The connections and mutual influences of two, or in this case three nations: Germans, Austrians and Serbs, are most clearly reflected in the language. These mutual lexical influences are the result of political, social and cultural relationships between nations that changed under different historical frames of reference. The 30-minute video "Emigrated / Immigrated Words" (2019) is a personal reflection on a long study on the subject of contact between two languages, German and Serbian. It is an animation of words / dictionaries of Germanisms, Slavisms and Serbisms. The starting point for this work was the book "German influences in our language" (1937) by the Germanist Miloš Trivunac (1876-1944), a respected Germanist, professor and co-founder of the chair for German language and literature at Belgrade University. If you look at the video or read the dictionary, you cannot deny an influence in all areas, from technology to gastronomy, the military and politics ... to culture. The language is characterized by the alphabet, whose visual recognizability was strengthened with the awareness of national identity. Taking that into account, the fonts Zentenar Fraktur OsF and Miroslav were chosen. The video “Emigrated / Immigrated Words” was shown in 2019 at the exhibition / installation of the same name at the Goethe Institute in Belgrade. The installation Emigrated / Immigrated Words forms the basis for the animated GIF Latin vs Cyrillic (Latinica vs Ćirilica / Latin vs Cyrillic / Latin vs Cyrillic), which was developed for the online exhibition "Na drugi pogled // Auf den zweiten Blick // At Second Glance". More info here.
Ausgewanderte/Eingewanderte Wörter

Mirjana Đorđević-Thaler

  • MIRArt — Mirjana Đorđević-Thaler was born in Belgrade in 1967. After completing her studies at the Belgrade Art Academy in 1994, she continued her artistic training at the Düsseldorf Art Academy in the class of Klaus Rinke (1994–1997). In 1999 she received her master's degree from the Belgrade Art Academy. Her installations are characterized by the sublimity of minimal aesthetics, which is the result of a dedicated conceptual approach, through contextual, spatial, material and media articulated treatment of the topic. Since 1989, she has exhibited her work in numerous solo and group exhibitions in Serbia and abroad and has received awards. In the 1990s she had numerous exhibitions at the SKC Gallery in Belgrade, for which she is well known. Since 2005 lives in Vienna, Austria, where she has exhibited or collaborated with the following institutions: KulturKontakt Austria, Kunsthalle Wien, MuseumsQuartier, museum in progress, Infoscreen, Der Standard, Secession, Kunstbüro Gallery, Künstlerhaus Wien — Passagen Gallery, Forum Stadtpark Graz, KÖR — Art in Public Space, Art & Idea, Austrian Cultural Forum Tokyo.
Untitled
Untitled (gobelin - tapestry, 46 x 3,5 cm, 2021) This artwork was created in 2020 and thematizes the phenomenon of “guest” workers (Gastarbeiters), who left Yugoslavia in several migration waves after the war, most often to Germany and Austria. The Yugoslavs mostly worked in factories and were well paid. Their intention was to save money by temporarily working abroad, with a plan to use it to buy farm machinery, cars, renovate their houses or start a business. The story of the inviolable paradise of socialism languished with each return to homeland, so the workers often decided to stay abroad for good. They embodied the structural shortcomings of the Yugoslav economy, especially its inability to provide enough jobs. The “Gastarbeiters” achieved national self-affirmation through megalomania, a spectacle of kitsch and aesthetics of turbo-folk. As a concrete example, the weddings of returnees were used as a field where the lowest feelings of belonging would develop. This gobelin is the result of cooperation with my grandmother Rajka Stanic as part of the master project - ,,Zeitgeist".

