05.04.2024 – 14.07.2024
For 100 days, the focus will be on the potential of art, design, architecture and science with regard to a sustainable and liveable future and the social impact of climate change. The biennial, initiated by the City of Vienna’s Climate, Culture and Economy departments, is organised by KunstHausWien – thanks to more than 60 cooperation partners, it covers the entire city. The programme of the Vienna Climate Biennale, put together by artistic directors Sithara Pathirana and Claudius Schulze, presents a multi-layered view of the social challenge of the climate crisis. It focuses on participation, global networking and cooperation and appeals to a diverse audience: the art and cultural world, scientists, people from the neighbourhoods, decision-makers from politics and business, children and young people as well as people who are being hit hardest by the climate crisis.
The Vienna Climate Biennale focuses on cooperation and invites people to take part in the dialogue about future social developments.
The Biennale headquarters are located in the KunstHausWien, whose sustainable renovation is currently being finalised. “Into the Woods”, the group exhibition of the first Climate Biennale Vienna curated by Sophie Haslinger, is dedicated to one of the most important ecosystems of our time: on two floors of the museum, 16 contemporary positions deal with the human influence on the state of the forests and their destruction on the one hand, and the collective and symbiotic activities of the forest ecosystem on the other. The Garage project space houses modular workshops where repair cafés and workshops are offered.
The inner courtyard will be given a temporary and sustainably built event space for talks, performances, concerts and community meetings: following the principles of re-use and upcycling, the “Climate Culture Pavilion” designed by the Breathe Earth Collective for the Graz 2020 Year of Culture will be adapted for the Vienna Climate Biennale. In June, KunstHausWien will also host the first Vienna Climate Summit – a new interactive symposium format aimed at the school and extracurricular education community with workshops as well as scientific and artistic impulses.
The group exhibition “Songs for the Changing Seasons”, curated by Lucia Pietroiusti (Head of Ecologies, Serpentine, London) and Filipa Ramos (Lecturer, Institute Art Gender Nature (IAGN), University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland (FHNW), Basel), reflects on the ways in which art deals with the effects, consequences and reality of environmental changes between mourning and transformation.
StudioVlayStreeruwitz is designing the festival area together with Isolde Rajek. The “Climate Canteen” focuses on the food supply of the future, while the overview exhibition “Design with a Purpose” deals with green and circular design from Austria. In the “Biofabrique Vienna” – a pilot project of the Vienna Business Agency based on the bioregional design practice of Jan Boelen and his team – unused and reused resources are processed into new materials for design and architecture in cooperation with the Vienna University of Technology. In “Strategies & Solutions”, students from the University of Applied Arts Vienna, the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and the Vienna University of Technology are developing projects centred on art and climate.
Projects such as the “Mobile School for Art & Sustainability” developed in cooperation with Soho Studios, the “Dock for Change” designed by the Children’s Office of the University of Vienna, the “Future Lab” to be created in cooperation with Volkshilfe Wien or the “Educational Paths” by FutureWorks (Red Carpet Art Award) are dedicated to the active involvement of children and young people in shaping a sustainable future. With “Immediate Matters”, the Climate Biennale brings together artistic positions from all over Vienna through an open call.
Vienna Climate Biennale 2024
05.04.2024 – 14.07.2024
Vienna, various locations
www.biennale.wien
