radical matter. When Materialism is No Longer Enough
group exhibition opening: 25 Jan 2024, 18:00
opening hours exhibition: 26 Jan–16 Feb 2024
Mon, Tue, Wed, Fri: 13:00–18:00 / Thu: 13:00–20:00
Angewandte Interdisciplinary Lab
Georg-Coch-Platz 2, 1010 Wien
ail.angewandte.at
radical matter: When Materialism Is No Longer Enough offers a rigorous, playful, interdisciplinary approach to our contemporary real. Set against the hyper-polished atmospheres of robotically automated knowledge systems (RAS), generative and distributive intelligences, and wildly proliferating deep-fake narratives, this exhibition invites you to experience the infinite world of folds, psychedelic/ neural sensory camouflaging, machinic aliveness and synthetic encounters – all part and parcel of our 21st century forms of agency, ethics, collective responsibility and new imaginaries.
Dancing ever closer to strangely alive and deeply compelling human machine interspecies co-evolutions, we find ourselves moving away from the old materialist canons of method, rationality and reason that asked: “supposing it could be otherwise, what would your otherwise look like” towards a slightly more graphic, urgent, raw, re-think: “supposing it already is ‘otherwise’”– how does this ‘otherwise’ enable new forms of agency, aliveness, and responsibility in the face of multi-modal generative Ai, non-conscious cognitions, TouchDesigner?
Our initial answers demanded a full stripping-off’. A radical matter that demands: Strip away the old metaphysics of materialism! Strip off the speculative, object-oriented, historical or idealist well-past-their-sell-by-date wine in new bottles! Strip off these old knowledge systems which for so long have occluded new imaginaries, different forms of resistance, poetics, and libidinal economies.
Take a walk with us on the wild side – a wild side that is already here, shape-shifting and proliferating.
participating artists:
Sonia Bernac
Yasmine Boudiaf
Jonathan Boyd
Bernhard Cella
Clarissa Leonie Cohausz
Selina de Beauclair
Sylvia Eckermann
Maximilian Gallo
Johnny Golding
Ivonne Gracia Murillo
Tonica Hunter
Ajamu IkweTyehimba
Ameera Kawash
Jeremy Keenan
Gerhard Lang
Tina Lechner
Thandi Loewenson
Manu Luksch
Gerald Nestler
Jannis Neumann
Harold Offeh
Julian Palacz
Mukul Patel
Maggie Roberts
Ashley Hans Scheirl
Linn Phyllis Seeger
Dario Srbic
Noor Stenfert Kroese
Tanja Traxler
Shira Wachsmann
John Wild
Julia Wolf
Curatorial Team
Johnny Golding
Martin Reinhart
Tanja Traxler
The Radical Matter exhibition and symposium is part of a PEEK artistic research project hosted by the Art & Science department at the University of Applied Arts Vienna in cooperation with the Royal College of Art London. We would like to thank the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) and all our project partners.
AIL is an experimental space and a platform for projects at the intersection of art, science and artistic research, run by the University of Applied Arts Vienna. AIL is located in the Otto Wagner-Postsparkasse and home of Café Exchange:
Mon, Tue, Wed, Fri: 10:00–18:00 / Thu 10:00–20:00 (Free entry)