The exhibition is concerned with the production of space or elliptical sense between the three positions and the works on display by Nora Schmidt, Katharina Swoboda, and Kosta Tonev, and to what extent the aesthetic use of research or research creation (lightening of sense) refers to what Jean-Luc Nancy calls the “knowledge of a condition of possibility that gives nothing to know.” It is rather about “the syndrome known as life,” or “the sense of being which calls for more form.”

Curated by Dimitrina Sevova & Alan Roth.

Saturday, 5 - Thursday, 31 August 2017.

Opening: Saturday, 5 August 2017, 17:00h

Finissage: Thursday, 31 August 2017, 19:00h
with, starting 19:30h,
Performative reading Altered State by Nora Schmidt
Lecture-performance Practice as Research – Research as a practice (Video Narratives) by Katharina Swoboda
Lecture-performance Wilfred Wyman by Kosta Tonev

Sunday, 6 August 2017, 16:00h - 19:00h: Guided tour with the curators and Kosta Tonev, with coffee, tea and cake.

Opening Hours
Thu/Fri/Sat: 16:00h - 19:00h
or by appointment



Nora Schmidt

Altered State
2017. Installation and performative reading.

[English below]

Prolog: Alles, was ich während meines Aufenthaltes an jenem Ort tat, war, das Innen mit dem Aussen abzugleichen.
Das, was scheinbar offenbar war, im Negativ zu zeigen. Nahm Mass an den Objekten, die diesen Ort mitbestimmten.
Dass die Oberfläche, die ich zu sein glaubte, die mich umschloss und in welche ich gleichzeitig eindrang, die Form eines Poetischen Faktums annahm…

“[…] Zu unterscheiden ist das poetische Faktum von der poetischen Kunst – die zum Ziel hat, solcher Art Faktum zu produzieren oder zu provozieren oder zu präparieren oder zu isolieren.
Jedes Ereignis, jeder Eindruck, der von sich aus Erregung, Produktion von ungebundener Energie bewirkt, ohne auf ein präzises Bedürfnis, eine unmittelbare Handlung zu zielen, ohne Vorhaben, ein Begehren hervorzurufen (ausser der Bewahrung, Fixierung, Erfassung dieser Erregung selbst) – ist ein poetisches Faktum, Objekt oder Ereignis.”
(Paul Valéry, Cahiers/Hefte: Die vollständige Pléiade-Edition)




[Deutsch oben]

Prologue: Everything I did during my stay in that place was to match up the inside with the outside.
To show what was seemingly obvious, in the negative. Took the measure of objects that contributed to defining this place.
That the surface I believed to be, that enclosed me and into which I penetrated at the same time, took the form of a poetic fact…


“[…] The poetic fact is to be distinguished from poetic art - which has as its aim to produce or to provoke or to prepare or to isolate facts of this kind.
Every event, every impression that of itself effects excitation, production of unbound energy without aiming at a precise necessity, an immediate action, without a plan to evoke a desire (besides the preservation, fixing, capture of the excitation itself) - is a poetic fact, object or event.”
(Paul Valéry, Cahiers/Notebooks)



Katharina Swoboda

Marguerite’s Desires
2017. Site-specific installation, video, archive materials, wallpapers.



Marguerite’s Desires is a video work about French Feminist Marguerite Durand (1864-1936). The work makes a connection between two places founded by Durand: the pet cemetery Cimetière des Chiens and the Bibliothèque Marguerite Durand in Paris. Durand, a former actress at Comédie-Française, became interested in politics after the Congrès féministe international in 1896. She then founded the journal La Fronde (The Sling), a journal solely written and edited by women. Marguerite had a lion, which she lovingly called tiger and which brought her also publicity for her political campaign. In 1899 she founded the pet cemetery Cimetière des chiens in Asnières-sur-Seine, close to Paris. Although an animal lover, she founded the cemetery for purely hygienic reasons. In 1932, she donated her extensive collection of journals and literature to the government, and the Bibliothèque Marguerite Durand was founded. It was the very same place where Durand died in 1936 of a heart attack.




Practice as Research – Research as a practice (Video Narratives)
Lecture-performance (at the finissage on 31 August 2017)

As a strategy, I often use historical, actual or fictive female characters to install a multilayered biopic inside the exhibition. In Marguerite’s Desires, I use the figuration of Marguerite Durand to explore her progressive ideas and their relevance today. My video interact with other material like discourses in cultural theory, press releases or even the exhibition text on the wall. In this sense, the audio-visual fragments, that I produced, are or can be read in an actual and abstract relationship to other texts, videos, photographies, performative elements and events.


This project was supported by Kulturamt der Stadt Graz.



Kosta Tonev

Wilfred Wyman
2014-2017. Object and sound installation, 23′30″.



The project constructs and narrates the life story of a fictional, late-Victorian artist named Wilfred Wyman (1859-1939). Set against the backdrop of real, historical events, Wyman’s life witnessed the developments in post-Darwinian science and their dire consequences. The human body is a recurrent theme in Wyman’s own work, which resonates with the scientific and intellectual discourses of his time. A collection of documents and relics forms a narrative reflecting the intricate relationship between 19th-century biology and the totalitarian ideologies of the 1930s.





The project is part of the Corner College platform Transferences: The Function of the Exhibition and Performative Processes in the Practices of Art – Questions of Participation, initiated by Dimitrina Sevova and Alan Roth.


Mit der freundlichen Unterstützung des Bundeskanzleramts Österreich.