Mothering Communities

Guadalupe Aldrete, Grossi Maglioni, Käthe Hager von Strobele, Lena Rosa Händle, Anežka Jabùrková & Amalija Stojsavljevic, Isabella Kohlhuber, Nora Mayr & Stephanie Winter, Musikarbeiter*innenkapelle, Claudia Sandoval Romero, Solar Manufaktur/Irene Lucas, Deniz Sözen, Manuela Zechner
 
Initiated and curated by Barbara Mahlknecht 
Child Care Pavilion by Isabella Kohlhuber 
Pre-opening: Saturday, 1 July 2023, 4 pm, 1060, Richard Waldemarpark with a multi-voice lecture performance and action by Claudia Sandoval Romero
Opening: Thursday, 6 July 2023, 5 pm, 1020, Rustenschacherallee 2–4
 
Project duration: 6–29 July 2023 
Location: 1020, Rustenschacherallee 2–4
 
Mothering Communities is a public art project focusing on maternal caregiving – the continuous, repetitive, physical, emotional and at the same time “invisible” work that is carried out for the nutrition, health, education and general integrity of a child. The project explores forms of communal care work: How can care work be shared beyond existing but often inadequate family and institutional structures? How can caregiving be reinvented and organised? What infrastructures, resources, forms of creativity, and time and collaboration does caring for a future generation require? 
 
Following the trajectory of these questions, Mothering Communities brings together workshops for children and adults, performances, talks, live concerts, listening sessions, an energy-autonomous solar kitchen, picnics, play and experimentation on the grounds and in the garden of Zentrum Fokus Forschung at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. The audience is invited to temporarily leave the isolation and singularity of caretaking and to open up communal caregiving as a shared field of research in the form of meeting, exchanging, caring, being creative, listening, watching, experimenting and playing. 
 
The central pivot and location of the project is the walk-in sculpture Child Care Pavilion designed by Isabella Kohlhuber. It relocates care as an intermediate activity between work and play, between the satisfaction of children’s primary needs and amusement, shifting it into the public space. As a sculpture and object of use, it mediates between inside and outside spaces, serving simultaneously as a stage, a place to linger and a site for exchange, conversation and play.
 
For the detailed public program, please visit: 
 
Mothering Communities is funded by SHIFT BASIS KULTUR WIEN and hosted by Zentrum Fokus Forschung, University of Applied Arts, Vienna.
 
 
Opening hours
During opening hours, visitors can visit and use the Mothering Communities site and the Child Care Pavilion – you are welcome to stay and play.
 
Wed 15–18 h (12/07, 19/07 and 26/07)
Thur 15–19 h (13/07, 20/07 and 27/07)
Fri 15–20 h (07/07, 14/07, 21/07 and 28/07)
Sat 10–13 h and 15–21h (08/07 and 15/07)
Sat 15–21 h (22/07 and 29/07)
 
rendering
                                          graphic
Isabella Kohlhuber, Child Care Pavilion, Rendering, 2023

Events

Pre-opening:
01. July 2023 - 16:00
Richard Waldemarpark, 1060 Wien
Duration
06. July 2023 - 29. July 2023
Zentrum Fokus Forschung, Rustenschacherallee 2-4, 1020 Wien
Opening
06. July 2023 - 17:00
Zentrum Fokus Forschung, Rustenschacherallee 2-4, 1020 Wien