Hysterical Mining • Kunsthalle Wien • Museumsquartier & Karlsplatz • Vienna Biennial for Change • 2019
•
Artists • Trisha Baga • Louise Drulhe • Veronika Eberhart • Sylvia Eckermann & Gerald Nestler • Judith Fegerl • Fabien Giraud & Raphaël Siboni • Katrin Hornek • Barbara Kapusta • Marlene Maier • Miao Ying • Pratchaya Phinthong • Marlies Pöschl • Delphine Reist • Tabita Rezaire
•
Curators • Anne Faucheret • Vanessa Joan Müller

•
In any society, one fundamental field in which gender is expressed is technology. Technical skills and domains of expertise appear to be divided between the sexes, shaping masculinities and femininities. In the contemporary West, which pioneered industrialization, allowing it to dominate the worldwide production of material and intellectual goods, of commodities, services, and desires, technology is firmly coded as male. Male-read bodies are viewed as having a natural affinity with technology, whereas female read bodies supposedly fear or dislike it. The ones actively engage with machines, making and using them, whereas the others, who may still rely on machines, are regarded as passive beneficiaries or unskilled users. The modernist association of technology with masculinity translates into gender-specific everyday experiences, historical narratives, employment practices, education, the design of new technologies and the distribution of power across a global society that sees technology as the driving force of progress. 

The exhibition analyses the material and symbolic worlds created through technology and technology’s role in shaping local and global configurations of power, based among others on gendered discriminations. It draws on radical feminist and techno-feminist theories from the 1970s until now that criticized and revised the nexus tying new technologies and technoscience to patriarchal ideas. The exhibition’s agenda is both intellectual and political. The works of the artists included in the show go beyond critique to think and enact other kinds of knowledge, skills, and bodily practices regarding the use as well as production of (new) technologies.

•
Link to exhibition's website
https://kunsthallewien.at/en/exhibition/hysterical-mining
•
Link to exhibition's booklet
https://kunsthallewien.at/assets/exhibitions/2019-05-hysterical-mining/Hysterical-Mining_Booklet_EN.pdf
•
Link to exhibition's library
https://kunsthallewien.at/assets/exhibitions/2019-05-hysterical-mining/Hysterical-Mining-Library.pdf

•
Exhibition views from left to right, from top to bottom
1 • Left: Tabita Rezaire, Ultra Wet – Recapitulation, 2017–2018, Courtesy of the artist und Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg. Right: Miao Ying, Blind Spot – Love, 2019, Courtesy Galerie nächst St. Stephan, Rosemarie Schwarzwälder, Vienna.
2 • Front: from left to right: Trisha Baga, Untitled, 2016; Trisha Baga, TBT, 2016, Courtesy of the artist and Société, Berlin.
3 • Back: Louise Drulhe, Critical Atlas of Internet, 2015; Louise Drulhe, The Two Webs, 2017, Courtesy of the artist. Front: Barbara Kapusta, The Giant, 2018, Courtesy of the artist and Gianni Manhattan, Vienna.
4 • Barbara Kapusta, The Giant, 2018. Courtesy of the artist and Gianna Manhattan, Vienna.
5 • Judith Fegerl, the kitchen was what she had given of herself to the world, 2019. Courtesy of Galerie Hubert Winter, Vienna.

6 • Veronika Eberhart, 9 is one and 10 is none, 2018. Courtesy of the artist.
7 • Marlies Pöschl, Aurore, 2018. Courtesy of the artist
8 • From left to right: Trisha Baga, Hamilton Beach, 2016; Dog Bowl with Boobs, 2016; Brother Making an Impressionist Painting, 2016; Thelma and Louise, 2016; William’s Wonder Bread, 2016; Microscope, 2016; Optical 88, 2016. Courtesy of the artist and Société Berlin.

9 • Delphine Reist, Etagère, 2007. Courtesy of the artist.
10 • Pratchaya Phinthong, 2017, 2009. Courtesy of the artist and gb agency Paris.
11 • Katrin Hornek, Casting Haze, 2018–2030. Courtesy of the artist
12 • Left: Barbara Kapusta,The Giant, 2018. Right: Tabita Rezaire, The Song of the Spheres, 2018, Courtesy of the artist and Goodman Gallery

•
Photos : Jorit Aust