Welcome to the yearly Open Doors Festival (Rundgang 2023) at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna! For three to four days, all institutes open their atelier and studio doors, and offer a broad variety of exhibitions, presentations, performances, discussions, tours and workshops.
I am one of the main coordinators at the Institute for Education in the Arts (IKL)– I am especially proud of the exhibition (re)connections // (re)constructionsby the students at my Transmedia Art course – working intensively with engaged student groups is one of the best “perks” of my current job! Photos follow asap!
I wish to warmly thank all my cooperation partners – both individual and institutional – and our audiences for the past year 2022!!
A few of my personal highlights:
* I have had the opportunity to continue my involvement in the artistic research project TACTICS for a COLLECTIVE BODY led by Renata Lamenza and Stefania Assandri at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp and the Royal Conservatoire Antwerp (AP Arts, 2020-2022) as an advisor and collaborator
* I’m honoured that the tfm (Department of Theatre, Film and Media Studies) at the University of Vienna will include video documentations of my past performance/installation projects in their Video Collection (Videothek)
* Our jointly authored art pedagogical publication Wie Kunst für Zukunft unterrichten? Feministische Sorgeethik als Perspektive der Vermittlung in Zeiten planetarischer Katastrophe und digitaler Toxizität(How to teach art for the future? Feminist care ethics as a perspective in art mediation in the times of planetary catastrophes and digital toxicity) by Prof. Elke Krasny, Sophie Lingg, Johannes Köck and me at the Department for Education in the Arts at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, was recently published as the first publication of the brand new series „Per Eduart. Kunstpädagogische Materialien für Studium und Schule“ by Fabrico Verlag and the EduArts platform (Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna, and the University of Applied Arts Vienna)
I’m utmost happy to announce that the tfm (Department of Theatre, Film and Media Studies) at the University of Vienna will include video documentations of my past performance/installation projects in their Video Collection (Videothek). The Video Collection serves both as an archive and as a reference video library for teaching and research use. All students and staff of the University of Vienna will have access to the materials.
I wish to warmly thank Dr. Adam Czirak and Dr. Anton Fuxjäger who contacted me regarding this matter. Both as an artist and as a performance scholar, I know what a rare occasion it is for a (performing) artist to be offered such a chance, and how important it is to officially document and archive performance and live art projects for future use by lecturers, students and researchers.
I had the pleasure of contributing to the project as an advisor and collaborator during the last two years.
*PPP stands for:
Plato: Dinner at 18hrs by Ines Ballesteros and Michela Dal Brollo.
Performance: Installation-performance at 20hrs created by Renata Lamenza and Stefania Assandri, with the collaboration of Amôra Pera for the soundscape, the advise and collaboration of Joonas Lahtinen; and the scenographic bodies by Luiza Crosman; with the special participation of Agnese Forlani, Jackson Shallcross-Platt, Jurgen Fonteijn, Lara Ferrari -tummma- and Researcher (>1).
Party: Party-performance at 21hrs ESTADO de F(i)ESTA with DJ to be announced soon!
PPP can also stand for Public! Performer! Participation!
TACTICS for a COLLECTIVE BODYis a research project dedicated to investigating, developing and experimenting tactics to create collective bodies through participatory performance. After 2 years of research, SUDAKAS artist-researchers Stefania Assandri (Uruguay) and Renata Lamenza Epifanio (Rio de Janeiro) will stage the TACTICS developed and share them with YOU. YOU are invited to be Public, to be Performer, to be Party, to be Plate, to be “Water my friend” (Bruce Lee, atemporal).
The evening will start with a TACTICS warm-up, a gathering at the Kitchen of Het Bos at 18hrs with dinner prepared by researchers Ines Ballesteros and Michela Dal Brollo.
At 20hrs we invite you to enter our Installation-performance at the Concert Hall with Parkour routes that the Performers will guide. At 21hrs the Party-performance takes over the stage, the floor, and it will have its Gran finale at the bar!
We invite you to immerse yourself in a water-like soundscape, to watch the performance-horizon from the sand and/or to walk, sing and dance with us in this latin-sudaka flavored evening.
