26.04.–08.07.2012
Main Hall

Living Together How?

Work thought through radically is a movement of the same to the Other that never returns to the same. (Emmanuel Levinas, The Trace of the Other)

Even before the intensive debates following the last elections in Austria, the question of the relationship of the self to the Other represented the central theme of our social debates. Asylum, migration, and cultures’ relationships with each other seem to have become the main point of contention, and not only in Austrian politics.

Contemporary art made intensive attempts to counteract a hardening of cultural disputes in recent years. In what way is the cultural sector successfully interfering in these issues? To what extent are encounter, confrontation, and change really wanted in a concrete debate with the Other? What could artistic practice look like that positions itself beyond simply “preaching to the converted?”

The movement described by Emmanuel Levinas acted as a guideline for the international group show in many ways: on an interpersonal and intercultural level, as a definition of artworks, as well as a guide for their reception, which also has the potential to change the viewer.

Artists: Johanna Diehl, Nilbar Güreş, Klub Zwei, Ernst Logar, Ján Mančuška,
Wendelien Van Oldenborgh

Curator: Hemma Schmutz
Project assistant: Susanne Staelin