Fokus: Senior Artists

Every phase of life raises new questions – especially the advanced phase 50+. Awareness for the needs of this age group is only slowly increasing – as well as with regard to the potential that this group holds.

As a self-organized advocacy group, IG Bildende Kunst has been fighting to improve working and social conditions for visual artists for over sixty years. IG Bildende Kunst’s new focus concentrates on the working and living conditions of those no longer perceived as young artists - older and old artists. Thus we invite, in cooperation with WIENWOCHE, three experts to hold workshops on different aspects catering to the needs of senior artists.

The workshop Alternative Biographies invites the participants to talk about the possibilities of a holistic life course, gaps in artists' biographies and how to deal with them. Some questions that aging artists often face: how can alternative biographies be developed that meet certain requirements and also include care work, time off, illness? How may one self-generate access in an urban, economically privileged art world as a queer-feminist, rural, precarious artist? 

The second workshop, Diaspora and Dementia, explores narrative and memory forms that can be practiced transnationally and intergenerationally: how to develop alternative narratives playfully, in which overlapping dimensions of time are permitted? As we age, we build a living bridge between the present and an increasingly distant past. How may aging artists maintain spoken and lived languages and not lose others in their own elaborated cultural reality through age and illness?

The last workshop discusses the possibilities of Artistic Estates and Bequests: how are estates managed? What does society want to preserve – and what should it preserve? Who decides what is archived? What is possible and useful to preserve for future generations? How do archives condition history? Which institutions see themselves as representatives of certain media? The workshop is specifically aimed at artists and/or their relatives who want to administer an estate themselves, regulate their estate or those who have to administer the estate as heirs.

The event is accompanied by an exhibition in the IG Bildende Kunst’s main room, bringing together various artistic works about the social construction of age. It is fed by the contributions of the artists, archivists, and multipliers invited during the action day, but may also be used as an open, public laboratory, as part of the Action Day.

The results aim to formulate, address, and achieve future art policy demands to better the situation of aging artists by collecting and publishing experiences and strategies into an information pool.

Credits

Exhibition: Fokus Senior Artist

Artists: Veronika Höschl, Ahoo Maher, Zehra Baraçkılıç, Rini Swarnaly Mitra, Johanna Kirsch, Artistic statements: invited senior members of IG Bildende Kunst/participants from Discoursive Breakfast, Romana Hagyo, Andrea Lumplecker

Curators: Carla Bobadilla, Almut Rink, Ruby Sircar