Opening, June 12, 2025, 6 pm
Exhibition, June 13 – August 14, 2025
Works by Apparatus 22, Albin Bergström, Luca Büchler, Monilola Olayemi Ilupeju, Francis Whorrall-Campbell
Under the title edging—bodies without orgasms, Michał Leszuk curates a group exhibition at Kunstraum Lakeside that expands the annual theme Glitch with artistic positions that open the world to a queer language and bring the hegemonic dominance of majority society to the edge. Edging, commonly known as orgasm control, practiced alone or with one or more partners, is conceived as a phenomenon that transcends the realm of sexuality while remaining firmly anchored in it. With selected works by Apparatus 22, Albin Bergström, Luca Büchler, Monilola Olayemi Ilupeju, Francis Whorrall-Campbell, coupled with his own curatorial research, Leszuk explores its contradictions and potentials. Pleasure and stimulation are contrasted with a seemingly aimless (sexual) activity. Or, transferred to prevailing conditions in society, rapid acceleration on all levels is interrupted by social stagnation, even regression. In this sense, edging shares key characteristics with the glitch. “Herein lies a paradox: glitch moves, but glitch also blocks,” writes Legacy Russell, whose concept of the glitch is central to the 2025 annual program at Kunstraum Lakeside: “It incites movement while simultaneously creating an obstacle. Glitch prompts and glitch prevents. With this, glitch becomes a catalyst, opening up new pathways, allowing us to seize on new directions.”*
Three interconnected motifs form Michał Leszuk’s departure point: first, the principle of multiplicity, as Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari described the dynamics of entanglements and assemblages, which interact in complex, non-linear ways and lead to unpredictable outcomes; the instability of the category “body,” whose conventional representation and fixed concept are put up for discussion by Legacy Russell as a glitch or malfunction; and last but not least, moments of desire and lust that correspond to Roland Barthes’ idea of pornographic messages. “There is a certain lure to search for what is unknown, what is hybrid and ambiguous, and to stir up uncertain desire-zones,” says Leszuk about the concept of the exhibition. It is “the journey of a wild celebration that can determine neither the beginning nor reach the end. Unlike a structure, which is established by the signifying points and positions (beginning-end), queering always remains unfinished, it takes a form of a horny rhizome, mapping and traversing limitless multiplicities, simultaneously rewarding it with pleasure, excitement, and affirmation.”
Michał Leszuk (b. 1993 in Poland) lives and works in Vienna.
* Legacy Russell, Glitch Feminism (London: Verso, 2020), eBook.
Curatorial statement
edging—bodies without orgasms, 2025
Michał Leszuk
“Principle of multiplicity: it is only when the multiple is effectively treated as
a substantive, ‘multiplicity,’ that it ceases to have any relation to the One
as subject or object, natural or spiritual reality, image and world.”*
“We” wish to distinctively impose neither subject nor object; instead, “we” manifest as an assemblage of multiplicities or bodies-without-organs. Within this context, the bodies become imperceptible, instigating action and emotion. The absence of a singular subject allows for an acknowledgment of intricate dynamics and the perpetual nature of interconnections. Within each realm exist lines of connection or segmentation, layers, and domains. Yet, there are also escape routes, processes of disengagement, dismantling of established structures and layers, and slippages, glitches, or frictions that welcome the critical potential of incoherencies and errors.
The project does not embody a single object, as doing so would hinder the potentialities of multiplicities, rhizomatic connections, and obscure relationships. As an assemblage, it exists intricately entwined with otherness and in correspondence with other bodies-without-organs—a concept signifying a state of being not constrained by societal, biological, or normative structures. The inquiry into this project diverges from a central focus on its meaning; instead, it directs attention to the potentialities it holds, the intensities it transmits or refrains from transmitting, the multiplicities it incorporates and transforms, and the convergence it achieves with other bodies-without-organs.
“Body: it is a world-building word, filled with potential, and,
as with glitch, filled with movement.”**
“We” wish to initiate a discourse that explores dialogues on the instability and disability of the body, challenging its conventional and binary depiction while offering a powerful critique of capitalist structures. The gender binary is a precarious and immaterial construct that permeates societal narratives with toxic influence. Within this binary system, “we” are confined to unchangeable selves, relinquishing the power to define and choose “our” identities. Perceived as a “glitch,” an error or malfunction, this project materializes as a refusal to adhere to predetermined norms. Simultaneously, it embodies the glitch to question societal expectations and disrupt the established score of gender and body performance.
