HEBA AMIN

AS BIRDS FLYING
2016
Video 6’43’’

In late 2013, Egyptian authorities detained a migratory stork suspected of espionage due to an electronic device attached to its leg. “As Birds Flying” addresses conspiracies embedded in the political landscape that shape the present. It confronts the absurdity of the media narrative that has blurred fantasy with realty and turned a bird, that migrates from Israel to Egypt, into a symbol of state paranoia. The film juxtaposes drone footage of the “spy bird” with reconstructed audio from Adel Imam’s iconic film “Birds of Darkness” (1995) which critiques government corruption in Egypt through the opposing perspectives of secular and Islamist parliamentary candidates.

YANE CALOVSKI

FORMER CITY
Archival Material and drawings
2017-2018

‘Former City’ is the latest stage of an ongoing research on the ‘Skopje Urban Plan Project’ that also includes the two previous works ‘Master Plan’ (2007-08) and ‘Obsessive Setting’ (2009-10). The newest project documents the unsalvageable and contaminated data pertaining to the Skopje Urban Plan Project (1963-67) in the aftermath of the fire of the former Institute for Town Planning and Architecture Skopje (ITPA) in April 2017. All three works comprise “Undisciplined: A Construction of An Archive”, an editorial project on the subject that will result in a publication in 2019.

RAMESCH DAHA

SIGMUND KLEIN

2018
Archival Material,
Paintings, Drawings, Blue Prints, Tools, Images from the Artist Books, Audio Track “Dachau”
30’38''

Based on extensive historical research, Ramesch Daha in her artistic work, connects biographical historical aspects, collective memories and historical-political events in new constellations.

With “Sigmund Klein” project,, Daha traces a personal archive and processes findings with a distinctive artistic approach. Sigmund Klein was the father of Daha’s step grandfather. He was deported from Vienna to the concentration camp Dachau after the Reichsprognomnacht in 1938. At that time is son, the artist’s step grandfather was 15 years old and he survived with his mother as the son of a Czech Jew and a political activist.

After Dachau Sigmund Klein was deported to the concentration camp Buchenwald, about 2 years later to the concentration camp Ravensbrück where he was killed in 1942. Klein’s son kept photographs, the letters of his father that he wrote during the 4 years of prison, documents, and all tools of his father who was a tinsmith.

RICARDA DENZER

ECHO, OR DEVIATING THE ORIGINAL
CHAPTER 1: EXERCISING A GHOST
mixed media sketches
2018
audio/video: Condition of the Mouth, interview with Elaine Morman (first woman Freeminer at the Forest of Dean); To Tell a Story, video animation (voices: John Berger & Susan Sontag), potato prints on paper, ochre pigments, cardboard, forked stick, clay, candle, glass, c-prints, photography.

In this chapter, several stories are told simultaneously. They share the interest in the materiality of the oral and in forms of narration.

BARBARA HOLUB

BLUE FROG SOCIETY | A HABITAT WITHOUT TERRITORY
2018

The Blue Frog Society is a messenger of a future society. It pushes the borders of the “possible” to make space for the unplanned and unthinkable, emphasizing civic engagement and the need for new social values, new commons and forms of living together beyond cultural, social or geographical borders. After presentations at the Czech Mission to the UN/ Czech Center (New York), the 64th UN DPI/ NGO conference in Bonn, and many other public venues and internal meetings, the BFS will now gather in Vienna, where it originated in 2010 and published the "10 Issues of the BFS". You are invited to become a member and contribute your suggestions.

NIKOLAUS GANSTERER

FIGURING VITALITY
2015-2018
Video, Object and Drawing/

Nikolaus Gansterer understands the processes of thinking and drawing as analogous. He is thus concerned with the fundamental question of how to translate processes of thought, and explores how the act of drawing can become a tool of communication. To approach the materiality of perception Gansterer applies a unique performative grammar, in which the artist’s flow of observations in relation to his environment manifest as captivating live drawings, diagrams and arrangements. He questions how these situative constructions of meaning could be expanded towards a radical autopoiesis: where a line of thought becomes a line on paper, turns into a line in space, and then again a line articulated with the whole body or transforms into an object.

The animation film "Figuring Vitality" (2015) enables to experience a blackboard as resonating body and site of knowledge transfer. Gansterer projects a dynamic spatial structure which is constantly formed by vitality forces that dissolve the boundaries between inner and outside world, unveiling the process of “figuring something out”. /p>

OTTO KARVONEN

ALIEN PALACE BIRDHOUSE COLLECTION
2010-2018
Photographs and documentation

Alien Palace Birdhouse Collection consists of birdhouses that are modelled after detention centres for immigrants in different European countries. Detention centres are places where illegal immigrants, such as paperless refugees are held waiting for deportation or processing of their asylum application. Detention centres are essentially prisons, although only a small minority of their residents have a criminal record.

Alien Palace birdhouses provide excellent nesting conditions for the occasional winged visitor. The birdhouses are made of weatherproof and durable materials such as cement fibreboard, aluminium, brick and stainless steel.

