STAGES
Jakob Kolb aka On Bells
Video
The STAGES format is as radical as it is simple. HALLE FÜR KUNST Steiermark offers a platform for artists from the immediate vicinity for the duration of an evening. The exhibition hall is intended to serve as a stage to learn more about the artists’ work – what they are passionate and enthusiastic about.
Jakob Kolb has worked not only with painting and sculpture, but also repeatedly as a curator and, under the stage name On Bells, musically and performatively. For his evening at HALLE FÜR KUNST, Kolb has explored the theme of love songs and developed a musical performance. Old and new enter into a dialog, offering insights into the musical approach within the framework of a stage set and creating their very own emotional world. The setting for his performance is a mobile stage consisting of 4 LED curtains that will create an immersive visual situation. After the performance, Kolb will DJ in the Kombüse bar adjacent to the HALLE FÜR KUNST.
Artists
Participating artists
Jakob Kolb
Jakob Kolb is a musician and visual artist. With his project On Bells, he mixes dreamy sounds from different genres to create a nostalgic, self-ironic blend of lo-fi soul and synth-pop, with postmodern, self-produced beats and his guitar forming the foundation; the mood oscillates somewhere between romantic, dark and euphoric. Culture clashes characterize the lyrics and sounds of On Bells. The Styrian writes his lyrics and produces his music single-handedly, and has already performed his 80s-style pop songs in a wide variety of venues, including clubs in Barcelona and London, houseboats in Budapest, the Waves Festival and the impressive Semperdepot.
More contributions
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 Tobias Boos
Chainsaws, crypto, corruption.
Argentina between populism and the radical right
Video
Tobias Boos is political scientist at the University of Vienna who specializes in Latin America, populism, and economic developments, such as Argentina’s crisis since the 2000s and current right-wing populist movements like that led by Javier Milei.
Tobias Boos