University of Applied Arts, Vienna

Zentrum Fokus Forschung

Rustenschacherallee 2-4

1020 Wien

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Impulse
11 March 2024, 18:00 – 19:30

Exchange & Discourse
12 March 2024, 10:00 – 12:00

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The question of art’s ability to speak to that which is unknowable, unspeakable and alien has been a long tradition held in Romanticism and Realism, the former being associated with the subjective physiologies of the individual and the latter being associated with more objective and scientific aims. In the contemporary condition of art’s critique, art terminated both cases in its realization of the impossibility to speak to the question of “how everything hangs together.” This resulted in new paradigms of tragedy, farce, parody, irony and the postmodern sublime. Here, art narrates its own compulsion to mirror reality and produces an infinite and traumatic feedback loop of artistic production. However, making a distinction between what is ‘out there’ and the absolute notion of the impossible, this talk will speak to the question of how art as a form of techno-cultural-scientific machinery might engage the question of what it is to compute, render and manifest vectors of knowledge today beyond the structures of capitalism. Here, focusing on some recent projects and ideas, we will deal with the significant question of art’s capacity to be involved in the production of reality, the importance of fiction: the crucial question of how art communicates what reality is and should be.

‍Reading:
http://amandabeech.com/writing/art-intolerable-knowledge/
http://amandabeech.com/writing/heroic-realism-violence-conservatism-and-the-fate-of-culture/

Watching:
Statecraft, 2008
https://vimeo.com/179513398/7936580dbf?share=copy

Map of the Bomb, 2022 five channel video installation
https://vimeo.com/691912545/e6c331c70d

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‍Understanding Practice is an event series hosted by the ZFF and the PhD in Art Program. With our renowned guests, we explore their respective practices and experiences, questioning the possibilities of understanding and practising art and research together. In both a staged performance or lecture and a conversational workshop and exchange format, we will dive into different perspectives of art and research. This approach allows for an encounter with the work of the invited guests, as well as a joint reflection of their practice and its specific challenges and implications.