Secession Podcast

Artists: Mai Ling in conversation with Christian Lübbert

Secession Podcast: Artists is a series of conversations featuring artists exhibiting at the Secession. This episode is a conversation between the artist collective and association Mai Ling and the curator Christian Lübbert. It was recorded on November 3, 2023 in the context of the exhibition:
Mai LingNOT YOUR ORNAMENT15.9. – 12.11.2023
Founded in Vienna in 2019, Mai Ling is an artists’ collective and association dedicated to facilitating dialogues on experiences of racism, sexism, homophobia, and any kind of prejudgment, particularly against Asian FLINT* (women, lesbian, inter, non-binary, and trans). Rooted in solidarity against patriarchal and racial discrimination, the group offers a space and growing network to give voice to the many individuals affected by such discrimination and foster new forms of collaboration. As an anonymous collective and a multi-hybrid figure, with everyone identifying as “Mai Ling,” the group employs a variety of artistic and discursive formats such as performances, texts, videos, sound, installations, talk series, interventions, and protests. More
Christian Lübbert is a curator at the Secession. He has worked with art institutions such as Tate Modern, the Institute for Contemporary Arts, Chisenhale Studios, the Royal Academy of Arts and the Delfina Foundation in London, as well as Studio Simon Denny, Galerie House of Egorn and the Brandenburg Art Prize in Berlin. Since 2017, he runs Arnis Residency, an annual residency for international artists. In 2020, he organised Afloat Assembly, a residency for contemporary art on a sailing boat.
The Dorotheum is the exclusive sponsor of the Secession Podcast.
Jingle: Hui Ye with an excerpt from Combat of dreams for string quartet and audio feed (2016, Christine Lavant Quartett) by Alexander J. Eberhard
Editing Director: Christian Lübbert & Mai LingEditor: Paul Macheck
Programmed by the board of the SecessionProduced by Christian Lübbert

Members: Sabine Bitter und Helmut Weber im Gespräch mit Elke Krasny

Secession Podcast: Members is a series of conversations featuring members of the Secession. This episode is a conversation between the members Sabine Bitter and Helmut Weber in conversation with Elke Krasny. It was recorded on October 18, 2023.
Sabine Bitter & Helmut Weber live in Vienna and Vancouver. They have worked, primarily in the medium of photography, on the politics of how cities, architectures, and urban territories are negotiated through images since 1994. Recent works on Educational Modernism include the research project “Performing Spaces of Radical Pedagogies” (SFU, Vancouver, 2020), contributions to the exhibitions “Education Shock” (HKW Berlin, 2021), and their current exhibition “Darkroom of Educational Modernism” (station urbaner kulturen, nGbK Hellersdorf, Berlin, 2023/2024).
Elke Krasny, PhD, is Professor of Art and Education at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. Krasny’s research focuses on concerns and matters of care. Combining feminist care ethics and social reproduction theory, Krasny researches emancipatory practices concerned with counteracting social and environmental in/justices in architecture, art, urbanism, memory work, and curatorial practices in museums and urban spaces. In 2023, her book Living with an Infected Planet. Covid-19, Feminism, and the Global Frontline of Care was published. (transcript).
The Dorotheum is the exclusive sponsor of the Secession Podcast.
Jingle: Hui Ye with an excerpt from Combat of dreams for string quartet and audio feed (2016, Christine Lavant Quartett) by Alexander J. Eberhard
Editing Director: Sabine Bitter, Helmut Weber & Elke KrasnyEditor: Christian Lübbert
Programmed by the board of the SecessionProduced by Christian Lübbert

