Galerie im Taxispalais

Worlds in Contradiction

Areas of Globalisation

with Michael Blum, Christian von Borries, Bureau d’études, Cristina Garrido, Andreas Gursky, Kasmalieva & Djumaliev, Rosmarie Lukasser, Eva and Franco Mattes, Nyaba Léon Ouedraogo, Oliver Ressler, Allan Sekula and Noël Burch, Gabriele Sturm, Thomson & Craighead, Gruppo Tökmag, Wang Qingsong, Yin Xiuzhen


Global interconnectedness due to the growing movements of travel and migration, and to increasingly complex flows of goods and data, raw materials and capital has made often ambivalent changes to the reality of life in various regions of the world. The developing processes of globalisation are leading to ever new questions, experiences, images and formal languages of globality, which are manifest in the personal and social reality of life. The international group exhibition Worlds in Contradiction – Zones of Globalisation presents works by 16 artists from Europe, Asia, America and Africa who investigate global and local contexts within diverse thematic fields. In research-based and documentary, but also narrative, poetic and thought-provoking works they reflect on aspects of mobility, the ambivalent links between production, transport and consumerism, the essence of global information and knowledge networks, or the effects of the global economy on work and our environment.

Curators: Julia Brennacher, Jürgen Tabor


Catalogue
Worlds in Contradiction – Zones of Globalisation
With texts (Germ./Engl.) by Roland Benedikter and Katja Siepmann, Julia Brennacher, Beate Ermacora, Christina Nägele, Markus Neuwirth, Lena Nievers, Sabine Maria Schmidt and Jürgen Tabor 176 pages, numerous colour illustrations, Verlag für moderne Kunst, Vienna 2015

The exhibition’s specific approach, which links the current discourse on globalisation with its artistic reflection, is also mirrored in the text contributions to the publication. The political scientist and sociologist Roland Benedikter and the cultural scientist Katja Siepmann examine current shifts in global systems like economics, politics, culture, religion, technology and demography. Julia Brennacher and Jürgen Tabor analyse these processes as thematised in art, while Markus Neuwirth uses the example of royal cabinets of curiosities during the Renaissance and Baroque periods to demonstrate that the foundation for many political, social and cultural facets of today's globalisation had already been prepared from the 16th century onwards.