Eurotopia. What ist your Europe?
Presentation of Works 

This contribution shows the works of all 11 selected artists of the Open Call Eurotopia, which was carried out in the context of the exhibition Europe: Ancient Future.

From March to the 1st of May the Open Call Eurotopia. What is your Europe? took place in cooperation with the digital platform nextmu​se​um​.io. 

The call is intended as a complement to the exhibition Europe: Ancient Future curated by Sandro Droschl. During the call, HALLE FÜR KUNST Steiermark received a large number of submissions from international artists on the themes of Europe, transnationality, and the reality of European life. 

From the submissions, the team has made a selection of a total of 11 positions, which we would like to present to our visitors. The selected contributions will also be made accessible via a screen in the foyer and can be viewed for the remaining duration of the exhibition.

The selection of the artistic works was based on the exhibition and the question What is your Europe?

Nadine Arbeiter

Bull’s head (from the small palace Knossos) (2016)
70 x 50 cm, letterpress and drawing on wood

Mask (polychrome female head from Mycenae) (2016)
30 x 24 cm, acrylic and marker on wood

Nadine Arbeiter’s two works Bull’s Head (from the Small Palace of Knossos) (2016) and Mask (Polychrome Female Head from Mycenae) (2016) are based on ancient and historical finds. The model for the bull’s head comes from the small palace in Knossos (1550−1500 BC) and can be seen in the Archaeological Museum in Herakleon. The polychrome female head originally dates from the 13th century BC and was found below the castle of Mycenae. The mask was also used, among other things, as a prop for Arbeiter’s video work My Three Lyrical Identities (2016).

My Three Lyrical Identities https://​vimeo​.com/​1​9​7​6​12722

Anne Barth

Vsbl (2020)
Multimedia Project

Through her project vsbl (2020), Anne Barth is working to give refugees and their individual stories a voice and to ensure that they do not get lost in the media coverage as a part of a mass. Media reports from Moria speak of 20,000 refugees, a number that makes it easy to forget that these are 20,000 individual people with their stories. The artist dedicates herself to these stories by means of video portraits that open up an immediate encounter and create a tension between intimacy and distance. Unmediated, the people look into the camera while various stories and thoughts unfold by means of a voice-over.

https://​vsbl​.art 

Kuesti F.

Europapa
A conversation at the right time (2014)
Video
8:30 min.

With Kuesti F. and Alexander Busse.
Camera and editing: Chris Brandl.
© mobtik 2014

The setting, a claustrophobic-looking concrete (play) square, where a man in a tiger shirt wanders along the fences, partly ironically, partly threateningly. From the OFF we hear a conversation that deals with freedom of expression, voter turnout and democracy fatigue. What would happen if the fence no longer protected us?

A docufictional reflection about personal, popular as well as populist narratives and strategies, which try to take up the topic of ​“Fortress Europe” on the textual as well as on the visual level.

For more and regularly updated news about the filmmaker, visit www​.face​book​.com/​m​obtik

Jonas Höschl

Manfred Weber (2019)
Video
5:10 min.

Jonas Höschl’s video work Manfred Weber (2019) consists of various samples from the commercials of 41 parties that have contested the European elections in Germany in May 2019. The resulting mosaic of political diversity is dramatized musically; Falco’s song Europa can be heard and the soundtrack is based on Bavarian brass band music. Höschl examines the suggestive imagery of advertising agencies and makes clear how uniform the parties’ self-representations are. The artist deconstructs the representations by breaking through the promising narratives with recordings of resistance and police violence.

Bea Nielsen

From the series Struggle for Space (2020/2021)

The Colossus moves on (2021)
Poster, ballpoint pen, text collage, correction strip
39,5 x 30 cm

Untitled (2021)
Digital photography, c‑print
60×40 cm (edition 1/10)

In her current series Struggle for Space (2020÷21), Bea Nielsen investigates the political appropriation of public space by taking up forms of expression of civil society such as posters, graffiti, and other interventions. These provide inferences about issues such as urban transformation, demography, and diversity. The found materials are photographed by the artist, reworked and sometimes intertwined with art-historical motifs, creating new possibilities of connection and spaces for interpretation. Through her work it becomes apparent that a struggle for space, a struggle on the level of signs and opinions, as well as ideas of another Europe implies.

