15 Apr 2015

Life´s Finest Values at Kunsthalle Exnergasse, Vienna

LIFE'S FINEST VALUES
Opening: April 15, 2015, 7:00 pm
Exhibition: April 16 to May 30, 2015

Participating artists:
Lisa Schmidt-Colinet & Alexander Schmoeger & Florian Zeyfang, Libia Castro & Ólafur Ólafsson, cylixe, Jan Peter Hammer, Annika Eriksson, Brigitta Kuster & Gülây Akin & Angelika Levi, Ina Wudtke, Iratxe Jaio & Klaas van Gorkum, Oliver Ressler, Ines Schaber & Mathias Heyden, Vermeir & Heiremans

April 17, 2015, 4:00 pm: Life, Labor, Looking. Lecture by Dieter Lesage (in English).
May 29, 2015, 7:00 pm: Handel mit der Zukunft. Screening and artists' talk with Arne Hector & Minze Tummescheit and Vermeir & Heiremans, moderated by Florian Wüst (in English).

Curated by Ina Wudtke and Florian Wüst

The exhibition LIFE'S FINEST VALUES presents video works by 21 artists, filmmakers, and architects. The exhibition investigates the interrelations between the realms of housing, art, and capital in different urban contexts around the world: from Berlin to Caracas, from Havana to Hong Kong, from Brussels to Tbilisi. The title of the exhibition was a slogan used by a real estate company in Berlin to market luxury apartments. The values that this slogan bespeaks have been reappropriated by the participants in their works. The video works share a focus on text, dialogue, and interview formats as a means of political analysis and knowledge production. Many projects deconstruct neoliberal language and ideology, which often consciously extract loaded words like 'freedom', 'values', and 'life' from their historical contexts and equate them with the 'freedom of the market' and 'monetary value', thus promoting a concept of 'life' solely as a 'market-oriented project'.

Exhibition in the framework of Destination Wien 2015 EXTENDED