with:
Johanna Braun, Daniela Comani, Angela Dorrer, Petra Egg, Eva Gerth, Esther Glück, Anna Kowalska, Isabella Kresse, Antje Majewski, Fiona Mouzakitis, Katrin Plavcak, Fiona Rukschcio, Frederike Schweizer, Barbara Sturm, Anita Witek
curated by Fiona Rukschcio

The Earth is round – what was once a claim, is now a certainty. Claims always construct a reality and therefore a truth, one of many. Similar to a prism, claims, once made, propagate effect and validity. If everyone was like me, wouldn't the world be a wonderful place is something supposed to have been said by Margaret Thatcher, which might make her relentless actions more understandable, but not any more tolerable. Claims always evoke counter–claims too. They are supposed to be valid until refuted by another claim. Ping pong.
For decades, the words Jesus loves you have adorned the Our Lady of Victory Church, situated at the Mariahilfergürtel nearby Westbahnhof railway station towards the Vienna Valley, and may be seen as an assertive claim, I have a dream as a motivating claim of agitation.
Claims can move mountains – or sometimes unmask social norms: stubborn insistence on something, for example, might reveal a wish rather than a fact: I love you. The interesting thing is what lies behind a claim. Claims also thrive on ambivalence: grave and ephemeral, momentary and pioneering, bold and profane – they unite absurdities more than even scientific theses: Ceci n´est pas une pipe by René Magritte.
Claims uttered willfully in the heat of the moment often precipitate unexpected chain reactions. Strictly speaking, the whole world is based on claims. Claims – the building blocks of our world. – Can everything be put down to/reduced to claims? This exhibition, entitled Behauptungen auf Papier – nonchalant, en passant und absolut (Claims on paper – nonchalant, en passant and absolute), focuses on the phenomenon of claims by looking at works on paper as the carrier medium. Consisting solely of female artists, it establishes a future norm by means of a claim.
fR

artists:
Magdalena Bichler | Melanie Bonajo | Nine Budde| Eli Cortiñas | Sonja Cvitkovic | Christina Dimitriadis | Béatrice Dreux | Mary Beth Edelson | Simone Gilges | Mariola Groener | Guðný Guðmundsdóttir | Allison Halter | Mathilde ter Heijne / ff | Malin Holgersson | J&K / Janne Schäfer & Kristine Agergaard | Antje Majewski / ff | Kirsten Palz | Julia Phillips | Katrin Plavcak / ff | Jen Ray / ff | Nina Rhode | Fiona Rukschcio | Eva T. Schippers | Frauke Schmidt | Tanja Schomaker | Sarah Schumann | Juliane Solmsdorf / ff | Annie Sprinkle & Beth Stephens | Valerie Stahl von Stromberg | Melissa Steckbauer / ff | Betty Tompkins | Magda Tothova / ff | Ellie de Verdier | Katharina Wulff

Curated by Juliane Solmsdorf & Mathilde ter Heijne / ff

screening of common.places
l 6.4.2013 at 5 pm

The act of applying make-up as the manufacture of femininity: A woman dressed up as a woman exhibits images of her gender construction.

"schminki 1,2 + 3"
A 1998, 8 min.


Not only since Paris is Burning have images of make-up rituals been closley connected with the question of the dominating gender norms, because the act of putting on make-up reveals simultaneously the making of bodies. Putting on lipstick seems to directly go along with the crossing of the legs, i.e. a multitude of supposedly "female" identifiable poses. The performative character is inherent in such images because the construction of the gender is being revealed.
In schminki 1, 2 + 3 a woman is putting on make-up. A woman, disguised as a woman, exhibits images of her own creation. Individual image-photographs follow each other, but not in chronological sequence. The poses, respectively their identifiability, precede the images, and the aesthetic operation clarifies the construction. Rukschcio creates a parody of the prevailing norms by trying to reveal the imitative structure of gender norms. Images of hegemonial gender discourses to which the title refers, are to be questioned in the parody.
Christa Benzer
Translation: Birgit Rukschcio

In her films, collages, and projects, Fiona Rukschcio focuses on roles ascribed to women, identity formation by internal and external forces, and extreme emotional experiences. By combining research and documentary materials with her own subjectively charged perceptions, she develops a heterogeneous visual language juxtaposing archive material and the aesthetics of the everyday.
For the Secession she has produced a new film based on Rape (1968) by Yoko Ono and John Lennon. Rukschcio re-filmed the original, in which a young woman is followed by the cameraman through the city of London and back to her apartment, using the same shots in the same locations, but without the woman. This shift raises a series of questions about the links between camera idiom, gazes, violence, and places as collective storehouses of memory.
Annette Südbeck.

Réflexion sur la notion de temps inhérente au travail photographique à travers des photographies anciennes et contemporaines Proposée par l'association L'agrandisseur et imaginée par Anne Immelé, avec des photographies contemporaines de Raymonde April, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, François Deladerrière, Pierre Filliquet, Aurélien Froment, Angela Grauerholz, Suzanne Lafont, Eric Nehr, Bernard Plossu, Fiona Rukschcio et des photographies anciennes d'Auguste Bartholdi, Adolphe Braun et Henri Ziegler. La photographie instaure une relation particulière à l'éphémère et à l'immuable. Le rapport au temps se noue lors de la prise de vue mais aussi dans la mise en relation de photographies, comme dans l'archive. Par la mise en regard de photographies du 19e s. et de photographies du temps présent, l'exposition propose de confronter des esthétiques photographiques qui peuvent se rejoindre et se répondre, indépendamment d'un regard historique, à partir de thématiques liées aux temporalités de la photographie. Les photographies sont autant de témoignages de la manière d'habiter le monde pour les photographes. L'exposition s'accompagne de nombreuses animations.