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Symposium CRASH! on Youtube

The sym­po­sium about ME/CFS took place on August 18th as part of our exhi­bi­tion at Kün­stler­haus Fac­to­ry. You can now find it online on the new Black Ferk Stu­dio Youtube channel.

The event with expert talks, a read­ing and a per­for­mance ist avail­able as full video (divid­ed into chap­ters), or as sin­gle slideshows (for peo­ple who can’t watch mov­ing images so well or pre­fer to read or less visu­al input).

Sub­ti­tles are avail­able in Ger­man and Eng­lish. Please select your lan­guage and turn them on or off as needed.

Full Playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist…

Black Ferk Stu­dio on Youtube:

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Archive

Symposium CRASH!

August 18th, 2023, 7:00 pm

Kün­stler­haus Vien­na, Fac­to­ry
Bösendor­fer­straße 10,
1010 Wien

Con­cep­tu­al­ized by BLACK FERK STUDIO

Kün­stler­haus Vienna

Schedule

Mod­er­a­tors:
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Joachim Her­mis­son and Matthias Mollner

6:30 pm
Admis­sion to the Factory

7:00 – 7:15 pm
Wel­com­ing

Pre­sen­ta­tion of the project part­ners:
Aus­tri­an Soci­ety for ME/CFS,
WE&ME Foun­da­tion (pre­vi­ous­ly TEMPI-Foundation)

7:15 – 7:30 pm
Read­ing Bar­bara Kauf­mann:
Die Verdächti­gen (The Suspects)

7:30 – 7:50 pm
Talk Dr. Mar­tin Komen­da-Lett:
Beyond Known Struc­tures: ME/CFS as a chal­lenge for med­ical practice

after­wards Q&A and discussion

8:00 – 8:20 pm
Talk Dr. Jen­nifer Blauen­stein­er:
MicroR­NAs of Blood Ves­sels in ME/CFS

after­wards Q&A and discussion

8:30 – 8:45 pm
Break

8:45 – 9:05 pm
Talk Andrea Strohriegl:
Com­mu­ni­ty and Activism: What dif­fer­ence can one make together?

after­wards Q&A and discussion

9:15 – 9:35 pm
Talk DDr. Markus Gole:
Fatigue and Men­tal Ill­ness: Dif­fer­en­tial diag­nos­tic ways to ME/CFS

after­wards Q&A and discussion

9:45 – 10:00 pm
Per­for­mance Matthias Moll­ner:
Stop and Go

 

Fur­ther information:

  • Fee admis­sion to the symposium
  • No reg­is­tra­tion required
  • Bar­ri­er-free access
  • Entrance via the Bösendor­fer­straße 10 (the back­side of the Künstlerhaus/House of Artists)
  • Face masks: As many of our par­tic­i­pants and vis­i­tors have a severe neu­roim­muno­log­i­cal ill­ness or belong to vul­ner­a­ble groups, masks will be avail­able for free in the exhi­bi­tion place.

CRASH!

Exhi­bi­tion
Kün­stler­haus Vien­na, Fac­to­ry
August 11th to 27th, 2023
Open­ing: August 10th, 7pm 

Curat­ed by BLACK FERK STUDIO

Kün­stler­haus Vienna

Work by
Christi­na Bal­tais, Bro­ken Bat­tery, Ruth Bra­ham, Mar­tine Brandt, Whit­ney Dafoe, Sibylle Dahren­dorf, Faraz Fal­lahi, Franziska Han­nig, Mila und Sabine Her­mis­son, Hazel Hugh­es, Sun­ni­va Innstrand, Noli Kat, Matthias Moll­ner, Renate Mowlam, Mar­tin Keogh aka The Miss­ing Neigh­bor, Kris­tine Cor­nelia Paulsen, Anna Park­er, Judith Schoßböck, Ilse Sjouke, James Straz­za, Olivia, Anil van der Zee

ME/CFS (myal­gic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syn­drome) is a mon­ster: one that many affect­ed peo­ple and their loved ones in Aus­tria and around the world are fight­ing. A severe and not uncom­mon mul­ti-sys­tem ill­ness, there is no treat­ment for the root caus­es nor gen­er­al­ly acces­si­ble ther­a­py to date. Due to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic and the mil­lions of indi­vid­u­als affect­ed by Post or Long COVID, this often unrecog­nised and triv­i­alised ill­ness has shift­ed more into the pub­lic awareness.

“Even try­ing to put on an exhi­bi­tion with this ter­ror is com­plete mad­ness,” was one of the thoughts that went through the minds of Judith Schoßböck and Matthias Moll­ner in autumn 2021, when they came to the deci­sion to trans­late their expe­ri­ence into art. Express­ing their per­son­al stroke of fate as art is a way of pro­cess­ing their expe­ri­ences and inti­mate insights into a silent and invis­i­ble world lived each day by mil­lions of peo­ple who are miss­ing from soci­ety (#Mil­lion­s­Miss­ing), who mobilise their mea­gre ener­gy reserves for dai­ly sur­vival and recog­ni­tion. This is an ill­ness that stands in dia­met­ric oppo­si­tion to the com­mon­ly accept­ed ideals of moti­va­tion and per­for­mance, as sim­ple activ­i­ties and exer­tion are pun­ished with a wors­en­ing of symptoms.

