Kunsthalle Exnergasse Archive

What’s the weight of a ton when distributed amongst peers, handled and moved around with archaic DIY instruments? With Moving Mass we aim to bridge the concepts of The Right to the City, Commons, and Action-based research. We’ll be looking at Mass both as an assembly of people and as the physical opposite of a void. Gravity, leverage, torque; using bodies and mass as means of transgression. Aiming to achieve what’s seemingly impossible we won’t necessarily be.

We are pleased to invite you to the open studio of Natalia Matsenko and Yuri Yefanov! The curator and artist are part of our artist and research residency program from September to October 2025. Under the title City Visions 2050 – Between Reality and Utopia, they invite you to join them for an exchange.

The Wharf, the “construction site by the water,” is a place for building, learning, reading, planning, and resting. Over six construction days, we will work with you to build a vehicle for protest, which we will ceremoniously drive out at the end of the exhibition. No skills, more thrills.

In the workshop, we will first show a few fun “building materials” from the shelf, talk about protesting, and then work with clay, water, and wool ourselves in protest. This will take place in the shipyard. We want to pay special attention to the use of raw wool for all possible and impossible purposes in construction. The end result: wool paving stones, felt tiles, or even your own little “Wollbau” (cf. Folke Köbberling).

Together with the young people, we will build in the "Werft". Based on the exhibition and the specific materials on the shelf, we will develop materials and props for the final move-out at the closing event. In the workshop, we explore the question of how (building) materials and protest are connected and how we ourselves can create and produce “revolutionary materials.” The focus is on the experiences and views of the young people themselves.

This multimedia workshop uses speculation and simulation to explore the dynamics of city life. Firstly, participants share the most significant challenges they face, discussing potential solutions and their vision for the future of the city. The next phase brings these speculative ideas to life. Using a virtual city built in a gaming engine, participants design the neighbourhood of the future they have imagined.

We write, compose poetry, and make sense of the inconsistencies in the city. In a guided process, we create haikus, shortest stories, crossed-out poems, and collaborative typewriter poetry. In Romanian, German, Hungarian, French, English, and any other languages and symbols you bring with you. Everyone is welcome; writing experience is not a prerequisite.

The Bussi Beginner Workshop explores the group's favorite topics: urban development, de-gentrification, appropriation of space, and neighborhood. Between theatrical, participatory, and semi-rehearsed tips and tricks, they walk together with participants through the 17th district, starting at Dornerplatz.