Host

Setting off, on the move, (never) arriving, being dependent/strange/other/free—a guest. Inviting, welcoming, caring, exchanging, and offering a platform. In a time marked by mobilization, by the global circulation of data, objects, goods, and bodies too; in a time, in turn, when stringent attempts are being made to preclude the refuge and migration movements of people, Kunstraum Lakeside reflects on the capacity to accommodate others. The 2024 annual program asks what being a host is all about. Hospitality is ultimately a phenomenon permeated by power effects. For, according to Beatrice von Bismarck, such dynamics within different relationships determine “whether hospitality is granted in the first place, and if so, under what criteria and conditions. Subsequently, these are responsible for ascriptions of identity and status as well as, entangled within, the distribution of the resources at stake.” In this light, exhibiting—the curatorial situation—is also informed by these aspects of hospitality. According to Bismarck, this entails “the definition of roles, tasks, and functions that all participants can assume in the given situation and the allocation of spaces in the broadest sense,”—in short, society.

Lisl Ponger — welcome
Opening, February 6, 2024, 6 pm

Exhibition, February 7 – March 29, 2024

Huda Takriti — Rewinding(s). In Rehearsal
Opening, April 9, 2024, 6 pm

Exhibition, April 10 – May 29, 2024
Long Night of Research, May 24, 2024

Steffi Parlow
Opening, June 11, 2024, 6 pm

Exhibition, June 12 – September 13, 2024

Dušan Barok
Opening, September 24, 2024, 6 pm

Exhibition, September 25 – November 15, 2024

Salome Dumbadze, Ana Gzirishvili, Nina Kintsurashvili
Opening, November 26, 2024, 6 pm

Exhibition, November 26 – January 2025

In 2024, we shed light on the multifarious aspects of hospitality. The departure point is the concept of the “host,” which has undergone an interpretative shift in the course of digitalization and virtualization: in IT, a host computer can basically be any resource that can host another resource as a “guest” or provide the clients connected to it with particular IT services. The term “host,” first used in connection with mainframes to refer to centralized hardware elements, is now used to denote, for example, virtual machines that share server capacities with other such units and host applications, or in the case of cloud providers, “hosting” describes a line of business.

The annual program at Kunstraum Lakeside explores how hosts enable or disable encounters with strangers and the other, what hosts expect from those who enter their territory, and if it is even possible to create spaces for hosting outside of prevailing conditions. And we stake out whether a host—as a host computer and part of a greater network—can serve us to better understand the necessities of global social relations.

* Beatrice von Bismarck, Das Kuratorische (Leipzig: Spector Books, 2021), 201.

 
Artistic research

Each year, Kunstraum Lakeside devotes its program to a specific theme derived from its special standing as an institution for exhibition, performance, and discourse. The Kunstraum’s integration into a Science and Technology Park, and the linking of its events to the semester program at the University of Klagenfurt, raise questions about how visual artists interact with the fundamentals, possibilities, and limits of current knowledge production. The artistic program focuses on fields of action that can be subsumed under the term “artistic research.” Artistic research, like art in general, allows us to gain aesthetic experience. In addition, however, it also offers artists an opportunity within their respective art practice—i.e., using their own media, formats, and modes of representation—to contemplate the framework conditions that govern their activities while keeping a close watch over the impact of their actions. Embedded in social, historical, and cultural interpretation contexts, artist research therefore enables us to respond to the constantly changing realities of our society.

Exhibitions 2018 — Research
Exhibitions 2019 — Process
Exhibitions 2020 — Format

Exhibitions 2021 — Future Perfect
Exhibitions 2022 — A Sense of Relatedness
Exhibitions 2023 — Hollow Ground

Exhibitions 2024 — Host
Exhibitions 2025 — Glitch
Exhibitions 2026 — Script