From Multidirectional Memory to Multidirectional Moments

The artistic research project “From Multidirectional Memory to Multidirectional Moments (MDM)” explores the social, spatial and political conditions surrounding forms of remembrance in order to question how different approaches to memory can co-exist in the public sphere without cancelling each other out. 

With the project Palais des Beaux Arts Wien (PdBA) as a starting point, MDM will bring together a core team of artists Antoine Turillon and Stephanie Misa (University of Applied Arts Vienna, Artistic Strategies), Sarrita Hunn(founder/editor, MARCH) Seth Weiner (current artistic director, PdBA), and Bernhard Garnicnig (founder, PdBA). 

While decentralization, decolonization, immateriality, and appropriation have long been topics of discussion within the fine arts, MDM considers how they remain mostly absent from more official and politically visible forms, spaces and institutions dedicated to remembrance. As Michael Rothberg suggests, memory could work productively through negotiation, cross-referencing, and borrowing to “allow marginalized groups to create counter-memories that challenge hegemonic memory regimes“. 

Envisioned as a response to a lack of visibility and accountability in the public sphere, the project MDM is a first endeavor into multidirectionality as an artistic strategy. The decisively production-oriented research method is key to the process, as the goal is to explore how artists create innovative strategies to envision potential new forms of social relations, perception, and comprehension within the challenges of our time.

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MDM is made possible with support from the University of Applied Arts Vienna INTRA program.