Erik Buenger with Cordula Daus and Mihnea Mircan
Zentrum Fokus Forschung
Rustenschacherallee 2-4
1020 Vienna

What is the relationship between voice-over and image? Does a voice-over give voice to the image? Does it help the image communicate something that images cannot communicate on their own? Common sense tells us that this is how voice-over functions. This artistic research project explores a line of thought that runs contrary to common sense. A voice-over functions – not by giving voice to the image – but by taking voice away. By speaking of the image, the voice-over commands the image to silence. 

Thou Shalt Not Speak brings a group of artists together in a research project that examines whether it is possible to use this paradoxical logic against the voice-over. If the voice-over commands the image to silence, can this silence be mobilised against the voice-over? Can it become an obstacle to speech that blocks the voice-over from articulating what the image means? The evening will begin with Erik Bünger and Cordula Daus introducing the artistic works they have produced as part of their research. Bünger will present his video ‘Nature See You’. Daus will premier a brand new lecture performance that responds directly to Bünger’s work. The event will conclude with a discussion between Bünger, Daus and curator Mihnea Mircan where they speak about the research presented and the implications this research has for the wider questions addressed by the project.

Erik Bünger is an artist, writer and composer whose work presents a continuous investigation into the human voice and its paradoxical relationship to human language. His videos, lecture performances and musical compositions have been presented at venues such as Centre Pompidou in Paris, The Wellcome Collection in London, The Curitiba Biennial in Brazil and the Art Encounters Biennial in Timisoara.

Cordula Daus is a writer-artist whose work is concerned with questions of place, sexuality, body and language. From 2010-2016 she published the journal series Toponymisches Heft (Fantôme Verlag Berlin). Her novel SEHR is forthcoming. She has presented her books, lecture performances and collaborative works at brut Vienna, the Research Pavilion #3/Venice and Akademie der Künste, Berlin.

Mihnea Mircan is a curator currently based in Bucharest. His most recent projects are the exhibitions Landscape in a Convex Mirror, for the 2021 edition of the Art Encounters Biennial in Timisoara (RO), and A Biography of Daphne at ACCA in Melbourne. From 2011 he served as artistic director of Extra City Kunsthal, Antwerp. This research was funded in whole, or in part, by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) [AR688] 

In ihrem Vortrag spricht Cordula Daus über ihr aktuelles künstlerisches Forschungsprojekt „Outer Woman“ und die Herausforderung, sich einer entfremdenden Praxis, der Ektogenese, auf künstlerische und performative Weise zu nähern. Gemeinsam mit den Künstler*innen Sebastian Bark, [M] Dudeck und Charlotta Ruth, arbeitet sie an einer neuen Phänomenologie der Schwangerschaft bzw. des Schwangergehens. Dabei kommen verschiedene Verfahrensweisen zum Einsatz: Séancen, Atemübungen, Fragebögen, Mythen, Konversationsspiele und andere Formen experimentellen Ahnens.

Eine Veranstaltung der Kunstuniversität Linz (Abteilungen Kulturwissenschaft sowie Kunstgeschichte und Kunsttheorie) in Kooperation mit dem Kepler Salon
Gastgeberinnen: Anne von der Heiden, Jasmin Mersmann

I’m happy to have been invited to Villa North in Millstatt/Austria. Enjoying roe deers jumping in the garden, the treasures on Peter’s shelves, the mighty lake and the villa’s lovely inhabitants (Laurien, Sebastian and Marie). Working on Outer Woman, the podcast. I’ll be back in August!

Tracing Presences
APL Practice(!)Symposium
Künstlerhaus
Karlsplatz 5
1010 Vienna

Cordula Daus and Charlotta Ruth
with: [M] Dudeck (performance) and Roman Harrer (technical direction)

Let’s spell it out: What is performance?  What is ______ and what can _____ do beyond the ______ of art and  ______?

On behalf of the Angewandte Performance Laboratory Charlotta Ruth and I co-conceived the symposium’s opening. We will give a speech thrice, summon collective human intelligence and call upon witch craft. We will refill forms and liquids, misread manifestos and send messages from our guts. Come and breed with us!

Entry is free of charge, register here

Zentrum Fokus Forschung
Rustenschacherallee 2-4
1020 Vienna

Cordula Daus with Sebastian Bark, [M] Dudeck and Charlotta Ruth

Language: English/German

We are all of women born. What if this fundamental fact was called into question?

Currently, millions of frozen embryos are being stored in labs all over the world. Premature lambs are being brought to term in plastic bags. Mice are being created in bioreactors without using any eggs or sperm. Ectogenesis, the fabrication of a being external to a body, is a reality. Departing from this premise Outer Woman seeks for new perspectives onto the human reproductive complex.

In Das Aufhebungsspiel (The Sublation Game) we want to revise the cultural practice of pregnancy: What elements does it consist of? What is to be preserved; what is dispensable? We approach this task through Live Action Role Playing, through exercises in anticipation and wondering. Alienation is our method.

The good news is: We are pregnant. The revolution is here. The belly is empty. The work is ours!

Outer Woman is funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF): V 797 Richter Programm incl. Richter-PEEK.

Zentrum Fokus Forschung
Rustenschacherallee 2-4
1020 Vienna

This workshop invites to a series of exercises that strategically confuse the binaries between free/automated writing and human/machine thinking. We will play with words, code and the relational space that emerges between participants. The focus is on how analogue and digitally interfered constrained writing can support experimental and collaborative thinking processes.

The exercises are part of Questionology an ongoing art project and research environment conceived by writer-artist Cordula Daus and choreographer Charlotta Ruth. Together with our collaborator, the programmer Simon Repp and the participants of the workshop we will activate some of Questionology’s core elements. The workshop takes place within the Almost Doctor Festival by Charlotta Ruth & friends.

13th SAR Confererence 2022
Bauhaus-Universität Weimar
Hörsaal A

presented by: Emma Cocker, Cordula Daus and Lena Séraphin

In July we will be in Weimar, Germany, introducing the activities of the Special Interest Group of Language-based Artistic Research as part of the Society of Artistic Research Conference 2022. For a more detailed program please click here.

Vasa, Finland

with: Emma Cocker, Andrea Coyotzi, Cordula Daus, Vidha Saumya, Lena Séraphin

conceived and organised by Lena Séraphin, and funded by the Pro Artibus Foundation.

A group of 5 writers will come together to write on the market square Salutorget in Vasa, Finland. The aim is to investigate collaborative writing in public space as a method and to try out different writing assignments – especially with a focus on the implications of writing in public space. Wording is inspired by the French writer Georges Perec and his experimental book Tentative d’épuisement d’un lieu parisien, or An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris.