00:00:05:

00:00:09: Welcome to another episode of Im Kunstraum, our podcast series featuring interviews lectures and discussions as well as conversations that offer a glimpse behind the scenes.

00:00:20: My name is Friederike Spellingen.

00:00:21: I'm the artistic director at Kunstraum Niederösterreich.

00:00:25: Today i am joined by Aditi Kapur and Sarah Joana Teurer who have guest created The Group Exhibition Subterranean at the Kunstraum.

00:00:34: Aditi Kapoor is a writer and curator working at the intersection of performance, media & technology.

00:00:41: Currently she's a fellow at Haus der Kunst in Munich.

00:00:45: Sarah Johanna Teurerer is a curator and writer.

00:00:48: She currently serves as Curator of Contemporary Art at Fundación Bayela, centring transdisciplinary collaborations and experimental formats.

00:00:57: In this conversation we explore how and why subterranean came into being, trace the ideas that shaped the exhibition... ...and take an imaginary walk through their show together!

00:01:16: Hi both!

00:01:18: How are you?

00:01:19: I'm very well, how're you?

00:01:24: Thank you.

00:01:25: So I suggest that we jump right into it, um... You are both curators with a keen interest in time-based media and the fact that three out of six works In your exhibition subterranean feature video And one is sound installation i guess really testifies to that.

00:01:43: Um..I was wondering can you elaborate A little bit on what fascinates you Both individually about moving image Sound but also performance and how this generally manifests

00:01:56: in your practice.

00:01:58: Sarah, would you mind making a start?

00:02:02: Sure!

00:02:03: You're here on the background of the photocopying machine.

00:02:07: actually I'm at my office.

00:02:08: sorry Where does my interest moving image come from?

00:02:12: is it's good question?

00:02:13: i think It was just first contact with arts.

00:02:17: probably Full disclosure is that I didn't study art history, but marketing and linguistics.

00:02:28: So coming from very different backgrounds to arts... Pop-cultural formats were always something that interested me.

00:02:37: in music or moving a match was something felt like direct love or access too!

00:02:49: Of course, I appreciate many other forms of art as well and we also have very conceptual artworks in the exhibition.

00:02:55: But that was really like my first access point to art you know?

00:02:59: All right

00:03:01: thank you!

00:03:02: And i really love that We might be able To hear The photocopy machine In the background in the final recording Because it suits so Well the theme of your exhibition.

00:03:13: But we'll come to that later.

00:03:14: And first of all, Aditi would you mind telling us about your fascination with time based media?

00:03:21: Virtually I mean very similar to Sarah.

00:03:24: actually it's almost not surprising.

00:03:28: perhaps they're coming both from the same attitude because of our exposure to art.

00:03:34: similarly to Sarah i did not study art history so a lot my exposure was like perhaps film and music.

00:03:40: exactly what Sarah said.

00:03:42: to come into our history was somewhat atypical because I...was just drawn in the liveness of format, moving image or performance and found it so captivating.

00:03:55: And attention grabbing!

00:03:57: So interesting.

00:03:59: The layers of subjectivity in a time-based format are largely increased because the duration is quite fascinating and leads to so many more interpretations.

00:04:21: Yeah, I think this is why time-based media has so much potential in the way that it activates the attention of the viewer.

00:04:27: and perhaps it did to me as well.

00:04:30: Like the captivity...I was very captivated let's say.

00:04:33: but similarly what Sarah said The exhibition also has a lot of conceptual art pieces that don't necessarily fit exactly into the category of time-based media, but still extend this principle of having layers of subjectivity.

00:04:46: That can be unfurled or unfolded through the course of understanding the work in a time based format even if the more it's time you spend with the work I would even say it reveals itself to you a bit more each time.

00:05:01: and yeah the fascination with time basis and this honesty.

00:05:06: Thank you, maybe we can venture into looking how all traverses your exhibition Subterranean now?

00:05:17: How did you arrive at a specific selection of works?

00:05:25: Yeah,

00:05:27: I can take that one.

00:05:55: agency, technological futurism.

00:05:59: I think there are these topics that perhaps we're more aware of than ever and not considering our presence in this contemporary circumstance.

00:06:09: And the artists i feel

00:06:12: Are

00:06:12: so brilliant and have this like Of course making work in the twenty-fourth century.

00:06:18: It's So revealing the position that artists are coming from given their past, giving their histories of let's say migration or being an individual in various spaces they're in today.

00:06:34: And our general fascination towards these artist was how astutely and sharply they interrogate present circumstance.

00:06:42: and we believe that these artists are coming from various positions in trying to come up with ingenious answers through their work by sharing the histories, but bringing us into these stories and narratives that they have lived through.

00:07:01: But are kind of conceptually recreating in an artistic format?

00:07:06: And Subterranean came out with this conversations with several artists on what are the conundrums or contemporary situations that artists are integrating today.

00:07:15: And Labour seemed to be a key conversation.

00:07:19: between all those works we were looking at The word subterranean itself surfaced a lot because of the works, some of which happen on a subterrain level literally let's say like a prison's plumbing system or the basement of a nightclub in Valentino Jams film Pacific Club.

00:07:39: But Subterranean also felt like a useful metaphor for how labor is hidden in our society.

00:07:47: Yeah I think when we first started speaking Puerto Rico also in relation to the program of The Construm this year, we were speaking or thinking a lot about this sort of ambient anxiety.

00:08:02: Or like a persistent background tangent?

00:08:05: Like a chronic condition sort of stress or something that may.

00:08:13: perhaps art would have recipes for resilience to navigate it and deal with something we thought about when, yeah.

00:08:25: When we looked at like... We made a really long list of artist names in the beginning because I think these invitations to do like group exhibitions always are beautiful opportunity too To think what we saw on past years What kind left an impression and then maybe how where we see overlaps between artists works how they inform each other, maybe in what they say about our present moment.

00:08:57: Yeah that was quite interesting also a challenging task and it's beautiful speaking with Aditi because I think we both had different experiences of the same world, you know?

00:09:15: And I guess it goes for artists.

00:09:17: They all come from a very different background and they also develop languages to speak about what is similar conditions.

00:09:24: so that's showing these differences as much as similarities.

00:09:30: but lastly I recently came across this song, Subterranean by David Bowie from a completely different kind of research strand.

00:09:42: But that song was on the album Low and captures time or like a mood we could say... ...from East Berlin before The Wall came down.

00:09:56: And it's interesting also to think into history.

00:10:01: Yeah, how certain conditions really kind of reach into the present.

00:10:07: So

00:10:09: sorry but as we were putting their wall text that comes from and the person who was putting the wall takes obviously there was like a language barrier between English in German But then one word they did understand with the words up to Iranian because it's David Bowie song And they told me about him.

00:10:25: when I say wow voila There is another additional context that someone else brings Yeah,

00:10:31: and just also to loop listeners into what you said Sarah about the annual program.

00:10:39: We called it fragile fictions And we're trying is looking at various manipulative transformative but also emancipatory forms of storytelling.

00:10:54: So observing that there are very dominant narratives nowadays circulating by right-wing politics, by populists and fascist.

00:11:09: And through the exhibitions we present this year they are so dominant and also make, or try to make ample room for stories and narratives that lay more in the crevices of these channels.

00:11:28: And this I think leads me also too another question since you already hinted at what subterranean is about?

00:11:36: You mentioned labor, you mentioned... Also the invisibility.

00:11:44: In the exhibition brochure, you talk a lot about systems.

00:11:48: The system and perhaps before going more into different works we could lay out what this system is that we're describing.

00:11:59: since also all of these work are delving in to so many different cultural political and social contexts

00:12:08: I mean i can say bit more.

00:12:13: I'd say our understanding of system is expansive on a societal level.

00:12:20: So exactly, Fredricka like you were saying it features all these worlds that we occupy as the general human being – a citizen in this world whether its political systems or institutional systems or governance that often look over us and configure our identity, so to say and categorize them on various levels.

00:12:45: Whether it is the system of a nation or this system of gender or abstract elements like that that categorized human being in various levels And those are all systems that we embody.

00:13:00: these are the very systems execute this form pressure on us.

00:13:05: our labor therefore gets entrenched into these very systems and we're claiming becomes invisible, so to say.

00:13:17: But yeah... Very expensive!

00:13:20: Yeah the term I mean.

00:13:22: thank you Aditi for i think he explained it really well.

00:13:28: um We were struggling quite a bit with the words, because obviously system is such a wide thing.

00:13:33: we weren't mainly trying to evade the word infrastructures which has been used kind of too much I think in the past years.

00:13:44: so we kinda wanted get back something that was more widely understandable and could encompass all these different systems that Eddie just mentioned.

00:13:55: Yeah, and why we're also trying to just to grasp or describe a sort of negative form right is something that it's like formulas.

00:14:01: So with saying system as something that kind of surrounds it in gives you the shape but has a negative form so It's complicated.

00:14:17: So

00:14:18: In The next

00:14:19: step I Was wondering To give listeners A better picture Of what We are Actually Talking About.

00:14:26: And when We Talk about Subterranean Could You Perhaps Take Us on an imaginary tour through the show and describe or introduce each work a little bit.

00:14:39: Yeah, so as soon as we enter into this space um... We see a hunter-orc television hocking in front of us with like a blizzard of numbers And the numbers are constantly added into this, like, analog calculator that perhaps we don't use anymore and doesn't install the contemporary imagination any more.

00:15:04: So we almost think of this moving image as a dated piece where it is in fact a contemporary piece made by the artist Joyce Jumma which was first work we encountered The film untitled, and it was made in twenty-twenty five after the Lebanese energy crisis.

00:15:29: The artist is using this analog calculator that's often used by people in Lebanon and other parts of West Asia to calculate daily things whether it is like your grocery bills but in this case exaggerated slew of numbers are added one after another because operating the calculator is somewhat worried about.

00:15:55: The financial crisis that Lebanon has been and the value of currency is deprecating as we go along, so Joyce through the work is trying to like gun at this anxiety that one feels in thinking about the economy in Lebanon especially at a time when the currency is so volatile.

00:16:15: it's constantly deprecated.

00:16:17: your life in the city, in Beirut and the country is at the expense of the currency.

00:16:24: And your whole life is revolving around this calculation of what... Your value might be a different value every second or everyday.

00:16:34: The anxiety that induces it's very apparent and thinking about the cost in a society where this happens as well.

00:16:45: And, as we encounter Joyce's work there are two spotlights on the floor that seem slightly out of place but then the viewer might end up reading with text and understanding a bit more about exhibition concepts.

00:17:01: But as you're by-the-wall where the walltext is There also another spotlight frame With screw marks without a frame within the frame, it's just a lit up rectangular section.

00:17:14: that seems very odd to be in this space like that.

00:17:19: In The flyer will realise that there are several works in the space, they act as non-works.

00:17:33: They're the works by artist Gelene Lang who is kind of also interrogating... ...the idea of labour we previously spoke about by refusing the labour.

00:17:44: so.... As an artist, Gillene Lange works with scores and the score for work maintenance which has been realised at The Construm is that the exhibition space remains as it is.

00:17:56: So the exhibition hasn't changed shape very much since their last exhibition Attitude Era At Construm and various traces of Attitude era And various traces Of the exhibitions I have taken place at Construm are left as-is and viewers therefore get insight into working before the exhibition was changed.

00:18:20: And Ghislaine, through this artwork is kind of also thinking about what happens when you refuse labour or if you refuse... This general understanding of how arts organisations are meant to behave when a new exhibition is installed.

00:18:37: usually things are very clean and done very properly, but what happens when the art technicians and the art handlers refuse that labour?

00:18:46: And the great value of this work is also there between the curators' and our handlers.

00:18:51: We are given creative liberty in realising the score.

00:18:54: so there's various elements within the exhibition which have been opened for the first time by the viewers witnesses to this revelation as

00:19:06: well.

00:19:08: I also really like how it seems to be a sort of continuation... ...of Mirda-Ledemann Ukele's work maintenance in the way that it visualizes work by indeed not working, refusing to work.

00:19:26: Whereas, of course, Okele was more spotlighting

00:19:31: on

00:19:32: actual care work and reproductive labour and really staging it in the gallery, you know?

