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The European Dream
Rose-Anne Gush 

Video

Please note that this video is available in English.

The European Dream is a collaboratively written reading performance developed by Rose-Anne Gush and her students at the Institute of Contemporary Art at TU Graz.

The performance is meant to be an artistic tool to explore the question of the ideological forces that shape Europe today. What kind of society do we live in and how can the different positions of speakers even be thought together? Ideology exists in many forms and contains beliefs, images and values that can never be considered as final and naturally given, but always tend to be presented as universal, though.
While the postmodern turn was proclaimed with the end of the 1980s and the view spread that values such as ambiguity, polyphony and difference were about to become social guiding principles, the situation now seems to have changed dramatically. For some time now, a revival of major ideological narratives has been observable, narratives that offer simple solutions to complex questions. Considering old social inequalities rearising and the ongoing political rejections, a critical examination of social ideologies seems urgently needed.


Participants of the Performance:
Nicole Antunovic, Gagandeep Bhatti, Rose-Anne Gush, Elsa Karvanen, Budour Khalil, Alena Viola Köstl, Anastasiia Kutsova, Abdelrahman Elbashir, Farnoosh Namaziyan, Sali Ren, Ana Patrícia Silva Varão Moreira. Support by Christina Chalmers and Federico Campagna.

Rose-Anne Gush is Assistant-Professor at the Institute of Contemporary Art at TU Graz. Her research interest includes among others theories of Global Art, spatial politics, the spatial politics of capitalism and form, and the relationships between colonialism, fascism and capitalism. Her research and teaching are oriented towards anti-racist, feminist, and emancipatory horizons. Gush’s first book length project (in progress), Artistic Labour of the Body builds on her PhD, exploring the place, use of, and meaning of the body in postwar art and literature in relation to Theodor W. Adorno’s aesthetics. Gush’s research is published in Kunst und Politik: Jahrbuch der Guernica-Gesellschaft (2020), Third Text (2019), Performance Research (2018), Objects of Feminism (Helsinki, 2017) and AWARE (2017).
 

More contributions

Diedrich Diederichsen
Vortrag 

Video

On the basis of his contribution to the publication, conceived against the backdrop of Poledna’s film produced in Los Angeles in the summer of 2024 especially for the exhibition at HALLE FÜR KUNST Steiermark, Diederichsen will discuss and present Mathias Poledna’s artistic career with references to music and art history as well as pop culture.

Diedrich Diederichsen

Karel Císař
Lecture 

Video

In this lecture, Císař will explore Mathias Poledna’s career and artistic practice against the backdrop of the current exhibition, which can also be understood as a kind of retrospective. 

Karel Císař – Lecture

Mathias Poledna
Exhibition Tour 

Slide show

Mathias Poledna has created a complex, multi-layered body of work in which films, expansive installations and architectural interventions are in constant dialog with each other, where independent series of works, found objects and ephemeral materials all condense to form a singular artistic language. Central to his practice are questions of modernity, cultural memory and the visual imaginary in art and popular culture.

Ausstellungsrundgang Mathias Poledna

Performance Total Romance: Partial Repair
Isabel Lewis, Dirk Bell with vocalist, performer and artist Rupert Enticknap and performer and pole dancer Yann Slattery 

Video

The performance Total Romance: Partial Repair is the centerpiece of Isabel Lewis and Dirk Bell’s joint exhibition Ever/​Repair at HALLE FÜR KUNST Steiermark, and is performed by four performers. In… 

Performance Total Romance: Partial Repair Isabel Lewis, Dirk Bell with vocalist, performer and artist Rupert Enticknap and performer and pole dancer Yann Slattery