ART CITIES:Vienna:… of bread, wine, cars, security and peace

The exhibition “…of bread, wine, cars security and peace” is the first exhibition WHW* are curating since taking over the lead of Kunsthalle Wien. It presents a broad view into many of the artistic and political interests, as well as many artists, the collective has worked with over the years. At the same time it attempts to suggest a general orientation of the program which WHW will develop in the course of the next five years.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Kunsthalle Wien Archive

The exhibition “… of bread, wine, cars security and peace” takes place in all venues and inter-spaces of Kunsthalle Wien, opening the house metaphorically and literally, pushing the threshold of the exhibition towards public space, while not being afraid of working with all the contradictions this might reveal.The title quotes Bilal Khbeiz, a Lebanese author who mused over some of the things that made the difference between the dreams of people in the Global South and the West in “Globalization and the Manufacture of Transient Events, Beirut: Ashkal Alwan” (2003). For Khbeiz that very list – bread, wine, cars, security and peace – defined an idea of the ‘good life’ that was unattainable for much of the world. Almost two decades later, it seems that these basics begin to escape more and more people living in places where they were taken for granted: Climate change puts the continuation of life on earth under question; ecological destruction gathers pace; faith in the benevolence of capitalism was broken by the 2008 crash and its horizon of slow global improvement and trickle-down benefits is steadily evaporating. The exhibition is conceived as a framework, experiential and cognitive, in which it is possible to envision the future in a way that is not complicit with the conditions that constitute the present. It represents a collaborative effort to understand today’s political world and reflect, motivate and assist the struggles to change it. Presenting works by artists of different generations in a dialogue, the exhibition offers perspectives on the ‘good life’ to suggest real alternatives to a perpetuation of ruinous economic violence and monstrous social forms. Critical, constructive and imaginative voices act as faint signals of things to come, and of social forms emerging into life. The exhibition posits artistic subjectivity and autonomy as a place where one can imagine abandonment of the fatal dialectic of modern capitalism and think beyond it. There are many moral, ecological, and scientific arguments for organizing our economies more fairly: Degrowth as a principle stands for an ecologically sustainable world economy not governed by profitability but by human needs. It is not only about carbon reduction, but about celebrating the richness of the planet and all its life forms. The exhibition also suggests a feminist perspective in which social and ecological reproduction and serious reckoning with the ways that the work of serving others has been shaped by gender and race are at the heart of the vision of the future. It is a celebration of all the work oriented toward sustaining and improving human life as well as the lives of other species who share our world, of a daily life that is less arduous and more pleasurable, with abundance of communal luxury and collective leisure, where the ‘good life’ is ecologically supportive and oriented toward the flourishing of all.

Participating Artists: Marwa Arsanios, Zach Blas, Sonia Boyce,  Banu Cennetoğlu, Alejandro Cesarco, Saddie Choua, Phil Collins, Alice Creischer, Adji Dieye, Ines Doujak, Melanie Ebenhoch, Tim Etchells, Kevin Jerome Everson, Forensic Architecture, Giorgi Gago Gagoshidze, Hito Steyerl & Miloš Trakilović, Monika Grabuschnigg, Vlatka Horvat, Anne Marie Jehle, Gülsün Karamustafa, Jessika Khazrik for the Society of False Witnesses, Victoria Lomasko, Hana Miletić & Globe Aroma, Marina Naprushkina, Tuan Andrew Nguyen, Wendelien van Oldenborgh, Sylvia Palacios Whitman, Dan Perjovschi, Pirate Care, HC Playner, Oliver Ressler, School of Contradiction, Selma Selman, Andreas Siekmann, Daniel Spoerri, Mladen Stilinović, Marlene Streeruwitz and  Milica Tomić.

Info: Curators: What, How & for Whom / WHW (Ivet Ćurlin, Nataša Ilić und Sabina Sabolović), Kunsthalle Wien, Museumsquartier, Museumsplatz 1, Vienna & Kunsthalle Wien Karlsplatz, Treitlstrasse 2, Vienna, Duration: 8/3-8/5/20, Days & Hours: Days & Hours: Tue-Wed & Fri-Sun 11:00-19:00, Thu 11:00-21:00, www.kunsthallewien.at