Artists: Mykola Ridnyi in conversation with Anna Witt

Secession Podcast: Artists is a series of conversations featuring artists exhibiting at the Secession. This episode is a conversation between the artist Mykola Ridnyi and the board member and artist Anna Witt. It was recorded on September 15, 2023 in the context of the exhibition:
Mykola Ridnyi15.9. – 12.11.2023
Mykola Ridnyi’s generation of Ukrainians grew up in a climate of increasing orientation toward the West and the European Union. This emancipation from Russia found expression in the 2004 Orange Revolution and was defended in the Euromaidan events of 2013–14. It was a process that went hand in hand with the emergence of a confident Ukrainian arts scene, among whose leading exponents Ridnyi ranks. Long before graduating from the Kharkiv State Academy of Design and Arts in 2008, he was instrumental to the formation of a politically active arts scene, both as an artist in his own right and as a curator and author. He was a founding member of the art collective SOSka, whose SOSka gallery-lab, an artist-run space that existed from 2005 until 2012, was a key contribution to the local artistic infrastructure. Ridnyi’s curatorial project Armed and Dangerous (2017–2021) prompted him to begin developing a platform for collaborations between Ukrainian moving-image artists and filmmakers. In 2022–23, he curated several Ukrainian film and video art screening programs at DAAD-Galerie, Berlin; MAXXI, Rome; Museum Folkwang, Essen; and the National Gallery, Sofia. More
Anna Witt, born in Germany in 1981, lives and works in Vienna and Berlin. Her artistic practice is performative, participatory, and political. She creates situations that reflect interpersonal relationships and power structures as well as conventions of speaking and acting. Her work has been shown at the SEMA Seoul Museum of Art; the Secession, Vienna; the 1st Vienna Biennale at MAK; the Gallery of Contemporary Art Leipzig; Museum Ludwig, Cologne; the Austrian Cultural Forum in New York; Kunstmuseum Bern; and the MOCA Museum of Contemporary Art Taipei, among others, and she has had solo exhibitions at Museum Belvedere 21 Contemporary, Vienna; Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen, and Gallery Tanja Wagner, Berlin, at Marabouparken konsthall, Stockholm and Stacion—Center for Contemporary Art, Prishtina, Kosovo. She took part in Aichi Triennial in 2019 and 2013; the Lux/ICA Biennial of Moving Images, London; the 6th Berlin Biennale of Contemporary Art, and Manifesta 7 in northern Italy, and is the winner of the Outstanding Artist Award of the Austrian Federal Ministry of the Arts, Culture, the Civil Service and Sport (2020), the Otto Mauer Prize (2018), the Art Prize ‘Future of Europe’ (2015), the BC21 Art Award (2013), and the Art Prize of the Columbus Art Foundation (2008).
The Dorotheum is the exclusive sponsor of the Secession Podcast.
Jingle: Hui Ye with an excerpt from Combat of dreams for string quartet and audio feed (2016, Christine Lavant Quartett) by Alexander J. Eberhard
Editing Director: Mykola Ridnyi & Anna WittEditor: Paul Macheck
Programmed by the board of the SecessionProduced by Christian Lübbert

Artists: Chen Chieh-jen in conversation with Meiya Cheng and Jeanette Pacher

Secession Podcast: Artists is a series of conversations featuring artists exhibiting at the Secession. This episode is a conversation between the artist Chen Chieh-jen and the curator Meiya Cheng and the curator Jeanette Pacher. It was conducted in Mandarin and recorded on June 30, 2023 in the context of the exhibition:
Chen Chieh-jenWorn Away30.6. – 3.9.2023
A long-time denizen of Taiwan’s art world, Chen Chieh-jen’s work from the 1980s to the present has been exhibited internationally. To the local scene, he became renowned for Dysfunction No. 3, an interventionist performance on Taipei’s streets in the early 1980s. Wandering along dressed as hooded inmates, Chen and his contemporaries rejoinded government control through civil disobedience, forging a public sphere during times of oppression: From 1949 to 1987, the country was subjected to martial law, an emergency state governance banning free speech and public assembly. Distancing Taiwan from the neighboring People’s Republic of China, the innately anti-communist martial law coerced power through a one-party system, with the military and secret police assuming control. In Chen’s multifaceted work, the Japanese rule over Taiwan in the first half of the 20th century, the country’s kinship with the US during the Cold War, and its present-day neoliberalization feature as periodic points of departure. More
Meiya Cheng is a curator from Taipei. Before co-founding the Taipei Contemporary Art Center (TCAC), an experimental art association and independent art space in 2010, she worked as a curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art, MoCA, Taipei. As chair of the TCAC association from 2012 to 2014, she initiated exhibitions, forums, residencies and publications with contributions of Asian art workers that were presented in Taipei, New York, and Southeast Asia. She co-curated Trading Futures with Pauline Yao at Taipei Contemporary Art Center (2012), the  6th Queens International with Hitomi Iwasaki at Queens Museum, New York (2013), and The Great Ephemeral with the New Museum team at the New Museum, New York (2015). Her research on Southeast Asian art was presented in the exhibition Public Spirits at the Center for Contemporary Art Ujazdów Castle, Warsaw (2016).
Jeanette Pacher is a curator at the Secession and lecturer at the University of Applied Arts Vienna / Site-Specific Art department. She was part of the editorial team of Ö1 Kunstradio and began working in the curatorial field at Kunsthalle Wien.
The Dorotheum is the exclusive sponsor of the Secession Podcast.
Jingle: Hui Ye with an excerpt from Combat of dreams for string quartet and audio feed (2016, Christine Lavant Quartett) by Alexander J. Eberhard
Editing Director: Meiya ChengEditor: Paul Macheck
Programmed by the board of the SecessionProduced by Christian Lübbert

