Structures of Radicality at Open Space_Vienna

Open Space Zentrum für Kunstprojekte

Opening: 9 December 2008, 19.00 – 21.30

Project Curator: Walter Seidl

Participating artists: Sabine Bitter and Helmut Weber
Petra Gerschner Marina Grziniç and Aina Smid
Andrea Ressi

Book presentation: 9 December, 19.30, with Marina Grziniç, Gülsen Bal & Walter Seidl

New-Media Technology, Science, and Politics. The Video Art of Marina Grziniç & Aina Smid, Vienna: Löcker Publishers, 2008

The exhibition project Structures of Radicality questions modes of how art still manages to formulate a progressive stance in today's market-driven society. Over the last decade, the divide between a capitalist-oriented art production and mere criticality has made the latter often appear in niches outside an institutional framework. The exhibition focuses on artworks which question the hegemonic structures of society and proclaim the necessity for lifestyles and political views which operate outside a mainstream agenda.

What are the regulative standards neo-liberal politics demands from the individual in order to operate in a world which follows the dictate of economic exploitation? Why does the turnover of businesses have to increase every year in order to widen the gap between the super rich and the poor? Which are the benefits of tax havens such as Jersey, which provides financial services for trillions of dollars whose taxation could help the respective states to provide a better infrastructure and benefits for a socially less powerful group of people? The recent financial crisis has proven how high-class gambling affects the world economy in a downward spiral domino effect. At this point, artists are more than ever in search for alternatives vis-à-vis the dominant, economically and politically restrictive forces. Is it possible to find solutions for the problems at stake?

The works in the exhibition deal with notions of forced migration; urban re-planning due to economic deregulation; and the medial perception of what seems to be a normative social effect. With the means of photography, video, and painting, a discourse on contemporary elements of power is being analyzed on the premises of how anti-strategies and radical interferences into the dominant capitalist system can be made. By hinting at the forces behind global endeavors of inclusion and exclusion, the artworks raise questions about the possibility or impossibility of re-thinking models of social performance and the necessary steps for political action.