Tanzquartier Wien

Queer-feminist organising and artistic-activist strategies in visual arts, theatre, film and on the street: it’s all about forming alliances beyond one’s own fields of work, personal concerns and class affiliations. Marginalised groups and communities suffer the consequences of right-wing politics first, but in time, everyone else does, too. So why do we still care about queering and decolonising museums while the majority of people are affected by completely different challenges? What relevance does the next art project bear in a society that is increasingly characterised by fascist tendencies? We will discuss concepts such as ‘Fake it till you make it’ and concrete instructions for action, with a desire to imagine other worlds and open up spaces of possibility for social impact in the curatorial realm.

This session focuses on the current political situation in Slovakia, particularly the radical and swift suppression of artistic freedoms. It mainly draws from the activities and methods of operation of the freshly formed civic initiative Otvorená kultúra! / Open Culture!, a joint activity governed horizontally by hundreds of Slovak cultural workers and artists in the course of the year 2024. What can be done when ideologically motivated gestures start dismantling a cultural sector built on democratic and transparent grounds when expert opinion and data cease to have value?

Taking the Slovak example as a starting point, the format opens towards debate about the consequences of the current changes for society as well as feasible scenarios or forms of protest, which could activate wider segments of society – beyond people working in the field of art and culture.

The dance and performance scenes of the post-Yugoslav region have regional specificities that developed within non-existent institutional and policy frameworks. Diverse tactics and strategies, curatorial and collaborative approaches have been developed with values such as mutual care, collective and collaborative processes, solidarity, trans-dependence, and joy, rather than promoting competition, contest, judgmentalism, or rivalry.

The first part of this session will be a presentation of our curatorial practices within this context. The second part will take the form of a workshop, revisiting the notion of ‘local context’. The main question will be how socio-political and cultural contexts define the meaning and experience of performances and how they influence curatorial practices. The participants will be invited to propose one artwork they appreciate and then draft their hypothetical curatorial concept based on collected proposals from their work contexts. They will be encouraged to speculate and imagine a programme, taking into account real data and figures.

Where and how can polyphony be put into practice while going through conflicts within institutions as well as with funding bodies? This panel discusses how art institutions deal with dissensus. Presentations by Friederike Landau-Donnelly, Martyna Lorenc and Ivana Pilić will address the role of ‘conflictual cultural policy’ as well as possibilities and strategies to shape polyphonic spaces. Together with the audience, we will reflect on what the implementation of values, terms and conditions for cultural production entails when put into practice and in different contexts. We will also discuss challenges and strategies for dealing with dissensus and polyphony beyond the cultural sector.

Curated and moderated by Johanna Schindler.