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Current Resident: Jul 1, 2021–Dec 31, 2021

Federal Ministry for Arts, Culture, the Civil Service and Sport of Austria

Studio #218

Artist

Anna Witt

Anna Witt’s artistic practice is performative, participatory, and political. She creates situations that reflect interpersonal relationships and power structures as well as conventions of speaking and acting. Passers-by in public spaces, or specifically selected people and groups, are drawn into her experimental arrangements, usually in a directly physical way. The tasks range from repeated imitation of specifically coded gestures to the development of complex choreographies, and give the participants opportunities for individual articulation and authorship.

Anna Witt has exhibited work at Belvedere 21, Vienna; Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul; and KW Institue for Contemporary Art, Berlin, among others.

annawitt.net

Events & Exhibitions

Homecoming Outdoor Screening

August 20, 2021, 8–9:30pm

“Trecce in Fiamme/ Braids on Fire (2 channels HD video 2021) is a video installation in which one part is focused on a conversation and, the other imagines the women of Forcella as almost divine creatures capable through sisterhood and solidarity of becoming present in a society which often puts them apart and closes them away, diminishing us all: in fact, the artist has realized one of the videos letting them to perform as heroic women like in classical frescos where the public spaces of their daily lives became the shared spaces in which to affirm their bold struggled lives. From this process Anna Witt came to imagine a set of performances in which the care for the souls in purgatory in a practice of faith evolves into an inspiring conversation between the women of today with the histories of women of the past, despite the great period of time that might at first appear to separate them. Here is an open conversation between mothers and daughters, between the past and the present, that asks what needs to be done, what may we learn from the past, and what the values are of lives which for too long have been lived in the silence of the “narrative of established history”, lives that actually form and make the strength of society and of future generations.

Anna Witt, Braids on Fire, 2021, 2-channel HD Video, 15 min.

How does automatization and artificial intelligence affect the working situation in an industrial town like Toyota city? What are its effects on the human condition and what does labor mean to each one personal? Factory workers and employees of the car industry in Toyota city came together to discuss their personal experiences and expectations towards the future of labor, automatization and artificial intelligence. In addition to the discussion, imaginative utopian and dystopian aspects are expressed through elements of body movement, sound and performance. The workers extracted movements of their daily working routines and transformed them into a collective choreography. In an act of creativity, they experimented with acoustic instruments and created a reverse process of production by dismantling working clothes. By carefully cutting of piece after piece of cloth from each other’s bodies, they created a playful yet intense moment of liberation. The work was developed in an experimental collaborative process of the artist and the participants together.

Anna Witt, Unboxing the Future, 2019, 3-channel 4K video, 29:09 min.

Kagran and Kaisermühlen are areas in Vienna’s 22nd district that concentrate a piece of the city’s history. Formerly a working-class neighbourhood and stronghold of council housing, it was one of the last bastions of the Socialist Party in its fight against Austrofascism. What interests Anna Witt most about this history is the vibrant utopia, the belief in the collective and in solidarity. The work of the visual artist, who was awarded the Otto Mauer Prize in 2018, is performative and participatory – this allows her to delve into questions that are important to her: How much community still exists in our society? In what way are the residents of a “Gemeindebau” connected nowadays? For Beat House Donaustadt Witt uses an ultrasound scanner to record their heartbeats. At the start of the Wiener Festwochen, the residents open their windows, letting their individual rhythms drift out and join to form a collective sound. The sound of the city.

Anna Witt, Beathouse Donaustadt, 2019, collective performance, 20 min.

Anna Witt is following a group of young people in Leipzig while developing a manifest for a potential youth movement. The young adults spent several months realizing the project in close cooperation with the artist. During their conversations, they are discussing their personal ideas of social utopias and are expressing their own feelings within the prevailing systems. By questioning and deconstructing consisting norms and values of our society, they are following their ideas of these concepts and their meanings to articulate the youth movement’s inherent purpose. According to their own imagination and sensations, they translated their manifest into physical forms of expression and performative interventions in the public space. The project has been developed in significant contribution by the group, not just as participants but as coauthors from the beginning throughout the whole process. Utopian approaches are openly express without comment and provoke the viewers to position themselves. Fathoming authorship and hierarchies within participatory concepts play a particular role in Anna Witt’s artistic practice. In doing so, the artist creates fictional spaces to enable a certain distance when questioning society and own positions in a playful way. In collaboration with Maria Bujanov, Phillip Borchert, Anja Engelhardt, Belve Langniss, Blandia Langniss, Chiara Rauhut, Lena Schubel

Anna Witt, The Radical Empathiarchy, 2018, 2-channel HD video, 20:10 min.

