department, also contributes.

Chronolalia Video link

*LASER Talks are a collaborative Art&Science lecture format with Leonardo MIT Press, associated with 40 universities globally. The Vienna LASER is currently hosted by the Medical University in partnership with the Department of Media Theory, University of Applied Arts.

Leonardo/ISAST LASER Talks is a program of international gatherings that bring artists, scientists, humanists and technologists together for informal presentations, performances and conversations with the wider public. The mission of LASER is to encourage contribution to the cultural environment of a region by fostering interdisciplinary dialogue and opportunities for community building to over 50 cities and 5 continents worldwide.

More About the LASER (Leonardo Art & Science Evening Rendevouz) Series

Funded by PEEK AR 687 Semiotic Sympoiesis for the Posthuman Commons and the Angewandte Interdisciplinary Laboratory

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Conceptual Joining: Backstage Report

From our Newsletter 2019 (Interview in German)

Daniela Kröhnert and Lukas Allner giving us insights in their research project and experiences

About the project

figure of stacking system | Image by ©

Das Forschungsteam von Conceptual Joining zeigte im Winter 2019 in Form einer Ausstellung im AIL ihre Arbeit und Ergebnisse, im Rahmen dessen haben wir Daniela Kröhnert and Lukas Allner gebeten uns einige Hintergründe und Erfahrungen zum Projekt zu beleuchten:

Wir haben im Grunde untersucht wie das Wesen des Materials Holz raum- und strukturbildend erlebbar wird. Unsere Überlegungen begannen im Detail, in Prinzipien und Systemen zunächst losgelöst von einem konkreten Gebrauchszweck.

Wir wollen mit den entstandenen Experimenten Spekulationen über eine materialorientierte Architektur anregen, die auf eine mögliche Funktion und Deutung aus dem sich ergebenden Potential verweisen.

Team at work | Image by ©

Wie setzt sich euer Team zusammen, wer kommt aus welchem Kontext?

Wir sind alle Architekten, mit verschiedenen Hintergründen und Expertisen, zum Beispiel ist Philipp Reinsberg auch Zimmermann und Daniela Kröhnert Spezialistin für CNC Fabrikation. Unsere Mentoren sind Professor*innen und Unterrichtende an der Angewandten in verschiedenen Bereichen mit weiteren Kompetenzen zum Beispiel als Ingenieur*innen, Industriedesigner und Wissenschaftler*innen.

Unser Team wird angeleitet von Prof. Christoph Kaltenbrunner, momentan Professor am Institut für Kunstpädagogik und leitet die Abteilung Darstellung, Architektur und Environment und vereint den Architekten, Produktdesigner und Maschinenbauer in einer Person.

Das Forschungsteam sind Lukas Allner, Daniela Kröhnert, Philipp Reinsberg und Mechthild Weber, alle studierte Architekt*innen, mit unterschiedlichen Vorausbildungen und Spezialisierungen. Philipp ist gelernter Zimmerer, Daniela Spezialistin in Digitaler Fabrikation, Lukas Stärken liegen vor allem im Entwurf und der konzeptionellen Entwicklung unserer Experimente und sorgt für eine kohärente Umsetzung der Forschungsagenda, Mechthild ist Expertin wenn es darum geht die komplexen Prozesse in der Bauausführung mit der Kunst zu verbinden und steuert unsere Forschungsagenda indem sie für den Wissensaustausch zwischen allen Beteiligten (auch Forschungspartner*innen) sorgt. Zusätzlich werden wir betreut durch die Mentor*innen, Prof. Karin Raith und Anja Jonkhans aus der Abteilung Baukontruktion des Instituts für Architektur und Clemens Preisinger, Bauingenieur und Entwickler der parametrischen Tragwerkssoftware Karmaba3D.

workshop in the woods | Image by ©

Wie entsteht so ein Forschungs-Projekt?

Es gibt vom österreichischen Wissenschaftsfond (FWF) ein Förderprogramm zu künstlerischer Grundlagenforschung (PEEK). Es werden Projekte von 2,5 Jahren Dauer gefördert. Das Tolle an diesem Programm ist die vollkommen ergebnisoffene Ausschreibung, als Forschende*r ist man also sehr frei in der Untersuchung von Fragestellungen. Wir haben uns als Gruppe von befreundeten ehemaligen Kommiliton*innen, zunächst zu dritt zusammengefunden, als wir die Themenstellung für den Förderungsantrag entwickelten, kamen die weiteren Team-Mitglieder dazu.

Der Ausgangspunkt war eine weitergeleitete Anfrage, ein Projektkonzept zu einem innovativen Klebstoff zu entwickeln. Durch die Auseinandersetzung mit dem Zusammenfügen von verschiedenen Materialien / Teilen (per Verklebung) kamen wir sehr schnell auf das Material Holz. Uns faszinierten einerseits die komplexen Materialeigenschaften und -formen, andererseits die vielfältige Kultur der Fügemethoden in der Handwerks- und Baukunst.

excursion to Japan | Image by ©

Ihr habt zur Recherche eine Exkursion nach Japan gemacht, was ist euch besonders in Erinnerung geblieben?

Besonders beeindruckend war wie gleichzeitig uralte Tradition und High Tech überall präsent sind. Die Einzigartigkeit der zeitgenössischen japanischen Architektur kommt auch daher, dass traditionelle mit futuristischen Ansätzen sich zu etwas Neuartigem verbinden.

Ein besonderes Erlebnis war wie traditionelle Zeder-Bäume aufwändig gezüchtet werden, um perfekt gerade Stämme zu bilden, diese Wälder wirken wie riesige Säulenhallen. Noch extremer ist die Kunst des “Daisugi”, einer speziellen Baumzucht, in der oben auf einer Art Mutterbaum gerade gewachsene Nebentriebe als Pfetten (eine Form von Dachlatten) für Teehäuser im spezifischen Sukiya-Stil wachsen gelassen werden. Herr Iwai, der allerletzte, der dieses Handwerk noch betreibt, hat uns großzügig in sein schönes uraltes Holzhaus zu einem traditionellen Tee eingeladen und Einblick in das alltägliche japanische Leben in einem Bergdorf nördlich von Kyoto gegeben. Überhaupt ist die Liebe zum Detail und zur Perfektion in allem spürbar.

preparing the wood | Image by ©
augmented reality in the exhibition | Image by ©

Welches Potential seht ihr in der Verbindung von Handwerk und neuer Technik?

Wir glauben dass mit den Möglichkeiten von Computern und Technologie mit hoher Irregularität und Komplexität umgegangen werden kann. Es ist nicht mehr unbedingt notwendig in gleichförmigen Standards zu denken, individuelle Realisierungen von Räumen und Objekten als Unikate sind möglich. Durch Technologie wird ein neuer Zugang zu Material und Handwerkskunst möglich.

robot and graphic working with wood | Image by ©

Daniela hatte mir im Vorfeld von "Robotic Production der Branch Formation" und "Augmented Reality Programmierung" geschrieben – Worum geht es hier genau, wie sieht der Arbeitsprozess aus?

