Exactly As Imagined emerges from an ongoing process shaped not by a fixed curation but by the collaborative efforts of a temporary collective of art students, artists, and cultural workers. The collective challenges and transforms the concept of the traditional ‘art exhibition’ shifting the space into a zone of shared expression and inquiry. Through the constant articulation of difference(s) and resistance(s), Exactly As Imagined acts as a platform for unearthing hidden narratives and creating new ones, fostering a sense of interconnectedness and interdependence. How do we address a site in constant flux, caught between invisibility and hypervisibility? How do we take care of it and how do we take care of each other? How do we imagine its pasts and futures?
As a transitory collective, we intervene both collectively and individually in the inner space of the exhibition location – brut’s working dance studios – as well as in its outer space – the area of the former station. Hereby, we investigate its historicity and its materiality, its occupation and its abandonment, its structure and its surfaces. We dig out physically and metaphorically some historical layers, we populate it with works and stories, we expand its boundaries and shape.
Located within the industrial site of the former Vienna Northwest Railway Station, the building once housed a clothing company, later a beverage dealer’s storage, and is today the temporary home for contemporary performative arts. Its imminent demolition will pave the way for a new district development. The collective spatial concept design of the exhibition delves into the building’s rich histories. Embracing impermanence, we engage with it minimally but radically. We work with what we found on the site that we shortly inhabit. Instead of adding things and through a process akin to archaeological excavation, we dismantle and peel away the layers of the space’s infrastructure. A subtle vitality emerges, inviting us to explore the architecture’s inner anatomy. From pulsing wires to buzzing blinds and flickering lights, the building reveals itself in unexpected ways, luring us in for deeper exploration.
By committing to each other and our delirious explorations we take over continuous care work, we challenge conventional boundaries and invite the public to walk into an unfinished conversation.
