EVENT LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

This year’s FACING TIME line-up by VIENNA ART WEEK is all about time. Inspiring international guests from the fields of art, business and science will shed light on the topic from different perspectives, and a top-class panel discussion will focus on “20 editions of VIENNA ART WEEK, 20 years of Vienna as a city of art”. This will be followed by a short presentation of the anniversary publication and an aperitif.

18.00 Panel discussion “20 editions of VIENNA ART WEEK – Years of Vienna as a City of Art”  

• Francesca Gavin (Artistic Director viennacontemporary)
• Oliver Hangl (Artist)
• Lilli Hollein (General Director MAK)
• Bettina Leidl (Director MuseumsQuartier Wien)
• Fabian Burstein (Author & Cultural Manager)
• moderated by Robert Punkenhofer (Artistic Director VIENNA ART WEEK)

19.00 Presentation of the anniversary publication of VIENNA ART WEEK

19.30 Aperitif

Short bios:

Francesca Gavin, Artistic Director of viennacontemporary, Austria’s leading fair for contemporary art, since 2023, has 20 years of experience in contemporary art and culture as a curator and writer. She is Editor-in-Chief and co-founder of EPOCH Review, a contributing editor at Twin and Beauty Papers and has regularly contributed to Financial Times HTSI, Frieze, Cura, Blau, Artnet among numerous other publications. Gavin has written ten books on contemporary art including Watch This Space, 100 New Artists and Hell Bound: New Gothic Art. She co-curated the Manifesta11 biennial in Zurich and has curated exhibitions internationally at institutions including Fundação de Serralves, Somerset House, Palais de Tokyo, Site Sheffield and Mu, Eindhoven. Her monthly radio show Rough Version on NTS Radio (www.nts.live) has been running for over 8 years, looking at the relationship between contemporary art and music.

Oliver Hangl is a performance/media artist, curator, urban activist. Unsafe interventions in public space. Reality as a field of action beyond control. The City as a process: Oliver Hangl, who originally started his career as actor and stage designer in 1993, is just as active in performative disciplines and media spaces as in fine arts exhibition sites. His works mark a consistent confrontation between man and environment. Hangl pushes at the boundaries between physical and psychological spaces. His work takes place in real and fictional settings. With the public space as his stage he playfully embeds a site and context-responsive set of experiences and interactions for both planned and incidental audiences.

Since 1999 various teaching engagements at Art Universities, since 2008 Director of project space k48 – offensive for contemporary perception in Vienna. Since 2010 Founder, artistic director of WIENER BESCHWERDECHOR.

Lilli Hollein has been General Director and Scientific Director of the MAK – Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna, since September 2021. The design expert studied industrial design at the University of Applied Arts Vienna and was Director of the VIENNA DESIGN WEEK, Austria’s largest curated design festival with an international reputation, which she co-founded, until 2021. As a curator, she was responsible for a number of architecture and design exhibitions, and in 2007 she was commissioner of the Austrian contribution to the São Paulo Architecture Biennale. As a design and architecture critic, she has published in national and international media and specialised magazines, including Der Standard, ORF, Domus, blueprint, Ottagono, FRAME and MARK. From 2010 to 2013 she was jury president of KÖR – Kunst im Öffentlichen Raum Wien and from 2015 to 2019 president of ADN – Austrian Design Net. She has been an honorary professor at NDU (New Design University St. Pölten) since 2022 and a member of the University Council of the University of Applied Arts Vienna since 2023.