00:19:39: Yeah.

00:19:39: Totally!

00:19:40: I mean... It's such a powerful score because it does so little but makes such a great impact.

00:19:49: And i think that beauty of this score is also developed through the exhibition stage.

00:19:54: So as it was at the beginning may not be towards the end As the exhibition space will accumulate a lot of degree set to not utilise labour in trying to clean that over.

00:20:09: So I think it would be an interesting contrast also for people, viewers who have witnessed this at the beginning and then once again towards the end.

00:20:18: And thinking about Labour Once Again we come into The Screening Room where Valentino Germs Pacific Club is playing, which is a part of the trilogy that the artist has made called La Défense.

00:20:33: Which had been built over time after World War II but used to house this suburban subterranean club called the Pacific Club, which was often frequented by Arab immigrants who used to live in the area.

00:20:50: But of course through gentrification and through the years this district was taken over by this burgeoning finance industry in France that wanted to make a business district atop involves neighborhood and kind of eradicate the presence of immigrants, build a new district that would completely take over the neighbourhood so to say.

00:21:18: And Valentin is very interested in people who used to house this neighbourhood before the space of Pacific Club through various treaty generations, to this interview with Azizine where he recalls his memory about what the club used to mean for him and two people in his positions who had just come to France.

00:21:47: And they thought it was an idea of integration as migrants into a foreign country assimilating exemplifier or the value of assimilation and cost in this area, especially through third culture spaces like The Pacific Club.

00:22:10: And what it meant when these cultural spaces were taken away from them?

00:22:15: Then we also have towards left is really big installation which includes steel pipes.

00:22:23: It's quite gigantic and very enigmatic.

00:22:27: These steel pipes are like a recreation of prison's plumbing system.

00:22:34: It is made by the artist Teehan Nguyen Chi and Andrew Yung Hon Lee, who in speaking to A Prisoner Of Conscience came with this idea or thought about how prisoners in an incarcerated system often communicate with each other.

00:22:55: and it was revealed to them through this prisoner of conscience that the communication is often done through these like plumbing pipes, they exist in their toilets.

00:23:07: And being inspired by this network especially in thinking about using the same infrastructure of oppression as an infrastructure, some form of human connectivity.

00:23:19: The artist recreated the artwork which now includes elements from various activists and singers interrogate what it means to have a voice, so within the artwork we will listen to a lot of spoken word poetry there's sound and music orchestrated and choreographed by the artist.

00:23:42: And he brings To us like this idea Like The Voice still travels.

00:23:48: if even If the individual being is not then So Even if one Of the pipes in the system includes the speaker or the voice.

00:23:58: The voice still travels between all of their pipes and it's a very visceral, poetic depiction of communicating in dire circumstances over what value communication actually means.

00:24:19: If one would look across this space we'd encounter marinas and a fontus installation titled New Faithful which is an amalgamation of five monoblock chairs.

00:24:33: CRT TV, the Hunter X chairs are quite reminiscent of the chairs that one would have in their houses.

00:24:40: They're like the most common plastic chairs but perhaps what we don't know is at them.

00:24:44: The provider of these chairs worldwide Is this company called Lordus United in Cyprus and usually the chairs come in solid colors whether it's brown blue or white.

00:24:54: for the chairs That We Have In The Exhibition The Chairs That Had Been Generated when the ink is being changed from one color to another so that the chairs include two inks and there's a funny beautiful fusion between the chairs where they are brown-and white both, different forms of pigments.

00:25:14: And what is interesting global level, the chairs are rejected by Loaders United and they have no value.

00:25:24: They're completely unsellable.

00:25:26: so the artist made a contract with Loaders united to use these chairs the chairs to be different and the cost of those chairs being completely eradicated from like, the line off production at Loaders United.

00:25:46: But then the chairs are also really beautifully and practically paired with this video of a lemon ball dance that is very common in Cyprus is a common traditional dance in Cyprus that immigrants are performing in the United Kingdom.

00:26:02: What it's important to note, is that Cyprus still has presence of British military within the country and for Cyprus immigrants then try to settle into the UK.

00:26:14: what does this mean?

