"Sovereignity in Chaos"
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Kunstraum ​LLLLLL Verein für Kunst der Gegenwart

Seidlgasse 14, 1030 Vienna, Austria
11. 12.2019 – 10. 01. 2020
curated by Camilla Cole
photography by Reinhold Zisser

Julia Belova
Katharina Cibulka
Luisa Kasalicky
Gašper Kunšič
Christiane Peschek
Céline Struger


”This exhibition is not only concerned with how our global governing bodies are free falling from one catastrophe to the next, but it also draws on Neurohacker Jordan Greenhall’s strategy of self agency and drawing the idea of Sovereignty inward. By using our agency to contribute to collective multimodal action, we can ride the storm of flux that we increasingly find ourselves caught up in. All of the artists in this exhibition: Julia Belova, Katharina Cibulka, Luisa Kasalicky, Gašper Kunšič, Christiane Peschek and Céline Struger offer alternatives to our predetermined frameworks.

As democracy rose in strength, placing power in the hands of the people, we realised that there could be no peace without law, and these laws inherently bound Sovereignty's powers. Alarmingly, today these democracies are struggling- slipping back towards authoritarian control, while simultaneously social structures such as politics, gender, identity, religion, and even basic premises of truth and justice- are now mercurial and we need to reconsider our positions on what we thought we knew, and why we believed it in the first place. The adjustment of these structures is typically considered to be a paradigm shift, and today these paradigms are collapsing too quickly and we cannot adjust quickly enough leaving us in a period of crisis (…)”

”(…) By Sovereignty, Greenhall doesn’t just mean independence of thought and action, but also a deeper sense of integrity beyond ego and ideological frameworks. Instead of there being a hierarchy, we need to work simultaneously - be multimodal, collaborative with no ownership. Blockchain is one example of this decentralisation, and we should apply this way of thinking to our relationship with machines, animals, and vegetation. Celine Struger’s “Limbic Resonance” and “Tender Prey” (2019) raise the question of who is doing the reclaiming (e.g. marginalised groups, future generations, alien invaders, machines, nature) and at the expense of whom. The works exhibited indicate vegetal growth and tackle issues such as animacy and mimicry.”

Camilla Cole