Artists: Laila Bachtiar, Tony Cokes, Henry Darger, Patricia Domínguez, Rahima Gambo, Jakob Jakobsen and Sophie Carapatian, Yesmine Ben Khelil, Stanislava Kovalcikova, Niklas Lichti, Opoku Mensah, Shana Moulton, Tom Seidmann-Freud
Curators: Laura Amann and Aziza Harmel
To speak about madness or unreason is to speak not only about forms of consciousness but also about the description of historical systems of thought. Whether madness is described as a philosophical or spiritual phenomenon or as an objective medical psychopathology, these conceptions are not discoveries in themselves – rather, they are historical productions of meaning. So, if madness is a phenomenon of culture, curing the mad is not the only possible reaction to insanity.
In Do Nothing. Feel Everything., we wonder how we can instrumentalize our own condition, or maybe learn from it. Not for the sake of optimizing our yield but because, as humans, we are behavioral strategists and learning is, at its core, a biological process. Therefore, this group exhibition looks into art practices from diverse geographies that understand insanity as a form of knowledge and that use risk-taking as a method to learn, when there is something at stake – practices that through careful bruising attempt to heal.

Kunsthalle Wien Karlsplatz
Kunsthalle Wien is the City of Vienna’s institution for international contemporary art and discourse. At its venues in Museumsquartier and on Karlsplatz, it presents exhibitions of contemporary art and contextualizes them in their social and political contexts.
Do Nothing. Feel Everything.
18 Nov 2021/19:00-21:00H