Joanna Pianka PHOTOGRAPHY

Joanna Pianka & Veronika Suschnig
Collective Memory as an Archive of Urban Identity

Perceptual Grounds is a research and exhibition project by Joanna Pianka and Veronika Suschnig, which is on view at the Museum Nordwestbahnhof since October 2, 2021 and deals with history and memory in urban space. The emergence, change and shaping of spatial memory images is the starting point for a discussion in the urban development process.

Venue

Museum Nordwestbahnhof
Nordwestbahnstrasse 16a
1200 Wien

Open every Thursday 3-7 pm and by appointment

Foto Wien - European Month of Photography

Perceptual Grounds at Foto Wien
Foto Wien 2023 opening hours:
1.-30.6.2023
Tuesday, Wednesday, Saturday: 3-7pm
Open House and Garden Party: 17.6. & 24.6
3pm - open end

Collaborations

Museum Nordwestbahnhof
Tracing Spaces
Vienna Art Week
urbanize! Festival
Vienna Design Week
University of Applied Arts Vienna
Academy of Fine Arts Vienna
Lange Nacht der Museen
Q202 Atelierrundgang

Abstract

How can we experience the history of a place through our immediate senses?
How can we perceive events that have happened there?
Who and where are the witnesses of a place and what are our means of uncovering, then depicting, and triggering that atmosphere?
How do we uncover the layers of transformations and reconstructions on a place? Is that the job of us as artists and architects?

The former railway grounds, the Nordbahnhof and Nordwestbahnhof in Vienna, is a palimpsest of various time. It is our area of investigation for the collective memory of a place. The overgrowing urban wilderness – called in Vienna Gstettn – is an intermediate state between different forms of use per se, which past traces are overgrown by time. Processes of transformation, forces of nature, wars and industry, all have shaped this site and its witnesses. We discuss processes behind the codification of history and the significance of preservation and mediation of collective memory linked to a specific place. Perception, cultural appropriation and memories are the foundations of its social constitution.

With the use of different imaging techniques, further processing, distortion and rearrangement of past and present, of various perspectives, we compose the imagines agentes (acting images) of individual and of collective memory. We create a recontextualisation of history and memory through the making of an exhibition as an archive of spatial perception and collective memory. Photography, screen print, film and drawing are deliberately chosen as media for this project. Image and projection take over the function of memory carriers and new levels of perception. The compilation sees itself as an archive of spatial perception and collective memory.

Research Project (german)

Book: Collective Memory as an Archive of Urban Identity (print version)
Book: Collective Memory as an Archive of Urban Identity (web version)

Further Exhibitions and Collaborations

Immo Grief - for a collective culture of mourning for a home
Group exhibition and publication at wienwoche 2022

17.9. - 24.9.2022
Kulturzentrum 4lthangrund Augasse 2-6, 1090 Wien
A project by Lisa Bolyos and Tomash Schoiswohl
with Hamed Abboud, Bahar Aykan, Lisa Bolyos, Kirsten Borchert, Cäcilia Brown, Bisrat Kifle, Lisbeth Kovacic, Georg Lembergh, Joanna Pianka, Tomash Schoiswohl, Veronika Suschnig, Adriana Torres Topaga, Ruth Weismann, Flo Karl Berger
wienwoche 2022
immogrief

parcours - Academy of fine Arts Vienna

12.12. - 15.12.2020
magdas at Stephanushaus Ungargasse 38, 1030 Wien
parcours exhibition

Funding

financed by BMKOES Architecture