OPTION 2:

Rehearsals for Resistance – On extractivism in art-based research and its socio-eco-political formations 

(This project seminar is a cooperation between the Academy of Fine Arts (MA Critical Studies), the Kunsthalle Wien,  and the University of Applied Arts (KKP),Vienna, namely Anca Benera, Moira Hille, Annette Krauss, and Andrea Popelka.)

The project seminar proposes open study sessions as a format for learning through sharing of resistance  strategies against extractive ways of relating to the world and each other. The course is addressed to  students with a specific interest in pedagogy, environmental history, political ecology, decoloniality, and  politics of resources, with a specific focus on extractivism in art-based research and its institutional  formations. 

Resource extraction is at the core of today's planetary crisis. It forms a complex of mentalities, behaviors  and ecologies of power, socio-ecologically destructive modes of organizing life through subjugation,  depletion, violence, and non-reciprocity. Therefore, the course will look at both resource extraction in  terms of pulling out material resources, as well as to extractivism as a logic of capitalism. 

We take the practice and exhibition Ancestral Clouds Ancestral Claims by Denise Ferreira da Silva and  Arjuna Neuman at Kunsthalle Wien (5.10.2023-17.3.2024) - as a framework or point of departure to jointly  facilitate public study sessions in which we can learn about, share, rehearse and try out practices through  which we study our own complicities, and in the best sense refuse, resist and oppose modes of  extractivism, both in terms of our relationships to land and resources, as well as in terms of social,  imaginative, and learning spaces, collaboration and art making. 

Da Silva and Neuman propose a planetary view of the world as a single mass, where the human and the  non-human are part of each other joined through water, clouds and movements of geological matter in  constant flux, alongside questions such as displacement of people, circulation of ideologies, and  aesthetics. How can artistic practices initiate, deepen and facilitate experiences of mutual interconnection?  And in the words of Denise Ferreira da Silva: How can we imagine the possibilities of a world without time,  measurement, or notions of value—a world free from the destructive consequences of the Western mind? (From Denise Ferreira da Silva and Arjuna Neuman’s synopsis of their film 4 Waters – Deep Implicancy) 

The seminar will take place mostly in a public setting at Kunsthalle am Karlsplatz (inside of the exhibition  space), which is open to all visitors and the entry is free during opening hours. External guests will join us  for some sessions. While the first phases of the seminar will be prepared by the facilitators/hosts, the aim is  that in the later part, in winter, students will form groups and start to work on and facilitate their own study  circles (supported by the facilitators/hosts of course). Towards the end of the project seminar, as a result of  sorts, the working groups will conceptualize, organize and facilitate public rehearsals / public study circles  that take place at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna’s Rundgang and at the Kunsthalle Wien in the second  half of January 2024. The second event at Kunsthalle Wien will be part of the educational and public  program of the exhibition by Denise Ferreira da Silva and Arjuna Neuman. 

 

- Regular attendance

- Participation in working groups

- Reading of the assigned texts

- Active participation in the public study sessions

- Facilitation of public study sessions during the semester

- Realize, i.e. conceptualize, prepare, organize, and facilitate public study sessions at the Academy of Fine Arts’ Rundgang and the Kunsthalle Wien (which will be more public and visible than the study sessions in the seminar)

Schedule: 

Session 1: Thurs 12. October 1-4 pm; Location: Kunsthalle Karlsplatz 

Session 2: Tues 17. October 18-20pm; Location: Kunsthalle Karlsplatz 

Session 3: Tues 24. October 16-19 pm; Location: Kunsthalle Karlspl 

Session 4: Thurs 9. November 13-16pm; Location: Kunsthalle Karlsplatz 

Session 5: Thurs 16. November 13-19 pm; Location: Kunsthalle Karlsplatz 

Session 6: Thurs 23. November 17-21pm; Location: Kunsthalle Karlsplatz 

Session 7: Tues 12. December 14-17pm ; Location: Kunsthalle Karlsplatz 

Session 8: Thurs 14. December 13-16pm; Location: Kunsthalle Karlsplatz 

Session 9: Tues 9. January 14-17pm; Location: Kunsthalle Karlsplatz 

Session 10: Tues 16. January (time tbc); Location: Kunsthalle Karlsplatz 

Session 11: Fri Thurs 19. January (time tbc); location: Rundgang Academy of Fine Arts 

Session 12: Tues 23. January 16-19pm; Location: Kunsthalle Karlsplatz 

Session 13: Thurs 25. January 17-21pm; location Filmmuseum 

Session 14: Fri 26. January all day; rehearsal symposium Kunsthalle Karlsplatz