Klassengesellschaft

Opening | 21.11.2008, 7 p.m.
Welcome address | Stephan Schmidt-Wulffen, Rector of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna
Introduction | Matthias Herrmann, Head of the Institute for Fine Arts

As part of Month of Photography 2008, the departments of Art
and Digital Media, led by Constanze Ruhm; Art and Photography,
led by Matthias Herrmann; and Video and Video Installation, led
by Dorit Margreiter, present three thematically independent
exhibition projects featuring works by the departments' students.

Untimely Specifics and Dual Articulations
Works by students at the department of Art
and Digital Media / Constanze Ruhm

A "double articulation" is something one might also call a
"self-divested form"-a form, that is, that "imparts" itself to
something else. "Double articulation", then, would indicate a
radical division of forms: we would be compelled to imagine that
media might penetrate each other without losing their specificity,
without becoming "general".

Our exhibition focuses on the interrelations between analogue
and digital cultures, between 16-mm and 35-mm films, between
film and photography, between still and moving images, between
the image and its soundtrack, between amateur and professional
formats. At the center of the works shown here stand interferences
between these formats in general, but also between the pasts
of a medium and its possible "futures."

Photography class: 2 projects
Works by students at the department of Art and Photography /
Matthias Herrmann

As part of Month of Photography, the photography class at the
Academy of Fine Arts will present two thematic foci: the design of
new counseling pavilions for the Chamber of Labour, Vienna,
which raises exemplary questions regarding the conditions of
artistic production amid the tensions that arise from a commission;
and the question of the topicality of AIDS in an era after the end
of the massive public debates it raised during the 1980s and
1990s.

Format: exhibition
A project realized by students at the department of Video
and Video Installation / Dorit Margreiter

In the context of the semester program "Format: Exhibition" dedicated to different approaches to the subject of exhibiting, the Video and Video Installation Department came to the conclusion to present an individual position. In a round of discussions, the students chose Stefanie Hilgarth's work, which she produced together with some colleagues for the Month of Photography.

"entree" is a video installation examining the production and durability of amusement park architectures. Taking the recently opened Prater Plaza as its starting point, the work deals with an architecture which is not aimed at copying imperial buildings but rather stands for recollection and imagination. Focusing on a culturally controlled urban space, "entrée" directly relates to the exhibition space which originally served as a depot for stage sets.