Opening:
Fri, Sep 27th, 19:00
Fri, Sep 27th 2013 to Fri, Nov 22nd 2013
Venue:
freiraum quartier21 INTERNATIONAL
Free admission
FACELESS is an exhibition exploring the basic role that faces play in our media-defined culture. Many faces are familiar and known to us; we recognize them, associate biographies, scandals, and stories with them. Even though we are only confronted with media surfaces, we think we are gaining an insight into a personality and are able to witness an entire life. We deduce character traits from facial features, infer unmistakable identities. But in the end, the physiognomies we encounter only reflect our own personal concept of happiness, recognition, attention, and success.
The grotesque faces the media bombards us with not only affect our sense of self, not only confront us with unequal reflections, but also ensnare us in excessive self-control. They have long since left marks that are indelibly engraved in the almighty web. Eternalized in the book of faces, we become findable, identifiable. Ultimately, all our projections and desires are revealed, and worse yet are divulged to entities of control both legal and secret. We emerge and can never disappear from view again.
This exhibition explores the various strategies and projects of revolt and self-empowerment in the face of these overpowering standards that we can never satisfy. It shows that not only outsiders and critical artists are developing their very own subversive methods to escape: even popular culture long ago started to respond to the glut of faces, to the notion that we should forever be recognizable.
Faces do not disappear: they hide themselves behind masks, are manipulated beyond recognition, sometimes disfigured. This exhibition on faceless faces, then, can also be read as an ironic, angry, and above all justified criticism of our media reality.
FACELESS part II, will investigate disturbed identities, everlasting searching for the right that one could have, broken icons in which we use to believe or use as source of inspiration.It will offer trough workshops and lectures practical solutions for regaining privacy that we are talking so much about and wishing back. Visitors will be trained to try new hair and make up style how to escape security systems and face detection, how to start digital revolution in which faces are definitely hidden behind masks.
Digital world to many young creative minds is source of inspiration, so therefore they are translating these forms and notion in to reality and physical. Such a change is visible in fashion and design, art too. FACELESS part II insists on interdisciplinary work as only way to move to the next level in future that is already presence. REVOLUTION IS UNDER MASKS.
Artists:
Martin Backes (GER), Jeremy Bailey (CAN), Jonathan Barnbrook (GBR) for David Bowie, Aram Bartholl (GER), William Basinski (USA), Zach Blas (USA), Heiko Bressnik (AUT), Ondrej Brody (CZE) & Kristofer Paetau (FIN), Mark Brown (NED/GRB), Cracked Labs (AUT), Ben DeHaan (USA), Sofie Groot Dengerink (NED), DENNATON (Jonatan Söderström & Dennis Wedin) (SWE), Arthur Elsenaar (NED), Hrafnhildur Gissurardottir (ISL), Adam Harvey (USA), Jakob Lena Knebl (AUT) & Thomas Hörl (AUT), KATSU (USA), Miodrag Krkobabić (SRB), Matthieu Laurette (FRA), Mirko Lazović (SRB/NED), Theo-Mass Lexileictous (CYP), Vanessa Lodigiani (MEX), Jill Magid (USA), Alberto de Michele (ITA), Jelena Misković (SRB), Bob Miloshević (SRB), Andrew Newman (AUS/GER), Bernd Oppl (AUT), Marco Pezzotta (ITA), RAF SIMONS, Tarron Ruiz-Avila (AUS), Bryan Lewis Saunders (USA), Tim Silver (AUS), Maiko Takeda (JAP), Ari Versluis (NED) & Ellie Uyttenbroek (NED), Daniel Vom Keller (SUI/NED), Martin C de Waal (NED), Anne Wenzel (NED), Lucy Wood (GRB), Andrew Norman Wilson (USA), and Marcus Zobl (USA/AUT). *Some of the participating artists are living and working in the art studios at the MQ as part of the quartier21/MQ Artist-in-Residence program. “FACELESS part II” has been has been organized in cooperation with the Federal Ministry for European and International Affairs, Artistic Technology Research (University of Applied Arts Vienna), and Mozarteum University in Salzburg with the support of partners and sponsors from Austria and abroad. A side program will feature a symposium as well as guided tours, performances, lectures, and workshops, including during the VIENNAFAIR and VIENNA ART WEEK.
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