A group exhibition and public theoretical symposium

Reality Manifestos - Can Dialectics Break Bricks? A study of détournement as Art Forms

Kunsthalle Exnergasse, Währinger Straße 59, 2nd Staircase, 1st Floor, 1090 Wien

kunsthalleexnergasse.wuk.at | www.realitymanifestos.info

Comprised of an international group exhibition and a two-day symposium, the project develops in the field of inquiry and investigation of hijacking and ready-made in contemporary art in relation to the cinema industry, and the possible transmission of properties between them. It investigates the space and the confusion of the border between image and representation, and specially focuses on the ruins of representation, what are the possibilities for translation, and where the idea of original and copy is lost. It follows the social, political and aesthetic content created as a dialectic clash between invisible and visible, or shifts between the notions of production and consumption, reality and fiction, creating temporalities in-between, bringing together a diversity of art practices that offer singular tactics of speculative misuse, repetition, faithful mimicry and détournement of existing images, visual icons, narrative patterns – re-enacting, rewriting and translating them. It marks a shift from knowledge to fight and from fight to passion and dance, involving the audience in the complicity in a crime of détournement, making them 'committed spectators.'

Exhibition 19 January - 3 March 2012. Opening on 18 January, 19h.

With the participation of Marc Bauer, Sabina Baumann, Mareike Bernien & Kerstin Schroedinger, Pauline Boudry & Renate Lorenz, Bogna Burska, Brice Dellsperger, Konstantinos Manolakis, Michele O'Marah, Cora Piantoni, Elodie Pong, "Schmale, Scheirl, Knebl Werke" (Toni Schmale, Hans Scheirl & Jakob Lena Knebl), Rebecca Ann Tess

With a performance at the opening by The Centre of Attention, a sound performance and DJ set by DJ Sweatproducer (Anne Käthi Wehrli).

At the finissage on 3 March at 19h, Hans Scheirl will give a public interview to the curator of the exhibition.

The exhibition and symposium are curated by Dimitrina Sevova

Public Theoretical Symposium

Museum Halls, WUK, Währinger Straße 59, 1090 Wien

19-20 January 2012

"The first entirely detourned film in the history of cinema: Can Dialectics Break Bricks?

A film produced by the person listed here [Yeo Ban Yee], who naturally has no idea what has happened to his film. Let it be said: all films can be detourned: potboilers, Vardas, Pasolinis, Caillacs, Godards, Bergmans, as well as good spaghetti westerns and all commercials."

From: René Viénet, Can Dialectics Break Bricks?

The theoretical symposium is organized in conjunction with the exhibition project of the same name, and serves to contextualize the exhibition and the artists' works and raise a public critical discussion among scholars, the artists and a broad audience. The exhibition and the theoretical symposium reflect upon each other in order to theorize the work of the artists and deepen the understanding of the topics and subjects addressed in the theoretical framework of the project, and issues concerning the relation between contemporary art and cinema.

Symposium with the participation of Mareike Bernien & Kerstin Schroedinger, The Centre of Attention, Brice Dellsperger, Eva Egermann, Maren Grimm, Esther Kempf, Lucie Kolb, Elke Krasny, Boyan Manchev, Isin Önol, Bernd Oppl, Ma?gorzata Radkiewicz, Dorothee Richter, Nicola Ruffo, Simone Schardt & Wolf Schmelter, Dimitrina Sevova

And: artist talks by the participants in the exhibition

Program of the Symposium

Thursday, 19 January 2012

10:30-11:30
Walk through the exhibition at Kunsthalle Exnergasse, coffee and welcome by the curator, Dimitrina Sevova

11:30-12:10
Maren Grimm
“frontier” – western movies, the migrations and reworkings of the genre

12:10-12:50
Simone Schardt & Wolf Schmelter
Other Spaces of Cinema

Lunch Break

14:00-15:20
Rebecca Ann Tess, Bogna Burska, Elodie Pong
Artists' Talks

15:20-16:00
Ma?gorzata Radkiewicz
Cinema, Media and Women’s Arts in Poland – negotiations of the gaze

16:00-16:20
Coffee Break

16:20-17:00
Dorothee Richter
Feminist demands to curating… On the distribution of the gaze

17:00-17:40
Isin Önol
Cast Shadows as Readymade Images Amid the Status of Representation and Reality

17:40-18:00
Coffee Break

18:00-19:00
Mareike Bernien & Kerstin Schroedinger
Modes of Colour (performance / lecture)

19:00-19:20
Chair: Maren Grimm
Plenary Discussion

19:20-20:00
Buffet

20:00-20:40
Brice Dellsperger
Lecture with screening of Body Double 26, book launch Body Double: Posture and High Heels

20:40-21:20
Brice Dellsperger
Screening of Body Double 22 (based on Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut; 40 min)

Friday, 20 January 2012

11:00-11:15
Coffee

11:15-11:55
Elke Krasny
dérive and détournement. How to reappropriate?

11:55-12:35
Eva Egermann
Touching Crip History: Unlikely Encounters in the Fog

Lunch Break

13:35-14:55
Sabina Baumann, Konstantinos Manolakis, Marc Bauer
Artists' Talks

14:55-15:35
Lucie Kolb
Art-Language, Music-Language, Cinema-Language
Kathryn Bigelow between Hollywood and Critical Art Theory

15:35-16:15
Nicola Ruffo in conversation with Esther Kempf
Esther Kempf: How to work with Illusions

16:15-16:55
Isin Önol in conversation with Bernd Oppl
Orders of Perception

16:55-17:15
Coffee Break

17:15-17:55
Boyan Manchev
The Détournement of Form as Alteration of Matter

17:55-18:35
The Centre of Attention
COPYWRONG - techniques for mobilizing emancipatory politics!

18:35-19:15
Dimitrina Sevova
From performativity of the moving images to their precarization and migration in the working system of cinema and contemporary art, and the economy of the free digital market place

19:15-19:55
Chair: Elke Krasny
Concluding Plenary Discussion

19:55-21:00
Buffet

21:00-22:15
Nicola Ruffo
Screening program with introduction: Documentary Strategies in Art Films (60 min)

The symposium is organized in collaboration with the Postgraduate Program in Curating, Zurich, www.curating.org. A special issue of the on-curating.org magazine on the exhibition and symposium will be published in May 2012 with expanded texts based on the lectures.

We would like to thank the following organizations for their kind support: Pro Helvetia, Institut Français de Vienne, Polnischer Institut Wien, Wien Kultur, bm:uk, ifa institut für auslandsbeziehungen e.V.