XENO

A FORENSIC APPROACH TOWARDS A XENOPHILE SOCIETY.

SONG JING  -  NOÉMI KISS  -  ANDREAS KATTNER

Unprejudiced curiosity, vision and openness have always been the main drivers for explorers, scientists and artists to discover the unknown. While medialization offers an incredible variety of secondary knowledge, it may suggest the needlessness of primary experiences. But with virtual reality comes the knowledge of the essential  importance of original encounters. This exhibition projects aim is to create a variety of first hand experiences for the public – and involve them to co-create the body of work. In a time where our world’s cultures are shaken by xeno-phobic aggression and exclusive behaviour it becomes more important than ever to re-activate the xeno-phile and inclusive capacity of human civilization. This is why XENO introduces collaborative strategies of work and encounter. The collaborations will involve the public for the production of collective archives.  

The Exhibition concept is developed and curated by Andreas Kattner, who has specialized in the development of collaborative art production in art spaces, public spaces and in art academies. The artists Song Jing, Noémi Kiss and Andreas Kattner all have a migration background and intend to explore cultural diversity by creating archives of identities in collaboration with the public. The project will be initialized in the Arthill Gallery in London and will then travel to different countries as a growing archive.       https://www.arthillgallery.com/single-post/2017/08/31/XENO

HAIRY FAIRY Noémi Kiss invites the visitors to participate in her art production by contributing drawings and some of their hair;

this hair will be used by the artist and the visitors in the gallery. HAIRY FAIRY is being performed with the visitors of the Arthill Gallery in London for the first time.

CHILDRENS´ DRAWINGS - VISITORS ARE WELCOME TO ADD THEIR DRAWING

Children have an unprejudiced approach toward the foreign and the unknown - their actions are driven by their curiosity. Normally children are painting after drawings made by grown ups; Kiss reversed this order and makes grown ups draw after drawings made by children. Kiss invites the adolescent gallery visitors to paint on enlarged original children's drawings with color markers. The results vary in between surprisingly creative additions and premature doodles.

Happy Couple Children’s Drawing Drywall Crayon 180 x 270 cm 2017 Drawings from Kindergruppe Kunterbunter Puma Panther Kinderhaus Hofmühlgasse Vienna Special guest Stefan Lutschinger

NOÉMI KISS Noémi Kiss is born in Székelykeresztúr in Transylvania, Romania and lives in Vienna since 1986.
Her work has been exhibited in various international european institutions and galleries.
The philosopher, architect and artist Noémi Kiss devotes herself primarily to materiality that relies on the gentle collision of incompatibility. She transforms the material into new meanings and achieves a new appreciation of seemingly well known objects. Her refreshingly sensuous play of grown and made things evokes a cheerfulness, that invites us to rethink our ideas of materiality on the one hand - and on the other hand the value that we are willing to give nature.

HAIRY FAIRY Noémi Kiss invites the visitors to participate in her art production by contributing drawings and some of their hair; this hair will be used by the artist and the visitors in the gallery. HAIRY FAIRY is being performed with the visitors of the Arthill Gallery in London for the first time.

ANDREAS KATTNER  (born in Hamburg, Germany) lives in Vienna. He is an artist, academy lecturer and curator and studied philosophy, fine arts and education. His work has been exhibited in various international european institutions and galleries.
Based on his studies of fine arts, conceptual art and education with the emphasis on collaborative learning and interaction is an essential feature of his artistic work, since these enable him to implement his aesthetic ideas in the tension field of the inter-relationship between artist and recipient. This is partly in cooperation with other artists and through curatorial concepts, partly as an interactive collaboration with the audience - him serving as an initiator of an artistic process - mainly in the form of interactive installations. Kattner is lecturer for communication strategies in Vienna and initiator of the TALENT SPACE. He is offering experimental classes in collaborative communication and arts for universities and other institutions in order to elaborate and explore the language and possibilities of collaborative art forms in shared learning environments.
XENO is his curatorial concept and a collaborative as well as investigative approach, same as HANDSHAKE WITH, which are being shown at the Arthill Gallery for the first time.

HANDSHAKE WITH, 2017 An Initiative Towards a Handshake Society. The Handshake has always been an honest way to seal a deal on eye level; mostly common for commercial agreements, Kattner offers the HANDSHAKE as a tool to shape society – through the qualities that the participants agree to – and keep those “deals” by living them. HANDSHAKE WITH is being performed with the visitors at Arthill Gallery in London for the first time.

SONG JING (b. 1983 in Henan Province, China) is a Vienna based artist. She studied photography and fine arts at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. Her work has been exhibited at various international institutions in Europe.
Song Jing’s work revolves around body and emotions. She detects emotional patterns in her environment and projects them on chosen objects. The different artefacts created by the amalgamation of the disembodied feelings and external objects thus turn into visible manifestations of inner landscapes of emotions. This method has led her to create works that need time to evolve. Large series of works are the result of this approach.  
VITA CONTEMPLATIVA has been shown in Athens during the Documenta14 (2017). A photo series of this project is now being shown in London for the first time.

VITA CONTEMPLATIVA, 2017 Spirits-Gum-Cocktail. The philosopher Byung-Chul Han in his essay "Müdigkeitsgesellschaft” (“Fatigue Society") provides a literary account of the phenomenon of alienation and self-exploitation in contemporary society. According to Han, Prometheus was the original mythological figure of the ‘fatigue society’ - with his alter ego, the eagle, eating away at his ever-growing liver. Kafka, in his narrative "Prometheus" (1918), attempted a reinterpretation of this myth: "The gods became tired, the eagles became tired, the wound closed with fatigue." This healing fatigue might be a suggestion for the high performance subject of modern age to a contemplative way of life.
The chewing gums in "VITA CONTEMPLATIVA" are metaphoric representations of the contemporary subjects of self-exploitation. Numbly sunk in spirits (lat. spiritus), air bubbles develop around chewed and exhausted bodies. While mirroring the effects of time, these bubbles both question and symbolise the forces of power, the authenticity of subjects, the notion of free will, cultural divisions, all the connecting and disconnecting elements of life. This work reflects the necessity to overcome this state of self-anaesthesia. It is about the restless search of the soul and about the longing for a contemplative way of life.