Focus on Vienna: April 2016

Franziska Zaida Schrammel, our new Vienna correspondent, recommends five contemporary art events worth exploring.

Balkanization at Friday Exit

Friday Exit is a non-profit space run by an open collective of emerging artists and curators associated with the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. Bringing together 17 international artists, this exhibition explores the ambivalence of “Balkanization” and “the Balkans”, and questions the social and political constructs, roles and clichés associated with the terms. The current refugee crisis has propelled the Balkan route into the spotlight as a controversial topic for Europe and the Middle East, and for oppositional politics in Europe. The 17 presented positions describe a variety of approaches to this broad subject.

Renate Bertlmann gives tour of AMO ERGO SUM - A Subversive Political Progam at Sammlung Verbund Vertical Gallery

Feminist avant-garde artist Renate Bertlmann has been dealing with serious issues in an ironic and playful way since the early 1970s. Making use of a wide range of media - photography, film, drawing, collage, objects, installation and performance - she reflects on gender relations, sexual desires, violence, stereotypes, motherhood and male domination while including the male perspective. Following early successes, after a period of continued but less widely-heralded work she is now being “rediscovered”, having been featured in “The World Goes Pop” at Tate Modern earlier this year. Thanks to the Sammlung Verbund, Bertlmann's oeuvre is going to remain public. In this exciting presentation, the 72-year-old Viennese artist herself walks you through her first retrospective.

The Impossibility of Being - "Walk the Talk" #2: Nature vs. Culture at Kunsthalle Exnergasse

"Walk the Talk" #2 accompanies the group exhibition The Impossibility of Being, curated by Hannah Beck-Mannagetta and Lena Fließbach. Promising some unusual insight into the exhibitions theme, Dr. Alexander Damianisch, head of Support Art and Research at the University of Applied Arts, Vienna, and Prof. Dr. Reingard Grabherr, virologist at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, invite participants to locate nature and culture, art and science, and theory and practice in the wider global context. Confrontations with artworks by Julius von Bismarck or Janina Lange make curator's philosophy clear: compared to the extraordinary power of nature, human life often seems absurd and insignificantly small. In spite of our growing knowledge and relentless progress, we are often overwhelmed and helpless, both politically and emotionally. How can we handle our own failures, instability and imperfection in a productive way? What is art-based research capable of?

Provoke. Between Protest and Performance. Photography in Japan 1960 – 1975 at Albertina

Taking the interplay of protest, photography and performance in the 1960s and ‘70s as its central theme, this exhibition’s presentation in the home city of Actionism makes it a must-see. Despite its short existence, the Japanese photo magazine Provoke had a great impact on politics, aesthetics and social life. Striking photographs reveal people's struggle for identity and freedom, and a burst of creativity with full bodily commitment. Showing a lot of unseen material, the exhibition represents this revolutionary era through the eyes of Japan's most important photographers along with numerous anonymous others.

The Turn المنعرج - Art Practices in Post-Spring Societies at Kunstraum Niederösterreich

Five years after the Arab Spring, “The Turn” takes a close look at ongoing political and social change in Tunisia where local art communities and individual artists continue to support the democratic movement. In a similar manner to Provoke, art practitioners investigate art as a form of protest, using multi-disciplinary interventions to show how art can have both immediate and long-term effects. Works like “Une poétique du geste” by Selma and Sofiane Ouissi address the current search for a Tunisian identity with choreographic gestures in the long history of female pottery.

Franziska is an art theorist and writer working in projects related to Visual Culture. She's ArtRabbit's new Vienna correspondent. For more updates on contemporary art events follow ArtRabbit on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram.