Design: Ale Zapata
Opening: 20.05.2026, 7-10 PM
Exhibition Duration: 21.05.2026 - 22.07.2026
Participating Artists: Oleksandr Halishchuk, Lo Moran, Alina Pust, Kathi Sylvest & Jakob Liu Wächter
Curated by: Barbora Horská
Assistant Curator: Ola Plankenauer
Visual Design by Ale Zapata
Accessibility Design: Sabrina Haas
Neurotopias are the seventh edition of Improper Walls’ initiative to participate in the Mental Health Awareness Month with an annual exhibition and accompanying public program that uses artistic means to encourage open discussion about often stigmatized topics, their deeper context and socio-political repercussions. This year we invited artists via an open call to reflect on what a truly accessible society would look like, materially, socially, infrastructurally, asking: What kind of economic system could accommodate people with different abilities and take into account more-than-human needs? How can we offer each other care without pathologizing the issues or denying their existence? What would our surroundings—our homes and cities—look like if we create them from feminist, disabled, and neurodiverse perspectives?
The artwork selection illustrates the nuances of both neurodiversity and utopia, especially their plurality. Alina Pust's audio installation addresses this directly, investigating "best possible futures" through interviews with different people she encounters in her life. Each conversation begins with questions about gratitude, values, and perceived challenges of the present, before the author guides the participants into speculative envisioning of a world 200–300 years ahead, creating a constellation that reveals shared patterns of care, coexistence, and transformation.
At first glance, it may seem artist Oleksandr Halishchuk rejects the idea of a utopia altogether, but their work Khutir, invites the visitors to recognize the solutions within the chaos of today. Drawing from anarchist thought, the installation of gypsum houses covered in text fragments opposes the right-wing narrative of tribalism and looks for mutualism in common frustration, questioning, and humor. It brings the artist’s personal thoughts on political apathy and technofeudalism, from house to house, from home to home, inviting us to touch, feel and enter it, to recognize, we are not alone in our anger.
Out of the four selected positions, Lo Moran's video Normativity Detox is the only work that confronts the mental health industry itself. Through appropriating the affective language of contemporary influencer practices and conversion therapy rhetoric, the artist guides viewers through participatory "therapies" to "cure" neurotypical compulsions toward interdependence, care, and worlds where unmasking is not only safe but comfortable. The work insists that "acting normal" is a survival strategy, not a choice, and that unmasking is an everyday political framework to create more access for everyone.
Artist duo Kathy Sylvest and Jakob Liu Wächter trace the origin of the current problems all the way back to the Garden of Eden, and for the exhibition, reimagine it filled with hyper-feminized, defensive forms and translucent, trans*chromatic plant structures that form a synthetic ecology in which contrasting qualities—softness and protection, sweetness and toxicity—coexist. The installation proposes an adaptive, collective system of care shaped through spatial arrangement, material interaction, and the movement of visitors.
While the exhibition aims to be a speculative playground, the accompanying public program takes a more practical approach and looks at today's challenges. Patrícia J. Reis's Tactile Intelligence: Rethinking Consent through Embodied AI Prototyping is a hands-on workshop that explores the ethical, emotional, and sensory dimensions of AI-driven human-machine interaction by approaching the body as a “black box” both as an artistic strategy and as a critical lens through which to examine how interactive technologies—and AI in particular—engage with bodies. Studio Immerea offers an opportunity to critically reflect on who is empowered by technology and digital media and who remains excluded, with particular attention to usability barriers, dependency, and the skills, knowledge, or resources required to navigate digital spaces safely and meaningfully. Other events will include a discussion addressing Whiteness in Neurodiversity Discourse, a guided tour in Austrian sign language, and a session of inclusive body-work.
Public Program
20.05.2026 | 7–10 PM | Vernissage
With performance by Kathi Sylvest and Jakob Liu Wächter
Date and time to be announced | Digital Inclusion in Immersive Technologies
Workshop with Immerea
11.07.2026 | 11 AM–4 PM | Tactile Intelligence: Rethinking Consent through Embodied AI Prototyping
Workshop by Patrícia J. Reis in collaboration with Mz*Baltazar’s Laboratory
22.07.2026 | 7–10 PM | Finissage
*More events will be announced soon
About the artists:
Oleksandr Halishchuk is a multimedia artist, queer-anarchist and curator from Melitopol (southern Ukraine). In their artistic practice, private-sincere and political-triggering are inseparable. They like to explore the intersections of concepts such as truth and sincerity, hearing and listening, presence and being somewhere physically through personal (marginalized, queer, traumatic) life experiences.
Lo Moran creates interdisciplinary projects that are socially engaged, participatory and collaborative, experimenting with and questioning the systems we are embedded in through connection, openness and nonhierarchical learning. Working toward accessibility and reimagined ways of being together, their practice spans social practice, performance, printmaking, illustration, educational work, and archival methodologies. Lo has performed experimental sound internationally for 10 years and been involved in disability art communities for 13. They embrace fluidity and chaos to contribute to emergent futures and radical approaches.
Alina Pust is a Ukrainian interdisciplinary artist and educator working across drawing, performance, music, and interactive practices. She explores imagination, care, and storytelling as collective processes. Since 2017, she has participated in performative and community-based projects, including Speaking Portraits at the Gogol Festival (Dnipro, 2020). She co-created performative works, Narrative Presences and No Distance Allowed, that are based on the personal stories of people displaced by the war in Ukraine. Currently based in Vienna, her practice focuses on listening, relationality, and collective future-making in times of crisis.
Kathi Sylvest studies Transmediale Kunst at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, and Jakob Liu Wächter studied at the Beaux-Arts de Paris. Working across sculpture, installation, and experimental practices, they have collaborated closely over the past years and curated several exhibitions together. They met at the artist-run space Bräuhausgasse 31 and are active within Vienna’s queer art scene.
Immerea is an indie studio based in Vienna, focusing on the development of virtual reality games and interactive installations. Coming from a background in media art, architecture, and design, their vision is to create projects of high artistic quality and experimental character, pushing the boundaries of immersive and interactive technologies.
Patrícia J. Reis is a media artist, researcher, and lecturer based in Vienna. Her practice engages critical and sensorial approaches to technology, employing hacking and ecofeminism to question systems of control and address the complexity of contemporary technological and social systems. She lectures at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, where she leads the Elise Richter PEEK research project Hacking the Body as the Black Box.
Sabrina Haas is a designer whose practice is rooted in projects with strong social value. Through her studies in expanded and social design, she developed a broader understanding of what design can be—a trajectory that has led her across short films, exhibitions, artistic research, workshops, digital applications, and journalistic formats. Her master's thesis focused on neuro-inclusion in urban spaces. During an AMS-sponsored placement, she applied this research practically for the first time by developing a sensory map for an exhibition at kunsthalle exnergasse. The present project continues that work and advances her ongoing commitment to creating neuro-friendly spaces and raising public awareness.
About curators:
Barbora Horská is an editor and cultural worker based in Vienna. She studied transmedia art with a focus on participation and currently works as an editor, writer and curator at Improper Walls. Her practice is about using artistic means to draw attention to socially engaged and environmental issues, with a particular focus on education and mental health.
Ola Plankenauer is an anti-disciplinary artist and researcher based in Vienna. With a background in art history, dance and art, their practice moves fluidly between visual art, performance and material research. Their work engages with bodies and binaries, drawing from the mystique, the monstrous and more-than-human to explore themes of transformation, non normative embodiment, and resistance.
The exhibition and public program are supported by MA7, BMWKMS, 15. District, and Mz*Baltazar’s Laboratory