January 28th, 2011 - March 5th, 2011
a w o r k t h a t c a n ' t s h a k e o f f w h a t i t r e f l e c t s .
Debating and contesting continuities and ruptures of colonial, fascist and Nazi practices in Austria
An exhibition project by and with Petja Dimitrova, Lina Dokuzovic, Eduard Freudmann, Can Gülcü, Ana Hoffner and Ivan Jurica
with Ljubomir Bratic/Richard Ferkl, Marina Grzinic/Aina Smid (in collaboration with Zvonka Simcic), Nina Höchtl, kegnschtelik - Yiddish Resistance 3.0, maiz - Autonomous Center by and for Migrant Women, Marcel Malis, Ivana Marjanovic, MigrafonA, Katharina Morawek, Platform History-Politics, Research Group on Black Austrian History and Present, Marika Schmiedt.
Departing from Austria’s involvement in colonial practices, in both the present and the past, as well as its crossovers to imperial and fascist policies of expansion, the exhibition collects artistic positions that examine these practices and oppose them through resistant strategies. Multi-dimensional perspectives on interwoven pasts should thereby challenge existing competitions of memory and open up spaces of action for contemporary processes of political and anti-racist self-empowerment.
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Kunstpavillon Innsbruck
January 28th, 2011 - March 5th, 2011
Opening: Thursday, January 27th, 2011, 7 p.m.
Welcome speech: Franz Wassermann, chair board member, Tiroler Künstlerschaft
Kunstpavillon
Rennweg 8a
A-6020 Innsbruck
http://kuenstlerschaft.at/
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A work that can't shake off what it reflects is what Astrid Messerschmidt describes as a memorial work, which debates and contests the eliminatory systems of violent oppression, such as colonialism and Nazism, whereby their similarities and differences, their continuities and ruptures, are taken into consideration - always under the premise of clarifying the incompleteness and inconcludability of history as a field of constant debate. This denotes a memorial work that strives to avoid the relativization of genocides and the creation of competitions of memory, in which histories of victimization are played out against each other. Instead, the opening of spaces of narration is intended, which do not define themselves exclusively as the continuation of existing concepts of history or as the dissociation from them, but to rather enable multi-dimensional perceptions on interwoven histories.
A work that can't shake off what it reflects also implies the debating and contesting of the effects of colonial, fascist and Nazi practices and their interrelations with present-day racisms and mechanisms of exclusion. The respective memorial work, which is both post-Nazi and post-colonial, should thereby serve to examine given policies of disfranchisement, precarization and exploitation in order to catalyze resistant processes of anti-fascist and anti-racist self-empowerment.
Furthermore, a work that can't shake off what it reflects represents the attempt to assemble interwoven, unconcluded and contradictory artistic positions. The works represented in the exhibition investigate processes of transition and their interlinked neocolonial structures in post-socialist countries (Ivan Jurica, Marcel Malis), analyze Austrian colonial histories (Nina Höchtl, Katharina Morawek), refer to the relations between nation-state constructions of identity and racist objectification (Petja Dimitrova, Research Group on Black Austrian History and Present) and position themselves against the medialization and normalization of their discrimination (Ljubomir Bratic/Richard Ferkl, Can Gülcü, kegnschtelik - Yiddish Resistance 3.0). They show potentialities of collective and self-empowering strategies for action, such as self-organization and self-historization (maiz, MigrafonA, Plattform Geschichtspolitik, Marika Schmiedt), develop strategies against normative stereotypes of gender, migration or class (Lina Dokuzovic, Ana Hoffner) and depict the intersection between art, theory and activism as the point of departure for political intervention (Eduard Freudmann/Ivana Marjanovic, Marina Grzinic/Aina Smid/Zvonka Simcic).
The exhibition, a work that can't shake off what it reflects, has been organized by a group of artists and cultural workers who are linked through a common history of artistic, theoretical and activist, thereby political, analysis and debate.
