Painting human conditions.
I gave a lecture about “The Relationship of Chaos and Order in the Creative Process” for the scholarship holders (Stipendiat*innen) of the ProScientia Sommerakademie, which happened at Schloss Puchberg on September 6th, 2023.
Here’s the link to their program.
Katrin Liesenfeld-Jordan and Dirk Liesenfeld have been managing the Art Lodge for over a decade. It’s a four star hotel, an exhibition space, a sculpture garden — and so much more.
I’ve been their resident once more this year, and wanted to share some photos from the time there. It was beautiful and inspiring: from hail storms to rainbows, from laughter to philosphical discussions about art, life, transit and local produce. <3
I’m a guest speaker at Günther Oberhollenzer‘s lecture series “Cultural Administration in Fine Arts” at the University of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna.
I’ll talk about my multi-disciplinary artistic and creative practice, and the various projects I’ve been involved in the last decade — from co-organizing an independent art space, to founding the On Doubt YouTube channel, co-managing the Kunst und Klischee podcast or establishing the Conscious Artist Membership. And more — on June 12th 2023 🙂
It will be fun!
I’ll be assisting Alexandra Feichtner in her multi-week lecture/workshop format at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, which is hosted by the photography team, but open to all students.
The focus is on offering strategies for graduates; to discuss the realities of the time after art university in a complete, actionable way; from deepening your artistic practice to business aspects (galleries, networking, pricing..) and various topics of personal development.
PS: Thanks to each of you who participated, it was a great day!
I recorded this video, three weeks after the Conscious Artist Membership started.
By the time of writing there are over 20 participants; artists from the US, Canada, Russia, India, Germany and Austria. We meet every other week, and discuss any topic that feels relevant and requires deep dives.
After years of solo and group deep dives with artist from all over the world, I decided to offer an affordable membership program that enables everyone to join in:
The Conscious Artist Membership offers access to monthly group calls, a private FB group enabling direct communication between peers, and — can now be subscribed to by anyone, independently of their age, background, and whether they studied art. This is an open platform for those who want to discuss artmaking and the art life holistically <3
Details here — spread the word!
I was invited once more to talk about art and life, at “Kunst und Schnittlauch“, an awesome weekly get-together at Kunsthandel Giese und Schweiger (Vienna).
If you can, do check it out in person: K&S happens every friday, free of charge, at 3pm: you get free drinks and food, and at 4pm the hosts (usually Alexander Giese and Christof Habres) talk about the week’s art events. It’s a great format, and it’s awesome people.
I’ll be hosting a 4-session drawing workshop at the “Klasse für Alle” at the University of Applied Arts (Vienna), scheduled between October 2022 and January 2023.
Participation is open to everyone, the course costs €80; more here.
The goal ist to integrate drawing as strategy to document processes of reflection, introspection and opinion-making. What does it mean to draw? How do you draw an experience, a feeling, a memory? An opinion, hope or otherness?
How do you then draw specific plants, landscapes or people? How would you draw the change of things, or the passing of time? How do you draw when you can’t draw? How to you draw together?
The workshop supports experimentation, with a clear focus on the process — and results being optional.
“Klasse für Alle is a new program of continuing education, created by the University of applied Arts Vienna to opening up their institutes and departments towards all those who are interested in discussing, reflecting upon, and redesigning of our society. The urgency of current existential dangers requires collective action and dialogue. We invite people of all ages, cultures and backgrounds, from all professional fields, with or without previous education, and with a diverse range of skills and interests, to work with us on building a present and future worth living. […]“
The Kunst und Klischee podcast by Kevo and me is back with another live event: we’re recording at Badeschiff Wien, in front of an audience, which can include you.
Our guest is musician and composer Lukas Kranzelbinder. Drop by for an evening full of delights: once the recording is over, it’s possible to mingle with the crowd, and dance to Philipp‘s music..
Monday, October 3rd, 7pm
I’ll be moderating a round table for Vienna Contemporary, with guests Agnes Husslein-Arco (Heidi Horten Collection) and Heike Meier-Rieper (EVN Collection), about the Ethics of Collecting Art; schedule for September 9th, 4:30-6pm at Biergart’l im Stadtpark.
From the press release: “Two panel discussions aim to question the value – axiology – and responsibility in terms of diverse modes of collecting. This value is understood in an economical, ethical, and moral sense. Diverse experts from the most prominent institutions in the public, corporate and private sectors have been invited.
