Tomorrow Is Cancelled Event

The challenge of the show lies in the input and collaboration of a group of international curators developing and producing the exhibition together during the six-week program.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the renowned 1968 protests: The global rise of social collisions, largely distinguished by popular rebellions opposing bureaucratic elitism and the military, who in return counteracted through the act of political repression. The protests allowed for countless socialist movements to prosper, take action and make an impact within the USA, Europe, Mexico and Brazil. 50 years later, the 1968 riots and revolts generate pressing concerns as political climates once again veer towards a growing inclination of right-wing fascism.

The global rise of right-wing populism tactically incorporates tropes of mystification generated through post-truth prevalent in fake news, propaganda and corruption. Such a precarious masking of the real, which has made a substantial return in politics and elsewhere, can be understood as the spectacle not being a “collection of images, but a social relation among people, mediated by images,” (Debord: Society of Spectacle, Thesis 4) the spectacle slithers into every crevice of life by commodifying it, creating collective alienation and drowning any possibility for authenticity.

Today, the domination of the spectacle of ever developing technologies, post-internet and artificial intelligence is undeniable. Algorithms are based off feedback loops that survey and calculate people’s behaviors day in day out, social media and the news blur into one conglomeration and access to the online realm is feasible almost anywhere and at any given time. Alienation from the real world persists through virtual media’s sheer image explosion and re-production. The works presented in Tomorrow is Cancelled, take into account collective alienation in a world where the degradation of knowledge bleeds into a blindness towards critical thought where everything turns into homogeneous robotic feelings of unconsciousness and political ambivalence. As a point of departure, the works consisting of video, sculpture, installation, performance and photography deal with altering perspectives of complacency as both a repercussion and liberation of alienation.

CURATORS:
Melody Chuan (Taiwan, 1984), Camilla Cole (UK, 1985), Joelle Ferly (Guadeloupe, French Caribbean, 1970), Sania Galundia (India, 1991), John Kenneth Paranada (UK/Philippines, 1988), Sayori Radda (UK/Austria, 1992), Nina Rokvic (Australia, 1993), and Nia Tabakova (Bulgaria, 1983).

ARTISTS:
Maximiliane Leni Armann, Nicoleta Auersperg, Marie Yael Fidesser, Lisa Großkopf, Elizaveta Kapustina, Gašper Kunšič, Marlene Lahmer, Anna Lerchbaumer, Esther Martens, David Meran, Darja Shatalova, and Peter Várnai.

PUBLIC PROGRAM:
25th October: Performances by Darja Shatalova at 7.30PM and Marlene Lahmer at 8.30PM
27th October: We invite everyone to join us for tea and an exhibition walk led by the curators at 11.30AM, followed by an artist talk held by Lisa Großkopf

Tomorrow is Cancelled is the exhibition realized in the framework of the Curators’ Agenda, an annual curators-in-residence program organized by BLOCKFREI association in partnership with the University of Applied Arts Vienna. The program is supported by the City of Vienna and the Seventh District.