Members: Florentina Pakosta im Gespräch mit Melissa Lumbroso und Jürgen Tabor

Secession Podcast: Members is a series of conversations featuring members of the Secession. This episode is a conversation between the member Florentina Pakosta and the curator Melissa Lumbroso and the curator Jürgen Tabor. It was recorded on May 16, 2022.
Florentina Pakosta (b. 1933) is an Austrian artist and pioneer of the feminist avant-garde. Initially active as an artist working with drawing, a socio-critical realism prevailed at first, successively leading through the reduction of forms to her characteristic, abstract-geometric tricolour paintings. From 1952 to 1960 she studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague and Vienna. In 1971 she became a member of the Secession and from 1975 to 1983 she was its first female board member. In 1978 she curated the exhibition Secessionistinnen. Since 1975, the artist has published numerous short stories and art-theoretical texts. Her works are represented in renowned collections and museums, including the Albertina and the Museum der Moderne Salzburg. In 2023 she received the Austrian Art Prize.
Jürgen Tabor has been curator of the Generali Foundation Collection – Permanent Loan to the Museum der Moderne Salzburg since July 2019. He studied art history as well as English and American studies at the University of Innsbruck. Until 2017 he was curator, deputy and interim director of TAXISPALAIS, Kunsthalle Tirol, then curator of the Klocker Foundation and the Biennale Innsbruck International. As a freelance curator he realized projects in Bolzano, Madrid, Vienna, Budapest and Dornbirn, among others. He is the author of numerous texts on 20th century and contemporary art and has taught at the universities of Innsbruck and Graz.
Melissa Lumbroso (b. 1980 in Paris) is assistant curator at the Albertina in Vienna, where she has collaborated on several group exhibitions, e.g. Drawing Now: 2015, as well as on large-scale exhibitions dedicated to Keith Haring, Florentina Pakosta, Hermann Nitsch, Xenia Hausner, Ai Weiwei and Yoshitomo Nara. She established “Kunst@IHS” in 2017, a series of exhibitions with contemporary artists at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Vienna. Since 2020, Lumbroso has been developing an online catalogue raisonné with over 3,000 drawings and paintings by Florentina Pakosta with the launch planned for the fall of 2023.
The Dorotheum is the exclusive sponsor of the Secession Podcast.
Jingle: Hui Ye with an excerpt from Combat of dreams for string quartet and audio feed (2016, Christine Lavant Quartett) by Alexander J. Eberhard
Editing Director: Melissa Lumbroso, Florentina Pakosta & Jürgen Tabor
Editor: Paul Macheck
Programmed by the board of the SecessionProduced by Christian Lübbert

Discourse: Ricarda Denzer und Axel Stockburger im Gespräch

Secession Podcast: Discourse is a series of conversations with a focus on current discourses which the Secession addresses, too. In the first episode, board members Ricarda Denzer and Axel Stockburger discuss the benefits and opportunities of podcasts as a medium based on sound and listening. It was recorded on March 23, 2023.
Ricarda Denzer is an artist and teaches at the University of Applied Arts Vienna since 2013, where she graduated with a diploma in graphics in 1993. She has been a member of the Secession since 2000 and of its board since 2020.
Axel Stockburger is an artist who works as associate professor for Art and Cultural Studies at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna. He is a member of the research group Technopolitics and board member of the Secession.
The Dorotheum is the exclusive sponsor of the Secession Podcast.
Jingle: Hui Ye with an excerpt from Combat of dreams for string quartet and audio feed (2016, Christine Lavant Quartett) by Alexander J. Eberhard
Editing Director: Ricarda Denzer & Axel StockburgerEditor: Paul Macheck
Programmed by the board of the SecessionProduced by Christian Lübbert

