WIENWOCHE

Curatorial statement

We live in the age of empires. Unipolar, multipolar—still imperial. Powers diversify, but the infrastructure of control prevails. From enslavement, forced labor and indentured servitude to guest work, illegalized and incarcerated essential workers—the relation remains exploitative. For centuries, we worked for free—now we work for nothing. Our occupied energies sustain the empires. We make them work. With no space to breathe. No life, no freedom.

To be aligned with the world implies being aligned with the military-industrial complex. The ultimate goal—defence of the neoliberal world order. Friends are bound to the forced liberty of allocating the burden of armament. Freedom has turned into a tool of intimidation, coercion and demagogy.

Once again, broad-front strategies are being undermined by capital. Yet another business model—friendship is time-bound, indivisible from investment and interest. Submerged in the shifting currents of the capital, former allies clash in customs wars. The capital race fuels growing hostility among the victors of the last World War, selectively erasing the shared legacy of anti-fascism. Under the guise of free expression, the agenda of sustaining liberal democracy is embraced by the farкight. We are numbed by the indifference towards normalized and systematized deaths and the logics of oppression.

Systems thrive on the illusion that ideology is dead, while the far-right is drawn to the left by a distorted magnetism— nationalists echo anti-imperialist slogans, the far-right mainstreams its demands successfully, subverts economic models of the left, hijacks radical alternatives and struggles against racialized capitalism. The self-opposing left stands at a crossroads, caught between liberalization and nationalization, while the necessary bridging of the anti-fascist and decolonial worldmakings remains an unimaginable utopia.

In its pursuit of labor and raw materials, the EU strategically entrenches green colonialism. Partnered with speechless repression against social movements, the comfort of its citizens is propped up by detention camps on the European periphery. Along the lines of empires, the paths are well-trodden. Layers of historical sediments sustain effortlessly. Between self-victimization and proclaimed neutrality, Austria carefully preserves the notion of preemptive obedience. Underdog mentality is contagious, spreading like giant hogweed. Innocently welcomed, skeletons behind the gilded facades resurface. Behind the monetized imperial and (post)nazistic past emerge gatekeeping descendants of the oppressors. The global majority shares present, common pasts of interconnected, unmattered planetary inconsolabilities that foster egalitarian alignments rooted in the repatriation of what was lotted also beyond labor and capital. The short-lived colonial ambitions of the Danube Monarchy across the Indian and South Atlantic Oceans and the Mediterranean did not conclude with the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the processes of inner colonization, but continue to persist in various forms of glorified remembrance. No wonder we got stuck on the Principles!

Still and firm we stand before the cliff
Lungful of mining dust,
tissued microplastics
The fire thunders yet in vain,
the pit of hell crumbles

Withhold weighty breath
and stride beyond the known
We have only worlds
and breathable futures to win

Jelena Micić

Araba Evelyn Johnston-Arthur