Things we don't understand
Publication to the exhibition from January to April 2000.
Ed. by Roger M. Buergel and Ruth Noack for the Generali Foundation. Preface by Dietrich Karner. Introduction by Sabine Breitwieser. Texts by Roger M. Buergel, Ruth Noack, Christian Kravagna and Kaja Silverman.
Artists from Germany, Austria, France and the USA look at the issue of how social engagement and aesthetic autonomy can be connected. In different political and historical contexts, they rely on the effects of irritations which do not frustrate the mind but rather transform it. "Things we don't understand" forge the tools which give new dimensions and spaces for action to our notion that the world can be changed. Rather than showing thankless alternatives of either succumbing to the draw of popular culture (and becoming part of the entertainment industry) or repairing social outrages (and dissolving into social work), the exhibition displays a picture of relevant artistic practice. The catalogue meticulously documents the artists' fields and elaborates them theoretically. lt is rounded off by an essay by the art critic Christian Kravagna on the connection between aesthetic and political experience and an essay by the film theorist Kaja Silverman on "The Language of Things".