Melanie Bonajo’s (1978, Heerlen, The Netherlands) practice examines subjects of spirituality, gender, sexuality and our shifting relationship with nature. Through her videos, performances, photographs and installations, she explores how technological advances and commodity-based pleasures increase feelings of alienation, removing an individual’s sense of belonging. Captivated by concepts of the divine, Bonajo investigates the spiritual emptiness of her generation, attempting to understand fundamentally existential questions by reflecting on ideas around classification, gender, domesticity, and our collective attitudes towards value.

Bonajo’s work has been exhibited and performed in international art institutions including Tate Modern, London; Frankfurter Kunstverein; EYE Film Institute, Amsterdam; STUK Arts Centre, Leuven; De Bond, Brugge; Rogaland Kunstsenter, Stavanger; De Appel, Amsterdam; Centre for Contemporary Art, Warsaw; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Moscow Biennale; National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul; Fondazione Prada, Milan; PPOW Gallery and PS1/MoMA, New York. Bonajo has contributed to several art magazines, was creative editor of Capricious Magazine, and has curated various shows. She has published several books, including Matrix Botanica, numero 1 – Non-Human Persons; Spheres; Furniture Bondage; and I Have A Room With Everything, and, in 2013, released an album with her band ZaZaZoZo (in collaboration with Joseph Marzolla). Melanie Bonajo is represented by Galerie Akinci, Amsterdam.

Text: Chris Clarke

Stephanie Cumming is Canadian dancer/choreographer/actress living in Vienna.

Following her classical training, Stephanie graduated from the University of Calgary in 2000 with a Bachelor of Arts in Dance. She has been working with Chris Haring since 2003 and and together with him, Andreas Berger and Thomas Jelinek founded Liquid Loft in 2005 and has collaborated on and performed in every piece since the company’s inception and has also worked as Haring’s choreographic assistant. In 2004 Haring choreographed the solo Legal Errorist for her for which she was named Outstanding Young Dancer in Ballett-Tanz Magazine. She also received a danceWEB scholarship in 2004. She has collaborated on various film projects with artists such as Mara Mattuschka, Erwin Wurm and Harald Hund. In 2009 she was invited as a choreographer to be part of Beyond Fr@nta, a project between dance organisations in four different EU countries. Her own work includes solos such as Ah Poetry (Szene Salzburg, Impulstanz), the short solo P.S. which was commissioned by Tanzquartier Wien for the opening of their new season, as well as her lecture performance Redneck to Cyborg: A Shared Transformation which premiered in Tanzquartier in 2009. In 2012 she created the short solo aurora borealis for the Austrian Dance Platform in Impulstanz. She also collaborates with Toxic Dreams and in 2014 premiered the full length solo “i dance, therefore i talk” in Tanzquartier Wien, which was written for her by Yosi Wanunu. Stephanie played the lead role in Gustav Deutsch’s award winning film Shirley:Visions of Reality which premiered in 2013 at the Berlinale and continues to be screened at various international film festivals. She also plays a lead role in Daniel Hoesl’s upcoming film WINWIN which will premier in 2015. Stephanie often teaches professional training in Tanzquartier Wien as well as giving workshops internationally.

Text: Liquid Loft

Addie Wagenknecht is an American artist based in Austria whose work explores the tension between expression and technology. Blending conceptually-driven painting, sculpture, and installation with the ethos of hacker culture, Wagenknecht constructs spaces between art object and lived experience. Here, the darker side of systems that constitute lived reality emerge, revealing alternative yet parallel realities. In the context of post-Snowden information culture, Wagenknecht’s work contemplates power, networked consciousness, and the incessant beauty of everyday life despite the anxiety of being surveilled.

A member of Free Art & Technology (F.A.T.) Lab, Wagenknecht was the recipient of a 2014 Warhol Foundation Grant, which she used to found Deep Lab, a collaborative group of researchers, artists, writers, engineers, and cultural producers interested in privacy, surveillance, code, art, social hacking, and anonymity. As an active leader in the open source hardware movement, she also co-founded NORTD Labs, an international research and development collaborative with Stefan Hechenberger, which produces open source projects that have been used and built by millions worldwide.

