GOLDEN RECORD STUDIOS

The final afternoon of the Opening Days of the new Research Institute for Interdisciplinary Ethnography on Violence, Gender, Sexuality and Justice, Webster University, moves into the exhibition space at kunsthalle exnergasse.

Inspired by the idea of the Golden Record, visitors are invited to consider what stories, images, sounds, memories and perspectives we would choose to communicate about life on Earth — and whose experiences and forms of knowledge should be included. They can engage creatively and collectively with the central questions of the new Research Institute: gender, violence, sexuality and justice. Rather than producing a single authoritative record, the event opens a space for multiple, situated and sometimes contradictory perspectives.

GOLDEN RECORD STUDIOS by matthaei & consorts is a long-term series of international collaborations based on artistic research in site-specific assemblies, installations, podcasts, and a digital archive: a recording of a contemporary “World Selfie” for our as-yet-unknown alien friends. 

To this end, the STUDIOS have been collecting recordings at a wide variety of locations since 2021: at Europe’s largest animal shelter, in a satellite lab, and at a digital hippie house share under the roof. On the campus of Pakistan’s elite university on a Saturday night before the party with students of all religions, and in Karachi with emerging female artists preparing for their first group exhibition. In the valley near Davos, they worked with world saviors caught between hope and fear of the future at the World Ethics Forum, as well as at the National Theater in Mannheim with children and academics, accompanied by a composition from Belarus and the “Choir for People Who Can’t Sing.” In short: The STUDIOS show up wherever we earthlings are shaping our magnificent, terrifying, and diverse present. 

Since 2000, Lukas Matthaei has realized over 50 performative projects with collaborators and performers in Europe, the Levant, North Africa, India, and the U.S. He works in a variety of formats based on extended periods of research within specific communities and diverse realities. This translates into performances in urban landscapes, as well as stage productions, installations, film, and works for radio. 

Closing Keynote — Ethnography and Justice by Hayal Akarsu

17.00

Hayal Akarsu’s work on ethnography and justice resonates strongly with the questions at the heart of the exhibition Off the Precipice and the Golden Record event. Throughout the afternoon, the Golden Record invites visitors to ask what we would choose to communicate about life on Earth if we were to create such a record today. Whose experiences would be included? Whose voices would be heard? What would we want to communicate about gender, violence, sexuality and justice—and what might remain absent, silenced or difficult to translate? 

Together with Hayal Akarsu, a group of invited guests — filmmakers, artists and anthropologists — will be present in the exhibition space and offer short inputs about their work. Their contributions bring different perspectives, experiences, images, stories and ways of knowing into the Golden Record event. 

The closing afternoon thus brings the different elements of the Opening Days together: artistic practice, ethnographic research, film, storytelling and public conversation. It concludes with a question that also lies at the heart of the Golden Record: If we were to create a record of our world today, what would justice require us to include? 

Invited Filmmakers and anthropologists: 
Mostafa Abdelazem
Christoph Marx 
Almira Saifullina
Shadi Tabibzadeh