This injection of irregularities becomes an act of resistance, activating new architectures through malfunctions and celebrating gateways to the unknown. The body, described as unpredictable and unnamable, is imbued with potential and movement, or, as Deleuze and Guattari term it—“becoming.” The process involves composing, emphasizing interaction and collective valorization, and unsettling normative modes of comprehension. It simultaneously occupies some-where and no-where, no-thing and every-thing.
“porno-graphic messages are embodied in sentences so pure
they might be used as grammatical models.”***
“We” wish to open up and bring to an edge a world of/for the queer language, perceptions, dreams, and aesthetics that confront the hegemonic supremacy of majoritarian dominance. “We” want to tease out and edge these categories, prioritizing a messy and sometimes unattractive intimacy and pleasure, in which we lose ourselves, to bring unexpected energies between their junctures and to break from the established orders. In edging “we” seek the points of withdrawal and distortions from linearity of knowledge production. Seen from this perspective, “we” never aim to come to conclusions, since there is no predefined destination when we embark in the movement of fingering, pulling, and pushing.
This continual act of (self-) penetration simultaneously evokes the “pornographic” and reveals what disturbs and liberates the limits of the body. It pertains to what dramatically alters and captivates the gaze, and what inevitably delves into the raw essence of corporeal existence. “We” find it vital to destroy notions that are far too inclusive, notions like: body, animality, identity, sexuality, culture, technology, or ecologies. Things are never that simple, and a binary-reductionist operation only subjugates them.
There is a certain lure to search what is unknown, what is hybrid and ambiguous, and to stir up uncertain desire-zones. The journey of a wild celebration that can determine neither the beginning nor reach the end. Unlike a structure, which is established by the signifying points and positions (beginning-end), queering remains always unfinished; it takes a form of a horny rhizome, mapping and traversing limitless multiplicities, simultaneously rewarding it with pleasure, excitement, and affirmation.
* Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (London:
University of Minnesota Press, 1987), 8.
** Legacy Russell, Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto (London: Verso Books, 2020), 51.
*** Roland Barthes, The Pleasure of the Text (New York: Hill and Wang, 1975), 6.
Albin Bergström
Untitled, 2024
Plastic, popcorn, zippers, 60 × 50 × 20 cm
Albin Bergström’s Untitled draws from the atmospheres of gay cruising cinemas of the 1970s and 80s—spaces of coded intimacy that, under legal constraints, screened primarily heterosexual pornography. Yet rather than a direct homage, the work defies specificity, embracing ambiguity and withholding. At its core is a pillow—an object both private and anonymous, shaped by the artist’s encounter with a discarded plastic bag filled with popcorn outside a cinema in Hackney, London. Its deflated, emptied form evoked a corpse, a vacancy imbued with both melancholy and estrangement. This moment of recognition materializes in a sculptural gesture that hovers between familiarity and detachment, presence and absence. The pillow resists direct representation yet carries traces of the body, suggesting rest, intimacy, and the imprint of past encounters. As an object, it absorbs and reflects desire, memory, and loss, occupying a space between comfort and discomfort, where histories of touch and abandonment subtly unfold.
Albin Bergström (b. 1992 in Sweden) lives and works in Vienna and Gothenburg.
Apparatus 22
Apparatus 22 – Sex Tape III (Atletica Ideal x Lovers of Beaubourg by
Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries), 2022
Video installation / presented as video: 6:53 min
Apparatus 22 is a collective of self-proclaimed daydreamers, citizens of many realms, researchers, poetic activists, and (failed) futurologists. In their multifarious works, reality is mixed with fiction and storytelling, which all converge with a critical approach drawing knowledge from design, sociology, literature, and economics. The work with the subtitle Atletica Ideal x Lovers of Beaubourg by Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries is part of Sex Tapes, a series of quirky musical stories about love, desire, and pleasure from non-human perspectives—that of Atletica Ideal, a fictional artificial intelligence hailing from the SUPRAINFINIT utopian universe, who only has sex with artworks. Conjuring animism and sympathetic techno-magic, the steamy encounter between Atletica Ideal and the “Lovers of Beaubourg”—a digital work produced by two net art pioneers, namely the duo Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries—is an occasion for Apparatus 22 to add a torrid sapiosex spin to their daring celebration of machinic sexual agency. Flirtatious and mysterious to the core, the Apparatus 22 – Sex Tape III video is a juicy speculation about who is seducing whom, who could be a dominatrix in the relationship machine / human / artworks / artist, who is the mastermind, and who is the pawn in someone else’s game?
