Marwa Arsanios • Zach Blas • Sonia Boyce • Banu Cennetoğlu • Alejandro Cesarco • Saddie Choua • Phil Collins • Alice Creischer • Adji Dieye • Ines Doujak • Melanie Ebenhoch • Tim Etchells • Kevin Jerome Everson • Forensic Architecture • Giorgi Gago Gagoshidze, Hito Steyerl & Miloš Trakilović • Monika Grabuschnigg • Vlatka Horvat • Anne Marie Jehle • Gülsün Karamustafa • Jessika Khazrik for the Society of False Witnesses • Victoria Lomasko • Hana Miletić & Globe Aroma • Marina Naprushkina • Tuan Andrew Nguyen • Wendelien van Oldenborgh • Sylvia Palacios Whitman • Dan Perjovschi • Pirate Care • HC Playner • Oliver Ressler • School of Contradiction • Selma Selman • Andreas Siekmann • Daniel Spoerri • Mladen Stilinović • Marlene Streeruwitz • Milica Tomić • …

WHW opens their first exhibition in Kunsthalle Wien, with a program starting at 5 pm at Kunsthalle Wien Museumsquartier: Tim Etchells, Hor 29. Novembar, Marlene Streeruwitz and Wiener Grippe / KW77 (Lydia Haider • Mercedes Kornberger • Maria Muhar • Stefanie Sargnagel). More information here.

The title of the exhibition quotes Bilal Khbeiz, a Lebanese author who mused over some of the things that made the difference between the dreams of people in the Global South and the West (Bilal Khbeiz, Globalization and the Manufacture of Transient Events, Beirut: Ashkal Alwan, 2003). For Khbeiz, the very list – bread, wine, cars, security and peace – defined an idea of “the good life” that was unattainable for much of the world. Almost two decades later, it seems that these basics begin to escape more and more people living in places where they were once taken for granted: climate change puts the continuation of life on earth under question; ecological destruction gathers pace; faith in the benevolence of capitalism was broken by the 2008 crash, and its horizon of slow global improvement and trickle-down benefits is steadily evaporating. Today, one might conclude that each element in the title has turned sour and the idea of a “good life” is a fantasy persisting as “cruel attachment” to a world that is no more.  (Laurent Berlant, Cruel Optimism, Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2011).

Nevertheless, this exhibition is not a counsel of despair or a dark critique of all that is wrong with the world. Instead, the artists and artworks on show seek to rethink “the good life”, both as a collective and individual experience. The exhibition posits artistic subjectivity as a place where one can imagine abandoning the fatal dialectic of modern capitalism – and think beyond it. There are already many moral, ecological, and scientific arguments for organizing our economies more fairly and they are becoming increasingly realizable. Degrowth, as one example, is not only a principled stand for an ecologically sustainable world economy governed by human needs. It also looks for tangible ways to celebrate the richness of the planet and all of its life forms.

The exhibition had an early start. In cooperation with Burgtheater a series of events introduced some of the issues at stake in the show. A residency program for artists, in collaboration with das weisse haus, invites some of the artists to stay in Vienna during the exhibition and to engage with the educational department of Kunsthalle to discuss, mediate, and elaborate on their work. The exhibition includes an educational space which will host a series of artist talks and workshops, guided tours in different languages as well as special programs for kids and families. …of bread, wine, cars security and peace takes place in all venues and inter-spaces of Kunsthalle Wien – opening the house metaphorically and literally, pushing the threshold of the exhibition towards public space.

…of bread, wine, cars, security and peace opens on the 8th of March, International Women’s Day, to emphasize its feminist perspective. Social and ecological reproduction, and a serious reckoning with the ways in which the work of serving others has been shaped by gender and race are at the heart of its vision of the future. It celebrates sustaining and improving human life, as well as the lives of other species who share our world. It proposes a daily life that is less arduous and more pleasurable, with an abundance of communal luxury and collective leisure, where the “good life” is ecologically supportive and oriented toward the flourishing of all.