THE VIENNA MODEL | PANEL DISCUSSION | THE ROLE OF THE ARTS IN HOUSING DEVELOPMENTS
Following the opening of the Austrian Cultural Forum’s new exhibition, The Vienna Model, the show’s curatorial advisors Sabine Bitter and Helmut Weber will moderate a talk on the role of arts in housing developments. Further participants will include Angelika Fitz, Michael Rieper, Denisse Andrade Arevalos, Nader Vossoughian, and Michael Zinganel.
The past two decades have witnessed an increased involvement of contemporary art in social and urban conditions and everyday life in the city. Today, art projects – which range from post-conceptual and site-specific to activist and relational art practices – address shifts in public and communal spaces, engage in marginalized social groups’ demands and are involved in urban initiatives of anti-gentrification and ‘right to the city’-movements and their struggle for ‘affordable housing’.
The role of art and its potential to mediate (through cultural production) the relationship between individuals and politics on one hand, and to actively intervene in social relations, knowledge, and the city on the other, will be the topic of this discussion. The very specific situation in Vienna will be taken as a point of departure in order to explore comparisons with New York City.
ABOUT THE PARTICIPANTS
Angelika Fitz (Vienna) is an author and curator of exhibitions including the Austrian contributions to the Architecture Biennale in Sao Paulo in 2003 and 2005. Recent projects include the exhibitions Generation City at kunsthaus muerz, 2011/2012 (with Christiane Feuerstein), and REALSTADT. Wishes Knocking at Reality’s Door, former power station Berlin Mitte, 2010 (with Martin Heller). She writes for architecture periodicals such as ARCH+ and Bauwelt. Recent publication: REALSTADT. Whishes Knocking on Reality’s Doors, Angelika Fitz, Martin Heller (eds.).
Michael Rieper (Vienna) is a freelance architect, graphic designer, and teacher at the Department of Urban Design at the University of Technology, Vienna. He has collaborated on projects such as SELFWARE. politics of identity, Graz, 2000 – 2003, add on, Vienna, 2005, and BELLEVUE- The Yellow House, Linz, European Cultural Capital, 2009 (with Peter Fattinger and Veronika Orso).
Angelika Fitz and Michael Rieper’s recent filmic essay How to Live in Vienna, and the urban cultural project add on by Michael Rieper, Peter Fattinger, and Veronika Orso, are on view in the exhibition The Vienna Model.
Denisse Andrade Arevalos (New York) is an activist and independent curator who attended the Whitney ISP Curatorial program 2011-2012, where she co-curated ISP’s 2012 exhibition Creative Destruction at the Kitchen. As a geographer in training she is now working on her PhD with Cindy Katz at the CUNY Graduate Center. She currently teaches urban studies at Hunter College at the City University of New York.
Nader Vossoughian (New York) is a curator, critic, and theorist whose research interests center on the relationship between politics, knowledge, and the city. His articles have appeared in Bidoun, Metropolis, Design Issues, Volume, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, and Transnational Associations. He has recently contributed essays to European Modernism and the Information Society, Otto Neurath’s Economic Writings, and Josef Frank 1885-1967 – Eine Moderne der Unordnung. He curated “After Neurath: The Global Polis” at Stroom Den Haag in 2009 and is the author of the publication Otto Neurath: The Languge of the Global Polis. Currently, he is a lecturer at the Museum of Modern Art and an assistant professor of architecture at the New York Institute of Technology.
Michael Zinganel (Vienna) is an architectural theorist, cultural historian, curator, and artist. He has taught at various universities and institutions, most recently at the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation Postgraduate Academy. He worked with Peter Spillmann and Michael Hieslmair on aspects of urban and transnational mobility, contemporary mass tourism, and migration, and participated in exhibitions such as Shrinking Cities II, GfzK Leipzig (2005), Open Cities, the 4th International Architecture Biennial Rotterdam (2009), and the European Capital of Culture, Ruhr (2010).
His project Superblock – Free Spaces and Voids in Social Housing, 1995, is on view in the exhibition The Vienna Model.
Sabine Bitter and Helmut Weber (Vancouver, Vienna) have worked on projects addressing cities, architecture, and the politics of representation and of space since 1993. Their research-oriented practice which is based mainly in photography and video, engages with specific moments and logics of the global-urban change as they take shape in neighborhoods, architecture, and everyday life. Recent projects and exhibits include: “Time, Place, And the Camera: Photographs At Work”, Kosova Art Gallery; “Our Haus”, Austrian Cultural Forum New York; “Autogestion, or Henri Lefebvre in New Belgrade”, The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, Toronto; “Global Prayers”, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin; “Envisioning Buildings”, MAK, Vienna.
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