Artists: Lazar Lyutakov im Gespräch mit Annette Südbeck

Secession Podcast: Artists is a series of conversations featuring artists exhibiting at the Secession. This episode is a conversation between the artist Lazar Lyutakov and the curator Annette Südbeck. It was recorded on July 7, 2023 in the context of the exhibition:
Lazar Lyutakov1 Million Random Numbers30.6. – 3.9.2023
Many of Lazar Lyutakov’s works appropriate ordinary articles of our modern mass culture and simple industrial products, presenting them in a way that probes their meanings and ambiguities. He carefully selects the objects and adapts and enhances them with targeted interventions in an effort to analyze contemporary conditions of production and forms of consumption, flows of capital and commodities, and aesthetic mass phenomena and to reflect on values, productivity, quality, and utility in a post-capitalist industrialized world. More
Dr. Annette Südbeck is managing director and curator at the Secession. She studied Fine Arts, German Studies and Arts in Braunschweig.
The Dorotheum is the exclusive sponsor of the Secession Podcast.
Jingle: Hui Ye with an excerpt from Combat of dreams for string quartet and audio feed (2016, Christine Lavant Quartett) by Alexander J. Eberhard
Editing Director: Annette Südbeck & Lazar LyutakovEditor: Paul Macheck
Programmed by the board of the SecessionProduced by Christian Lübbert

Artists: Delaine Le Bas in conversation with Bettina Spörr

Secession Podcast: Artists is a series of conversations featuring artists exhibiting at the Secession. This episode is a conversation between the artist Delaine Le Bas and the curator Bettina Spörr. It was recorded on June 26, 2023 in the context of the exhibition:
Delaine Le BasIncipit Vita Nova. Here Begins The New Life/A New Life Is Beginning30.6. – 3.9.2023
Delaine Le Bas works in a transdisciplinary way: she combines visual, performative and literary practices to create an artistic oeuvre that encompasses all areas of life. In her works she deals with many facets, political as well as private and emotional, which involve belonging to the Rom*nja people, their history and rich cultural heritage. On the one hand, she uses "classical" forms and techniques, especially textile techniques such as embroidery and appliqué, which, in conjunction with large-flowered fabrics and fantastic imagery, are immediately associated with clichés and stereotypes. At the same time, Le Bas subverts her own decorative aesthetic by openly exploring her struggles, thus defying stereotypical limitations. More
Bettina Spörr is a curator at the Secession since 2008. Previously she was assistant curator and exhibition coordinator at the Generali Foundation Vienna.
The Dorotheum is the exclusive sponsor of the Secession Podcast.
Jingle: Hui Ye with an excerpt from Combat of dreams for string quartet and audio feed (2016, Christine Lavant Quartett) by Alexander J. Eberhard
Editing Director: Delaine Le BasEditor: Paul Macheck
Programmed by the board of the SecessionProduced by Christian Lübbert

