WiR | WE - A hybrid in progress, curated by_ Marina FOKIDIS

About

Cities have morphed into unfamiliar landscapes, the daily routine is not the daily routine we knew anymore; the politics are not the politics we can recognize anymore; our belongings do not belong to us anymore; the public space does not belong to us either, and even private space is negotiable. We are living through a disruption and as we are experiencing this inevitable change, where everything is in flux, the space loses its shape and transforms into nothingness, an immaterial place: the space for the impossible. Can we identify a set of new queer capacities that might be emerging, and go beyond the hysteria of hyperconnectivity and navigate the turbulence within the demanding superterritorial terrain in which we all live?

How can we bring the past into the present and how can "the future" again become plausible within our lives?

Art can always foresee a future, usually a "timeless" one. For this special display exercise, prompted by this year's thematic focus, I decided to pursue a "dig into the future". Specifically, a dig into the "vaults" of Christine König Galerie. By pairing older and newer artworks / accounts, that go beyond fixed (historical) times and geographies, the aim is to investigate a hybrid space that invites not only the reassessment of diverse certainties but also their cross-contamination and their cross-fertilization. It is perhaps in this narrow gap, between the two or more conditions - the "heres" and "theres" that have been partially separated - where inconsistencies, flaws and scarifications can be reconfigured and harnessed with sensitivity and affection. Yet, how can a hybrid coexistence and its entanglements be manifested in the form of an exhibition?

Inspired by the work of artist, poet, conceptualist Gerhard Rühm who challenges the boundaries of traditional genres and linguistic meanings, and in particular by his typocollage WiR, the idea was to open up a space where unexpected relationships might throw light on a third space - or a series of third spaces where people could meet to imagine the possibility of other ways of being in the world.

WiR, refers to an expanded - disproportionate even - understanding of oneself within the collective we. Through the complexification of the notions of collectivity as well as the process of coexistence, as it is attempted in this exhibition, we might be able to arrive at the formation of new / old vocabularies that encompass risk but also promise new forms of solidarity and interconnectedness, beyond the hegemonic relation of the "middle" and the "margin", the private and the public, the I and the WE and many other binaries.

Marina FOKIDIS