 | Close enough
Walking Conference
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Closeness or distance is not a static state but rather a movement, a constant adjustment of distances: Everyday social meshes of family, friendship, community and networks have changed drastically. What, for example, do we define as a professional and what as a work relationship? How do such relationships shape our everyday life? Just as work structures, sense of time or the relationship of sedentariness or mobility change, so too does the relationship of people often shift towards a paradox between pragmatic purposefulness and devoted unselfishness. So what contemporary models, what places, what possibilities or even utopias of closeness and distance are there?
Divided into various themed walks, the “Walking Conference” strolls around the city and art, asking abstract and concrete questions revolving around the topic of “close enough” in talks, lectures and discussions: As a theoretical event that itself reduces and increases distances. Starting with a joint panel discussion to lead into the subject, the event then divides up into six walks with different focal issues, intersecting at audiences with international theorists, and converging again at the end with a final lecture.
Love
Excursions to the land of unconditional closeness (by coach and on foot)
By Astrid Kury (A) & Astrid Polz-Watzenig (A)
With Franzobel (A), Clément Mutombo (A), Michael Ostrowski (A) & Eva Lia Wyss (CH)
The stories of love that we tell each other reveal the unstable utopia that love is today. This walk goes from the place where lines run hot and where love kindles to the place of failure – where “everything goes down the drain”. And in between and above it all hovers the subversive power of love. The only thing that counts.
Co-operation of steirischer herbst, KHG & Akademie Graz
Scene
Networks as social capital
By Jörn Morisse / Zentrale Intelligenzagentur (D) & Rasmus Engler (D)
With Joachim Baur (A), Rupert Lehofer (A), Robert Lepenik (A) et al.
Is it still possible to separate private and public relations when life, art and work are merging? Only few people involved in culture and arts can live on their own income, while most depend on additional sources. Flirting with failure is as much a part of staging the modern artist’s existence as cultivating a Dionysian lifestyle. This obviously goes hand in hand with a complicated mesh of relationships that make up the “scene”. What scene yields money, what scene quality of life?
Sex
Fetish in Second Life
By Anna Cäcilia Dorfner (A) & Johannes Sperlhofer (A)
With Kyrah Abattoir (F) & other avatars
Sex fetishes are omnipresent in the virtual world of “Second Life”: The borderlines between the human sexual act, substitute objects and cybersex blur to create a new, shameless dimension of sexuality that everyone can experience. The walk sets out for the market places of virtual fetish objects and then – equipped with your own fetishes – to fetish clubs to analyse the interpretation of sex, fetish and social interaction that prevails there.
Credit
Being paid to do nothing
By RELAX / chiarenza & hauser & co (CH/F)
With Sabeth Buchmann (A)
Can you save friendship like you save money? This walk with the artist duo RELAX takes out a loan from the audience without ruining anyone. On this joint walk around the city, friendships are wasted while meeting friends or colleagues on the way. Regular measurements may have to be made. And hopefully the loan will be used up after three hours.
Everyday
The good, the bad and the usual city
By Markus Bogensberger (A) & Gabu Heindl (A) – HDA - Haus der Architektur Graz
With Alex Axinte (RO) & Eyal Weizman (GB/IL)
A walk around the everyday city: To see how the inhabitants of Graz live, work, consume, but also to see how and where we look. Walking within the streets is the medium for a moving close-up view: an immersive relationship with an intense look at the city, its everyday architecture and its use and misuse.
In co-operation with HDA - Haus der Architektur Graz
Foreignness/Closeness
We are the others
By Gabriele Dietze (A/D) and Laila Huber (A)
With Ines Aftenberger (A), Joseph Dim (A), Veronika Dreier (A), Janja Kozel (A), Leo Kühberger (A), Igor Petkovic (A) et. al.
This walk sets out in search of points of connection between migrants who have settled in and a Graz of far/near networks. There will be a visit to a Fair Trade organisation, a cultural-anthropological street exploration, and a snack at a polycultural artist’s café. The search is for ‘Third Spaces’ and new structures.
Spielfeldforschung
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