This Thursday, we will have a release event of the book "Visceral Fiction" (edited by Anita Kaya, Johanna Nielson, Elisabeth Schäfer, Agnes Schneidewind and myself) at Vienna's depot. Find more information here.
20 years of artists‘ initiative Im_flieger: VISCERAL FICTION is an investigative review and research in the process of inscribing history/stories in, around and with Im_flieger. Im_flieger is a self-organised, rhizomatic platform and a body for dance, performance and transmedia art.
By means of interviews, conversations, images, and theoretical discourses, an activation of the network took place in a one-year research process, which we designed in analogy to a „detective agency“: People, spaces, artistic works, contents, … The past (even if only a fraction) gained attention, appreciation and relevance in the present.
The detectives, authors and conversation partners Robert Dressler, David Ender, Veza Fernández, Jack Hauser, Michael Hirsch, Sabina Holzer, Katrin Hornek, Kilian Jörg, Anita Kaya, Felix Kaya, Elke Krasny, Simon Mayer, Johanna Nielson, Martina Ruhsam, Elisabeth Schäfer, Sylvia Scheidl, Agnes Schneidewind and Sabine Sonnenschein ask about the discursive potential of self-organization, artistic work, its formats, conditions of production, and about the significance of art and artists‘ organizations and spaces as decentralized movements in the cultural-political field and all the relationships that derive from them. But above all: what kind of poetics does the process of this detective investigation require?
Even if we, artists and curators, cannot solve the major social problems into whose abyss we are currently looking with art, we can at least uncover the mechanisms, hierarchies and structures in and with which we work, become aware of them, change them, refuse them, realise others. Museums and theatres – as traditional, ritual spaces and places of assembly in Western society – serve to rehearse the values that are relevant to each society.
What new rituals and places of assembly does our contemporary society need and what new social order is to be rehearsed?
How can artistic and curatorial creation connect with society, the world, in a different way and become effective?
How can artistic and curatorial practice be developed to build a sustainable dialogue between artists and audiences?
How can artistic practices and methods be experienced as an essential part of our social life together?
How can art no longer be received as a closed system, but be recognised in its interactive research and transformation potential, and become relevant to social issues and processes?
How do we work on the community, on the social order?
It’s not about giving answers. It’s time for a break in the space-time continuum, but, … will you ever be the same when you return?
Kilian Jörg, Anita Kaya, Johanna Nielson, Elisabeth Schäfer, Agnes Schneidewind (eds.), VISCERAL FICTION. Im_flieger hi/stories. 20 years artists for artists, edition monochrom, Vienna 2021
