- Österreichische Galerie Belvedere, Curatorial Department, Department Memberadd
- Luisa Ziaja is an art historian, curator, university lecturer, and writer. She has been curator for contemporary art ... moreLuisa Ziaja is an art historian, curator, university lecturer, and writer. She has been curator for contemporary art at the Österreichische Galerie Belvedere Vienna since 2013 and co-director of the postgraduate program in exhibition theory and practice ecm – educating / curating / managing at the University of Applied Arts Vienna since 2006. In her curatorial and discursive practice, she deals with the relation between contemporary art, society, and politics (of history) as well as with the histories and theories of exhibiting. She is the author and coeditor of numerous exhibition catalogs as well as anthologies on contemporary art, curating, and art and exhibition theory, among others the publishing series curating. ausstellungstheorieedit
Since the outsourcing of the state museums, a process, which began in 2000, economic criteria and considerations regarding commercial success have gained significance in the exhibition field and have had an impact on organizational forms,... more
Since the outsourcing of the state museums, a process,
which began in 2000, economic criteria and considerations
regarding commercial success have gained significance in
the exhibition field and have had an impact on organizational
forms, conditions of production and decision making
processes. At the same time, a critical discourse has emerged
in the 1990s outside the institutions, which, referring to
Governmental Studies, examined in depth power relations
and the processes of commodification, which are a result of
the economization of public institutions. Premised on these
circumstances and perspectives the New Institutionalism was
developed, an approach, which pursues a change of the
structures of institutions from inside.
In economic science a new subject, the Critical Management
Studies (CMS) are currently evolving and becoming a new
field of academic inquiry, that, deriving from Critical Theory,
questions and challenges the authority and significance
of the mainstream of institutional thought and action, thus
challenging dominant systems and proposing new and
alternative developments.
In an interdisciplinary seminar we intended to scrutinise
these developments that are currently taking place in
economics, political theory and the exhibition field, as well
as their connections between and examine its usage within
institutions and society.
which began in 2000, economic criteria and considerations
regarding commercial success have gained significance in
the exhibition field and have had an impact on organizational
forms, conditions of production and decision making
processes. At the same time, a critical discourse has emerged
in the 1990s outside the institutions, which, referring to
Governmental Studies, examined in depth power relations
and the processes of commodification, which are a result of
the economization of public institutions. Premised on these
circumstances and perspectives the New Institutionalism was
developed, an approach, which pursues a change of the
structures of institutions from inside.
In economic science a new subject, the Critical Management
Studies (CMS) are currently evolving and becoming a new
field of academic inquiry, that, deriving from Critical Theory,
questions and challenges the authority and significance
of the mainstream of institutional thought and action, thus
challenging dominant systems and proposing new and
alternative developments.
In an interdisciplinary seminar we intended to scrutinise
these developments that are currently taking place in
economics, political theory and the exhibition field, as well
as their connections between and examine its usage within
institutions and society.
Research Interests:
From the 1990s onwards, there was a "reflexive turn" in exhibition theory, in which all the conditions of exhibiting and representing and the associated types of institutional logic have come into focus. Following those more or less... more
From the 1990s onwards, there was a "reflexive turn" in exhibition theory, in which all the conditions of exhibiting and representing and the associated types of institutional logic have come into focus. Following those more or less thorough institutional critiques and analyses of the conditions of production, in recent years an advanced segment of the field has increasingly been raising the question of curatorial agency. Even presuming there is no external standpoint for criticism, they nevertheless asked the question "What is to be done?" and it underwent a variety of deconstructive turns. The lecture will trace these deconstructive turns and will relate them to developments in the visual and performative arts of the last decades that have not only questioned the representational but thwarted and undercut its logic. In this light it will ask what kind of shadows post-dramatic theatre and postrepresentational art have shed on the format of the exhibition in order to think the very act of the curatorial differently.
