TENT TOPICS

Ideas and projects from the Social Design Studio

The specially erected tent camp in the Social Design Studio provides space for the various projects. The topics dealt with trigger new (survival) strategies. Contributions by Dimitrije Andrijević, Eliza Chojnacka und Lena Michalik, Frank Daubenfeld, Susanne Gutsche, Clara Hirschmanner und Alberta Sinani, Marlene Hübner und Amelie Schlemmer, Neslihan Kiran, Ana Mumladze, David Fabian Ritzi, Scheßl und Danny Nedkova, Viktoriia Slynchuk, Ana-Marija Vašiček.

(c) Anna Vasof

In the course of the pandemic, regulations and restrictions continue to shape our everyday life, and there is still no true feeling of safety. Not infrequently, we hear talk of a comeback or of the return to former familiarities and habits. As if the world had ever paused since the outbreak of the pandemic. As if the invoked certainties had ever existed. The fragility of living conditions, the inequality in pay and security, the injustices in health care, the restrictions in mobility and border crossing – this list could easily be continued

– all of which has been exposed rather than produced by the current global crisis. Young artists – and all those who find themselves at points in their lives that call for decisions – are highly affected and at the same time challenged. Life cannot be rewound. Predictions seem less reliable or they are based on merciless algorithms – turning us into puppets of our own existence.

The master theses of the academic year 2020/21 impressively address essential questions on food security, collective knowledge production, the urgency of manual labor, claiming an inclusive city through protecting and using its natural environment, that belongs to everyone and yet is not a commodity, and on the contemplation of one’s own sexuality in regard to the demand for closeness. All these issues determine and constitute our present as well as our future. The tent camp in the Social Design Studio gives the various projects a precarious and all the more necessary space for contemplation and reflection. The topics dealt with trigger new (survival) strategies.

The direction is clear: It is about not renouncing the future, not falling into resignation, but remaining active and in solidarity with each other, with nature and also with ourselves – with all the individuality we are longing for.

 

Time
Summer Semester 2021
Location
Vienna