Aleksej Sivcevič

  • Aleksej Sivcevič (26), born in Uzice, Serbia. Graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts Trebinje, Bosnia and Herzegovina. MA student at Academy of Fine Arts Novi Sad, Serbia (printmaking department). Participated in group exhibitions throughout Serbia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Romania and North Macedonia. Won several awards and recognitions, including: 2nd award at 31. Uzice regional art salon (2019), Annual award from printmaking department, Academy of Fine Arts Trebinje (2018), University of East Sarajevo award for great achievement during the studies (2015), 6th Beokulis - Awarded for best animation movie (2014), etc. Member of UVUU (Association of Visual Artists Uzice).
Sculpture Study: for Bretteldorf (video, 00’22’’, 2019 - not exhibited) Bretteldorf (cardboard village) was an informal settlement towards the end of the 19th century near Vienna. It was a landfill site, and the first inhabitants of this cardboard village lived on the sale of the recyclable materials they found on the site. Bretteldorf was at the core of a long conflict between the city administration and the inhabitants of Bretteldorf. Although the Bretteldorf community contributed with their agricultural products and significantly helped the food supply of Vienna after the WWI, the city administration tried to dissolve them in the so-called "Bretteldorfer war" in 1926. The Nazi regime used it for parade ground, and it also became a notorious site of executions. The Bretteldorf community was relocated under the auspices of the Vienna International Garden Show in 1964 (WIG 64) and a generous park area (today Donau Park) was created on the site. It represented the most important major event of the post-war period. Today, many of the features of the WIG64 have been dismantled or adapted for other uses. The ephemeral cardboard flower monuments for the lost Bretteldorf community was made from the photographic documentation of the WIG64, taken from the archives of the Österreichisches Gartenbaumuseum and the Wiener Stadtgärten.
Sculpture Study: for Bretteldorf

Andrea Palašti

  • Andrea Palašti (b. 1984) is a visual artist and lecturer based in Novi Sad, Serbia. She works across artistic and curatorial boundaries, experimenting with photography, video and illustrated lecture performances. Her practice is highly informed by collaborations with other artists/collectives, students, curators, journalists, scientists and/or historians. She is part of the ŠoK Gallery curatorial board and a university lecturer at the Academy of Art in Novi Sad, where she teaches Visual communications, blending her collaborative artistic research projects with educational strategies. Since 2014, she teamed up with picture researcher Daniel Popović (b.1978) on investigating picture archives and its potential to unveil a nuanced understanding of the world.
Utopian Technique
Utopian Technique (Ready-made object (passport), 12,5 x 9 cm, 2021) The idea is to encourage the viewer to think about the possibility of overcoming the imposed overall boundaries, both physical and mental. My utopian vision and desire is to eliminate all borders, having in mind that many countries are closed at this moment, passport itself became "excessive". That is why I have detached the state symbols from it. This idea occurred when I have realized that Austrian and Serbian passports have very similar colors. By removing the state symbols from the cover page, we have the option not to know which passport it is. With this act, an illusionary equalization occurs.
Utopian Technique

Boris Burić

  • Boris Burić (1981) is an intermedial artist from Belgrade. His works are conceptually oriented and often based on the idea of social and art critique expressed in gallery and artistic actions in non-gallery space. His field of interest covers film, photography, action, performance, collage. He cooperates with various artists, curators, galleries, etc. He exhibits in solo and group exhibitions in the country and abroad. He lives in Belgrade and Rijeka.
Rag rug
Rag rug (handsewn wall-rug out of unpicked camouflage-clothings, 530 x 380 cm, 2017-2020) Unsewn camouflage-fashion and military clothings were sewn together again to resemble hills or mountains, still using their patterns. They are combined to a huge landscape-picture, which due to the reduction by means of masking shows an abstract and simplified landscape. Camouflage-clothing enables to visually integrate oneself into a landscape by incorporating the surfaces. In combination with the concepts of identity and affiliation, it's also conveying a scenario of threat and defence. Being a trend in fashion, the military-connoted patterns entered public spaces of daily use and encounter. By showing a landscape, the piece opens the theme of identification with and "ownership" of a land as an aspect of the concept of national states.
Rag rug
Rag rug

Catrin Bolt

  • Catrin Bolt (born 1979) lives and works in Breitenstein and Vienna. She studied at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, departement for New Media (Peter Kogler) from 1997 to 2003. Bolt deals with the layers of spaces in regard to their contents, history and architecture. Through her photos, sculptures or installations – with minimal interventions and unorthodox presentations - they get comprehensible in their complexity. The artist is exploring the potential of art in daily spaces and objects. With the use and de-perspectivation of everyday items, which in playful methods get symbolically revalued, as well as with artistic tricks like fiction, fake and subtle irritations, she wrests new views from social conditions. With these strategies she unveils social absurdities as well as the imaginary, but real force of sign-systems. In her memorial projects she developed an own form of contemporary commemorative culture: 2010 the memorial for force labourers in Viehhofen near St.Pölten, 2013-2017 the memorials Lauftext (Graz) and Alltagsskulpturen (Vienna). In 2015 she received the renowned Otto Mauer-Prize and won the contest for memorials for women scientists in the University of Vienna. In 2019 she received the Theodor Körner Prize for her work "private EU border fence".
And in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath (four-channel sound-video installation, 06’20″, 2016) The title of the video-sound installation takes the phrase from John Steinbeck's “The Grapes of Wrath'' (1939). The epic novel about the distress, exodus, exploitation, and social exclusion of a family of Midwest farmers during the Great Depression of the 1930s provides the point of reference of Doplgenger's view of economically caused, historical and contemporary migration movements. Doplgenger intervened into the footage of Yugoslav television, which had been recording the processes of temporary economic migration to the Western European countries in the 1960s.
And in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath

Doplgenger Collective

  • Doplgenger is an artist duo, Isidora Ilić and Boško Prostran from Belgrade. Doplgenger engages as a film/video artist, researcher, writer and curator. The work of Doplgenger deals with the relation between art and politics through exploring the regimes of moving images and modes of its reception. They rely on the tradition of experimental film and video and through some of the actions of these traditions intervene on the existing media products or produce in the expanded cinema forms. Their work has been shown internationally at institutions such as the Wiesbaden Museum, Kunstmuseum Bonn, Centre Pompidou in Paris, Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam, Osage Gallery in Hong Kong, Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb etc. Doplgenger`s films were screened and selected for the film festivals like International Film Festival Rotterdam, Seattle International Film Festival, Kassel Documentary Film and Video Festival, Cairo Video Festival, Festival des cinémas différents et expérimentaux de Paris, Festival Images Contre Nature in Marseille, among others. Doplgenger is the recipient of Politika`s Award for the best exhibition in 2015.
Lost authenticity
Lost authenticity, photo print on 3mm alu composite plate, 800 x 1200, felted human hair, 2014-2015 Bald heads, symbols of rights, hooligans, agitators. But bald heads are also the symbol of prisoners, oppressed people in camps. Shaving off someone’s hair is still considered as a political instrument of degradation, used by all institutions that seek the total loss of personality - from concentration camps to the army. Bald heads are also indications of diseases. Therefore, bald heads can also cause a sense of pity or hatred and fear. Revolutions have already taken place due to hair. The hair as a symbol of freedom and equality. Eva Maria Schartmüller's artwork LOST AUTHENTICITY works through the various approaches and leaves us with a reduced, sober black and white photo of a bald female skull from behind. Like a fetish, a rolled-up rug, a mat felted from human hair, lies next to the photo, as if fallen out of the picture. Head and hair have been isolated from each other. What originally belongs together falls apart. The combination testifies loss, suppression, deindividualization. With the loss of authenticity, the human being loses both dignity and roots. A trauma emerges. Standardization becomes legitimate under the guise of globalization. Individualization gives way to a twisted idea of nationalism. (Denise Parizek / Curator 2021)
Lost authenticity
Lost authenticity

Eva Maria Schartmüller

  • Eva Maria Schartmüller, born 1961. Currently I´m based in Vienna/Austria and Pernitz/Austria (Lower Austria) where my studio is located. I work in the field of conceptual installation including electronic-digital technologies and also in the field of performance with self-experimental approach. The focus of my artistic engagement is on socio-political and socio-cultural processes. More info here.
Everything possible: Serbin Österreicherin (installation/index cards mounted on paper, dimensions variable, 2020-21) Offers for services, offers that are self-descriptions. Starting in 2005, I have been collecting job advertisements for years now. By adopting the exact wording, I am taking stock of reality, what can be found and what has been formulated, unify the form and print it on index cards. For the narrow scope of this project, I focus on advertisements from Serbian and Austrian women. This is more than a mere accumulation of material. It is a presentation of everyday suffering in society. My work eludes sensation. I notice everyday life and its abysses which have nothing sensational. These abysses are dreary, unimportant, stale. The advertisements, appearing daily in newspapers and on the internet, speak of normality, a supposedly safe level where consensus prevails. A closer look reveals the structural violence in the mass of advertisements: They are offers of self-exploitation. Statements that seem just factual aim at prejudices and clichés. There is a life story behind each of these advertisements, with all uncertainties and shifts in identities. A longer text by Nora Sternfeld & Ljubomir Bratić can be found here.
Everything possible: Serbin Österreicherin
Everything possible: Serbin Österreicherin
Everything possible: Serbin Österreicherin