Im Holzbau werden immer öfter computergesteuerte Maschinen und automatisierte Prozesse eingesetzt, diese ermöglichen eine komplexe Bearbeitung mit hoher Präzision. Solche CNC Maschinen, wie etwa eine automatische “Abbundanlage” werden dazu verwendet vorgefertigte Holzbalken herzustellen, die auf der Baustelle ohne grossen Aufwand montiert werden. Hauptsächlich werden so konventionelle ("konservative") Satteldächer hergestellt, wir sehen aber ein großes Potential für komplexe erlebbare Architekturen, die sich so realisieren lassen. Über die Dauer des Projektes haben wir verschiedene Prototypen von irregulären Stabstrukturen umgesetzt, einige davon sind in unserer Ausstellung zu sehen.

Heterogene Werkstücke wie Astgabeln lassen sich schwer mit herkömmlichen Maschinen bearbeiten, es gibt keine geraden Flächen oder gleiche Teile. Für diese Herausforderung ist die räumliche 7-Achs-Bearbeitung mit einem Roboterarm besonders interessant. Diese Maschinen kennt man vielleicht von vollautomatisierten Produktionsstraßen in der Autoindustrie, wo diese Roboter komplexe Arbeitsabläufe präzise ausführen. An den Arm können viele verschiedene Werkzeuge montiert werden.

Die Angewandte besitzt eine solche Maschine, wir haben für dieses Projekt eine spezielle Vorrichtung entwickelt, auf der Äste eingespannt werden. Nach einigen Versuchen hat sich ein Ablauf etabliert indem jedes Teil über drei Referenzpunkt eingemessen wird, wodurch die digitale 3D Geometrie mit dem physischen Objekt synchronisiert wird, anschließend wird mit einer Kettensäge bearbeitet. Vorrausgesetzt alle Dateien sind erstellt, dauert die Bearbeitung für ein Teil inklusive Befestigung und Einmessen 30 bis 40 min, der Roboter wird von einer Person bedient.

Als Alternative haben wir ein Verfahren entwickelt, in dem wir mit Hilfe einer Augmented Reality Anwendung auf einem Smartphone Äste von Hand bearbeiten können. Mit sogenannten AR Apps lassen sich virtuelle Informationen mit der physischen Umgebung überlagern. In unserem Fall haben wir dieses Werkzeug dazu genutzt virtuelle Umrisslinien der Verbindungsdetails auf die physischen Elemente zu projizieren, nachzuzeichnen und schließlich mit einfachen Handwerkzeugen (Handsäge, etc.) auszuschneiden. Dieser Prozess war sehr interessant für uns, weil wir darin das Potential sehen durch Computer Software mit einfachen, leicht verfügbaren Werkzeugen ein hochkomplexes Projekt zu realisieren.

Ähnliche AR Anwendungen haben wir auch verwendet, um die großen Gesamtstrukturen zusammenzusetzen und aufzubauen. Es gab keinerlei physische Pläne oder Zeichnungen, lediglich eine virtuelle Bauanleitung fuer ein 3D Puzzle.

The artistic research project Conceptual Joining investigates wood constructions in a series of structural and spatial experiments. By combining the intelligence of traditional craftsmanship with the potential of computational techniques different design methods and techniques are developed.

The exhibition focuses on two projects that explore the relationship between material, structure and space. Branch Formations is about utilizing naturally grown wood elements as components of a spatial framework. In Interlocking Spaces joining principles, derived from traditional Japanese Architecture, are expanded by digital systematics, forming complex configurations. The working process and results of 2.5 years of research are presented. Full scale installations, models, videos and Augmented Reality allow for an interactive experience of an architectural speculation.

Projektteam:
Leitung: Christoph Kaltenbrunner

Forschungsteam: Lukas Allner, Daniela Kröhnert, Philipp Reinsberg, Mechthild Weber

MentorInnen: Karin Raith, Anja Jonkhans und Clemens Preisinger

Ein Projekt gefördert von österreichischer Wissenschaftsfonds (FWF) / PEEK Programm

All Photos: Conceptual Joining
Questions by Eva Weber

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In Conversation with Clemens Apprich on ‘Decolonizing Technology’

About media technology and its political implications in terms of identity politics and the importance of critical thinking in digital cultures. What does it mean to ‘decolonize’ technology, and how can it be that technology generates a ‘colonizing’ practice in the first place?

Clemens Apprich is head of the department of Media Theory, which co-hosts AIL’s Talk Series on the topic of ‘Decolonizing Technology’

Read more on the subject (in German)

Image by ©Foto: Universität für angewandte Kunst / Adam Berry, transmediale

Clemens Apprich

is full professor and head of the department of Media Theory at Angewandte. His current research focuses on filter algorithms and their use in data analysis procedures as well as machine learning methods. He is author of Technotopia: A Media Genealogy of Net Cultures (Rowman & Littlefield International, 2017) and co-editor of the book Pattern Discrimination together with Hito Steyerl, Florian Cramer and Wendy Chun (University of Minnesota Press, 2018)

Elisabeth Falkensteiner (Curator and Co-Head of AIL) talked to Clemens Apprich about media technology and its political implications in terms of identity politics and the importance of critical thinking in digital cultures.

Elisabeth Falkensteiner (EF)

In recent times, the political visions or, rather, the naïve utopian dream of a fundamental democratization of the internet has been dulled just as the hope has faded that artificial intelligence and machine learning will develop ‘neutral’ digital worlds.

In fact, new technologies are even more likely to entrench inequality, reinforce racist and sexist tendencies and promote reactionary identity politics – which will have consequences in virtual space as well as in real life. After all, most 90s online cultures had their roots in activism and subcultures.

Where did we go wrong?

Clemens Apprich (CA)

Many technologies that constitute what we call the online world were created in the 90s – at a time when the future of the internet was still undecided and subject of passionate debates. The mass distribution of so-called web 2.0 applications, building on the initial internet infrastructure and known as ‘social media’ platforms today, has led to a shift in the balance of power: away from public, social and artistic positions towards commercial interests. The use of these new media platforms has also led to a staggering increase in digital data. However, an enormous amount of computational power is required to generate ‘valuable’ information from this data, something only global corporations can afford these days.

And these automated pattern recognition systems are anything but impartial. On the contrary, algorithms learn from our data and therefore adopt everything that is part of it, including our racist, sexist, classist and ableist prejudices as well as heteronormative concepts. We are thus confronted with self-fulfilling prophecies, which are then relabeled as objective decision-making processes.

One of these prophecies is the assumption that any proximity between data points is ‘significant’ as such. This homophilic premise, which translates as ‘birds of a feather flock together’, is based in the US-history of segregated housing.

Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, who will give a talk as part of our lecture series, reminds us in her new book that it is precisely this principle of segregation that continues to govern our online world.

Every time Amazon, Facebook, TikTok or Tinder recommend and suggest new products, friends, content or lovers, we come across homophilic clusters that fuel the toxic online-climate today. However, instead of being inherent to the technology, the issue of data bias and algorithmic discrimination concerns the logics these technologies are made to implement and establish; logics that come from retrograde – not to say reactionary – identity politics, and a cancel culture actually deserving that name, which blocks all non-identitarian content, eventually filtering out all we prefer not to see.

EF

In summary one can therefore say basic technologies are driven by a capitalist logic and hegemonic politics. Which current alternative methods and systems promote anti-discriminatory behavior?

Is there a way out of this mess?

CA

At the heart of machine learning, which mostly catches our eye in the form of algorithmic recommender systems, is the simple logic of sifting through big chunks of data and turning them into information. This requires a particular logic or pattern that reflects our social behavior. After all, it is not the technologies that are male and white but the ideas they are fed. And this might be an opening for us: if we think about technologies as being a part of us, as reflections of ourselves, then we can finally engage with them properly.