Research Interests:
1990, vor inzwischen dreißig Jahren, publizierte Rosalind Krauss in der Herbstausgabe der Kunstzeitschrift October ihren einflussreichen Essay »The Cultural Logic of the Late Capitalist Museum«. Er beruht auf Beobachtungen und... more
1990, vor inzwischen dreißig Jahren, publizierte Rosalind Krauss in der Herbstausgabe der Kunstzeitschrift October ihren einflussreichen Essay »The Cultural Logic of the Late Capitalist Museum«. Er beruht auf Beobachtungen und Begegnungen, die Krauss miteinander verknüpft, um die zunehmende Kommodifizierung und Korporatisierung von Kunstwerken, öffentlichen Sammlungen und Museen am Ende des 20. Jahrhunderts zu analysieren. Mit Fredric Jameson, dessen Aufsatz »Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism« Krauss im Titel referenziert, zeichnet sie paradigmatische Verschiebungen im musealen Feld und in der Ausstellungspraxis nach: Neuerdings erscheine es legitim, so Krauss, Objekte in einem Museumsbestand als »Vermögenswerte« zu bezeichnen – die Wahrnehmung einer Sammlung als kulturelles Erbe und unersetzliche Verkörperung kulturellen Wissens werde abgelöst von jener als Kapital, vergleichbar etwa mit Aktienpaketen. Dieses Primat des Ökonomischen im Museum äußere sich in der »Unternehmenskultur«, in den Haupteinnahmequellen und nicht zuletzt in der Zusammensetzung der mächtigen Kuratorien. Die Krise der Museumsgesellschaft sei demnach weitgehend ein Resultat der marktwirtschaftlichen Orientierung der 1980er-Jahre. Die Vorstellung vom Museum als Sachwalter des öffentlichen Erbes sei der Vorstellung vom Museum als Unternehmen mit sehr gut vermarktbaren Beständen und mit Expansionsgelüsten gewichen.
Research Interests:
Sich mit Sammlungen anlegen untersucht das Thema des Sammelns aus einer kritischen Perspektive, die bisherige Vorstellungen von Museen und Archiven hinterfragt und erweitert. Ausgangspunkt sind Reklamationen, die bestehende Ausschlüsse... more
Sich mit Sammlungen anlegen untersucht das Thema des Sammelns aus einer kritischen Perspektive, die bisherige Vorstellungen von Museen und Archiven hinterfragt und erweitert. Ausgangspunkt sind Reklamationen, die bestehende Ausschlüsse und Zuschreibungen in Sammlungen adressieren; dann werden diverse Sammlungsstrategien neu gedacht.
Es gilt das Sammeln gegen den Trend zu medienwirksamen Ausstellungen und zur Ökonomisierung von Sammlungen wieder wichtig zu nehmen, um es im Hinblick auf Demokratisierung, Vermittlung, Relationalität und Immaterialität anders zu denken und langfristig zu verankern.
Neben theoretischen Texten und künstlerischen Beiträgen umfasst die Publikation schlaglichtartige Erörterungen: Statements von SammlungsmacherInnen, die Sammlungen anlegen – und sich zugleich mit ihnen anlegen.
Es gilt das Sammeln gegen den Trend zu medienwirksamen Ausstellungen und zur Ökonomisierung von Sammlungen wieder wichtig zu nehmen, um es im Hinblick auf Demokratisierung, Vermittlung, Relationalität und Immaterialität anders zu denken und langfristig zu verankern.
Neben theoretischen Texten und künstlerischen Beiträgen umfasst die Publikation schlaglichtartige Erörterungen: Statements von SammlungsmacherInnen, die Sammlungen anlegen – und sich zugleich mit ihnen anlegen.
Research Interests:
The Museum of the Future, edited by Gerhard Bott, offers new perspectives on the museum. It was time to leave behind the notion of the museum as an ivory tower of science, as a place where items in collections were merely inventoried and... more
The Museum of the Future, edited by Gerhard Bott, offers new perspectives on the museum. It was time to leave behind the notion of the museum as an ivory tower of science, as a place where items in collections were merely inventoried and studied in terms of their cultural and art historical value. It was time for something new. It was time for the museum to (re)establish its relationship to society and to take on the role of an educational institution. In her book La Fin des Musees, Catherine Grenier, codirector of Centre Pompidou, challenges the discourse pointing to the “end of the museum”. Similar to her predecessors in the 1970s, she argues the museum needs to be understood as a current institution, whose interests do not only revolve around itself but as one that actively engages with urgent questions concerning our world and society today. What would happen if the “museum of the future” were a para-museum? What would it be like? If we conceive of the para-museum as something that is simultaneously inside and outside and in a parasitic relationship to the museum, then a form of subversion may just cross our minds—one that robs the museum (of its power to endow meaning and definitions and its infrastructure). Insofar that the para-museum maintains its relation to the museum with its potential for change and its relation to social struggles that disrupt logics behind hegemonic claims to power, it remains simultaneously part of the museum and part of a different order, one that is perhaps yet to come.
