Rose-Anne Gush
Surrealism from a Global Perspective
Video
Rose-Anne Gush’s lecture analyzes the political aesthetics of Surrealism and its anti-colonial and anti-fascist orientations through artistic practices in Paris and Martinique between 1920 and 1960, asking how Surrealist works — from Chris Marker and Alain Resnais’s film Les Statues Meurent Aussi (1953, Statues Die Too) to lesser-known anti-colonial and anti-fascist archives — embodied and continue to materialize the violent inequalities and crises of capitalist modernity. Gush argues that the radical formalism of Surrealism embodied and re-situated the unequal developments of capitalist modernity. Surrealism is understood by her as a transnational movement that artistically questioned colonial power structures and presented alternative emancipatory perspectives. Gush proposed an art-historical methodology that understands art as an active component of social struggles and, in particular, places a stronger focus on previously marginalized artistic positions.
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Rose-Anne Gush
is a writer, art historian and assistant professor at the IZK — Institute for Contemporary Art at Graz University of Technology. Her research interests include political aesthetics and theories of ‘global art’, including transnational surrealism, the spatial politics of capitalism, artistic form and geographies of extraction, as well as theories of Marxism, gender, trauma and memory. Her recent articles have been published in Berlin Review, FKW // Zeitschrift für Geschlechterforschung und visuelle Kultur, Camera Austria, Brand-New-Life Magazine, Third Text, Kunst und Politik: Jahrbuch der Guernica-Gesellschaft, and Performance Research. Her first monograph Artistic Labor of the Body is forthcoming in the Historical Materialism book series published by Brill and Haymarket.
More contributions
Michael Krebber in conversation with Sandro Droschl
Video
As part of the exhibition A.rtificial I.ntrospection O., Michael Krebber speaks with Sandro Droschl about his artistic practice and his engagement with the writings and conceptual models of Oswald Wiener.
Michael Krebber in conversation with Sandro Droschl A.rtificial I.ntrospection O.
Exhibition Tour
Slide show
The exhibition A.rtificial I.ntrospection O. (A.I.O.) explores questions of thought, perception, and subjectivity at the intersection of introspection, cybernetics, and artificial intelligence. Its point of departure is the work of the Austrian writer, cognitive psychologist, and cybernetician Oswald Wiener (1935 – 2021), whose genuine thinking since the 1950s critically navigated between these fields while systematically resisting institutional appropriation.
Slide Show A.rtificial I.ntrospection O. Dr. Brigitte Borchhardt-Birbaumer
Susanne Wenger’s painting between Africa and Europe
Video
In her lecture, art historian and curator Brigitte Borchhardt-Birbaumer examines Susanne Wenger’s work as a transcultural Gesamtkunstwerk that bridges European modernism and Yorùbá ritual practice, creating a new sacred aesthetic that merges art, ritual, and cultural boundaries.
Brigitte Borchardt Kathy Rae Huffman
FROM CYBERFEMINISM
UNTIL NOW
Video
Kathy Rae Huffman’s lecture traces the evolution of cyberfeminism since the 1990s: it connected women in the digital sphere, challenged existing power structures, and presented examples — from VNS Matrix to contemporary digital activism — that highlight critiques of platform corporations, AI cultures, and global inequalities.
Kathy Rae Huffman Xol Meissner
Concert
Video
New York-based artist Xol Meissner — the alter ego of composer Mauro Hertig — has transformed the HALLE FÜR KUNST Steiermark into a hypnotic soundscape of extraordinary intensity with his haunting music, which oscillates between contemporary classical and avant-garde rock.
Xol Meissner Karin M. Schmidlechner
Styrian women during and after National Socialism
Video
In her research and in the volume Aus dem Blickfeld (Out of Sight), co-edited with Heimo Halbrainer, Karin Maria Schmidlechner demonstrates that the lived realities of Styrian women during the Nazi era and the postwar period were diverse and ambivalent. Hence, she broadens the scholarly discourse on their daily lives while simultaneously deconstructing common narratives such as that of the conformist woman or the so-called “rubble woman.”
Karin M. Schmidlechner Eva Ursprung
The Art of Surfacing
Slide show
With the exhibition The Art of Surfacing, HALLE FÜR KUNST Steiermark presents the multifaceted work of Austrian artist, musician, and curator Eva Ursprung, who was awarded the Honorary Prize of the Province of Styria in 2024. Her cross-media, feminist, and socially critical approaches revolve around the element of water as a metaphor for change and political and ecological processes.
Slide show Eva Ursprung Susanne Wenger
Àdùnní Olórìṣà
Slide show
Susanne Wenger gilt als eine zentrale Künstlerin Österreichs nach 1945 und als frühe Wegbereiterin des Surrealismus. Ihr Œuvre, das Skulpturen, Gemälde, Zeichnungen, Drucke und Batiken umfasst, überschreitet ästhetische Kategorien und verbindet Kunst, Spiritualität und Mythos.
Slide Show Susanne Wenger