Hannah Stippl

  • Hannah Stippl is a contemporary Austrian artist and landscape theorist. She is best known for her impressive landscape paintings which playfully balance at the interface of ornament and image. In her works, she connects research in fields as mythology, feminism or ecology with individuality, emotion and beauty. Together, these structures evoke ambiguous natural sceneries she is interested in, familiar and alien at the same time. Born in Vienna, Hannah Stippl studied philosophy, art history and painting at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. Here she earned her doctorate in the field of landscape theory in 2011. Her dissertation offers the first comprehensive review of the landscape-theoretical watercolors by Lucius Burckhardt. From 2005-2017, she taught at the University of Applied Arts Vienna in the Department of Landscape design/art. Her theoretical preoccupation with cultural-historical and ecological aspects of plants, gardens and landscapes fundamentally influences her artistic work. Hannah Stippl also curated numerous exhibitions and runs the exhibition space pools in Vienna. She splits her time between Vienna, Elsbach, Lower Austria and Aguilas, Spain.
When I was young and wild
When I was young and wild (C-print, 20 x 30 cm, 10 x 15 cm, 2019) When a fellow student from the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna found out that I am from Serbia, she asked me how do I feel as a war criminal. To find a proper reply, I dug through my family history and found a photo that explains the complexity of my political background. I paired this photo with the following text: "This photo was taken four years before the war in Croatia and five before the one in Bosnia. I have my father's Yugoslavian army-hat with the star of the Communist party that he proudly attached to it. My grandfather's hunting rifle, his only possession after the Communist government took all of his land after WWII. Binoculars, belt and a dagger that my other grandfather took off a German Wehrmacht officer he captured while fighting as a partisan in WWII. "
When I was young and wild

Igor Ripak

  • Igor Ripak is an artist and a photographer. In his practice he is relying on transformative processes of transmedia adaptation, emphasizing socio-political topics that code our everyday reality. He graduated from the Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien in 2020, in the class of associate professor Dr Yair Martin Guttmann. He holds a BA in Dramaturgy from the Theatre Department of Dramatic Arts at the Academy of Arts in Novi Sad. In 2020, Igor was awarded the Preis der Akademie by the Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien. During his decade-long practice as a photographer, he worked for institutions such as the Wiener Konzerthaus, Musikverein Wien, Erste Stiftung, Brunnenpassage and many others. Igor worked as a set photographer on award winning movies (Min faster i Sarajevo, Refugee 532). He is one of the co-authors of the theatre play "Jedan zarez nešto", produced by LeStudio from Belgrade. More info here.
Stímmung (video installation, variable dimensions; 2021) tells a story about Branka, a folk singer, and Vladica, an artist and owner of a bar where Branka performs. Branka is a well-known star in eclectic, edgy places in which she sings in front of a wide audience: from working-class people to academics, nationalists to leftists, homophobes to the LGBT and queer population. Her shows not only attract people with irreconcilable differences, but also provide a platform for mutual understanding. During Branka’s cathartic performances, all prejudices are being annulled. Vladica is a young, progressive woman who grew up in Sweden and breaks through the taboos of  local communities, often targeted by prejudices, both in Serbia and Europe, from imposed political correctness of those who consider themselves progressive to insults of those confused by societal novelties and changes. These two seemingly completely different women perform together on stage, leaving the impression of a strong sisterhood that empowers not only women but all the others. The narrative is following Branka's plan to travel to Vienna where she would perform in local bars, for existential reasons and ambition. In the form of a peculiar cabaret, Branka performs highlights from folk songs that she chose for the Viennese audience together with Vladica who helps her to realize this goal.
Stímmung