Hito Steyerl’s work is certainly a prime example in this regard: she does not concern herself with technical solutions or simply downplays the technological conditions we live in; instead she focuses on the beliefs, myths and concrete ideological interests that are portrayed and adopted by these technologies.

Her narrative and visual language reject the glossy aesthetics of most digital art. Instead of reviewing the latest computer hardware or software, she presents ‘poor images’ that stir and enable discussions about digital technologies – ranging from social media and virtual worlds to recent AI applications.

Obviously, no technological innovation will be able to solve our social problems.

You simply cannot fight racism by using better data or algorithms. It is a political fight which requires political organization; online media can only ever play a supportive role here. This also applies to any critique of techno-capitalism, which needs to take place in a political context.

Big digital corporations must play by the rules of society – especially in terms of taxation and collective data management (‘data trusts’) – and need internal reorganization. And the solutions to meet these challenges are as old as the algorithms themselves. This can be best illustrated by the unionization of Amazon workers on Staten Island, New York, an event taking place while their boss, Jeff Bezos, was busy exploring outer space. One of the richest men on earth tries to escape this planet, while his workers unionize and fight for its and their survival. This is a poignant, almost cartoonish depiction of our current situation.

EF

Can art or media art and interdisciplinary practices assist in decolonizing technology? What role can art play?

CA

I think we need to be careful when using context-specific terminology and concepts – especially when they are derived from certain historical contexts that range from the Haitian Revolution to the struggles for independence after the Second World War.

After all, the ‘decolonization of technology’ seems to be a conflicting term, not least because decolonization describes the retrieval of stolen land, whereas in the case of technology our concern is with the understanding of our own cultural practices.

In an extended sense, though, we might speak of a decentralization of this knowledge by analyzing the – oftentimes violent – origins of technology.

There are several good examples, such as Luiza Prado de O Martins’ work, which focuses on alternative forms of knowledge and modern technology’s divergent points of origin – covering not only digital media but also other areas of interest like birth control.

And then there are also the artworks of Simon Denny, which render visible and thereby discuss the material conditions of our online world. His project ‘Mine’, for example, illustrates the nexus between the mining data and minerals – since both are integral to the functioning of our digital culture.

Especially the way artistic practices can engage with the production processes of our digital culture makes them viable to transcend current debates – which are mostly concerned with better data or better models – and create new technological visions.

In my opinion, Ramon Amaro, who will give a talk in early December, together with Tiara Roxanne, is one of few people who have truly accepted this challenge. Referencing theories by Frantz Fanon and Gilbert Simondon, he demands a radical break in the relationship with our technologies.

With a background in mechanical engineering as well as art history, he interprets technological systems, and especially AI, as reflections of ourselves with all the problems that come with it. His upcoming book, The Black Technical Object: On Machine Learning and the Aspiration of Black Being, focuses on the highly problematic and mostly racist history and logic of modern statistics, which form the basis of today’s machine learning systems. His demands therefore do not stop at improving these processes but press for an epistemological break, so as to be able to create something new.

EF

When we look at social media and its news feed algorithms, which do not only fuel the attention economy of its users but also divide them into separate bubbles, we can see it losing its utopian and emancipatory potential. The pandemic and the surrounding debate have instead underlined how social media contributes to social divisiveness. Still, what were the initial principles and ideas of social networks?

CA

In the early 2000s, the media theorist Tiziana Terranova already emphasised the significance of ‘free labour’ in digital societies. Her analysis has become even more relevant with social media platforms: on and with these platforms we produce a digital economy and profits that only benefit a few instead of the many. Sadly, we do this in the belief of ‘authenticity’;

everyone is convinced they are being creative, while in fact being caught in the behavioral patterns and restrictions imposed by tech companies. Bernard Stiegler once called this the ‘systemic stupidity’ of our digital culture.

However, what I like about Tiziana Terranova’s work is that she never tires to stress the ‘social’ in social media. As a matter of fact, social media algorithms are not interested in the individual person – their holiday photos or music collections – but rather in the relationships to other individuals in a given network; this ever-changing trans-individuality is still an important, yet underrated fact which we need to take into account when critiquing our capitalist digital society.

Generally, all technologies are no more than cristallisations of our social relations. For this reason, we also need to find new ways to engage with them. The theoretical field of Disability Studies could be an interesting point of departure, as it traditionally focuses on scrutinizing what we perceive as ‘normal’ in our culture.

As part of our lecture series, Katharina Klappheck will talk about machine learning processes in terms of disability and the unruly. And in March, Tung-Hui Hu will speak to us in a similar way about non-Western concepts of digital cultures in his lecture on analogue internet culture.

If we want to counter the divisive potential of these technologies, we should not – even in the face of justified criticism of our excessive mediated society – submit to any kind of cultural pessimism or technophobia. For there is always a playful approach to deal with our neuroses and technological dependencies.

Thank you Clemens Apprich for the Interview!

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In Conversation with Sophia Panteliadou

Follow-Up Questions to the Curator of ::KAIROS. Recall of Earth from 2022 (in German)

Die Beziehung zwischen Natur und Mensch aus verschiedenen Blickwinkeln

Exhibition View

About the Exhibition

About the Symposium

Sophia Panteliadou at the Opening of the exhibition | Image by ©

Die Ausstellung war 2019/20 in Griechenland bereits zu sehen: Inwiefern, hat sich die Ausstellung verändert für das AIL?

Für die Ausstellung in der Foundation MIET in Thessaloniki (Griechenland) richtete sich mein Blick vor allem auf Phänomene, die mit Wetter-Ereignissen in Verbindung stehen und stellte diese in Zusammenhang mit den Perzeptionen des Körpers (Patricia J. Reis, Sensorial Screen #3, 2019-2021) sowie der Wahrnehmung durch die Sinne (Thomas Glänzel, Gewitter, 2019 und Alfred Lenz, Lightning, 2014).

Der Fokus in der Ausstellung im AIL konzentrierte sich jedoch stärker auf die Bedingungen sowie Auswirkungen und Konsequenzen der Klimakrise sowohl im lokalen wie auch globalen Zusammenhang. Als Initialpunkt für die Ausstellungskonzeption galten die Überschneidungs- beziehungsweise Verknüpfungselemente von subjektivierten und kollektiven Denk- und Handlungsstrukturen sowie ihr Verhältnis zu den differierenden Produktions- und Kunsttechniken. Zum einen im Kontext der Außenwelt, der Natur und Landschaftseinbrüche und zum anderen in Verbindung mit den Wirkungen auf die Innenwelt der Lebewesen, auf die Psyche der Menschen und ihre mentale Re/aktion.

