[Reverberated]

Memory is not a stable record of the past. Rather than functioning as a static archive, it unfolds as a dynamic process in which traces are continuously reshaped by perception, narration, and material conditions.

[REVERBERATED] explores notions of memory as the annual exhibition of the master’s program Art & Science. The exhibition approaches this process through the metaphor of reverberation. Reverberation describes the reflection of sound from multiple surfaces, producing many overlapping echoes at once. Just as sound continues to resonate within a space, memories reverberate through bodies, media, and environments long after the events that created them.

Taking this physical phenomenon as its conceptual point of departure, the exhibition explores how memories move across temporal, spatial, and technological contexts. Memory is never something fixed, but rather a living trace that unfolds over time. It continuously changes depending on context, interpretation, perception, and the ever-shifting present moment. Within this framework, the participating artworks investigate different modes of remembering: some address the role of images, storytelling, and artificial intelligence in shaping narratives of the past, while others engage with ecological and material traces: from disappearing species and botanical archives to residues embedded in landscapes and infrastructures.

Yet for this fluidity of memory to persist, structures are necessary – a mind, a community, or an archive. These structures are required similarly to sound waves, requiring surfaces in order to reverberate. At AIL, the exhibition unfolds across two interconnected spaces that function as the surrounding structures. Each space gathers works that resonate with one another while simultaneously echoing across the architectural interior of the historic Kassenhalle. Through this spatial arrangement, the exhibition itself becomes part of the inquiry, staging memory as a process of resonance, interference, and transformation.

Across these artistic approaches, [REVERBERATED] invites visitors to consider memory not as something simply preserved, but as something continuously produced through interactions between bodies, technologies, and environments. The exhibition thus explores how the past continues to reverberate within the systems of the present.

With contributions by:

Agustina Agüero, Phin Anibal, Lobna Awidat, Anna Buchner, Laura Chalabi, Ronnie Danaher, Rimon Alyagon Darr, Tatiana Del Valle, Hasti Ghasedi, Leah Giertz, Hanna Hofmann, Tal Horesh, Laura Isselhorst, Mauritius Itzinger, Dina Karaman, Moritz Klarer, Leonard Otterbein, David Ristic, Rajarshi Sarkar, Agnes Schyberg, Aryan Shahabian, Majedeh Shahvelayati, Mehrta Shirzadian, Pauline Simon, Collective: People of soil

The exhibition [REVERBERATED] emerges from the Art & Science master’s program at the University of Applied Arts Vienna and is developed within the framework of the program’s yearly research theme Memory. Memory is not a stable archive of the past but a dynamic and reconstructive process in which traces are continuously reshaped by perception, narration, and material conditions.

The project is supported by interdisciplinary collaborations that extend the artistic inquiry into adjacent research fields. One important reference point is the SONIME research project, which investigates historical audio media as both cultural artifacts and material carriers of memory. Through this connection, questions of sonic preservation, migration histories, and the materiality of recorded voices become part of the exhibition’s broader investigation into how memories are stored, transmitted, and reconstructed. A second collaboration with the Vienna Cognitive Science Hub introduces perspectives from empirical aesthetics and philosophy, contributing to the exhibition’s research program on how perception, attention, and narrative interpretation shape processes of remembering.

Accompanying public discussions with invited researchers from relevant fields will further extend these perspectives and situate the exhibition within a broader interdisciplinary dialogue on memory, archives, and distributed forms of remembering.

In this sense, [REVERBERATED] positions the exhibition itself as a methodological tool. By bringing artistic practice into dialogue with perspectives from media archaeology, cognitive science, and environmental thinking, the project explores how artistic research can contribute to a broader understanding of memory as a relational and continuously evolving phenomenon.

(Research Framework Statement by Senior Lecturer at Art & Science Dr. Martin Reinhart)