Members: Carl Pruscha im Gespräch mit Bettina M. Busse

Secession Podcast: MembersCarl Pruscha in conversation with Bettina M. Busse
Secession Podcast: Members is a series of conversations featuring members of the Secession. This episode is a conversation between the member Carl Pruscha and the art historian and curator Bettina M. Busse. It was recorded on April 5, 2023.
Carl Pruscha (b. 1936 in Innsbruck) studied architecture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna with Lois Welzenbacher and Roland Rainer and urban planning at Harvard University with José Luis Sert. In 1976 Pruscha became university professor and head of his institute at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. From 1988 to 2002, he was the rector of the academy. An important project from this period was the reconstruction of the so-called Semper Depot. From 2001 to 2005, Pruscha transitioned to the position of professor in Design and Habitat, Environment & Conservation. At the invitation of the Getty Institute in Los Angeles, he wrote critical analyses of architectural developments in countries of the Global South. From 2005, he realised the new school building for the organisation "One World Foundation" in Sri Lanka. Carl Pruscha was Chairman of the Advisory Board for Art and Building in the Ministry of Science, Art and Research, is a sought-after jury member in art and architecture competitions, and has been awarded the Austrian Decoration for Science and Art and the Gold Decoration for Services to the City of Vienna, among others.
Bettina M. Busse is an art historian and curator at Kunstforum Wien. Before that, she worked for many years as a curator at MAK Museum of Applied Arts/Contemporary Art, Vienna. She has curated numerous exhibitions on Contemporary and Modern Art, including Joseph Beuys, Anish Kapoor, Jannis Kounellis, Jenny Holzer. The Cindy Sherman Effect. Identity and Transformation in Contemporary Art, Kunstforum Wien, 2020, Rebecca Horn, 2021 and David Hockney Insights, Kunstforum Wien, 2022. In 2003, together with Kasper König, she was responsible for the Austrian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale (Bruno Gironcoli). Co-founder and director of the Bruno Gironcoli Estate. She is currently working on the most comprehensive retrospective of Marina Abramovic's work to date, which will be shown at Kunstforum Wien in 2025. Bettina M. Busse is author and editor of numerous texts and publications.
The Dorotheum is the exclusive sponsor of the Secession Podcast.
Jingle: Hui Ye with an excerpt from Combat of dreams for string quartet and audio feed (2016, Christine Lavant Quartett) by Alexander J. Eberhard
Editing Director: Christian LübbertEditor: Paul Macheck
Programmed by the board of the SecessionProduced by Christian Lübbert

Members: Barbara Holub im Gespräch mit Rainer Fuchs

Secession Podcast: Members is a series of conversations featuring members of the Secession. This episode is a conversation between the former and first female president of Secession Barbara Holub and the curator Rainer Fuchs. It was recorded on December 13, 2022.
Barbara Holub lives and works in Vienna. Following her studies in architecture at the Technical University of Stuttgart, Holub developed a socio-politically engaged art practice. In 1999 she founded the collective transparadiso with Paul Rajakovics, which operates at the interface of art, architecture and urban intervention. From 2006 to 2007 Barbara Holub was president of the Secession. Since 1997, Holub has taught at the UIC/ School of Art and Design, Chicago, at the Vienna University of Technology, f+f School of Design and Media Design, Zurich, and the Universidad Católica, Valparaíso in Chile, among others. She has been a visiting professor at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, where she is currently a Senior Lecturer. She is a member of the editorial board of the journal dérive and a partner in the EU project SPACEX. Barbara Holub has been awarded numerous prizes (including the Austrian Art Prize, 2018) and has been part of international juries and advisory boards. In 2022, she most recently published the book Silent Activism.
Rainer Fuchs (b. 1959 in Judenburg) studied art history, history, and philosophy in Graz. Since 1991, he has been the chief curator at mumok - Museum of Modern Art Foundation Ludwig Vienna. Past exhibitions include: Exhibition, 1994; Self Construction, 1996; Felix Gonzalez-Torres, 1998; Lois Weinberger, 1999; Öffentliche Rituale – Video/Kunst aus Polen, 2003; John Baldessari, 2005; Ryan Gander, 2006; Keren Cytter, 2007; Mind Expander, 2008; Painting: Process and Expansion, 2010; Aktionsraum 1, 2011; Dan Flavin 2012, Poetry of Reduction, 2012; Marge Monko, 2013; Space and Reality, 2014; Pakui Hardware, 2016, Nikita Kadan, 2017, Natural Histories – Traces of the Political, 2017; Ingeborg Strobl, 2020; Emília Rigova, 2022; On Stage, 2023.  Publikationen und Vorträge zur Kunst seit der Moderne. He has published publications and given lectures on art since the modern era.
The Dorotheum is the exclusive sponsor of the Secession Podcast.
Jingle: Hui Ye with an excerpt from Combat of dreams for string quartet and audio feed (2016, Christine Lavant Quartett) by Alexander J. Eberhard
Editing Director & Editor: Christian Lübbert
Programmed by the board of the SecessionProduced by Christian Lübbert