Exhibitions and presentations

The exhi­bi­tion project devised by Matthias Moll­ner and Judith Schoss­böck focus­es on one of the sever­est, least vis­i­ble, and most under­es­ti­mat­ed ill­ness­es, which affects 25,000 peo­ple in Aus­tria alone, and at least 17 to 20 mil­lion peo­ple glob­al­ly: Myal­gic encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syn­drome, abbre­vi­at­ed as ME/CFS. 

The project exam­ines the soci­etal rel­e­vance of the ill­ness from artis­tic and sci­en­tif­ic per­spec­tives, exis­ten­tial dimen­sions, and the con­di­tions of pro­duc­ing art for those affect­ed and their rel­a­tives. The exhi­bi­tion tells the sto­ries of peo­ple who dis­ap­pear from life from one day after the oth­er because they are no longer able to work, meet up with friends, see a doc­tor or go to hos­pi­tal, or par­tic­i­pate in social life in any capac­i­ty. It looks at a real­i­ty that is often ignored or remains unseen, but can tru­ly affect any­one. 

ME/CFS has been known and writ­ten about for more than 50 years now, is a reflec­tion of the major fail­ures in research, med­i­cine, pol­i­tics and, — in par­tic­u­lar — soci­ety. It could be described as an unno­ticed human­i­tar­i­an cat­a­stro­phe on our own doorstep. ME/CFS is a rad­i­cal con­di­tion that per­ma­nent­ly changes the lives of those affect­ed and their imme­di­ate envi­ron­ment, reduc­ing any thoughts of per­form­ing to absur­di­ty. 

Visu­al artist Matthias Moll­ner and sci­en­tist and neo-artist Judith Schoss­böck have used their per­son­al life expe­ri­ences — Schoßböck fell ill with ME/CFS in 2020, and has expe­ri­enced a very severe form of it since 2021 — to make the mad­den­ing real­i­ty of this extreme­ly chal­leng­ing dis­ease vis­i­ble, as it is so often dif­fi­cult for out­siders to under­stand. The exhi­bi­tion high­lights the way peo­ple deal with an inhu­man life sit­u­a­tion and uses art to reflect the exis­ten­tial dimen­sion that accom­pa­nies this seri­ous chron­ic illness.