Research Interests:
The Museum of the Future, edited by Gerhard Bott, offers new perspectives on the museum. It was time to leave behind the notion of the museum as an ivory tower of science, as a place where items in collections were merely inventoried and... more
The Museum of the Future, edited by Gerhard Bott, offers new perspectives on the museum. It was time to leave behind the notion of the museum as an ivory tower of science, as a place where items in collections were merely inventoried and studied in terms of their cultural and art historical value. It was time for something new. It was time for the museum to (re)establish its relationship to society and to take on the role of an educational institution. In her book La Fin des Musees, Catherine Grenier, codirector of Centre Pompidou, challenges the discourse pointing to the “end of the museum”. Similar to her predecessors in the 1970s, she argues the museum needs to be understood as a current institution, whose interests do not only revolve around itself but as one that actively engages with urgent questions concerning our world and society today. What would happen if the “museum of the future” were a para-museum? What would it be like? If we conceive of the para-museum as something that is simultaneously inside and outside and in a parasitic relationship to the museum, then a form of subversion may just cross our minds—one that robs the museum (of its power to endow meaning and definitions and its infrastructure). Insofar that the para-museum maintains its relation to the museum with its potential for change and its relation to social struggles that disrupt logics behind hegemonic claims to power, it remains simultaneously part of the museum and part of a different order, one that is perhaps yet to come.
Research Interests:
On the occasion of the 20-year anniversary of the /ecm Master Program in Exhibition Theory and Practice at the University of Applied Arts Vienna Thursday, May 5, 2022, 10am–9pm The museum is dead. Long live the museum. This, or something... more
On the occasion of the 20-year anniversary of the /ecm Master Program in
Exhibition Theory and Practice at the University of Applied Arts Vienna
Thursday, May 5, 2022, 10am–9pm
The museum is dead. Long live the museum. This, or something similar, could be the brief summary of numerous conferences, debates, and publications in the field of curating and museum studies over the past 20 years. The critique of the museum has been widely discussed. We have heard a lot about crisis and departure, we have heard about “tired museums” and the “end of the museum,” only to debate in that same breath untapped possibilities for thinking about the museum in new and different ways – as a space of assembly and as a contact zone, as a place of criticism, polyphony, and negotiation. Something seems to be on the move, and so it is not surprising that talk of the “museum of the future” is booming. Claims of diversification, digitalization, and democratization have become ubiquitous, while at the same time institutions are more than ever focused on privatization, economization, competition, and precarization. How can we as critical curators and museologists think and
act within these contradictions? And how can critical theory become
critical practice?
Exhibition Theory and Practice at the University of Applied Arts Vienna
Thursday, May 5, 2022, 10am–9pm
The museum is dead. Long live the museum. This, or something similar, could be the brief summary of numerous conferences, debates, and publications in the field of curating and museum studies over the past 20 years. The critique of the museum has been widely discussed. We have heard a lot about crisis and departure, we have heard about “tired museums” and the “end of the museum,” only to debate in that same breath untapped possibilities for thinking about the museum in new and different ways – as a space of assembly and as a contact zone, as a place of criticism, polyphony, and negotiation. Something seems to be on the move, and so it is not surprising that talk of the “museum of the future” is booming. Claims of diversification, digitalization, and democratization have become ubiquitous, while at the same time institutions are more than ever focused on privatization, economization, competition, and precarization. How can we as critical curators and museologists think and
act within these contradictions? And how can critical theory become
critical practice?