For the Installation-performance, taking into account that in a Collective body (>1) there are several individual bodies (>1), we have developed 4 different Parkour routes with different levels of participation for the Public to visit, experiment or watch the Installation-performance. The routes are divided by level of participation and engagement in the performance:
(A) No participation at ALL. Public is sitting.
(B) Tiny bitsy bit of participation. Public and Performer are walking.
(C) Medium participation. Public and/or Performer are navigating.
(D) intense participation. I am part of the performance. Public, Performer, who am I?
Winiecka’s thesis “illustrates how territorial, social and also legal borders are sites of permanent contestation and transgression. Starting from the criminalization of refugee activists of the Refugee Protest Camp Vienna under the criminal charge of “commercial smuggling within the framework of a criminal organization”, the impact of victimizing, criminalizing and heroizing discourses on refugee*migrant subjectivities is discussed. As a methodological tool, a triangle is designed that encompasses the reciprocal relations of the three figures victim, perpetrator and heroine in the discursive as well as linguistic field of “Fluchthilfe” [escape aid] and human smuggling. Using activism, art, and intersectional research approaches, the project will present ways to break down the hegemonic victimization of refugees, the heroization of humanitarian, unpaid escape aid, and the racialized and gendered demonization of paid human smuggling. Fluchthilfe & Du corresponds with the theoretical part of the work and is discussed as a possibility to elaborate a collaborative and solidary practice of knowledge production and mediation within the art field.”
I wish Ms. Winiecka the very best and courage for her future artistic, activist, research-led and mediative work with the acute and multi-dimensional problematic of agency, visibility, migration, refugees, justice, law and power.
I am overwhelmed by the generosity and engagement of all the participants and partners of last week’s Soup Session at de Wintertuin, Royal Academy of Art Antwerp (RAFA / AP Schools of Arts) – our installation and talk – that also involved my ongoing project Love Letters, exceeded all of my (high) expections! Many thanks for Renata Lamenza, Stefania Assandri, Ria de Boodt, Nico Dockx and all other persons who made the event possible! Our artistic research journey continues…
Below you find a few snapshots from our event, more photos to follow!
Together with Renata Lamenza, Stefania Assandri and the spectator-participants, we discussed challenges and possibilities of participatory performance practice and artistic research, as well as love letters as a form of research-based communication, in an installative setting, especially regarding Lamenza and Assandri’s ongoing research project TACTICS for a COLLECTIVE BODY at AP Arts, in which I act as an Advisor and Collaborator. The project is realized in cooperation with the research groups “Body and Material Reinvented” (RAFA) and “Creatie/Creation” (RCA). We focused on issues around authorship, material(ist) performativity, care and intimacy in participatory performance. The audience was invited to react, provoke and engage in our conversation.
The Soup Sessions at AP Arts ”are conceived as in-house research encounters. The main idea behind this initiative is for researchers to develop new insights sustaining their personal research practice and to tap into to the research capital which they are part of and contribute to by conducting their artistic research at the Academy.”
I’m pleased to announce that the postponed Soup Session at AP Arts (Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp (RAFA) and Royal Conservatoire Antwerp (RCA)) will take place on Monday 16 May 2022 at 7 PM (Belgian time) at the Wintertuin, RAFA, from 5:30 Pm to 7 PM! Renata Lamenza, Stefania Assandri and I will discuss challenges and possibilities of participatory performance practice and artistic research in an installative setting, especially regarding Lamenza and Assandri’s ongoing research project TACTICS for a COLLECTIVE BODY at AP Arts, in which I act as an Advisor and Collaborator. The project will be realized in cooperation with the research groups “Body and Material Reinvented” (RAFA) and “Creatie/Creation” (RCA). We’ll focus on issues around authorship, material(ist) performativity, care and intimacy in participatory performance. The audience is invited to react, provoke and engage in our conversation.
The Soup Sessions at AP Arts ”are conceived as in-house research encounters. The main idea behind this initiative is for researchers to develop new insights sustaining their personal research practice and to tap into to the research capital which they are part of and contribute to by conducting their artistic research at the Academy.”
I really look forward to our creative collaboration and discussion!