With representatives of various public institutions and private collections. More information at www.viennacontemporary.at. Moderated by Christian Bazant-Hegemark.“
You can watch the recorded livestream on Instagram.
I’m super excited and happy to spend part of this summer as a resident at Katrin and Dirk Liesenfeld‘s amazing Art Lodge. Will you join me there?
More soon 🙂
I’m part of a roundtable on speculations about the future, moderated by journalist and cultural worker Tina Perisutti. The guests are Elisabeth von Samsonow, Nora Jacobs and Stefan Tiefengraber — and yours truly <3
The event happens on Friday, July 22nd at 7pm, at Grünspan – Platform für Kunst und Kultur im Drautal. Drop by!
PS: You can watch the video through this link — the video owner disabled playback on external websites, so there’s no way to embed it here: https://youtu.be/b82D7-X2PJQ
I was asked to hold a lecture about the “Challenges of Creating a Portrait” within the elective week organized by Darrel Toulon. Darrel founded and conceptualized “docu-dance-theatre — a model for participatory performance art, trauma transformation and societal change“. It’s a platform to engage with childhood rape victims.
Darrel Toulon: “I realized that although there are a lot of books, films, features and other publications directly focused on the women who suffered, there was almost nothing concerning the children born to these women, and who survived infancy. The literature which I found was coloured predominantly by feminism, and humanitarianism concerns for the violated women – the existence of babies conceived through rape given little or no attention – violating in turn their rights as human beings“
The workshop week at Anton Bruckner Privatuniversität Linz included international speakers like Ajna Jusić (Bosnia), Amra Delić (Bosnia), Mercy Nabiyre (Uganda/UK) and others.
I participated with a lecture about the dynamics involved in creating the film portrait of Linda Sharrock and Mario Rechtern (2019); how to connect to strangers, trust your intuition, and how to navigate the challenges of inherent portrait transgressions. The lecture happened on June 2nd, 2022
“Kunst und Schnittlauch” is a weekly happening at Kunsthandel Giese und Schweiger (Vienna). Apart from bread with chive, you get various cocktails plus a live conversation about the week’s art happenings — usually between Alexander Giese and Christof Habres.
Now on May 27th, I’ll take Christof’s seat, and talk with Alexander about NFTs, his upcoming public conversation with Johann König at the ORF Radiokulturhaus, etc.
Join us between 3-8pm — it’s free, with food and drinks! Our conversation happens at 4pm, and is streamed via Instagram live here.
I was asked to hold a follow-up to my original lecture from November 17th, 2021 — at Die Angewandte, in the class of Jan Svenungsson.
This second part gave around fifty speculative strategies on how to navigate the artist’s life; here are some slides from the presentation 🙂
I was asked to participate and co-moderate Andrea K. Schlehwein‘s “Hybrid Formats”, the 9th edition of “POSITIONEN 022 | Discourse + Dialogue in Contemporary Dance”, happening at Art Space Stift Millstatt (Austria) on April 1-3, 2022.
The event is in itself a hybrid form, combining lectures, dialog platforms and a group exhibition — which also includes my work.
For the symposion..
Join us there for deep dialogs and good company!
I was asked to give a lecture on specific correlations between art and videogames, at Margarete Jahrmann‘s “Ludic Soirée”, which is part of the “Experimental Game Cultures” MA study she leads.
This is a public event which you can attend free of charge, happening at Die Angewandte/Wien on March 2nd, 2022 (7pm) at Vordere Zollamtsstrasse 7.
From the description:
Game Cultures use various structures that can be precious within the fields of art and sciences: transparency, knowledge exchange, mental health discussions, collaborative digital work environments, a positive attitude towards networking and more.
The artist and veteran game designer Christian Bazant-Hegemark offers a comparative analysis about potential lessons from the gaming field, where he worked as programmer on various AAA titles (GTA3, Vice City, Max Payne, Manhunt etc). But then his focus shifted to the real AAA of Agency and All fine Arts.
Bazant-Hegemark studied Fine Arts at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, did a PhD on “Painting and Digital Technologies”, works in drawing, painting and code. Community Building projects with the aim to make art world dynamics transparent and curatorial practice in over thirty exhibitions, the transmedial art space mo.ë., etc., will form the backdrop of this discourse, led by the head of Experimental Game Cultures, Margarete Jahrmann.