Ivana Ivković & Marina Marković

  • Marina Marković (1983, Belgrade) earned a B.A. and M.A. in painting from the Faculty of Fine Arts in Belgrade and is currently pursuing a PhD in the field of New Media at the University of Belgrade. Since 2006 she has exhibited extensively at various group-, and solo exhibitions worldwide. Marina Marković participated in various artist-in-residence programs at ISCP in New York, ZETA in Tirana, and Q21 – MuseumsQuartier in Vienna. Body and embodiment are the central motives of Marina's artistic practice, which spans from dealing with personal experiences to the consideration of complex social questions posed in relation to a woman's body. Ivana Ivković (1979, Belgrade) gained international recognition mostly by shifting the infamous classical roles between women and men in her drawings, performances, and site-specific works. The notion of identity and gendered experience plays a key role in her work. Ivković examines the roles between women and men in art using the male body as a performative instrument within orchestrated scenes or tableau vivant achieving the effects of fragility, transience, and psychological states while confronting the viewer with exaggerated emotion and ambivalent silence. Ivana's nomadic style of life and exposure to different cultural surroundings influenced her work which is revolving around personal history and collective memories.
House of Flowers
Julian Turner's installation "House of Flowers" (dimensions variable, min 5 x 5 m, 2019) shows a selection of the stylistic highlights of the former residence and now mausoleum of Josip Broz Tito. Quotation, self-quotation and material quotation intertwine with each other. The representative columns of the installation are tiled with photographs of chewing gums. There are replicas and interpretations of batons that were once carried through Yugoslavia on the Day of Youth by children who showed their defference to their leader on a sideboard made of canvases. Some of them are also bottles. And the model of the president's personal luxury train — in this case, an Austrian version — serves as a bar. In a quirky, sensitive manner, spleeny aesthetics are continued, which only seem to reveal their underlying charm in their re-interpretation.
House of Flowers
House of Flowers

Julian Turner

  • Julian Turner, born in 1985 in Hamburg, is an artist who lives and works in Vienna. "Planned imperfection" is at the heart of Turner's multimedia works, in which he cites and humorously challenges the conventions of the art business. Collages, models, material imitations and often repeated tropes like food, architecture and techniques are appropriated from everything the artist finds interesting, transferred into the spaces they inhabit and charged with new meaning via his typical signature, which may be described as amateurish in the best sense of the word. With Bar du Bois – a hybrid of an exhibition space, a working bar and a collaborative art project where the artist created a format that can be continuously developed while undertaking a social subversion of the exhibition space. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, with Amelie von Wulffen and Julian Göthe among others.
Here and There/Ecstasy
Here and There/Ecstasy (3 pencil drawings, 33 x 35cm) How shall we look for new shapes, symbols, new words or communication forms between the two nations? These drawings represent my intention to introduce the matrix of similarity in its dissimilarity, the new recognition at second glance by the usage of elements and principles of composition in messages, elements and symbols of the country identity. How to bypass the all-encompassing self-love of nations which, when mirrored, slows down the recognition of similarities in the way they behave and in the way they display prejudices towards "the other". Hedy Lamarr - at first glance, she is a movie star, the most beautiful woman on the planet and at the second glance, she is a serious inventor. At the first glance, she is Austrian and American. At the second glance, she is stateless. Contrary to the words that indicate opposites in a society, the hidden meanings in similar words-pronouns that we also see here and recognize in our daily lives are always universal topics that are painful or joyful, propel or lull us in a very same way and that actually connect us in every meaning of the word.
Here and There/Ecstasy
Here and There/Ecstasy

