Resiliance and Survival Strategies

The Academy’s Exhibit Studio is a new exhibition space for students and run by students. It is located at the Academy’s building at Schillerplatz, coordinated and curated by Viktoria Bayer and Natalia Gurova. In 2022 they are planning to organize five shows. The common denominator of all of them is the question of how we can react to the crises that define our current reality through art and with artistic methods.

The first show Resilience and Survival Strategies deals with the observation that we are living in troublesome times and try to navigate through them, while we are surrounded by an increasing instability. In order to cope with social, political, and economical challenges we steadily transform, unconsciously and consciously. Over the millenia our natural habitat has done an admirable job. Seeds developed resilience against all different kinds of environmental difficulties and species enter synergies in order to support each other.

We know that the era of individualism and extractivism made us tired and needs to end now. But what kind of alternatives can we imagine? Which role could artistic practices play in dealing with struggles, conflicts and ideas of resilience? Can we try to live, think, decide and (un)learn differently than we used to? And who is even the “we” that we are constantly referring to?

With works by: Elisa Bergmann, Carolin Melia Brendel and Helena McFadzean, Sattva Giacosa, Rubén Ezequiel Löwy, Alina Meyer, Sunggu Seonghyun, Shaya Safaisini, Nazira Karimi