Wagenknecht’s work has been exhibited internationally, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Phillips, New York; LEAP, Berlin; Haus der elektronischen Künste (HeK), Basel; MU, Eindhoven; the Istanbul Biennial, Turkey; MuseumsQuartier, Vienna; Grey Area Foundation for the Arts, San Francisco; Gaîté Lyrique, Paris; Beit Ha’ir Museum, Tel Aviv; and many festivals such a GLI.TC/H and the Nooderlicht Photography Festival. Her work has been featured in TIME, The Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Art in America, Vanity Fair, BUST, Vice, and The Economist. Past residencies have included Eyebeam Art + Technology Center, New York; Culture Lab at Newcastle University, UK; Hyperwerk Institute for PostIndustrial Design, Switzerland; and the Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry at Carnegie Mellon University. Presently chair of the MIT Open Hardware Summit, Wagenknecht holds a Masters from the Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University and a BS in Computer Science from the University of Oregon.

Text: bitforms gallery

In his work Jürgen Bauer explores the boundary between real and virtual space. How much are we affected by the digital world and how does it affect our behavior in the real world? What does it mean for our perception – how will it change in the future? In this field of tension, Bauer develops his conceptual paintings and installations. His latest work is about the manipulation of perception. Bauer arranges large areas of color in such a way that they can be seen both spatially and horizontally. One could summarize Bauer’s artistic approach quite well with the question “What is real?”

Born in Schwaz, Tyrol, artist, graphic artist and musician Jürgen Bauer (*1969) is ArtDirector of dmcgroup Vienna and co-founder of the design collective Automat. He lives and works in Vienna.

Selected Exhibitions:
>> MAK Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna,
>> Dutch Electronic Art Festival, Rotterdam,
>> OSME Gallery, Vienna,
>> Instant-edition/modulart Gallery, Vienna,
>> Parallel Vienna 2017,
>> Schreygasse Project Space, Vienna,
>> ORF Kunstraum Radio, Vienna, Stadtgalerie Schwaz

Marge Monko (1976, Tallinn, Estonia) primarily works with photography, installation and moving images, and her practice is particularly interested in how these mediums are and have been used as tools in science, politics, publicity, etc. Her works are often inspired by historical images and influenced by theories of psychoanalysis, feminism and visual culture. Depending on the subject, Monko employs methods including documentation, staging and appropriation – often combining these different approaches.
Monko has long been working with themes related to women’s roles in society and how these have developed over time. Her recent projects have explored the visual aspects that shape us and our values, including demonstrations of how advertisements and the display of commodities define women as well as the keywords used to construct femininity in commercial culture: beauty, desirability and fertility.

Monko lives and works in Tallinn, Estonia. Her previous solo exhibitions include Tallinn City Gallery; mumok, Vienna; Tartu Art Museum; Platán Galéria, Budapest; and Finnish Museum of Photography, Helsinki; as well as group exhibitions at Art Space Pythagorion, Samos; Electronic Arts Festival, Bozar, Brussels; Framer Framed, Amsterdam; Balassi Institute, Ljubljana; Riga Art Space; CCA Glasgow; Bétonsalon, Paris; and Manifesta 9, Genk. She studied photography at the Estonian Academy of Arts and the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, and was the recipient of the Henkel Art.Award in 2012. Marge Monko is represented by Ani Molnár Gallery, Budapest.

Text: Chris Clarke

Beware: Musician Magic Island is addictive. Her compositions transport the listener into a different dimension, somewhere between R&B, mainstream, and experimental pop. On her own or with her choir The Angels, this Canadian casts a spell on her viewers with her characteristic style of dance.

Text: Christian Glatz

Producer of experimental club music Rana Farahani (aka fAUNA) has been an integral part of Vienna’s music scene for years. Between her technological identity, political opinions, and impressions drawn from daily life, she develops dystopian, futuristic, and personalized tracks charged by today’s current affairs. Her musical career has led her from classical piano and vocal training to the later electronic realms of possibilities and sound definitions.

Text: Christian Glatz

Battle-Ax Her shows are unsettling yet sophisticated: armed with a viola, artist Beatrix Curran alias Battle-ax fills the room with unrelenting sound chains of reverb and distortion, generating a strong and emotional soundscape. In her adopted home of Vienna, Beatrix Curran is influenced by both the city’s classical and underground music scenes.

Text: Christian Glatz

In 2016, the vision of inclusive and experimental club music led Antonia XM and Amblio to create a platform for likeminded producers and visual artists, called Ashida Park.
With their label, they intend to establish an arena for intimacy and excess and to merge influences from a variety of bass music sub-genres with ambient and noise compositions.

Text: Christian Glatz

Founded by Aleksandar Vučenović, the Vienna music label Amen specializes in experimental and ambient music. It is Vučenović who is responsible for the label’s unique aesthetics. While the label itself is committed to rather esoteric sounds, his DJ sets are a traditional club sound mixture blended with experimental elements, hard percussion, and nostalgic Trance and Euphoria.

Text: Christian Glatz