The neologism re_silly_ence is the motto at Kunstraum Niederoesterreich in 2021. In light of all of the challenges in the past year, resilience has become a word that is on everyone’s lips. It describes an individual or a system’s ability to deal with crises, that its basic functioning – be it physical health during a lockdown or the resilience of an infrastructural system during flooding – can either withstand crises or be restored in a timely manner. We want technically “smart”, resilient systems, which can temper every form of crisis. But isn’t a resilient system merely one that perpetually reproduces itself and is barred from any type of further development? The title re_silly_ence contrasts society’s thirst for resilience and indestructibility, which is accompanied by ever more innovations and technological achievements to maintain this system. 

This theme runs through our annual programme like a red thread. The group exhibition Life constantly escapes (opening on February 25, 2021), which rings in the 2021 programme, investigates the idea of resistant life introduced by theorists of the Black Radical Tradition. It subverts the notion of resilience by posing the question of the radical new. The duo exhibition puzzled (opening on June 10, 2021) presents the artistic positions of Susanna Flock and Xénia Laffely, which pursue the motif of the predetermined (digital) breaking point. Both artists explore these gaps and fractures on the basis of their respective approaches to digital imagery. The exhibition by the collective The Golden Pixel Cooperative, Wake Words (opening on September 30, 2021) concludes the 2021 annual programme with different perspectives on the term “voice recognition”: on the one hand, in the sense of language assistance systems in the Internet of Things; on the other, politically, as vocal recognition in society.

Furthermore, the Kunstraum is throwing its 16^th birthday party in 2021. We celebrate this jubilee with a performance series called Sweet Sixteen, which consists of three different productions with performances by Fanni Futterknecht, Claudia Lomoschitz, and Elisabeth Bakambamba Tambwe.

And like every year, there is our engaged, low-threshold art education programme, including guided tours, workshops, and performances, which takes place both on location in the Kunstraum as well as in online formats.