Apparatus 22 (founded in 2011 by current members Erika Olea, Maria Farcas, and Dragos Olea, together with Ioana Nemes (1979–2011)) live and work between Bucharest, Brussels, and the SUPRAINFIT utopian universe.
Francis Whorrall-Campbell
Your Dreams Are Just a Dick Away, 2024
Graphite on dart flight, 16.5 × 3.5 × 3.5 cm
Working across text, sculpture, and the digital, Francis Whorrall-Campbell’s work undertakes a materialist investigation into sexual subjectivity. Guided by their research into the pasts and presents of gender transition, the relationship between making an artwork and making a (gendered) self emerges as a method of critical reflection on how identities and desires are formed in interaction with the world and narratives around them. Your Dreams Are Just a Dick Away is part of a series of “dart drawings” by the artist. Pencil is applied directly onto the plastic-coated surface of the dart’s flight, creating a fragile, delicate composition where the sheen of the graphite competes with the glossy coating for visual and material presence. Three sides of the flight feature drawings of male torsos, while the fourth depicts a graphic arrow—perhaps alluding to the dual meaning embedded in the object’s tail. Both in technique and form, the work oscillates between the painstaking and the crude, layering found imagery with recognizable symbols. Questions of desire and representation are thrown into play but remain unresolved as the images shift with each new angle.
Francis Whorrall-Campbell (b. 1995 in Great Britain) lives and works in London and Vienna.
www.fwhorrallcampbell.superhi.hosting
Luca Büchler
Horizon, 2024
Vaseline, variable dimensions
Luca Büchler’s artistic practice revolves around forms of performance and performativity derived from spatial encounters, which results in sculptures, objects, installations, and performances. He is interested in bodies and their entanglements with social norms and the choreography of space. Horizon is part of a larger series of works including a spatial installation in which the artist explores thresholds and the in-between moment. The work draws on Giorgio Agamben’s notion of gesture: something that defines human existence while remaining fleeting, a pure means without end, and an expression of process. As part of Horizon, Büchler presents a work in which a window is covered in Vaseline, disrupting the viewer’s initial perception of the space. Visibility is blurred: from the outside, one can only catch glimpses of what unfolds inside, hinting at what awaits beyond the threshold. Once inside, the view outward is equally obscured, turning the outside world into a vague impression. This two-way disturbance challenges the clarity of borders and creates a dynamic of partial concealment and exposure. Through its formal and conceptual strategy, Horizon alters the perception of spatial conditions, blurring distinctions between inside and outside, visibility and opacity. While Büchler’s work reveals the mechanisms of spatial and social organization, it simultaneously destabilizes them, inviting viewers to navigate uncertainty, desire, and the politics of access and belonging.
Luca Büchler (b. 1996 in Switzerland) lives and works in Zurich and Vienna.
www.lucabuechler.com
Monilola Olayemi Ilupeju
Masturbation Study #1–#5 (Body Print Series), 2022
Charcoal and graphite on paper, each 27.5 × 35 cm
Monilola Olayemi Ilupeju’s works between painting, writing, performance, and installation balance intimate experiences of connection, violence, and healing against broader considerations of cultural distortion and identity. Her Masturbation Study (Body Print Series) emerges from an act of cathartic inscription, where the body becomes both the medium and the subject. Created in a moment of emotional rupture, the works register the tension between desire, trauma, and release. Using charcoal and paper as extensions of the self, Ilupeju transforms a personal, instinctual gesture into a physical record of affect—pressure, friction, and absence materialized in ruptured surfaces and erratic marks. These drawings challenge the boundaries between self-possession and loss, between eroticism and violence, revealing the entanglements of memory and embodiment. Through this process, the act of drawing becomes a means of reckoning, a confrontation with the ghosts of past intimacies, and a site for transformation.
Monilola Olayemi Ilupeju (b. 1996 in the USA) lives and works in Berlin.
www.monilola.com