In this exhi­bi­tion Moll­ner, Schoßböck (a.k.a. Black Ferk Stu­dio), and oth­er artists and cre­atives reflect on the real­i­ty of liv­ing with ME/CFS. To cre­ate art in this con­text becomes a spe­cial activ­i­ty that is tied to risk, as suf­fer­ers of the dis­ease expe­ri­ence phys­i­cal con­se­quences. The hyper­sen­si­tiv­i­ties the ill­ness often caus­es are fur­ther chal­lenges to artis­tic endeav­our and com­mu­ni­ty participation.

The exhi­bi­tion shows var­i­ous artis­tic per­spec­tives togeth­er with infor­ma­tion on the ill­ness in dif­fer­ent con­texts: From the per­son­al views of those affect­ed to the stand­point of soci­ety, from help­less­ness to activism, from the iso­la­tion of the indi­vid­ual to the col­lec­tive view, from the emo­tion­al expe­ri­ence of per­pet­u­al cri­sis to sci­en­tif­ic fact. The exhi­bi­tion tells sto­ries from the “night­side of life” (as Susan Son­tag called ill­ness), pro­vides insight into cop­ing strate­gies, and seeks to utilise open­ness and dark-yet-colour­ful humour to coun­ter­act suf­fer­ing and neglect.

Sym­po­sium: August 18th, 7pm
Speak­ers:
Dr. Jen­nifer Blauen­stein­er. ME/CFS Research, FH Joan­neum, Graz. DDr. Markus Gole. Psy­chol­o­gist and philoso­pher, Linz. Bar­bara Kauf­mann. Film­mak­er and author, Vien­na. Dr. Mar­tin Komen­da-Lett. Neu­rol­o­gist and ME/CFS expert, Vien­na. Andrea Strohriegl. Com­mu­ni­ty and activism, Vienna

Live per­for­mance by Matthias Mollner

Project part­ner and sup­port:
Aus­tri­an ME/CFS soci­ety
TEM­PI-Stiftung

A green figure with red fire rays on its head and black boots on its feet hangs tied to ropes upside down in a spiral construction. Several ants and a snake can be seen on the construction.

“Can anybody hear me?”

Group Show in the ip. forum

U4 Cen­ter, Stiege B, 2. Upper floor
Schön­brun­ner Straße 218–220
1120 Wien
Aus­tria

Open­ing: Thurs­day, Okto­ber 13th, 2022
Exhi­bi­tion dura­tion: Until mid-Decem­ber 2022
Cura­tors: PJ Maguire und Gabriele Baumgartner

In recent years, we’ve all had to aban­don or adapt our social habits and inter­ac­tions, cre­at­ing a domi­no effect in our present and future inter­ac­tion habits.

Artists have also had to adapt in order to be heard or seen and to be able to com­mu­ni­cate to the view­ers. Art is usu­al­ly a mouth­piece to com­mu­ni­cate issues that move a per­son in some way. In this exhi­bi­tion, we ask about the ways artists have cre­at­ed to be „heard“ and how oth­ers have tak­en the path of com­mu­ni­ca­tion in their artis­tic work to date.

“Congress of the Knowing”

Sep­tem­ber 9th and 10th, 2022
Pub­lic space under the Lentos Art Muse­um
Dok­tor-Ernst-Koref-Prom­e­nade 1
4020 Linz
Aus­tria

„A burn­ing stone. Why you need to know about ME/CFS“

The Black Ferk Stu­dio is pleased to be present with two instal­la­tions and a lec­ture per­for­mance at the “Con­gress of the Know­ing” in Linz. All inter­est­ed peo­ple can take part in the con­gress. Admis­sion is free, reg­is­tra­tion is request­ed: https://kdw.institute

On Sep­tem­ber 9th and 10th, the “Con­gress of the Know­ing” will take place in Linz under the Lentos Art Muse­um. Knowl­edge­able peo­ple from all over Europe will come togeth­er at this mag­i­cal place to exchange and share secret, spe­cial and unique knowl­edge. Events, debates and per­for­mances are open to the pub­lic and will take place on both days. The open space under the Lentos hence becomes a form of “demo­c­ra­t­ic knowl­edge zone” in a pub­lic space. Peo­ple will meet there to exchange knowl­edge with exper­tise and expe­ri­ence valu­able to oth­ers: sci­en­tists, artists, per­form­ers, researchers and experts in oth­er, spe­cial areas: such as peo­ple affect­ed by pover­ty, peo­ple with expe­ri­ence of dis­crim­i­na­tion, social­ly dis­ad­van­taged peo­ple, or peo­ple whose spe­cial knowl­edge has lit­tle pub­lic reach. The lec­tures and audi­ence dis­cus­sions address cur­rent dis­cours­es. There is also the oppor­tu­ni­ty to gain access to com­plex con­tent in a play­ful way through work­shops and inter­ac­tive formats.