Projects on VBKÖ Archives and History

Organizations such as the VBKÖ demonstrate the complexity and contradictions of contemporary feminist historiography: Here, the emancipatory history of the artistic women’s movement, which goes back to the time of imperialism and which can still be claimed in an official art historiography, meets the history of the Collaboration with the National Socialist regime. The gaps in knowledge with regard to one’s own history, historiography and research resulting from historical and internal breaks in the association are more easily forgotten, not only National Socialist, but also class-specific and colonial entanglements in the association.

One of the greatest challenges is therefore to further develop structures and initiate processes that enable historical narratives to be re-examined over and over again, processes of reflection to continue and this knowledge to be made public and discussed. The VBKÖ positions itself as a place that maintains contemporary, feminist, artistic agendas, offers a space for experiments and promotes political and activist work in order to create a new, lively connection between historical debate and contemporary, queer, feminist art production.

To date there have been 26 artistic and research projects that have critically dealt with the archive, the Nazi past and post-colonial and racist practices since 2004.

Selected projects:

SKGAL |

100 Jahre:Years VBKÖ Festschrift |

Revolutionare Systeme aktualisieren:Tatsy steme konfrontieren I: 8. März 2010 |

Regulation of Violence: On the Body, Otherness and the Crisis of (Human) Capital |

Movement Politics. The Revolution Is Longer Than We Think: 30. Oktober 2010 |

KUNSTMARKT Am Schöpfwerk: 2007:2006 |

Intersectionality, co-constitution of oppression: the epistemological contribution of antiracist and decolonial feminisms |

Freunde und Komplizen

DIE VIELEN ARCHIVE! |

Die Kunst der Frau – Freundinnen und Komplizinnen |

Check Instead: the Colonial Matrix of Power! December 8-19, 2009 |