Protections : 'This is not an exhibition' at Kunsthaus Graz

Monday, 02 October 2006 16:33

Graz, Austria - Regarding the fact that our modern societies – under a pressure of individualism, neo-liberalism, information and global markets – are undergoing a crucial process of redefining and rearranging individual and collective values that condition both the private and the public life, Protections offers a platform to renegotiate the elemental aspects of the contemporary beyond-modern life.

Being to a large extent a live event, Protections is a study which involves both a thematic elaboration of the title notion as well as the self-reflexive examination of an exhibition format.  On exhibit until 22 October, 2006.

The project-in-progress - Protections - does not protect the viewer by providing him/her with the final product of conventional exhibition making.  It allows the viewer to follow the development of a concept spread in time and space and executed by the artists in a close encounter with the audience.  Its composition - as a storyboard - challenges the usual perceptive habits and it invites to explore the museum space in a participatory way.  As such, this project generates a situation which turns the museum into both a meeting place and a site of discovery.  Thus the site becomes a playground for staging the relations of public and private nature and producing the knowledge on the practice of everyday life.

As such Protections is a polyphonic edifice where a variety of artistic activities is being inhabited: from architectural interventions, through performances, theatrical forms and performative installations, down to visual contributions that include film and video as well as conceptual and discursive studies.  The complex and provocative architecture of the Kunsthaus as well as the social and cultural milieu of the city constitute the matrix for all artistic approaches gathered within this project thus turning it into a hyper site-specific event.