Die „Sprache“, ihre Vielstimmigkeit sowie kulturellen und politischen Implikationen, bildeten überdies eine zusätzliche Bedeutungsachse. Als Beispiel: Der Film Staging Narratives, Matewan Massacre (2018) als Teil der Installation Staging Nature von Mathias Kessler erzählt eine Katastrophe auf mehreren Ebenen, die repräsentativ für alle Realitäten in der Ausstellung steht: Darin geht es um den Verlust der Landschaft, den Gedächtnisverlust, den Verlust des Ausdrucks und die wirtschaftliche Gewahrsamnahme einer ganzen Region im Namen der Entwicklung. Es handelt von der kalkulierten Geschwindigkeit eines Fortschritts, der buchstäblich als auch metaphorisch die natürliche, kulturelle Umwelt und ihre soziale Ausdrucksform gefangen hält. Das komplexe Verhältnis von Umwelt und Migration wird beispielsweise durch das Zusammenwirken der Boden-Installation Risiko (2017/21) von Ruth Schnell und der Arbeit Enchantement of the Seas (2017/19) mit der Videoprojektion Die Straße (2013) Ulla von Brandenburgs, bei welcher die Wanderungsbewegungen greifbar und sichtbar werden, reflektiert. Der zirkuläre Prozess des Austausches, die Wieder/Holung und die Rekonstruktion von „Erzählungen“ stellt eine parallel verlaufende Schicht dar, welche durch den Film C,Ü,I,T,H,E,A,K,O,G,N,B,D,F,R,M,P,L (2017) Ulla von Brandenburgs re/präsentiert wird.

Was reizt dich am Thema Wetter, wie kam es zur Idee der Ausstellung?

Anfangs richtete sich mein Interesse auf das Themenfeld „Wetter“ vorwiegend von einer phänomenologischen sowie meteorologischen Perspektive betrachtet. In der anschließenden Zeit, wurde auch auf die damit verwobenen Implikationen Bezug genommen.

Während der Vorbereitungsarbeiten für die Ausstellung in den Räumen von MIET-Thessaloniki 2019/20, erweiterte sich das Ausstellungkonzept – sowohl im inhaltlichen Kontext sowie auch in formaler Gestaltung und Auswahl der Exponate. Parallel zur Ausstellungsgestaltung, -planung befasste ich mich mit der Textformulierung in der griechischen Sprache sowie mit Aspekten der Übersetzbarkeit und der Übertragung. Ausgehend von Fragen zur Metaphorizität in der Sprache aus einem philosophischen Blickpunkt, entstand der Titel der Ausstellung, denn KAIROS ist zum einen das Neugriechische Wort für „Wetter“ und zum anderen bezieht sich der Begriff auf die Zeitlichkeit – und den Augenblick als „richtigen Zeitpunkt“.

Das spannendere Element im Kontext von „Kairos“ und dem Ausstellungstitel ist somit der implizit philosophische Aspekt, der zur Aufspreizung des Wortes beiträgt: es handelt sich um die dem Wort „Kairos“ innewohnende Polysemie. Das polysemische Element in der Sprache ist das weite Spektrum im Umfeld dieses Wortes, das auch zur Erweiterung und semantischen Verschiebung des ursprünglichen Ausstellungskonzepts führte. Verknüpfungen mit dem Planeten Erde ließen sich konzeptuell leicht erschließen, nicht zuletzt in Verbindung mit Bruno Latours Texten, mit welchen ich mich einige Jahre davor beschäftigt hatte.

Kannst du uns etwas mehr zum Konzept und deiner Herangehensweise verraten?

Bei der Konzeption einer Ausstellung stehen mir vor allem erkenntnistheoretische, kulturphilosophische und psychoanalytische Fragestellungen zur Auswahl/Disposition. Mit der Ausstellung :: KAIROS. Recall of Earth versuchte ich diesen Themenbereich zum einen in Überschneidung mit dem Diskurs des Politischen in der Gegenwart zu verknüpfen und zum anderen einige Aspekte mit wahrnehmungstheoretischen Fragestellungen sowie mithilfe von Positionen aus dem theoretischen Feld der Psychoanalyse Lacans zu hinterfragen.

Führt man sich die Entstehungsdaten einiger in der Ausstellung gezeigten Werke vor Augen, stellt sich heraus, dass die Arbeiten teilweise um Jahrzehnte älter als das Konzept der Ausstellung sind. Hiermit wird nun dokumentiert, dass die Problemstellungen zwar auf aktuelle Ereignisse Bezug nehmen, diese jedoch sowohl in anthropologischer wie kultureller Hinsicht unberührt vom Zeitgeist bleiben. Der rechte Augenblick (kairos) definiert hier die Unterbrechung eines synchronischen und diachronischen Moments, und bestimmt somit den Schnittpunkt der Achsen zwischen Signifikanten und Signifikat.

Ein solch theoretisches Fundament steht somit im Prüfstand bei jeder Ausstellung. Der Parcours führt hier durch die Ausstellungsexponate, indem Fragen, welche mittels der künstlerischen Arbeiten und der Recherche gestellt werden, in Verbindung mit den Werken der mitwirkenden Künstler*innen mit diesen konfrontiert, um möglicherweise neue Wege und Denkweisen zu eröffnen.

Und welche Rolle spielt die große Vielfalt der verwendeten Medien? Was reizt dich daran?

Nebst einer formalen Vielschichtigkeit der Zugänge unterschiedlicher Medien, die in Verbindung mit differierenden Aspektierungen der künstlerischen Werke einhergehen, werden hiermit ebenso zeitgenössische Positionen zur Kunsttheorie angesprochen und Fragen zur Diskussion gestellt, wie: Was können die Künste und philosophische Positionen heute über die Beziehungen zwischen Wort und Bild, Sehen und Zeichen sagen – und in weiterer Folge über sozial-gesellschaftliche Strukturen?

Was wäre für dich ein Ziel der Ausstellung, womit soll ein Gast nach Hause gehen?

Indem die Besucher*innen der Ausstellung zumindest bei einem der Werke nicht allein den theoretischen Hintergrund im Kontext der Ausstellungsthematik reflektieren, sondern diese Erfahrung ebenso und vor allem als ästhetisches und sinnliches Ereignis wahrnehmen.

Gibt es weitere Pläne für die Ausstellung?

Zunächst steht nun eine Publikation in Aussicht.

Vielen Dank Sophia Panteliadou. Die Fragen stellte Eva Weber

:: Kairos. Recall of Earth war von 11. November 2021 bis 21. Januar 2022 in den beiden AIL-Seitenflügeln – verbunden durch die Kassenhalle – zu sehen. Die Ausstellung befasste sich mit der Beziehung zwischen Menschen und Naturereignissen. Ausgehend von meteorologischen Aspekten des "Wetters" zeichnete die Ausstellung auch ein Bild der Psyche und ihrer Verstrickung mit Naturphänomenen nach.

Beteiligte Künstler*innen:
Irini Athanassakis, Ulla von Brandenburg, Laurus Edelbacher, Thomas Glänzel, Maria Hubinger, Anni Kaltsidou, Mathias Kessler, Peter Kubelka, Alfred Lenz, Brigitte Mahlknecht, Josefina Nelimarkka, Patrícia J. Reis, Ruth Schnell, Christian K. Schröder, Helmut Swoboda, Anna Watzinger

Die Ausstellung wurde unterstützt von:
Bundesministerium. Kunst Kultur, öffentlicher Dienst und Sport; Stadt Wien – Kultur; ZAMG. Zentralanstalt für Metereologie und Geodynamik

Photo: Lea Dörl

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In Conversation with Kilian Jörg

As in almost all European cities, only around a third of people in Vienna own a car. Nevertheless, in most alleys and streets in the city, 70–80% of traffic and parking space is dedicated to cars.

