VBKÖ – Vereinigung bildender Künstlerinnen Österreichs

Scan the Difference: Gender, Surveillance, and Bodies

Seminar and educational training

15.05-21.05.2019

Mit/ With:

Edna Bonhomme
Vanessa Gravenor
Nina Prader

Everyone is watched, but not everyone is monitored in the same way. Surveillance crops up in many features of life through cameras, the Internet, and cellular phones.

Using methodologies derived from intersectional feminism, Scan the Difference: Gender, Surveillance, and Bodies (STD) deviates from the traditional art show. Through a series of lectures, a zine-making workshop, and lecture-performances, the aim is to create awareness and visibility on how bodies have been scanned medically, culturally, and politically. Thinking about the base of Vienna with a universal health care system, it is important to reflect critically on what rights bodies have and how these rights are threatened by the rise of the Right. Over the course of the exhibition, we will explore questions relating to archiving the self in the age of data collection and digitalization. What strategies do we have to own our body, medically and/or politically? What is the difference between “scanning” and “positioning” (You are vs. I am) from a doctor’s exam, a police report to your cultural I.D., verbal, digital or on paper.

The notion of “the scan” is the tension point: scanning the medical, digitized or human body, scanning a page for the digital archive, the algorithm. Who, what and how are you being scanned for society?

With facilitators, Edna Bonhomme, Vanessa Gravenor, Nina Prader, and contributors, critical friends & allies: Power Makes Us Sick, Ariana Dongus, Elke Krasny, and Hiba Ali.

The events will be held in the format of a workshop/reading group.

We encourage you to sign for sessions: info@vbkoe.org
Suggested readings will be sent after registration. Each speaker will lead each session, but we hope to facilitate active sessions and safe spaces.

*Most talks will take place in English with German translation in whisper circles when requested.

 

Program/ Programme

Wednesday 15.05
18:00-21:00
STD Soft Opening

Thursday 16.05
10:00
Breakfast & Manifesto Welcome
18:00-21:00
Talk with Elke Krasny: Resisting Surveillance, Practicing Healing: Simone Leigh’s The Waiting Room

Friday 17.05
10:00
Fieldtrip to Kunstraum Niederösterreich Care Exhibition

Saturday 18.05 Symposium (sign ups encouraged)
11:30- 12:00
introduction, opening words
12:00 -13:30
non-academic lecture and Video Screening with Vanessa Gravenor
14:00 -15:30
Skype & Screening of Hiba Ali’s Abra (2018) and a discussion on the Amazonification of labor and scanning stations
16:00 -18:00
Discussion on “Medical Apartheid, Technoscience, and Afrofuturism” with Dr. Edna Bonhomme

Sunday 19.05
13:00-15:30
Decolonial Salon with Edna Bonhomme

Monday 20.05
10:00- 20:00
Open hours for the exhibition
14:00-16:00
Zine & Scanning Workshop with Nina Prader

Tuesday 21.05
10:00-20:00
Open Hours & Closing Ceremony

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