INDEPENDENT FORUM FOR ART CRITICISM AND PRACTICE
E N T K U N S T U N G
A: Who is behind ENTKUNSTUNG?
We‘re a small team of two: Max and Felipe, who met three years ago in Vienna, some pretty wild party night. Immediately after that we started working together. First there was an online art critic and theory journal, then a record label and now we publish one book – an anthology – a year and curate group exhibitions. We have a background in politics, philosophy, art history, music and design — with ENTKUNSTUNG we follow all these interests related to art. Also, we’re in the process of founding a studio, a collective that allows us to extend our activities beyond this field and to open up for new projects, new groups of artists and art viewers.
A: What's the project's main objective and motivation?
ENTKUNSTUNG is an independent forum for art criticism and practice based in Berlin and Vienna. We started online and a year later transformed our work into a printed book; some enjoy calling it a bible as it‘s quite a massive piece. Then we wanted to tackle the next dimension: space — at the moment we try to realize more group exhibitions, mostly in Berlin. We want more than curating, we want to create contexts and connect artists. For us it‘s important to emphasize the diversity and plurality of art in everything we do — we‘re not limited to certain kinds of art or a specific aesthetic and in our books we feature big names like Alicja Kwade or Hito Steyerl next to newcomers from all over the world.
A: How are you dealing with isolation nowadays?
We have quite mixed feelings about it: One the one hand working from home is not new to us. We use the time wisely and try to plan ahead — but of course the situation is making projects more complicated or not realizable, budgets are more problematic than ever before. There‘s anxiety, insecurity, doubts.
And then in a bigger picture: We’re observing how this state of emergency affects our society, our rights and freedom. It will surely influence the production and future of art too. We‘re already thinking about two exhibition concepts dealing with the current crisis — but who knows when and where we‘ll be able to make them happen... We also put together a reading list collecting strong and powerful voices on post-pandemic times.
A: I am a big fan of your donating initiative for the assistance of refugees on the Greek Turkish border. How can people support it?
It‘s quite easy: We donate 100% of our online sales in the next two weeks to Caritas Austria. So if you order our books or records you basically get them for free and your money goes straight to our solidarity pot. We also have a poster edition online – beautiful artworks by 20 designers and photographers we admire.
If you are an artist and want to be part of the initiative, we can add your piece (size should be shippable) to our shop and promote it as well. It‘s a win win :)