About cars and mobility; to the series Exhaust(ed) Entangelements and the project The Cars We Like

Symposium (6 – 8 Mar 2024)

Workshop (4 – 8 Mar 2024)

This Conversation in German

Dear Kilian, in March you will be implementing the workshop and symposium The Cars We Like together with Rainer Prohaska's Futurama.Lab at the AIL. Both are part of the Exhaust(ed) Entanglements (EE) series. What kind of series is this, what is it all about?

KJ: I designed Exhaust(ed) Entanglements (EE) almost two years ago as an international symposium series that deals with the topic of “business as usual” in catastrophic times in a transdisciplinary manner. What do I mean by that? Almost everyone in the Global North now knows that their so-called footprint is too large and that we are triggering a catastrophe of global proportions with our “modern” lifestyle. Yet far too little changes and no one really feels like they can change – we seem to be stuck.

Hence the title Exhaust(ed) Entanglements – exhausted – or exhausting circumstances that we have to overcome as quickly as possible, but don't yet know how. A bonus in the pun is that “exhaust” also represents the exhaust (fumes) of a car. Since the topic as a whole is so vast, the series focuses on the car in particular, and mobility in general, in order to develop productive analyses and answers to this generational issue. The first edition of EE took place last May at the FU Berlin and at other locations in the city. Further editions are planned in London and Bogota.

I am producing this edition of Exhaust(ed) Entanglements (EE) in the AIL together with the Futurama.Lab, led by Rainer Prohaska, whose utopian designs I find very inspiring. After a rather critical and analytical first edition, my aim in designing this second part of EE was to present small micro-utopias as concretely feasible. In so doing, our aim as part of the five-day workshop is to overcome the traditional separation between theory and practice by – informed by the inputs from the symposium – building practical vehicles that can “hack” urban space in an experimental way.

I think it is very forward-thinking to consider theory and practice together in this way, because if you stay purely in the realm of discourse, while you may be able to present problems in their entirety, you don't realize how many adjustments and transformations the rocky path to implementation requires. I think this kind of building on utopia is an essential part of sustainable “theoretical work” that no longer has to be dualistically different from practice.

(A glimpse into previous editions can be found here)

What exactly is your background, and can you explain a bit about what drew you to the topic of cars?

KJ: My name is Kilian Jörg and I've been working at the intersection of theory and practice, or more precisely, art and philosophy on the topic of ecology, for years. After writing my PhD on very “abstract” topics in eco-philosophy, I felt the need to ground these very important theories in a concrete object and thus make them more generally understandable: the car fits the bill like no other object. Because everyone has an affectively charged relationship with the automobile, whether they want to or not. And if you dig a little deeper, almost everything in the modern world is connected in some way to the car: from the rubber monocultures for tire production that now blanket tropical zones, to the “salvation visions” of the electric car, to proto-fascist, turbocharged masculinity that has wreaked havoc in the hearts and minds of people from the time of Futurism and Fascism to the present day.

My book on the subject will be published by Transcript this year, probably in June. The title will be decided in the coming days. Since I never work purely theoretically, as part of my research I also worked artistically and activistically on – and against – he car. In addition to the project The Cars We Like with Rainer Prohaska you can, for example, also call my performance project Diverting the Public Space…

Why, in your opinion, is it so important to unite theory and praxis?

KJ: I believe that the separation between theory and practice is a very artificial one that has little basis in the world. Unfortunately, most of our educational institutions are built on this separation. Since I come from more of a so-called theory background, I can answer it better from this point of view: if you stay too “purely theoretical”, you can easily become entrenched in claims that are nice, good and correct, but that are rarely tested in practice. There is a kind of stiffness and hesitation among theory colleagues to concern themselves too much with concrete experiments, as these almost always fall short structurally and (can) fail. I love this – and much more – about working with Rainer: failing, trying things out, having fun with the next attempt in the knowledge of its shortcomings; that sort of thing is an extremely valuable virtue at a time when none of us know how we can get out of the predicament that modern consumer culture has put us in. It is a desire for and a joy in trying out and experimenting in catastrophic times that brings playful opportunities where there is too much calculation and metronomic calculation. I don't know whether this is something new, as the “new” is often just a fetishism of the neoliberal sales logic. It is definitely refreshing and motivating at a time when little appears that way from the outside and in the realm of “facts”.

As mentioned at the beginning, we will be dealing with the topic of the automobile in March as part of your workshop and symposium. Please give us some quick food for thought and an introduction.

KJ: As in almost all European cities, only around a third of people in Vienna own a car. Nevertheless, in most alleys and streets in the city, 70–80% of traffic and parking space is dedicated to cars. In the same way, traffic light settings and public spending are geared towards giving preference to cars. A parking space for a car in the city center of roughly 12m², for example, is much cheaper than a children's room of approximately the same size – even though rooms can be stacked more easily than cars.

A look at history shows us that the car did not have this privileged position right from the start: at the beginning of automobile history, only a very few privileged people owned an automobile and the workers, farmers and poorer citizens simply did not see why on earth the car should suddenly take up so much space in their living space.

A quote from Otto Julius Bierbaum, an early car fetishist, is instructive here: “Never in my life have I been cursed so much as during my automobile trip in 1902. All German dialects from Berlin to Dresden, Vienna, Munich to Bozen could be heard, as well as all dialects of Italian from Trento to Sorrento, not even counting the silent curses, which include: shaking fists, sticking out the tongue, showing the back and much more."* People even stretched wire ropes across the streets and there were repeated lynchings. This resistance was broken over generations by the often violent introduction of the car.

The problem with the car is that it creates a “feeling of majority,” even if drivers almost never form the de facto majority.

This starts on a small scale, on streets where perhaps only one car drives through every five minutes, while dozens of pedestrians with strollers, bikes, etc. are constantly moving through: nevertheless, on a typical Viennese street, pedestrians must squeeze between walls and rows of parked cars. We consider this to be normal – as is the everyday danger of death that the car poses. The fact that today we almost instinctively step aside on the street when we hear an engine somewhere in the distance is also the result of getting used to the routine deadliness of modernity (and nowadays this lethality is also slowly making itself felt globally in the form of a climate crisis).

I believe that this micropolitical everyday circumstance actually has major political effects that can explain the above-mentioned paralysis in the face of the ecological catastrophe.

You mentioned the “violent” introduction of the car above. Can you explain this to us in more detail…? Perhaps we can take a step back and you can give us some input on the history of mobility, which goes hand in hand with that of the car.

KJ: Germany's famous freeway plans were already being drawn up by the Weimar Republic in the 1920s. So Hitler is not, in fact, the “inventor of the German freeway network” as he is sometimes portrayed. But what Hitler and his NSDAP managed to do was to enforce a previously unpopular mobility paradigm so powerfully that it then became a generally accepted normality as part of the so-called “economic miracle” of the Federal Republic of Germany. In 1933, 0.2% of Germans owned a car. So, no democratic party would ever have built highways. A modern-day analogy would be parties in the current day promising to massively expand private jet runways everywhere.

But the highway plans were a decisive signal to industry and the bourgeoisie that their privileges were not really in danger, even if the party called itself National Socialist. For the interests of large-scale industry and its massively growing sales markets (as well as military calculations for troop movement), the Third Reich built miles and miles of freeways and, as a complementary counterpart, designed the “Strength through Joy” car – the forerunner of the VW Beetle – under the leadership of Ferdinand Porsche. With this, every man was sold the idea that he too would soon be able to take part in this bourgeois automobile privilege for little money, and that he would be able to take his blonde, heterosexual nuclear family on day trips to the German countryside.

