Katrin Hornek’s work playfully engages with the strange paradoxes and convergences of living in the age of the Anthropocene, that is, the new geologic epoch where the effects of capitalism, colonialism, and extractivism are written into the body of the earth.

The city where most of us live is considered to be an international capital of culture and the arts. This is also reflected in the touristic marketing of Vienna. In this talk, on the one hand, I want to look at another Vienna: that of science and its popular representations and its public places. On the other hand, I’d like to discuss how site-specific art could help to make science in the city more visible.

MAUVE is a artist-run space based in Vienna, Austria. Since its inaugural show in 2012, MAUVE’s mission has been to explore various ways of exhibition making. MAUVE investigates the possibilities of the exhibition as an art form. Always closely collaborating with the artists involved in the exhibitions, MAUVE strives to bring artistic production, discourse and experimental modes of curating closer together.

Tietchens: “No studies, no academic education, no scholarship, just pure learning by doing = self-taught appropriation of creative skills and handling of analogue and digital studio technology. I am my own Tonmeister.”

Paul Knight will talk through ideas concerning two main working areas of his practice, photography and weaving. Knight makes works which extend out of the domestic sphere, using quotidian objects and situations to engage with broader and narrowing ideas of politics and the sublime. Knight will discuss the intimate potential of both these forms and their shared inversion between perceived flatness and spatial volume.

Kunstverein Kevin Space promotes international and local developments of contemporary visual arts, brought into dialogue in solo and group exhibitions as well as performative and discursive formats. A focus on the commission of new artistic productions, developed on site and conceived specifically for the space, the close work with the artists invited, and an ongoing artist-in-residence program, tests out the potential of the art space as a dynamic space of encounter.

Institutions are an ambiguous subject. Some despise them for abuse of power or dominance over free will and choice, others rely on them to save us from corporate harm or social demise. In the worlds of art I got to know, the relations between artists and institutions are just as varied. I’ve seen short affairs or serious engagements, refusal by principle and embrace of the moment. In the few hours we have together, let us talk about the relationships we want and don’t want, should and should not, can and cannot have with institutions, and how we can work with, for or around them to create the things we would like to live among.