SPUKEN IM ARCHIV! (HAUNTINGS IN THE ARCHIVE!) (Political Confrontations in the VBKÖ)

SPUKEN IM ARCHIV! (HAUNTINGS IN THE ARCHIVE!) is a film and research project by the Sekretariat fur Geister, Archivpolitiken und Lücken (Secretariat for Ghosts, Archival Politics and Gaps – SKGAL) which deals critically with the hi/herstory/ies and archive of the Austrian Association of Women Artists (VBKÖ).

Founded in 1910 in Vienna, the VBKÖ was one of the first organizations in Europe that represented the interests of women artists. While the feminist origins of the association provide an impressive and important point of reference – and this includes contemporary perspectives – the hi/herstory/ies of the association are ambivalent: In 1938 the VBKÖ committed to cooperation with the National Socialist regime. Furthermore, over the several decades following 1945, it did not break away from its everyday routines and personnel which stemmed from National Socialist period.

Through the performative screening, SPUKEN IM ARCHIV!, SKGAL invites you to follow the ghosts of the VBKÖ, and to join them in reconsidering the material in the archive of the association in order to challenge it through debates and interpretations. In the project, ghosts haunt places, voices and images, and they show strategies as well as the power of hi/herstory/ies. Along with the ghosts, SKGAL aims to contradict the unequivocal consolidations of history and will thereby attempt to update and challenge the hi/herstory/ies of an old association for women artists!

The Sekretariat für Geister, Archivpolitiken und Lücken (Secretariat for Ghosts, Archival Politics and Gaps, SKGAL) is a working group of the Vereinigung Bildender Künstlerinnen Österreichs (Austrian Association of Women Artists, VBKÖ). It was founded by Nina Hoechtl and Julia Wieger in 2012 to incorporate a critical examination of the VBKÖ’s archive and history/ies within the association. Through lecture-performances, workshops, texts and a video-in-process they have discussed the role of the VBKÖ during the course of Austrofascism and National Socialism, alongside the association’s class-specific and colonial entanglements.
www.skgal.org

Supported by SHIFT.