20 August – 6 September 2009
Chapel of Pernegg Monastery

About the exhibition

democracy – a living challenge
by Sylvia Kummer

Democracy encompasses all the important themes of our existence, such as human rights, education, freedom of expression and religion, as well as the question of the identity of each individual and of individual states. Immigration, ghettoisation, enemy images and prejudice – all topics that ultimately lead to the question of how democracy can be lived. Sylvia Kummer's art project in Pernegg on the theme “Democracy – a living challenge” shows video sequences in an installation in a chapel – usually a place for meditation and contemplation. Here, however, the human being places themselves at the centre of existence. New questions arise: Is man the measure of all things? Church and democracy – a special challenge? Art and democracy – inseparable or a contradiction? Democracy – the loss of the self to the whole?

ars publica

The Romans' “public matter”, a temporary forerunner of the republic in the contemporary sense, was always an association of people for the good of all. A republic therefore has primarily to do with a multitude of people – hence the guiding principle of this exhibition for the symposium in Pernegg is to show people: individually as “prototypes” and in groups as an anonymous crowd. The belonging of the members of a group or a state as an intersubjective identity is contrasted with individual identity, in which each person carries both qualities. The plurality of visual approaches of the various artists, who today enjoy more freedom than ever before, mirrors the growing social freedoms within the democracies of the world.

Curator: Johann Feilacher

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