Monday, November 16 – Sunday, November 22, 2009
Concept and realization:
Ursula Maria Probst

Art projects shown in »interim spaces« that can be used for short-term exhibitions have a highly stimulating effect on the cultural dynamic of a city. Vienna has a vibrant art scene where artists from Southern or Eastern European countries or other regions of the world are busy realizing cross-border art projects or cooperations with other Viennabased artists. Promoted by artists-in-residence programs, this leads to a lively exchange with international art tendencies.
The exhibition’s title »The Center of Attention. Art as Sociotopia« refers to the social relations between artists and curators from which art projects evolve. It also questions the fulfillment of social utopias which are again gaining in relevance today, though in reverse circumstances. As a counterpole to a logic of compulsive topicality and in contrast to the propagation of hypes, the project is about the emergence of sociotopes whose expansion is driven by international networking. For the project »The Center of Attention. Art as Sociotopia,« Vienna-based artists such as Anna Jermolaewa, Magda Tóthová, Anna Ceeh, Mirjana Djordjevic ´-Thaler, Kamen Stoyanov, Lazar Lyutakov, Miriam Bajtala, Karine Fauchard, Michael Weidhofer, Ana Hoffner, Ivan Jurica, Lina Dokuzovic, Ulrich Dertschei, Steven Guermeur, Ivan Moudov, or Marina Gržinic´ were invited to realize projects themselves or, in turn, to invite two other artists. The open structure thus created provides scope for interdisciplinary and intercreative projects. Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin wall, participants address the political question of which effects geographical, social, and cultural conditions have on identity, artist biographies, relationships, and identification and how art contributes to creating an increasingly urban sphere of living.
As an exhibition venue, an »interim space« was chosen, that is, a place that to date has not existed in an art context. Thus new aspects in the structural transformation of a vibrant art scene are supposed to be made visible. »The Center of Attention. Art as Sociotopia« works as a dynamic exhibition – a »work in progress and regress« – which turns into a platform of artistic exchange to bring art and life together. Unlike in survey exhibitions, this is not about a thematic focus, but about an artistic way of dealing with performance, conceptual, and media-related art. Another starting point is how artists advance art production and the conception of new art formats through personal commitment, changing the value of art against the background of cultural, political, and socioeconomic developments. The project »The Center of Attention. Art as Sociotopia« is based on a multiple and multi-disciplinary definition of art, according to which art work has to be confronted with political and aesthetic discourse; thus new exhibition formats emerge. Art as a communication tool, a communication medium of growing social relevance thus derives from a given center of communication structures, artist relationships, cooperative art productions, and artistic sociotopes.

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