It was here that the amalgam of automobility and masculinity, which is still very toxic today, was decisively shaped.

Incidentally, very few “Strength through Joy” cars were completed until 1945, and automobilism was only able to reach its current expansion in post-war Germany – you can only talk about the economic miracle if you leave out some dark chapters of German history. To this day, many laws that massively favor cars, such as parking regulations, freeway laws and many more, are a legacy of the Nazi era that has been adopted unquestioningly into our supposedly “liberal” order. Since then, not only in Germany, but also in countries like France and Great Britain, the rail network has been massively neglected and dismantled, and freeways have been built everywhere because of the clamor to emulate the “economic miracle” of Germany, a country that had actually just been defeated.

My thesis is that without the era of fascism, at least in Europe, there would not have been such a great – almost monocultural – dependence on the car as we see today.

Is there anything positive that can be said about cars?

KJ: There are of course a lot of positive things to say about the car: we all know it and have (almost) all enjoyed it: driving quickly into nature after work or on the weekend is great, just as it is in rain and snow moving around the city in a heated cage – to name just two of many positive factors.

The problem is that thanks to advertising and the normalization that took place over the last century, we have been conditioned to only see these positive aspects: when we rush out of the city center in the SUV in the evening, while ensconced within it we don't notice that as a result the outside space of the city becomes increasingly loud, ugly and more dangerous – and more and more people are structurally seduced into wanting to retreat into a car.

This is particularly noticeable now in winter: winter, with its short days, could actually be a time of contemplation and pleasant slowness. But due to the bright LED headlights that constantly blind you and the massive noise from the unceasingly wet roads, you can't find peace in your surroundings… and you want to escape in a car to an increasingly distant quiet zone. You can't tell from the interior of the car that this is a vicious spiral. I feel like our heads metaphorically rarely leave this interior space at all...

But I would like to address one aspect in more detail: that of the protective space. We will have two experts speaking about this at the symposium in March. Gretchen Sorin shows that people who increasingly must expect to fall victim to racist, misogynistic, transphobic or homophobic attacks in public spaces have a structural tendency to buy “bigger cars” because they feel safer. Based on the history of the American Civil Rights Movement, she shows that the car was essential to fighting for the rights of Black people. Markus Wissen, who will share the panel with her at the The Cars We Like symposium, has put forward a kind of “SUV thesis” that is similar. He argues that the majority of buyers of SUVs are not climate change deniers (as they are often accused), but quite the opposite: the fear of the coming catastrophe leads certain classes to buy a bigger and higher car: because of the feeling of security bestowed by this shelter.

I think that this aspect of the “protective space for cars” briefly outlined here is central to a sustainable mobility policy.

Through it we learn that ecological change can only be sustainable, fair and inclusive if the demand to create less toxic environments not only means that they contain fewer pollutants, but that they are also characterized by less patriarchal and racist violence.

So it’s not only about designing new cars and reimagining the automobile, but questioning and developing our relationship to them anew?

KJ: Yes, exactly. Hence the excursions into the early history of automobileism. I believe that the massive spread of the car has atrophied certain “mental layers” of ourselves that we lack today: the sensual connection to the environment, the trusting wandering around the neighborhood, the shallow exchange with neighbors at the nearby general store or inn – all of this has declined massively due to the pervasive spread of cars. In the same way, a patriarchal gender order has become cemented in the car, as I already suggested in the history of fascism. And to this day, mobility researchers never tire of pointing out that a car-centric transport policy massively favors male “breadwinner” models and disadvantages traditionally “female” work models that focus more on care work. I hardly need to explain that the car is also one of the central focal points of a rather problematic male desire (which basically equates dominance of nature with dominance of women). Turn on the TV: the next commercial or music video will probably demonstrate what I mean.

The way the car is viewed has grown historically and not only affects issues of “environmental policy” in the narrower sense, but must also take its patriarchal and colonial entanglements into account in order to promote future-oriented, different ways of mobility and lifestyle.

I find it striking that “mobility” is largely thought of and treated as a “given” in politics and in an array of sciences. Nobody seriously asks: Why do people commute an hour back and forth to spend eight hours looking at an LCD screen in a glass box somewhere? Why do people have to move a ton and a half of steel to get their dinner? What we now call the “need for mobility” is often due to the car and the environment it advantages (supermarkets instead of general stores, sleeper towns, monocultural agriculture, gigantic supply chains) and would not have arisen in this form without it.

Furthermore, the time that we sacrifice to this mobility at the altar of modern consumer culture is viewed as a kind of “dead time.” Nobody is seriously demanding that the journey there should be fun, that it can contribute to a socially and culturally satisfying lifestyle and that it could promote exchange in society. But ultimately everything depends on the car and its transport policy focus. As a first step, we could at least demand that if we have to commute, then let's at least have fun while doing it... Here we slowly come to The Cars We Like

Finally, what do you wish for the future?

KJ: I think my most concrete political wish would be to regain political self-determination over our environment. I am aware that a “car-free world” (whether one may want it or not) would be neither democratic nor economically feasible overnight. But this is too big and abstract for me: because there are certainly a number of lanes, streets, neighborhoods, districts and perhaps even communities that no longer want so many cars––or cars in general. My favorite example is the Kreuzberg-Friedrichshain district (in Berlin): according to some surveys, almost two-thirds of residents would like a completely car-free district. Nevertheless, there is not even a pedestrian zone in the district. Why? Because the Road Traffic Act [StVO in German] is a federal law and dictates a system of values from above that originally dates back to the Nazi era and is still being pushed through by car lobbies today, even against all resistance. So my wish for the future would be: politically empower the lanes, streets and neighborhoods so that they can decide for themselves about their environment! Because usually those who live there know best what is needed there. And it's easy to sidestep the accusations of dictatorship that “green politics” often has to face, because there can still be neighborhoods that specialize in car racing or God knows what, if that's what the residents want. But it could also be the case that the surrounding neighborhoods all decide for a total car ban and then the cars go where they belong: on the playground!

The toxic normality of commuter traffic jams could then become various utopian bubble worlds of playful and diverse movement.

Thank you so much for your time!

Image by ©

The Cars We Like:

Workshop 4 – 8 Mar 2024

Symposium 6 – 8 Mar 2024

*Wolfgang Sachs: Die Liebe zum Automobil. Reinbeck bei Hamburg: 1990 S. 23.

Kilian Jörg was at AIL in 2020 and 2022 with the collective project Toxic Temple. Kilian is alumni of the University of Applied Arts Vienna.

Questions were asked by Eva Weber (AIL).

The Cars We Like is supported by:
Radbande
BMKOES
MA7 . Stadt Wien . Kultur
YPSOMED
Angewandte Interdisciplinary Lab (AIL)

text

May I introduce: Alien! Erfahrungen mit der Umstellung auf eine digitale Ausstellung

From our Newsletter 2020 (Interview in German)

Drei Fragen an die Kuratorinnen und Künstlerinnen Alexandra Fruhstorfer und Violetta Leitner

To the project

AILien Talk 01

AILien Talk 02

AILien Talk 03

Für Mai 2020 war im AIL die Ausstellung May I introduce: Alien! Von depressiven Affen und einfühlsamen Dodos der beiden Kuratorinnen und Künstlerinnen Alexandra Fruhstorfer und Violetta Leitner geplant. Aufgrund von Covid-19 war eine Umsetzung vor Ort nicht machbar, sodass die Beiden eine digitale Alternative entwarfen und umsetzten. Wir haben sie zu ihren Erfahrungen befragt:

Sujet from the project, different animals in different styles | Image by ©

Was waren Herausforderungen bei der Umsetzung online? Welche Grundüberlegungen hattet ihr, nach denen ihr die Homepage umgesetzt habt?

