Curated by Thomas D. Trummer

• 20.09.–25.10.2012

The present-day world is tense. Emergency measures are being taken everywhere. Yet can fiscal controls and global political measures truly ward off the more deeply felt vulnerability of life, including mortality? What about the existential constitution? Just as dominant in the present “conditio humana” is the need to get it right along with the drive for perfection. Many disciplines and books about everyday life are concerned with equipping people with an effective immune status by way of selftransformation. Self-help books guide us in avoiding unwelcome intrusions and self-imposed endangerment of our selves. The recommended measures range from physical exercises, social techniques, and medical-physical optimizations to spiritual precautions — all of which are designed to protect people from themselves. The Austrian-American biotechnologist Erwin Chagáff counted among a group of scientists that, starting in the 1950s, were exploring and furthering the conditions that govern the factitious nature of man by deciphering the human genotype. Chagáff himself has nevertheless expressed deep misgivings about this approach, for the empowerment of man goes hand in hand with cultural and ethical consequences. It implies that people may become the designers of other people. This results in an asymmetrical relationship whereby technological means are employed to separate one exemplar of the human species from the cultural learning process and its state of reciprocal action and to willfully study this person. An author thus emerges who is designated neither God nor artist, yet who claims the right to factitious creation.

Alina Szapocznikow (1926–1973), Lara Favaretto (1973), and Ryan Gander (1976) provoke an art of uncomfortable immediacy. In their works, mental armaments and immune systems appear to lack healing effect. They are concerned with direct physical experience and tangible encounters. Imaginary anticipation and sensitive deference supersede the performance requirements placed on the body. Delicate states of being, worldly encounters, and existential keys again rise to the fore.