Lana Vasiljević

  • Lana Vasiljević (1973) graduated and obtained a master's degree from the Faculty of Fine Arts in Belgrade (sculpture department). She has been exhibiting since 1997, and working in graphic design since 2002. She participated in the KulturKontakt Austria residency program and ArtsLink Residency program, ISCP, New York. She has presented her works at ten solo and over a 50 group exhibitions (Belgrade, New York, Paris, Vienna, The Hague, Warsaw). The awards she has won include the Award for Sculpture at the October Salon in 1997, GRIFON Award for Visual Identity in 2006 and 2010 Grand Award of the 10th Watercolor Biennial, Contemporary gallery Zrenjanin 2013, Annual Award for Sculpture, Association of Fine Artist of Serbia, 2020. Among other working experiences, she worked as a creative director for DDB Worldwide Communications Group and as a professor for sculpture in the Belgrade School of Design. Her works are part of the collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade, the Belgrade City Museum, the Telenor Collection and many other public and private collections. She lives and works in Belgrade. More info here.
The topic of migration has become a defining phenomenon in the public debate within the last decade. As presented in the media, migration is often used by right-wing populists for their benefit. At this juncture, many ignore the fact that displacement, escape and migration always were and still are formative processes within Europe. The film "Inđija" (documentary/video, 20’, 2020) addresses these topics from an individual and subjective perspective. It furthermore tries to capture a certain aspect of migration: the state of being unwanted. The persons in the film are so called "Donauschwaben" (a German-speaking minority in Yugoslavia). Since they were considered collectively guilty for the crimes of the Nazi regime, they had to leave their hometown Inđija, which is near Belgrade, in 1944 and seek refuge in Austria. The interviewees are also reporting on their childhood in Yugoslavia and their relationship with people from Serbia before and after the Nazi invaded the Balkans.
Inđija
Inđija

Leonhard Pill

  • Leonhard Pill, born in Munich, is a filmmaker and sound artist based in Vienna. He released a full length album together with the death metal band Over Your Threshold on the major label Metal Blade Records in 2012. His short films were presented at Great Lake Shorts 2015, Cinema Next 2016 or at Crossing Europe Filmfestival 2020. Pill's work deals with psychological topics as well as cultural phenomenons and languages. Currently he is shooting a new movie and converting light into sound.
Animation of a part of the drawing "Like a house" (ink on canvas, 2019). The drawing "Like a house" was presented in the gallery of the Salon of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade, at the exhibition "Conquistador. From Culture and Art" in 2019. The drawing "Like a house" was made according to the drawing of Richard Neutra, an Austrian architect who lived in Trebinje during the First World War in 1915. In September 1898, Freud stayed in Dubrovnik as part of a trip on the Adriatic Coast. From there, at the urging of his cousin, a doctor in the military garrison in Trebinje, he made a one-day trip to Trebinje to see the remains of the Bey's house (and possibly the harem with which he was fascinated) as well as life in them. Important texts of Freud are written after this visit (to which he himself dud not attach too much importance in his letters and texts), but the visit itself is fabulated and anti-dated. The drawing "This" is animated, as the words "Herr, was ist da zu sagen? Ich weiß, wenn er zu retten wäre, hättest du ihn gerettet" (“Sir, what can I say? I know that if it were possible for him to be saved, you would save him”) were written, and they speak of the confidence which the local population had in the doctor, and in destiny.
Like a House
Like a House

Mariela Cvetić

  • Mariela Cvetić, PhD is an artist and art theorist. She is a full professor at University of Belgrade, Faculty of Architecture and guest professor at the University of Arts, Interdisciplinary Studies of Arts and Media. Her artistic practice and theoretical work explore the relationship between subject and space. She is the author of a number of solo and group exhibitions and a member of the team whose installation was selected to represent Serbia at the 11th International Architecture Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia, 2008. She is the author of "Das Unheimliche: Psychoanalitical and Cultural Theories of Space" (Das Unheimliche: psihoanalitičke i kulturalne teorije prostora, Beograd, 2011), "The Artist's Book/Umetnikova knjiga", (Beograd, 2013)) and others. More info here.
Budget Rebellion (video, intervention, 6’30’’, 2017). Men waiting for odd-jobs like hustlers in the streets for punters gathering on Triesterstraße in Vienna every morning are the starting point of this film. In every larger city there are places where people who otherwise would not have the opportunity to work in a legal way can put their service on the labor market. These are modern day-labourers who are not employed on a permanent basis and who are prepared to carry out any small craft activity for any very low hourly rate. Being in this precarious and risky situation, they stand outside society. In my examination of the workers, I asked myself how great their potential to become active as a collective and to rebel against their working and living conditions is? What could the resistance of these men look like? What forms could it take and by what means could it be realised?
Budget Rebellion
Budget Rebellion
Budget Rebellion