Uns war wichtig, dass die virtuelle Umsetzung kein notwendiges Übel wird, sondern mit allen digitalen Mitteln strahlen kann. Wir hatten ja relativ wenig Zeit für die Konzeption und Umsetzung und mussten sehr schnell Entscheidungen treffen, als klar war, dass eine analoge Umsetzung sehr unwahrscheinlich möglich sein wird. Schnell waren wir uns einig, dass wir keine abgefilmte virtuelle 3D Ausstellung aufsetzen wollen, wie es sehr viele Galerien und Museen seit März getan haben. Auch eine Portfolio-Seite schien uns nicht sehr sinnvoll in Anbetracht dessen, dass ja einige der vorgestellten Arbeiten bereits auf bestehenden Werken basieren. Es war uns hier wichtig die Projekte auch inhaltlich weiterzuentwickeln, Querverbindungen herzustellen und sie auch in gewisser Weise enger ineinander zu verwickeln.

Wir wollten also die Chance ergreifen in dem neuen Format mit verschiedenen Narrativen zu experimentieren.

So haben wir an einem – wir nennen es gerne – "Universum" von verschiedenen Beobachtungslinsen und Erzählweisen getüftelt, in dem die Besucher*innen eingeladen sind sich verschiedene Brillen der Betrachtung aufzusetzen. Wir haben dabei zum Beispiel in unserer "THE OPINION"- Brille vier Expert*innen und Wissenschafter*innen aus Disziplinen von Biologie über Anthropologie und Kulturwissenschaften eingeladen, die Projekte, von ihrem spezifischen Standpunkt aus, zu beleuchten und zu reflektieren. Man könnte dies fast als eine Art Führung durch die Ausstellung aus verschiedenen Expertise-Perspektiven beschreiben. In unserer "THE VISITOR" Abteilung ist das Publikum selbst eingeladen etwas zur Ausstellung beizutragen – man darf und soll interagieren, kommentieren und philosophieren!

Eine große Herausforderung, neben der zeitlichen Komponente in der Konzeption, war natürlich der knappe Zeitrahmen für die technische Umsetzung. Es war ein großer Flexibilitätsakt für unser technisches Team in der Entwicklung dann auch noch auf den work-in-progress im Konzept Rücksicht zu nehmen – es war ein recht organischer und wilder Prozess. Auch hatten wir natürlich durch den knappen Zeitrahmen nicht so viele Möglichkeiten unsere Ideen vorab zu testen, weshalb ich das Projekt noch immer als ein kleines work-in-progress mit allerhand Möglichkeiten zur Verbesserung sehe.

Screenshots der Homepage – Virtuelle Ausstellung und interaktives Experiment | Image by ©Screenshot der Homepage – Virtuelle Ausstellung und interaktives Experiment

Was waren Vorteile / Nachteile bei der digitalen Umsetzung?

Sehr schön war, dass wir durch das neue Format und die konzeptionelle Arbeit daran zwangsläufig und glücklichereweise in sehr engem Kontakt und Austausch mit unseren Künstlerinnen waren, und das ganze Projekt so wirklich zu einem gemeinschaftlichen geworden ist. Unsere Künstlerinnen kommen ja aus oder wohnen derzeit in verschiedensten Ländern in Europa.

Eine Sache, bei der ich nie gedacht hätte, dass sie mir so wichtig sein würde, ist der rituelle Aspekt einer Ausstellungseröffnung: dass wir diesen offiziellen Moment des gemeinsamen Feierns und des "Band-Zerschneidens" nicht erlebt haben, habe ich respektive sehr vermisst.

Leider hatten und haben wir durch das digitale Format auch sehr wenig Gefühl dafür, wie viele Besucher*innen sich auf unserer Seite tummeln, und es ist natürlich etwas ganz anderes, wenn man den Besucher*innen – besonders aus Kuratorinnensicht – die Ideen und Geschichten hinter den Installationen persönlich kommunizieren kann.

Aus diesem Grund waren wir auch recht dankbar, dass wir mit den AILien-Talks während des Angewandte Festivals die Möglichkeit hatten – zwar auch nur digital und nicht in direktem Austausch mit dem Publikum – einige Aspekte, Gedanken und vor allem auch die Künstlerinnen hinter den Werken vorzustellen. Dieses Format hat uns zumindest ein klein bisschen von einem offiziellen Start suggeriert.

Und natürlich muss man sagen, dass die Köpfe des Publikums, was digitale Formate betrifft derzeit schon mehr als rauchen und man somit auch leichter untergeht in der Masse an virtuellen Veranstaltungen und Webseiten. Die Magie des Analogen, des Materiellen und Direkten ist hier unmöglich zu ersetzen.

Screenshots der Homepage – Aus verschiedenen Blickwinkeln werden die 5 Projekte beleuchtet | Image by ©Screenshot der Homepage – Aus verschiedenen Blickwinkeln werden die 5 Projekte beleuchtet

Gibt es ein erstes Fazit, auch aufgrund von Rückmeldungen, was ihr nun vielleicht anders machen würdet?

Ich denke wir würden definitiv nun den Fokus verschiedener Bereiche etwas anders gewichten. Die interaktiven Bereiche könnten etwas präsenter und in-your-face sein, um etwas offensichtlicher zur Beteiligung zu animieren. Dem Audioformat "THE OPINION" könnte man eventuell etwas mehr Ruhe verleihen, wobei wir hier auch noch zusätzlich einen nicht so experimentell angelegten Podcast aus dem Material zusammenstellen möchten, dieser ist sicher eine gute Ergänzung als klassisches Hörformat, auch für Unterwegs.

Exit through the Gift Shop, screenshot of the projects page | Image by ©Screenshot der Homepage – Exit through the Gift Shop

Die präsentierten Arbeiten der digitalen Ausstellung May I introduce: Alien! verdeutlichen auf unterschiedliche Weise die Wechselbeziehungen zwischen Natur und Gesellschaft. 5 Künstlerinnen, Designerinnen und Forscherinnen nähern sich dem Fremden, dem Alien in seiner vielfältigsten Erscheinungsform und fragen:

Müssen wir erst Eindringlinge werden, um vorherrschende Paradigmen hinterfragen und aufbrechen zu können?

Mit Arbeiten von: Solmaz Farhang, Alexandra Fruhstorfer, Ege Kökel, Lena Violetta Leitner and Andrea Palašti

Die Fragen stellte Eva Weber

podcast

In Conversation with TOXIC TEMPLE

Exhibition / Alumni in Residence from 2020

Elisabeth Falkensteiner in conversation with Anna Lerchbaumer and Kilian Jörg about their Toxic Temple – sensuality, religion, dystopia (Podcast in German)

Elisabeth Falkensteiner in conversation with Anna Lerchbaumer and Kilian Jörg about their ongoing project Toxic Temple – about sensuality and religion, communication with the afterlife, ecological disaster scenarios, the dystopia of extinction, the end of the Anthropocene, a possible other world and about the favourite object of the exhibition.