Liza Osepaishvili-Nemtsova

From the Series The body object: Ecology of the Art (2015)
Photography and video works

In the series of works The body object: Ecology often the Art (2015), Georgian artist Liza Osepaishvili-Nemtsova approaches the connections between humans and nature through video and photography. For this purpose, the artist creates pictures of human models, which she equips with pieces of material made of plaster, textile, ropes and packaging material, with masks and costumes. The bodies become objects, the objects become bodies, both are in a theatrical interplay with nature and landscape. Osepaishvili Nemtsova sets in motion collective processes that express the search for a new relationship with nature. She asks what role Europe could play in the development of a new ecological consciousness.

Sven Piayda

The Discovery of Europa (2016)
HD Video (1280×720), silent
4:30 Min.

In The Discovery of Europa (2016), Jupiter’s moon Europa is viewed from the perspective of a space satellite orbiting it. The distant namesake of the European continent becomes a parable. We look from the outside at something very large and recognize the interaction of the moon with other stars, which stand in a common balance to each other. The search for a new world means at the same time that we long for a better one. Can Europe live up to this?

Bohdan Pylypushko

From the Series Texture Gaps:
The Semiotics of the Pandemic in Warsaw’s Urban Spaces (2020)
Photography

In response to the spread of the pandemic, dark cellophane tapes have been used to restrict use of Warsaw’s playgrounds. Hundreds of alienated silhouettes of swings and carousels became a part of the everyday sight of the city. In his photo series ​“Texture Gaps” the author documents the subsequent changes and extends the meaning of the urban semiotics of prohibition beyond its utilitarian purposes. He reflects on the substantive role of the public sphere in democracy and its eclipse during the lockdown in 2020, which was accompanied by police misconduct and attacks by the right-wing authorities on the rights of women and minorities in Poland.

Nika Rukavina

In the end it’s all about the money (2016)
Performance
HD-Video (1080p, 16:9) 
7:56 min.

In the end it’s all about the money (2016) is a performance by Nika Rukavina, in which she uses a saw to cut out 12 stars from 12 one-euro coins and then arranges them into a circle on a blue fabric base. In this way, a new flag of the EU is created, which refers to the economic policy orientation of the Union. At the same time, Rukavina points out that bad political decisions can lead to crisis-like developments and names right-wing populism as a consequence. In doing so, she highlights the EU’s responsibility to promote positive change.

Susanna Schoenberg

Deep Interview – on shaping and monitoring of borders (2018)
HD Video 
30:50 min.

In Deep Interview (2018), one sees an unusual interview situation in which an interviewer dressed in blue asks meticulous questions about the logic of the EU’s border security against a blue background. It is an interview situation without a visible counterpart and the answers also remain absent. Susanna Schoenberg uses the method of the in-depth interview, which examines the exact wording of border security and asylum regulations. Another perspective that is included here is the perspective of flight and the needs of refugees, which questions the legitimacy of border control.

Deep Interview was created in collaboration with cultural scientist Christiane König and actress and presenter Valeria Risi. Sound design: Dirk Specht.

Benjamin F. Stumpf

IN-TRANSIT (2009)
2‑channel video installation
13:45 min.

The installation IN-TRANSIT circles around the themes of migration, human trafficking and transit processes. The recombination of images, primarily captured photographically at the external borders of Europe, in Morocco (Melilla) and Turkey (Istanbul), reflects a diffuse sense of current global conditions. During the development and research phase, Istanbul played a major role as a place between continents and a hub for international events. In the juxtaposition of scenes from Europe and its edges, the work refers in terms of content to visible and invisible border demarcations. It tells of a global dream state in which power and powerlessness, control and loss of control are closely linked and creates a view of the edges of reality.