00:26:15: To bring their traditional dances back to this kingdom which have taken over lives at home?

00:26:25: Yeah, to think about war integration implies once again quite like Valentines film.

00:26:31: It's a beautiful pairing in thinking of the chairs and then thinking about the lemon ball dance even if it feels right on there first.

00:26:39: If perhaps the viewer is to read between the artworks I think its quite a beautiful poetic juxtaposition about integration and assimilation.

00:26:48: And sort of thinks about what it means to integrate, and assimilate on the labor off doing that as an individual also.

00:26:57: Totally um.

00:26:58: thank you so much.

00:26:59: I was really nice!

00:27:01: Um i would actually start maybe from a different point?

00:27:06: Maybe even from Marina's work but when you enter... You hear a lot of sounds in this space So your attention is really kind of scattered and you have this, like... You have to be really present.

00:27:20: And you have to understand what's going on?

00:27:24: Yeah when we said about the plastic chairs I think they will probably intriguing element when you enter the space, because they're stacked and we recognize them as something that usually we sit on.

00:27:36: And then also part of the team at the Constraint said oh!

00:27:39: They remind me if like community or something.

00:27:42: whereas yeah now our kids are not supposed to sit on them...and I think plastic is such a funny material, there's like five hundred times more plastic in the ocean than an amount of stars and a galaxy.

00:27:56: So it's so obnoxious that is actually invisible already you know?

00:28:00: It feels... And also in a way subterranean when things down as microplastic its in everything Its really everywhere!

00:28:10: Again kinda comes back to this idea of the ambient or underlying system way.

00:28:21: So yeah, I think it might at first be a bit disorienting seeing them the metal structure that like emits sound.

00:28:29: you hear voices but you may not understand directly what they're saying.

00:28:34: there's Hanna Lebert voice reading letters from Rosa Luxembourg when she was imprisoned describing sounds which he hears outside of her cell.

00:28:45: so this is also quite concrete, it opens a concrete relation let's say to specific moment in time.

00:28:55: But then also how would you find out so that kind of climb into that installation almost and like really come close with your ear onto the opening of that pipe or steel pipe?

00:29:09: And when light bleeds kind of coming out of the smaller room on the side, which would lead you to Valentin Jams' video piece.

00:29:21: Which also has sculptural parts installed on both sides of the

00:29:27: room...

00:29:30: ...which he called his Gorgals I think?

00:29:34: And these are usually elements that kind of decorative elements, like churches or old buildings and they actually depict monsters.

00:29:43: Or some sort of creatures that would fend off evil but often look evil in themselves anyway... Sometimes there also is a narrative for structures that seem to hold balconies or entrance ways like portals.

00:30:04: So I think they're quite interesting architectural elements that are very different to, you know the modernist glass facades we see in film but also remind us of how architecture again kind of a system which shapes our lives and social conditions how it is always kind of exerted a sort of power or impression has always made an impression on humans.

00:30:37: And yeah, so I think there's like you can enter the show from all these different angles and... You might even start with these lanes work finding the rest of the vinyl letters on the wall wondering if this was artwork?

00:30:54: Or is this...?

00:30:58: kind of tries to do is ask what even isn't artwork, no?

00:31:03: And there's also the work in there already.

00:31:10: Yeah, I also think it's quite interesting exactly like what you said Sarah of like interrogating.

00:31:16: What is an artwork in itself and in a show?

00:31:20: Quite uniquely.

00:31:21: i feel Like there's nothing really hanging from the wall which Is perhaps well.

00:31:24: A lot people expect And thinking about or an artwork traditionally constitutes off.

00:31:29: so It's An exhibition In Which You Can There'S A Lot To Read Into and Almost like a study in understanding forms of labour, forms of artworks or redefining definitions for what might already be societally accepted.

00:31:50: Quite like labour – rethinking about what that implies and thinking of places where it surfaces.

00:32:00: we often forget.

00:32:03: Since you have your upcoming meeting at DT, I'm also happy to wrap it up.

00:32:12: Thank you so much for your time!

00:32:16: This was really great.

00:32:17: Nice and speak with you.

00:32:19: Yeah

00:32:19: thank you very much.

00:32:22: Bye bye.