The video project Care is about two geriatric nurses in Japan. A group of amateur dancers developed a piece of choreography based on the work routines and experiences of two young Indonesian nurses working in dementia care. The dancers, influenced by Butoh and improvisational dance, were in some cases already around eighty themselves. They performed their personal interpretation of the care work as an intervention in the public space of the Maebashi city center, which is feeling the effects of an aging and shrinking population. On a textual level, the nurses explain what motivated them to leave Indonesia and look for work abroad. We learn of a massively aging society in which the care of the elderly—a task traditionally performed by daughters and daughters-in-law—is not a topic of public discussion. The problem and those involved in it do not receive any attention or recognition. The dancers in the video Care interpret the personal experiences and movements of the Indonesian nurses, whose existence in society remains largely invisible. Closeness, physical contact, self-surrender, allowing oneself to be carried, empowerment, and disempowerment are important themes of interpersonal relations, which always concern the dignity of the individual and are thus politically charged.

Anna Witt, Care, 2017, HD video, 18:12 min.

Residents from Austria

Larissa Kopp & Florian Aschka

Austria

Federal Ministry for Arts, Culture, the Civil Service and Sport of Austria

Studio #212

Zara Pfeifer

Austria

Federal Ministry for Arts, Culture, the Civil Service and Sport of Austria

2021

Veronika Eberhart

Austria

Federal Ministry for Arts, Culture, the Civil Service and Sport of Austria

2021

The Netherlands, Serbia

Current Resident: Jan 1, 2020–Dec 31, 2021

Mondriaan Fund

Studio #219

Artist

Maja Bekan

Maja Bekan’s work explores and questions mediation and delegation of artwork production. She is interested in a collaborative and social approach to explore personal histories, truths, economies and social relations. Bekan works on long-term research-based projects that involve different levels of collaboration, presented to the public in the form of performances, site-specific environments, and video/audio/text-based installations.

Maja Bekan has exhibited work at Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art, Warsaw; Kunsthaus, Graz; and Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, among others.

majabekan.com

Events & Exhibitions

Closing Event for Maja Bekan: Hold It Together. (We Have Each Other)

October 21, 2021, 3-4pm

Homecoming Outdoor Screening

August 20, 2021, 8–9:30pm

2021 Summer Open House

July 28, 2021, 3–9pm

2021 Spring Open Studios

April 27–April 28, 2021

Maja Bekan: Hold It Together. (We Have Each Other)

April 13–October 22, 2021

Maja Bekan, Performance Class, 2017, site specific installation with light, floor intervention, paint, objects, construction elements, costumes, text and performance.

Maja Bekan, Social Room, 2017, constructed situation within the site-specific installation with custom-made furniture and text. Photo by Bartosz Górka.

Maja Bekan, A series of unexpected incidents, 2016, theatrical event.

Maja Bekan, Troublemakers And Other Wayward Subjects?, 2018, constructed situation. Photo by Tim Bowditch.

Maja Bekan, At some point we all have to dance, 2018, HD video, 57 min.

Residents from Serbia

Natasa Kokic

Serbia

Foundation for a Civil Society

2014

Saša Tkačenko

Serbia

Foundation for a Civil Society

2013

Slobodan Stosic

Serbia

Foundation for a Civil Society

2012

Norway

Current Resident: Sep 1, 2021–Aug 31, 2022

OCA - Office for Contemporary Art Norway

Studio #220

Artist

Skaus

Skaus is a nomadic art project, a hosting and occupying platform instigated by Håvard Sagen, Mari Kolbeinson, and Markus Bråten. It’s existence relies on continual, therefore irreproducible, change. Accumulative by nature, Skaus is a support structure that instigates encounters between sites, artists, institutions, social infrastructures, and the audience. Skaus represents a multi-authored artwork that is not geographically anchored. It explores different forms of collaboration, working towards an informal and shared authorship.

Skaus has exhibited work at Rogaland Kunstsenter and TOU, all Norway, among others.

skaus.site