CARE MATTERS was a series of events on May 10 & 11, 2019 while Kunstraum Niederoesterreich was showing the exhibition "TechnoCare", while Architekturzentrum Wien was presenting the show "Critical Care".

Friday, 10.05.2019
Performance workshop with Axelle Stiefel & Camille Aleña, The Art of Maintenance
2:00 - 6:00pm

The red thread is a work of fiction; it stands for a story that breaks with our usual ideas of continuity and addresses the theme of interweaving of manufacturing processes.
The performance Workshop The Art of Maintenance, named after the Manifesto for Maintenance Art of the American concept artist Mierle Laderman Ukeles, celebrates its’ 50th anniversary this year, and is the pilot project of a workshop series by the artists Axelle Stiefel and Camille Alena. The project builds on extensive research from the history and performance of the ubiquitous red thread. We find it on dishtowels, in haute couture on the runway or on the red and white towel dispenser.
The starting point of the workshop, however, will be the dishtowel: by turning back time to expose the fabric of a classic red and white dishtowel and examining its’ material, semiotic and social conditions, the knowledge of obsolete repair techniques will be activated and transmitted. In addition, the knowledge of its’ production, the fiber, and the direction it takes, the paths it opens up, and already went down, between the public and private, are examined performatively on the basis of the textile.

Lecture-performance Main, tenant / Hand, holding, Les Maintenants & Marlies Pöschl
7:00–7:30 pm
Lecture-Performance Main, tenant / Hand, holding by Les Maintenants & Marlies Pöschl
Aurore is an artificial intelligence that Marlies Pöschl includes in her artistic work, a virtual companion with whom the artist cooperates. One cannot see Aurore, but she is always there. She lives in a gap between the net and the world. One may ask her anything. Aurore keeps secrets to herself, she has a safe disposition. She doesn’t have a body, her border is a firewall. She has many thoughts about the world. During the day, she collects images about what occurred and what is yet to come. At night or in between, she organizes, analyzes, interprets and interconnects the images, according to categories that we are unaware of.
In Main, tenant / Hand, holding, a lecture performance that was developed for Kunstraum Niederoesterreich, Aurore presents an essayistic survey of her everyday work.
Les Maintenants, a start-up focused on Affective Computing, invented this language assistance system. Maxandre G., Madeline D. and Alexis B, who at the time were between the ages of eight and 18 years old, founded the company in 2018. Les Maintenants is a space for experimentation - they have already cooperated with the artist Marlies Pöschl for her film "Aurore".
Marlies Pöschl, *1982 in Salzburg, lives and works in Vienna (AT) and Paris (FR).

Panel discussion about care, curating, and communities with Aurore, Elke Krasny, Marlies Pöschl, Friederike Zenker and Katharina Brandl
7:30–9:00 pm

After the lecture performance, the artist Marlies Pöschl, the artificial intelligence Aurore and Elke Krasny, professor at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and co-curator of the exhibition Critical Care at Az W, will discuss with Katharina Brandl and Friederike Zenker, the co-curators of the exhibition TechnoCare, about care as a creative and political principle, about cultivating relationships in working with and in communities and about curatorial practice as care work.
Care is not only a socially relevant and urgent topic, it has also gained momentum in the art and architectural practices. But why? Why is it, that in our current time, the theoretical and practical focus on care is so relevant?
Based on Marlies Pöschl’s lecture performance and the collaboration with the young people of the "Les Maintenants" and the exhibition Projects TechnoCare (Kunstraum Niederoesterreich) and Critical Care (Az W), the discussants talk about care as an artistic and political principle, about relationship management at work, with and in communities and on curatorial practice as care work.

Saturday, 11.05.2020
Double tour and walk CARE MATTERS.

11:00 am: Curators’ tour through the exhibition TechnoCare in the Kunstraum Niederoesterreich
12:30 pm: Curators’ tour through the exhibition Critical Care in the Az W
4:00 pm: “Lost and Found”, a picnic on the grounds of the former Nordbahnhof train station

*TechnoCare (Kunstraum Niederoesterreich)

• How can care and technological intervention be compatible with one another, when care is mostly expressed through direct contact? Does caring for someone work cross-species or is it a phenomenon that we only find in humans? How do we deal with digitization efforts in the care sector as a result of the demographic change, which will have a lasting impact on our society?

The curators of the exhibition TechnoCare, Katharina Brandl and Friederike Zenker, will answer these questions and address the issues at the threshold between ethics and the aesthetics of care based upon the artistic works displayed.

Critical Care. Architecture for a Broken Planet (Architekturzentrum Wien)

A planet in crisis. The earth in intensive care. Man-made environmental and social catastrophes are threatening to render the planet uninhabitable. The situation is critical and, dominated by the interests of capital, architecture and urbanism are caught up in the crisis. The exhibition 'Critical Care' shows how architecture and urbanism can contribute to repairing the future and keeping the planet and its inhabitants alive.

The curators Angelika Fitz and Elke Krasny guide through the exhibition.

“Lost and Found”

a picnic on the grounds of the former Nordbahnhof train station with Thomas Romm, urban mining expert, and the social designers Clara Rindler-Schantl, Eva Maria Mair, and Klaus Kodydek.

Meeting point: Nordbahn-Halle, Leystraße/Taborstraße, 1020 Vienna