KUNSTHALLE EXNERGASSE

Since 1995, Liesbeth Bik and Jos van der Pol work collaboratively as Bik Van der Pol. They work and live in Rotterdam (NL)
Bik Van der Pol’s mode of working consists of setting up the conditions for encounter, where they develop a process of working that allows for continuous reconfigurations of places, histories and publics.

Elia Nurvista and Marta Fernández Calvo will present the results of their residency at KEX, which evolved out of a process of rapprochement and mutual care that began in October 2023. A series of readings and objects will unfold in the exhibition space, culminating in a workshop that celebrates the meeting of their practices.

Elia Nurvista and Marta Fernández Calvo will explore how food and cooking can be tools for collective power by using recipes handed down by generations of women that were cooked in the casas de comidas during the Spanish dictatorship and particular kitchen utensils for preparing certain recipes in Indonesia.

The exhibition Start Sniffing focuses on collaborations between human and nonhuman artists, highlighting the scope of cross-species dialogue at eye level and integrating neighbouring fields of research in interdisciplinary human-animal studies, philosophy, and animal ethics. The question of how we can abandon human exceptionalism in an anthropocentric world order has also arisen within the art world – latest since the artistic method of “Artistic Interspecies Collaboration” coined by Lisa Jevbratt.

In the lecture-performance The Dog in Me, a queer fetish cat lectures the audience on non-human animals. Somewhere between stand-up comedy, philosophical contemplation, and animal rights activism, the lecture takes the audience on a journey to conquer the status quo.

Art’s creative capacity to lend shape to thought experiments will be discussed primarily on the basis of two focal points: on the one hand, human-animal cohabitation projects and artistic microsanctuaries are presented as already implemented utopias. On the other, we explore approaches to aesthetic animal-human collaboration or animal aesthetics to envision how animals can be recognised as agents in their world-building capabilities.

Living Apart Together brings audio-visual artworks from Belgium and Austria, with some stops along the way, into correspondence. It explores how self-images and identity are constructed and performed, and examines the role of everyday habits and objects in this process.