BRONWYN LACE

BRED IN THE BONE
2016-2017
Stills from 1’30’’ time-lapse film

Lace created Bred in the Bone, - an accelerated time-lapse video, lasting a minute and thirty seconds, of carrion beetles frenetically feasting on the flesh of a gasping owl in Vienna. This sequence conjures up the lunacy of hunger and entrapment –even desire.

ASCENSION
2014-2015
Sculptural installation

In 2015, in response to the death of friend and mentor Neels Coetzee Lace created ‘Ascention’, the first work towards the exhibition ‘Response’, a posthumous meditation. Lace’s connection to Coetzee’s life and work runs deep. Although she was never taught by him, she came to know him well in the final years of his life and was present at the time of his death. Ascension was inspired by the memory of Coetzee’s hair being caressed as he was dying. This memory and the notion of spirit intertwine in the interplay of silver gut and light, gesturing toward the idea of transcendence or metamorphosis.

PASSAGES
2015
Resin cast pelvis and gold thread
Lace’s portrayal of the experience of loosing her friend emanates from a focus on the head, which links the work of both artists. For Coetzee, the skull is the locus of transmutation. In Lace’s response, the pelvis is the birthing point for transformation/new possibilities. The pelvis is rendered with light. Its fragility yet steady illumination brings comfort and release.

BREATH
2017
Ink drawings

When Lace begins a session in studio she often employs a type of meditation to settle the mind and focus the body. This meditation involves creating breath drawings with calligraphy ink on cotton paper. Lace is interested in the physical manifestation of breath, the intricacy and delicacy of the line reflects a quality and complexity of the respiratory system.

MARCUS NEUSTETTER

SYRIA
2016
Video
6’20’’ (loop)

For this first CrossSections exhibition of work in process, Marcus Neustetter presents a selection of previous works created in Vienna, the works reflect on Neustetter’s observations of the space and its relationship to and dialogue with cultures not originally from Austria. An example of this is the video piece Syria, created by exploring collections of Syrian artifacts within the Weltmuseum in Vienna, by turning off the storage room lights and moving through the archives with a torch Neustetter creates somewhat abstracted shadow-scape films that translate artifacts in to metaphors and evoke enquiries in to the positions Syrian people living in Austria occupy.

WEEP MEXICO – MONTEZUMA
2016-2017
Stop frame animation
1’30’’sec (loop)

In early January 2018 Neustetter has created engaged, experimental light performances with thousands of participants on the streets of Merida. Together people are encouraged to create large light drawings related to their individual and collective identities. Interestingly, one such light drawing is the headdress of Montezuma, an Aztec feather artifact currently held by the Welt Museum in Vienna and a source of dispute between Mexico and Austria.

BETWEEN BORDER LINES
2018
Video installation

During his performance Between Border Lines, Neustetter traced borders of contested territories directly onto the wall. Using a microscope attached to a projector the artist performed speculative mark making and amplifies movement and migration in response to found sound elements. The recording of this performance took place as a video installation in the exhibiiton.

ISA ROSENBERGER

DANCE/KNOWLEDGE/POLITICS (working title)
Research Material
2018

Politics are not located directly in dance, but in the way dance manages to occupy (cultural) space.
Mark Franko

The Volksheim Ottakring (today Volkshochschule Ottakring) was founded in 1901 and was of great cultural and political importance, especially in the interwar years. Adult education centres were an important hub of education and knowledge transfer and played a unique role in the popularisation of art and culture beyond the bourgeois salons.

The starting points of Isa Rosenberger’s research on the history and the present of the VHS Ottakring are the performances and the courses that the dancer and choreographer Rosalia Chladek offered at the VHS Ottakring in the 1930s.

LINA SELANDER

ANTECKNINGAR TILL EN FILM OM NATUREN/NOTES FOR A FILM ON NATURE
with Oscar Mangione
B/W Lambda print, projected video
s Video 9’51’’

Lina Selander and Oscar Mangiones work “Anteckningar till en film om naturen” (Notes for a Film on Nature) is a film projected on a photograph depicting a former courtroom, now an exhibition space, where a screen have been placed on the judges’ position. Anteckningar till en film om naturen is also an overwriting film, a palimpsest. The work seeks positions and outposts on the border between nature and image. Here is the dream of the empty gaze, of death, of montage as the opposite of nature.

TAMSIN SNOW

SHOWROOM
2017
CGI Animation 3’5’’

Snow’s research looks at science fiction’s relationship to real world medical innovation, with specific focus on scanning technologies and suspended animation. The work is an enquiry into new developments in scanning technologies, forensic pathology and cryopreservation. It seeks to imagine futuristic architectural visions for the viewer through the virtual experience of cutting-edge technologies.

Showroom takes the viewer on a virtual tour of a futuristic medical processing plant. The animation is an enquiry into new developments in forensic pathology, scanning technologies, and cryopreservation and looks at science fiction’s relationship to real world medical innovation.