Caring for Change: Performing Witchcraft Activism Event

Vortragsreihe: Kunst - Forschung - Geschlecht

Die interdisziplinäre Vortragsreihe “KUNST - FORSCHUNG - GESCHLECHT” an der Universität für angewandte Kunst Wien trägt im Studienjahr 2021/22 den Titel “Who has the Freedom to Care, or Not to Care?”
Sorgearbeit – Instandhalten, Pflegen, Wiederherstellen: dies verlangen Körper, Psychen, der Raum und die Räume, in denen wir uns bewegen, die Dinge mit denen wir leben. Aber wer kümmert sich? Und unter welchen Bedingungen?

Johanna Braun
Caring for Change: Performing Witchcraft Activism

Mittwoch, 11. Mai 2022 | 18h | Auditorium

Anmeldung erforderlich!
Studierende der Angewandten melden sich bitte über die BASE an um alle relevanten Informationen zu erhalten. Andere Interessierte melden sich bitte über gender@uni-ak.ac.at an, wir geben den Vorlesungslink dann gerne weiter

We seem to be living in bewitched times. Witches have been summoned in countless cultural, societal, and political discussion in recent years. Artistic practices have been enchanted by this phenomenon, as witchcraft and magic are increasingly mobilized in contemporary (performance) art and activism. Johanna Braun’s artistic-academic research investigates these current tendencies that are often summarized under the umbrella term “witchcraft activism”. Her focus lies on “performing witchcraft” in a contemporary context, and how these activities stem from various artistic practices that used concepts and aesthetics of witchcraft to raise important questions around care, healing practices, and health care politics. Witchcraft activism in this context demands (through artistic interventions) political change and addresses important questions such as: Who has the freedom to care, to be cared for, and to protest unjust health care practices? To understand witchcraft activism’s agency, Braun proposes to locate it’s specific (re-)emergence within a broader cultural context, allowing to imagine an artistic reflection on witchcraft, healing, and activism as an expression of doing artistic research.

Johanna Braun is an artist-researcher, current lecturer at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna and researcher at the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Institute of Culture Studies and Theatre History. She has internationally performed, exhibited, published, and has given lectures on various aspects of mass hysteria and witchcraft activism.