Opening: LOOKING AT THE PRESENT THROUGH REAR-VIEW MIRRORS

The Tiroler Künstler:innenschaft invites you and your friends cordially to the exhibition opening in the Kunstpavillon in the frame of the Fellowship Program for Art and Theory at Künstlerhaus Büchsenhausen 2016-17.

The exhibition Looking at the Present through Rear-View Mirrors is concerned with the state of contemporary existence and its conditions, actively incorporating historical narrative threads whose significance has been lost from general awareness or suppressed, but which might help to constitute an understanding of the present day. Fifty years after the initial publication of a much-cited aphorism by Marshall McLuhan in The Medium is the Massage (“We look at the present through a rear-view mirror. We march backwards into the future”), it is also necessary to question this statement critically regarding its current validity. In this regard, the exhibition also focuses on that moment of perception when present and past seem impossible to distinguish, and not least on the question of what extension in time such a moment can withstand.

In order to understand this better, one could imagine the following scene: one is sitting behind the wheel of a car a few moments after narrowly avoiding a dreadful crash. Looking into the existing rear-view mirrors – there are usually three, one inside and two outside, but in our case the number is only significant in the sense that it is plural – shows us an image following the same event, which is now several seconds past in time, but each in a different section. The perspective is always slightly altered, and although capable of assuming the overall picture, one will never be able to reconstruct a precise overall picture from these separate images. And nonetheless, what is perceived as the immediate past is also part of one’s own present: once again, is the impression given, one has narrowly escaped a potential catastrophe. And the important thing now is to understand, to process what happened.

The exhibition Looking at the Present through Rear-View Mirrors has emerged from close examination of the projects and working methods of the participants in the 2016-17 Fellowship Program for Art and Theory at Künstlerhaus Büchsenhausen. Their artistic and theoretical approaches, fields of investigation, and overall themes formed the starting point for the exhibition concept. During the conception of the second edition of Crip Magazine and the associated Crip Magazine Convention (2/3 June 2017) Eva Egermann engaged with oppositional practices, appropriation, social movements, and pop cultures which are concerned with deviance, the abnormal, illness, and disablement. Artist and filmmaker Stefan Hayn has made a critical investigation of current premises to and characteristic forms of visual narrative for children in various media. This is brought together in a painterly-cinematic installation, a film screening (19 May 2017), and a lecture with subsequent discussion (20 June 2017). Kerstin Schroedinger is expanding on her research into the historical and material conditions of analogue film, and has realised two audio works, supplemented by a performance evening (20 May 2017) and a film presentation and discussion (13 June 2017). Finally, Vladislav Shapovalov continues his project Image Diplomacy, which investigates specific functions of the image in the former Soviet Union’s and the USA’s systems of political culture, and illuminates specific historical aspects in the construction of the political-imaginary via exhibition strategies and the photographic medium during the 20th century. In the exhibition he is presenting a protofilmic installation and organizing a symposium (30 May 2017) on exhibition and film formats as media of political articulation.

Events during the opening weekend:

· Curator’s tour with the artists
with curator Andrei Siclodi the participating artists
Friday 19 May 2017, 18.00
KUNSTPAVILLON, Rennweg 8a, 6020 Innsbruck

· Films by Stefan Hayn:
Thirteen Rules or the Difficulty of Sexpressing Oneself, 1998
Conversations with Pupils and Teachers, 2000
After the screening talk with Clemens Krümmel (art historian, Berlin)
Friday 19 May 2017, 19.30
KUNSTPAVILLON, Rennweg 8a, 6020 Innsbruck

· Performance-Evening
with Nathan Gray · Olive Michel & Fred Hystère · Kerstin Schroedinger
Saturday 20 May 2017, from 17.00
KÜNSTLERHAUS BÜCHSENHAUSEN, Weiherburggasse 13, 6020 Innsbruck

Exhibition Details:
Opening on Thursday 18 May 2017 at 19.30
Welcoming: Lizzy Fidler, Member of the board
Introduction: Andrei Siclodi, Curator
Duration of the exhibition: 19 May – 29 July, 2017

The participating Artists:

Eva EGERMANN is an artist living in Vienna. In her research-based practice, Egermann works with oppositional practices, assimilations, social movements and pop cultures linked to deviance, abnormality, illness and disability. She works with examples from various times and places, which trigger resistance, irritation or contradiction within aesthetic representations of the undamaged. A huge range of materials can be found in her artistic projects – restaged, revised (e.g. in the form of a newspaper) – or during band practice.

Stefan HAYN is a painter and filmmaker and lives in Berlin. His films since 1989 question artistic as well as cinematic categorisation, and reject simplistic genre attributions. His works (films, painting, essays) have been presented in a wide range of art and film contexts. He has taught at Berlin University of the Arts, specializing in the interrelations of film and painting.

Kerstin SCHROEDINGER is an artist working with video, sound and text. Her historiographic practice questions the means of film production, historical continuities and ideological certainties of representation. Her films and curatorial practice are often collaborative.

Vladislav SHAPOVALOV is an artist and researcher living and working in Milan and Moscow. Between 1999 and 2007 he was a member of the art-group Radek Community. Since 2008 he has been working independently on projects that focus on rethinking images, cultural artifacts and the construction of narratives as a way to construe and analyze geopolitical configurations.