I was asked to hold a lecture at Die Angewandte, in the class of Jan Svenungsson.
From the teaser:
Before his fine art studies, Christian Bazant-Hegemark used to program video games for several years. Having experience in two industries enables him to offer comparative speculations: how could knowledge transfer benefit artists?
A conversation about the limits of art school education, about everyday realities of being an artist, and about the unique potential of continuously refining an individualized way of living.
Veronika Dirnhofer, Elke Krasny and Ruby Sircar conceptualized and organized a workshop series about the topic of “drawing is political”. within this series, I’ll host a workshop on November 20th, 2021 (11am-1pm) at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna.
I devised over twenty individual, pair and group exercices to challenge specific topics inherent to representational art:
I was invited by Jeanne Wolff-Bernstein to hold a lecture about art and identity; the lecture will happen at the Viennese Psychoanalytic Society (“Wiener Psychoanalytische Vereinigung”), the world*s oldest psychoanalytic society — the one founded by Sigmund Freund, with prominent members being Alfred Adler, Wilhelm Reich, Carl Jung etc.
I’ll talk about depicting individuals that “arent’t us”: about the transgressions this inherently includes, about trying to paint what we cannot understand. About the self-portrait aspect that’s part of painting anyone else.
The lecture happens on September 22nd 2021, 8:15pm at Wiener Psychoanalytische Vereinigung, Salzgries 16/3 (1010 Wien). Here’s the link to the event.
I was invited to be an artist-in-residence at the unique MillStArt exhibition and residency program. Part of this is a public artist talk, which happens on September 10th (Friday) at 8pm. The talk is led Tanja Prušnik, and features curator Günther Oberhollenzer and me, focussing on “Community and Isolation in Contemporary Art”. Drop by!
There’s an artist talk between me and the exhibition’s curator, Günther Oberhollenzer. It happens on August 22nd, 2021 — at 3pm.
Drop by!
This summer I host two free, open-space drawing workshops, sponsored by “Kultursommer Wien /Alsergrund“.
After the first of these events already happened, I want to show you this photo which makes me super happy.
What a difference! Wow.
My advice is usually the same, and very basic:
In a 90 minute/2h course where you get to see attendees only once, my main goal is to bring across the joy and meditative benefits/potentials of drawing. The process, not the result.
If you want to join in: this happens on more on July 7th (4pm) at Arne-Karlsson-Park in Vienna!
You don’t need to register, and it’s free!
I was asked to participate in a panel discussion about art and crises, as part of the group exhibition “(K)ein Mensch Ist Eine Insel” at Künstlerhaus Wien.
The panel included Asta Cink, Bernhard Kittel, Jeanne Wolff Bernstein and Günther Oberhollenzer, and was moderated by Nina Schedlmayer.
I held a 3-week workshop for alumni of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. The focus was on explaining the “open field of fine art”, “galleries and art pricing”, and “sustainable networking”.
Update: I did over twenty individual and group coachings with artists and curators from Canada, India, the Dominican Republic, Switzerland, Russia, USA, Austria and beyond.
This initiative eventually resulted in me conceptualizing a low-budget 6-week course on art world dynamics ($100 for the entire course, called “Living the Art Life“). Here’s a video of me advertising that course.
I’m currently hosting a six-week workshop at Veronika Dirnhofer‘s class for drawing, at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna. The course aims to support artists in increasing their (art) thinking and writing skills, by discussing various forms of art writings, the general power of words and meanings as tools of consequence.
The course includes various theoretical aspects, plus loads of practical exercices aimed to empower students.
In 2019 I was asked by Alexandra Rutsch Brock to give a presentation about my path into the arts, for her students at Pelham High School/NY. I talked about how I started drawing at age 24, got into the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna two years later, wrote a PhD thesis that got me into curating, led an artist-run space, managed a startup gallery, and left curating to found the On Doubt YouTube channel.
What a ride.
Photos (c) Alexandra Rutsch Brock
During my PhD studies I held a lecture about visual competence, focussing on the topics of canonization dynamics and big data. This happened at the Graduiertenkonferenz 2014 at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. The topics were part of the research for my PhD thesis, which I finished in 2015.
(I do not know who made this photos — please reach out for proper crediting!)
