Vienna Biennale for Change 2021 PLANET LOVE: Ecologies and Politics of the Living

Ibrahim Mahama: Nkrumah Voli. Living and non-living things, 1966–2020. © Ibrahim Mahama

An exhibition by the University of Applied Arts Vienna / Angewandte Innovation Lab

The exhibition "Ecologies and Politics of the Living" explores the relationship between animate and inanimate environments, against the backdrop of a politically and economically interwoven world – primarily from southern perspectives. Similar to ecological inquiries into the interrelations of all existing organisms and processes on planet earth, the artistic positions focus on the intersection of living beings, (in)organic structures and their economic, temporal and spatial conditions.

Instead of thinking about “Climate Care” in technological, design or solution-based terms, which only reproduce capitalist ideologies of progress and accumulation, the exhibition will present speculative narratives. By breaking with the logic of linear development and the dominant notion of perpetual progress, it deals with questions of coexisting beyond the anthropogenic status quo, as a response and an alternative to capitalist notions of progress as well as other exploitative and invasive practices that are inscribed in our global history of conquest (of "nature" and "peoples").

While some artistic positions look at the transformation of biological matter through chemical and physical processes, others analyze cultivation and upcycling processes from a socio-economic perspective. These processual and research-based projects address the production and processing of plants and raw materials in the context of the food and pharmaceutical industries, architecture and the visual arts.

With a post-anthropocentric reading, the exhibition "Ecologies and Politics of the Living" explores different narratives and presents a polyphonic collection of concepts focusing on planetary coexistence.

Artists:

Eric Gyamfi (GHA)

Mae-ling Lokko (GHA)

Ibrahim Mahama (GHA)

Tracy Naa Koshie Thompson (GHA)

Uriel Orlow (CH)

New-Territories (s/he_f.Roche) (F/THA)

Susanne Wenger (AT/NGA)

Curators:

Ibrahim Mahama, Künstler, Gründer und Leiter von Savanna Centre for Contemporary Art Tamale;

Baerbel Mueller, Architektin, Forscherin, Professorin und Leiterin des [applied] Foreign Affairs Lab / Universität für Angewandte Kunst Wien;

Elisabeth Falkensteiner, Kuratorin und Leiterin des Angewandte Innovation Lab / Universität für Angewandte Kunst Wien