Postapocalyptic Gestures

Postapocalyptic scenarios tell of a dark future, of social, ecological, and economic catastrophes; they construct a field of vision that concedes humankind no more than an elusive moment within geological time. These narrations create a porous fabric in which fictional and factual, and projected and experienced threats all seem to be irrevocably interwoven, while the constitutive narrative of modernism continues to be written: the narrative of a self who has lost her place in the world and whose comprehension of her own actions, whose purpose, have all become unfathomable with the advent of a new time. Life becomes illegible, and loses and gains itself in gestures. The gesture interrupts the narration, and by citing it defamiliarizes the given. Where do we encounter gestures? In the fragmented reality and the clichés of its narratives.

Temporary exhibition and presentation of the publication Postapocalyptic Self-Reflection (Vienna: Westphalie Verlag 2019), presented by Tanja Widmann together with Laura Preston, David Jourdan, and (former) students of the University of Applied Arts and the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna: Julia Aichinger, Viktoria Bayer, Magda Barthofer, Lisa Braid, Paul Buschnegg, Laura Egger-Karlegger, Maria Fößl, Kelly Ann Gardener, Sylvia Hirschvogel, Aneta Luberda, Loris Sultano, Sophia Widmann, Anna Weisser. This format was conceived together with Manuela Ammer and Johannes Porsch.