VBKÖ
‘finding pleasure in unarticulated forms’ opens a material speculation on the disruptive potentialities of viscosity to re-imagine the ways we think about queer identity, the boundaries of our own bodies, the way we relate to others, and the social and political anxieties about inhabiting an ambiguous state in which the established binaries of self/other, women/men and toucher/touched, liquid/solid are stirred. Problematizing clear distinctions, the ambiguity of slimy consistencies often brings a sensation of uncomfortableness, a troubling uncertainty that arouses an ambivalent reaction between a playful curiosity and a fearful disgust. Daring to touch the slimy, the exhibition interrogates the pleasures that might be found in building intimacies with unarticulated and ambiguous forms, in getting in-touch with what’s uncertain, unknown and unclear.
As part of a series of activation-events, "Viscous encounters" will be a collective close-reading, thinking and talking group in the framework of the exhibition "Finding pleasure in unarticulated forms". Together, we will touch on a brief selection of texts that engage with viscosity as well as experiment with slimy consistencies, and collectively think through the connections between this ambiguous materiality and the ideas of gender, identity, and being-in-the-world-with-others. A soft evening of collectively doing sensual theory.
*If you plan to attend the event, please drop us an email to confirm attendance & get the texts at: puro.conjuro.x@gmail.com
The Vereinigung bildender Künstler*innen Österreichs (VBKÖ) was founded in 1910 to promote women artists and stand for the improvement of their artistic, economic and educational conditions. Among the first achievements of the Association was successfully lobbying for the inclusion of female students into the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna in the 1920s. The VBKÖ has survived through 113 years of both an emancipatory turn of the artist-women’s movement and the dark segments of history that followed, contradicting and complicating its mission of feminist agency. Today, the VBKÖ fosters contemporary artistic agendas, offering a space for experimentation and the promotion of political and activist work in order to establish a vital connection between historical debates and contemporary queer, feminist art production.