Michael Heindl

  • Michael Heindl ( born1988 in Linz) lives and works as a visual artist and filmmaker in Vienna. He studied painting at the University for Applied Arts in Vienna. Heindl is a joker – a conceptual joker. His short works are each constructed on a series of repeated actions, or variations on a theme. The method is minimalistic, but the technique of accumulation is droll, rhythmic, and sometimes leads to surprising conclusions. Heindl's artworks simultaneously reflect the strict regimentation of our societies, and find playful ways to subvert their paths of order or utility.
Malo morgen
silkprint on pieces of an Austrian map (found object)
~12 x ~21,5 cm, 2020 / printed with support of Matrijaršija in Belgrade

The print “malo morgen” addresses the cultural interweavings between Serbia and Austria, made visible through language. A lot can be told with language, indeed. Serbian and (Austrian-)German share a lot of words – reminiscences of history, references of intercultural exchange. Some of these linguistic blendings originate in the time of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, some are indicators to immigration movements due to economic factors or flight from war in Yugoslavia. I’ve had many surprising moments during my stays in Serbia discovering those shared words. The phrase “malo morgen” caught my interest as it is like a linguistic remix: the word “malo” is Serbian, meaning “small” or “a little”; the word “morgen” is German, meaning “tomorrow”. Those words combined are a figure of speech used to express something is very unrealistic to happen like that – mostly translated with “yeah right”, “in your dreams”. Besides that language-layer I consider the print to be like an extract of my current personal process. I’ve spent years of dreaming about the far-away, about drifting through unknown lands. But somehow I wouldn’t let myself go for a long time. When last year I’ve made huge steps towards that dream, the pandemic ¬started and a lot of boarders where closed. But in summer it was possible to leave Austria and head East… On one of my drifts through Belgrade, in the Deponija neighbourhood, I found a crumpled map on the ground. I was excited to pick it up, imagining to have found something exotic. However, I felt like coincidence had prepared a joke for me: it was an Austrian street map. What a suitable surface to print “malo morgen” on!
Malo morgen
Malo morgen

Pira Tin

  • Hanna Priemetzhofer, born in Austria in the 80's uses "Pira Tin" as her pseudonym. Pira Tin is a drifter, a searcher, an observer and a collector. She loves the ephemeral, the in-between, fragments, improvisation and books. Pira Tin is also one part of "System Jaquelinde", a co-founder of the independent publishing collective "MIAU Publishing" and a graphic designer. On her blog she publishes insights into current pursuits and observations. Her website shows finished projects, with focus on graphic design. Projects created in collaboration with Frances Cat can be found here.
Another Europe (single-channel installation (HD video), 54’47'', 2020) is an essay film in the tradition of feminist experimental film. The film is divided into 3 sections and shaped by the time before and after Corona (or rather during it): I. Summer 2019, II. Winter 2020 and finally III. Spring 2020: the break from COVID-19 / the long journey home. A female voice (artist colleague Kathi Hofer) reproduces impressions and perceptions, personal and historical, blurring the boundaries between documentation and memory. Associative thought spaces are created. The keyword is queer storytelling. At the beginning, the connection between place and identity is reflected on. How does personal history connect with geography (place is integral to personal identity). Her story and space. The second part is more about longing for distance. What is is with feeling out of place? Where is home actually? How do these feelings connect with your own identity? Then, all of a sudden, in the middle of this Europe, in the middle of the film that I had thought through to the end, the crisis that nobody expected happens and changes everything in one fell swoop. The journey across Europe suddenly turns into a journey back to Vienna, through a completely changed Europe, very different than at the beginning of the film. Now it is all about arriving, at home and with yourself. The visual structure of the work opens up another level and offers alternative readings. You can see pictures in motion. Landscape photographs that were taken during the long journeys show a picture of another Europe, beyond tourist routes. The sound compositions by Rutger Zuydervelt (Machinefabriek) underline the atmospheric character of the work. (Photo selection of the Another Europe project — Photo documentation: Travel summer 2019 and winter 2020.
Another Europe
Another Europe
Another Europe