Today 23 January 2022 is the 125th birthday of the famous Austrian architect and resistance activist during the WW2 Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky (1897-2000) — I and my team developed and realized our first major project EIN.KÜCHEN.BAU based on Schütte-Lihotzky’s “Frankfurt Kitchen” (1926) for the international Freischwimmer-Festival 2012-2013; the project was later also presented at the SOHO in Ottakring Festival Vienna in 2016.
EIN.KÜCHEN.BAU was a performance, an installation, a meeting point for the various aesthetic, social and political dimensions of the fitted kitchen. It brought together stories, histories and ideologies that underlie our contemporary understandings about cooking and household work.
With her “Frankfurt Kitchen” (1926), Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky laid the basis for all industrially produced fitted kitchens (in German: die Einbauküche). Her emancipatory aim was to render cooking as efficient as possible so as to allow the housewife of the twenties more free time for other things. In which ways has the fitted kitchen – both as a site and as a concept – contributed to our conceptions of the everyday, cosiness and, ultimately, our idea of the private sphere and freedom?
“For me it has always been fundamentally important, in my job and also outside of it, with every bit of influence I have, to contribute to creating a better world than the one that I was born into.” (Schütte-Lihotzky)
Informative short read about Schütte-Lihotzky in English: Marcel Bois (transl. Julia Damphouse): “A Communist Designed Your Kitchen“, The Jacobin, 2020,
Here is the interview by the RBB Kulturradio Berlin-Brandenburg about EIN.KÜCHEN.BAU broadcast a few days before the premiere at Sophiensaele Berlin as part of the Freischwimmer-Festival 2012-2013 (sorry, in German only). You also hear thoughts of Luzie Stransky – dramaturge, my partner in life and work, and family member of Schütte-Lihotzky:
** I’m sorry to inform that the Soup (Safe) session + Creatie Session scheduled for tonight 10 January 2022 has to be postponed at a very short notice due to a Covid infection in the team — I let you know about the new date asap! **
I’m pleased to announce that I have been invited to the Soup (Safe) Session + Creatie Session at AP Arts (Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp (RAFA) and Royal Conservatoire Antwerp (RCA)) on Monday 10 January 2022 at 7 PM (Belgian time) as a guest speaker.
Renata Lamenza, Stefania Assandri and I will discuss challenges and possibilities of participatory performance practice and artistic research, especially regarding Lamenza and Assandri’s ongoing research project TACTICS for a COLLECTIVE BODY at AP Arts, in which I act as an External Advisor. The project will be realized in cooperation with the research groups “Body and Material Reinvented” (RAFA) and “Creatie/Creation” (RCA).
These sessions at AP Arts ”are conceived as in-house research encounters. The main idea behind this initiative is for researchers to develop new insights sustaining their personal research practice and to tap into to the research capital which they are part of and contribute to by conducting their artistic research at the Academy.”
Due to Covid reasons, the session will be held entirely online on Microsoft Teams. For the link, please send an email to: researchergreaterthan1(at)ap.be.
The last few weeks I and my students at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna have been extremely busy preparing a cooperation project with Schauspielhaus Wien, one of the most renowned theatres in Vienna — I am utmost happy that, despite the looming lockdown, our installation/artistic research laboratory “from nowhere to now-here” on the dimensions of resource and care in art practice could be realized as part of the Schauspielhaus/Hotel Autumn program and in the side program of the theatre conference “Überschreiten und Übereignen” organized by HTM Academy of Music and Theatre Felix Mendelsson-Bartholdy Leipzig, Schauspielhaus Wien and the Art and Education Programme of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna on 19.-21.11.2021. We had the unique opportunity to inhabit one of the Schauspielhaus/Hotel rooms; the spatial infrastructure of the whole theatre has temporarily been converted into a hotel providing spaces for over 50 different artists to experiment on site and to share their explorations with visitors.
On behalf of our project team I wish to warmly thank Lucie Ortmann, Tomas Schweigen and Andreas Fleck and the other great colleagues from Schauspielhaus Wien; Prof. Barbara Büscher (Leipzig) and Prof. Elke Krasny (Vienna), and all the visitors for their wonderful support and for making the project possible, even in the rather challenging circumstances!
joonas lahtinen 