Push the button and play! Have fun listening!

The exhibition TOXIC TEMPLE was on view at AIL from 6 to 26 February 2020 and is part of the Alumni in Residence series, which explores artistic research ideas by graduates.

Anna Lerchbaumer and Kilian Jörg are alumni of the Angewandte.

This exhibition was supported by ARTist – graduate association of the University of Applied Arts, and was realized on February 2020 with three performative evenings at the AIL.

video

Artist Talk: Ibrahim Mahama & Tracy Thompson

Artist Talk in English from 2021

In the framework of the exhibition ‘Ecologies & Politics of the Living’. Moderation: Baerbel Mueller

Tracy Thompson ( Artist, Ghana)and Ibrahim Mahama (Co-Curator and Artist, Ghana) will introduce their visions of coexistence, nature and the environment and offer insights into their works presented in the show. They will also provide glimpses of the emerging art scene in Ghana and their active role in it.

The artist talk was held on 28 May, 2021 at the new space of Angewandte Innovation Lab

video

How Will We Work? How Shall We Study?

Talk in English from 2017

Discussion about the challenges of higher education, the changing society, and how universities therefore will need to transform themselves

The panel will focus on the challenges higher education is faced with, and discuss what can be done to best prepare future students to become competent members of our changing society, and how universities therefore will need to transform themselves.

It is no longer a question of whether our present work structures will be confronted with radical transformation processes, we need to discuss how this transformation is taking place, and which consequences it will bring. Undisputedly, developments in the fields of automation, digitalization, artificial intelligence or further globalization will have a significant impact on labour: Human workers will particularly be needed for tasks that (at least for now) cannot be carried out automatically – requiring competencies like creativity, unorthodox thinking, innovative networking between different fields and disciplines, etc.

Contributors

  • Gerald Bast, President of the University of Applied Arts Vienna

  • Eve Lewis,Director of SPARQS – Student Partnerships in Quality Scotland

  • Hans Pechar, Department of Science Communication and Higher Education Research, University of Klagenfurt

  • Bill Price, Speaker of the Council for a Progressive Economy

  • Ingeborg Reichle, Head of the Department of Cross-Disciplinary Strategies, University of Applied Arts Vienna

news

10 Years of AIL

Collecting futures since 2014

(Text in German)

With the AIL, the Angewandte has created a unique platform that provides insights into diverse projects and stimulating endeavors, behind which there are exciting and often unexpected things to discover. Over the past 10 years the relationship between art and science and the potential of interdisciplinarity has been explored, and artistic research of the University of Applied Arts Vienna has been made accessible to a wide audience. Together we look back on ten years in which very different formats have been tried out and successfully implemented.

‘A whole array of interests and expectations is inscribed in academic and artistic processes. But does living up to them constitute a so-called success or achievement? Are there any alternatives, can we expect the unexpected? Self-reflection, self-denial, withdrawal? Focus? Distraction? Might it be for this reason that it’s all about creating a new place of possibilities, as inclusive as possible but as restrictive as need be? Let’s (still) be surprised, let’s take the risk of innovation, let’s expect the unexpected.’

These were the introductory words at the opening of the AIL on October 20, 2014. Ten years ago AIL opened at Franz Josefs Kai 3 under the name Angewandte Innovation Laboratory with the intention of creating a unique place of connection that makes art visible as a driving force for innovation, to provide insight into the activities of the University of Applied Arts Vienna, to foster the link between art and science; between inside and outside. This intention has always been reflected in a diverse program. Like a laboratory, theses have been put to the test, and exhibitions have often reflected processes or even changed with their duration.

Sometimes the AIL, with its ambitious and unique undertaking, was not easy to grasp: a satellite that flies into other institutions, explores, mediates, collects information, opens to the outside, connects inside – at the same time a magnifying glass, a petri dish, a color palette, a growing toolbox, a lounge, a white board, a White Cube.

Neither a museum, nor a gallery – think of AIL as a stage for ideas and formats, a flexible organism

Since its inception, the AIL has presented a variety of formats, bringing into the building collaborative partners from academia and other disciplines. The aim has been to provide insights and connections through a range of multidisciplinary exhibitions, curated talks and discussions, symposia, lectures, concerts and performances, as well as public experiments and informal gatherings, exploring crucial and forward-looking issues.

Looking through the dense program of the last 10 years, it seems impossible to make an eloquent summary or overview. You can find most of AIL's talks on Vimeo, or dive deeper into the past and EXPLORE HERE from exhibition views to interviews and podcast episodes, from collected topics to the latest news.

Early days at AIL: Through performances, talks, discussions performer Daniel Aschwanden and media artist Conny Zenk made us aware of the ways in which new interface cultures replace traditional communication in their project [Bastard] Crowd mobile Seems forever ago, thinking now on latest developments around AI.

Image by ©Johan Lorbeer, Tarzan / Standbein. Performance as part of Vienna Biennale 2015. Photo: eSeL

From the first edition of Vienna Biennale in 2015: Public Art can be beneficial to the functioning of democracy. The public, as in the public space, has always been an important medium alongside the evolution of the press and parliament. Do we need a new edition of Performing Public Art?

Post Doc Janina Loh giving us insight into her research and rich field of knowledge: When we think about the digital future as well as new values, the feminist view must not be missing. Where do patriarchal inscriptions, gender identities or stereotyping hide in the field of artificial intelligence and future technologies? (June 2019, in German)

In 2022/23 together with the department of Media Theory, AIL present lectures, talks and performances, mainly from the field of digital cultures, circling around the topic of ‘Decolonizing Technology’. Disability can be seen as a condition of possibility for AI is the main argument of the lecture by political scientist Katharina Klappheck followed by a dialogue with Katta Spiel (January 2023, in German)

Image by ©AIL with Café Exchange at the center of Otto Wagner Postsparkasse during Angewandte Festival 2022. Photo: Lea Dörl

Constant change

In spring 2021, after seven years at the Franz Josefs Kai 3, AIL moved to the former Postsparkasse – a historic landmark designed by architect Otto Wagner – thus joining other departments of the University of Applied Arts Vienna and a newly emerging neighborhood comprising several research institutions from the field of art and science. The new location provides the opportunity to further expand and strengthen networks for interdisciplinary work and research on an area of about 300 square meters, divided into three rooms on the mezzanine floor, with Café Exchange and the former Kassenhalle (banking hall) as its centerpiece.

Furthermore AIL relaunched as Angewandte Interdisciplinary Lab in 2022 to put interdisciplinarity at the forefront as its main approach and way of acting and thinking. What innovation and interdisciplinary have in common is breaking new ground, finding new approaches, creating connections where you might not expect them. It is and remains the aim of the AIL to promote critical and creative thinking. These times call for a space to get together, mix up ideas, put heads together, get in contact and exchange thoughts, knowledge, visions and utopias.

A big thank you to all colleagues, artists, researchers, scientists, partners and guests who have been part of the last 10 years and who have accompanied and shaped the idea and vision of the AIL with their curiosity, energy, flexibility and openness.

Hip hip hurra!

(October 2024)

Preview image: Performance by Team Tool Time (Paul Divjak & Wolfgang Schlögl) from the opening night. Photo: Lea Dörl