Book Presentation with Hannah Proctor, Rose-Anne Gush, and Andrea Popelka in context of the exhibition Genossin Sonne [Comrade Sun].
The conversation will be held in English. Free admission.
In the struggle for a better world, setbacks are inevitable. Defeat can feel overwhelming at times but it has to be endured. How then do the people on the front line of revolutionary change keep going? This is the question at the basis of Burnout. The Emotional Experience of Political Defeat, a book by Historian Hannah Proctor that draws on historical resources to explore how revolutionaries and activists retained hope.
Kunsthalle Wien invites you to a discussion between Hannah Proctor, Art Historian and Educator Rose-Anne Gush, and Curator Andrea Popelka within the context of our current exhibition Genossin Sonne, which playfully speculates on the ways in which the sun can be a revolutionary ally. The term revolution itself has been most closely associated with struggle. In its destruction of an old order it holds an assurance of the new: a promise of change and the realization of what has been untinkable before. How can those continuing to fight for revolutionary change endure the long journey to achieving another world?
Dr. Rose-Anne Gush is an art historian, theorist and educator. Since October 2020 she is a University Assistant (post-Doc) at IZK – Institute for Contemporary Art at TU Graz, Austria. Her current research focuses on theories of “global art”, concepts of the border, and the relationships between colonialism, empire, fascism, and capitalism. Her research has been published in Kunst und Politik: Jahrbuch der Guernica-Gesellschaft (2020); Third Text (2019); Performance Research (2018); Objects of Feminism (Helsinki, 2017), and AWARE (2017) among others.
Andrea Popelka is curator of Genossin Sonne; the exhibition was realized in collaboration with the Wiener Festwochen | Freie Republik Wien, and co-curated by Dr. Inke Arns. Since joining the curatorial department at Kunsthalle Wien, they have worked on various exhibitions including Denise Ferreira da Silva & Arjuna Neuman. Ancestral Clouds Ancestral Claims (2023), Laure Prouvost. Ohmmm age Oma je ohomma mama (2023) and In the meantime midday, comes around (2022).
Dr. Hannah Proctor is a historian of human sciences interested in the intersection between left-wing politics, psychological disciplines and emotional histories. After completing her PhD at Birkbeck, University of London, Proctor held postdoctoral positions at ICI Berlin, Birkbeck, the University of Leeds, while also teaching at Bard College Berlin and Leuphana University in Lüneburg (GER).