Our day consists of images: those that play out in front of our windows, and those that our imagination produces, fed by experience, sensations, states of mind. At the end of the day we have an overall image of the world before our eyes that we have created. Who defines reality?
Videorama is the title of an exhibition that is currently on view at Kunsthalle Wien. It deals with a panoramic omnivision, and with this aim it is far more than an exhibition in the usual sense of the word. From an archive of over 2,500 videos—Ursula Blickle Videoarchiv—works were selected for the show that are intended to provide an overview of recent video art in Austria.
We have joined in this effort, which is why we are pleased to be able to present to you this sixty-eighth edition of EIKON with a comprehensive series of images on Videorama, the result of a close collaboration with the two cooperation partners of the Ursula Blickle Stiftung, Universität für angewandte Kunst and Kunsthalle Wien.
In our Artist Pages, we present once more five artists who in various ways engage with the roles and worldviews that currently influence our everyday life. For example, Iranian artist SARA RAHBAR in her theatrical use of national props creates images that seek to suspend the ambivalence of mourning and confidence. We are pleased to have gained Shaheen Merali for this contribution: Merali was the curator of the sensational exhibition on art from Iran recently shown at Hilger BrotKunsthalle in Vienna, with an extensive catalog published by EIKON/ ÖIP.
In her video work, JUDITH PICHLMÜLLER (see also EIKON # 66, p. 56) makes provocative links between insects and the lives of migrants. She is concerned—like Rahbar—with the issue of violence, but especially is interested in the question of weighting: violence against animals versus violence against humans. LORENZ ESTERMANN is a photographer, painter, and architect, and unites all of this in his visual implementation of utopian sites with which he creates a fantastic prospect of new life forms. In his contribution, Dieter Buchhart spans the gap to our current society of consumerism and luxury, which Estermann artfully reflects in his work. FABIO ZOLLY, in contrast, does not construct anything: but rather explores the world in the age of industrial and digital reproducibility. Using his copyright, “branded” over the decades, he breaks the limits between objectivity and subjectivity, between being and appearances. Zolly’s works are currently on view at Viktor Bucher in Vienna, his writings can be found in a charming volume that is being published parallel to this edition of EIKON at Schlebrügge.Editor.
Read also in our Forum about Roland Maurmair and his work Rabbitism, which will be on view until February 2010 at EIKON’s SchAUfenster, and will open with a performance by the artist. Performance is incidentally also the artistic medium to which Fotogalerie Wien is dedicating this year’s cycle of exhibitions: EIKON reports on pp. 91.
Furthermore, you learn about the research of Johan Swinnen in Bangladesh, which reveals a new view of photography (his spectacular volume Majority World Photography will appear in June 2010), about GAMA, the new platform for networking media art databanks, a large scale auction of contemporary photography at Westlicht, the Mexican Colección Jumex at MUMOK, India in Vienna, Darkside in Winterthur, and… much more.