2009 Gugging “ars-publica & democracy – a lively challenge”

August 20 – September 6, 2009
Chapel of the monastery Pernegg
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Exhibition
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democracy – a lively challenge
Sylvia Kummer

Democracy includes all the important topics of our life, such as human rights, education, freedom of speech, religion and the question about the individual’s identity as well as the identity of individual states. Immigration, ghettos, the concept of the enemy and prejudices – all of them topics, which ultimately lead to the question of how democracy can be lived. The art project by Sylvia Kummer in Pernegg, Austria, called “democracy – a lively challenge”, presents video sequences within an installation located at a chapel. Usually a place for meditation and prayer, the chapel becomes a place to contemplate the human being. From this context new questions arise: Is the human being the measure of all things? Religion and democracy – a special challenge? Art and democracy – inseparable or a contradiction? Democracy – a loss of oneself for the greater whole?

ars-publica

The “public good” of the Romans as a temporary precursor of the Republic, in a contemporary sense, always presented itself as a union of people for the benefit of the greater good. A Republic therefore primarily occupies itself with a great number of people, which is why the guideline of this exhibition for the symposium in Pernegg, Austria is to present people – individual human beings as prototypes and as part of a group in an anonymous crowd. The sense of community, which members of a group or a state perceive as an intersubjective identity shall be contrasted with the individual identity, which itself carries attributes of the greater and oneself. The visual implementation’s plurality of the various artists, who today enjoy more freedom than ever before, displays a reflection of the increasing social freedoms within the democracies of our world.

Curator: Johann Feilacher