art or life: aesthetics and biopolitics

The focus of curated by_vienna 2012 is trained on the question of how art approaches the interplay between work and life and what role it plays in the process. Pursuing an aim to intensify and strengthen the international networks of galleries, curators, and art institutions, departure has once again initiated this highly successful exhibition project, with this year marking its fourth rendition. The project Art or Life: Aesthetics and Biopolitics has been developed by departure in collaboration with curator Eva Maria Stadler.

As the City of Vienna’s creative agency, departure has invited twenty-two of the city’s galleries to present exhibitions, together with international curators and artists, which foster discourse on the themes of aesthetics and biopolitics. Fresh contacts are intended to facilitate, beyond the scope of the project, connections between individuals active in the art field and in the gallery sector, thus broadening relations that may in future be tapped into for new ideas and initiatives.

Fusing art and life was one of the great desires that fueled the avant-gardes of the twentieth century. Technological and social revolutions were to engender a new life in all its facets, preferably through the means of art. In recent years, numerous approaches informed by biopolitics have undertaken a fresh exploration of the interconnections between work, economy, knowledge, and politics. Life no longer represents a utopian ideal full of promise but is now something to be approached constructively. This is the thematic cluster around which curated by_vienna 2012 revolves.

Life and work increasingly coincide, with changes in the way our time is structured making it ever harder to distinguish between the two. What began as a rising trend toward a more flexible working environment has grown into a totalization of work and life that is fostering more and more precarious labor conditions. “Work” no longer describes only the activities in which humans engage to earn a living. It now also guarantees social recognition and an existence in the social sphere. The “right to work”—as one of the elementary human rights, closely tied to human dignity—is increasingly permeated by liberalization and commoditization and thus profoundly remolds not only the organization and shape of work but also the organization and shape of life.

At exhibitions held in twenty-two Viennese galleries, curators are addressing various issues, including the limitations inherent to representing individual situations or the regulation and optimization of living conditions. Issues dealing with the techniques of power, social control, and repression are challenged, as are the economic conditions that individuals not only encounter but also create for themselves.