Sangam Sharma

  • Sangam Sharma (born 1978 in Vienna) is an independent artist and experimental filmmaker. She produces works by examining "herstory". Explores space and sound. Makes work at the border between fine art, film/video and sound art.
Wien Wien (video, 7' 48") This video shows relations to Austria and oneself. The most dominant opinion is the one of grandma Milka, who has been to Vienna and whose experiences are intertwined with the idea of an ideal Other. Other opinions are shown through comments from grandma Milena, who has never been to Austria, and through other siblings' laughter listening to grandma Milka’s experiences with a pinch of caution. Prejudices that appear concern both Serbs and Austrians. Prejudices about Austrians are positive and utterly idealistic. Austria appears as an utopia, while Serbia is presented as a negative example. However, cracks appear in the story. Through grandma Milka's speech, it becomes apparent that she does not fit into that utopia, as well as that she belongs to the Serbian rural discourse. This work is about an identity gap that everyone can identify with. Grandma Milka is torn between two cultures. On the one hand, she wants to be a part of an urban environment of Vienna, but on the other, she confirms some preconceptions about Serbs and their culture with her own presentation.
Wien Wien

Tijana Petrović

  • Tijana Petrović is currently studying for a Master's degree at the department of New Media at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Belgrade. Tijana situated her artistic questions in a geopolitical, critical institutional framework across various forms of artistic expressions from performance, video-performance, video art, to text art and textual discursive practices. A significant segment of her work is directed towards an active pondering of contemporary social and political problems, both in Serbia and in broader terms. She has exhibited her artistic works in art institutions such as Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb, Croatia, KIBLA Multimedia Center in Maribor and the Biennale of Contemporary Art Pančevo.
The video work “BGTX” (video, HD, 19’, 2018) offers a glance of reality transformed by digitalisation. Labour environments are changing rapidly with the use of technologies like big data or machine learning. Following protests of taxi drivers against the influence of ride-hailing services in Belgrade and their perspectives of the city, a generated fictional character leads us through the city on imaginary paths commenting on the subject matter.
BGTX

Ulrich Reiterer

  • The artist, filmmaker and documentarist Ulrich A. Reiterer lives in Graz and Vienna. In his semi-documentary films he deals with aspects of transformation processes within cities. Focused on architecture and its agents, he works with spheres of influence like the sharing economy and its impact on society.
The Flaw (1920)
The triptych "The Flaw" (Digital, Graphite, Oil on Paper, 40 x 30 cm each) is about police identification photos which have been retouched by Walter Kratner with graphite and oil and which emphasize particularly oppressive socio-political aspects. The images show how we see "others". Which cliches and prejudices we use in order to classify "others"? Are those portrayed murderers, innocents, rapists or are they guilty of a petty crime? The viewer has to admit that nationality or cultural background cannot even be guessed at second glance. The mug shots show the suspect person in a standardized position, which is well known to the viewer from passport photos. The individual facial expression is still authentically preserved and cannot be standardized or labeled. Reworking the photo-documents with the pencil in a very sensitive way the artist forces us to take a closer look. The viewer can ask himself: what crime could the person depicted have committed? What offense could the person depicted have been guilty of? What tragedies are often behind a criminal act? Despair? Hate? Love? Violence? Alcohol or drugs? Human error? Or even a mistake?
The Flaw (1920)
The Flaw (1920)

Walter Kratner

  • Walter Kratner was born in 1954 in Graz (Austria). He received his education from the University of Florence (Design and History of Art). He lived in Switzerland and San Francisco for many years and now lives in Austria. His site specific installation works include the Church of Tabor in Austria and the Memorial („Porajmos") to the Sinti and Roma Victims of National Socialism. He received a 2002 Carl Djerassi Artists-In Residence Program Award. He exhibited his work at the Exploratorium, The Refusalon Gallery, the Projects Room in San Francisco, in Tehran and Istanbul, Vienna, Berlin, Rome, Hamburg, Graz and in different places and cultural institutions in Europe. His revisited photographs used to transform and reconstruct memory and history. Recently the artist reflects on the situation for refugees in Europe and in the Middle East.