Open Challenge / Open Moment Artistic Research: Hell as paradise as hell An appalling investigation

Thomas Ballhausen (A) / Jack Hauser (A) / Sabina Holzer (A) / Michikazu Matsune (J/A) / Michael Mastrototaro (A) / Helmut Ploebst (A) / Tanja Ostojic (SRB/D) / Boyan Manchev (BUL) / Kattrin Deufert + Thomas Plischke (D)
Open Challenge / Open Moment Artistic Research: Hell as paradise as hell
An appalling investigation

Life, death and the life hereafter. Discipline, punishment and reward. The archaic metaphors of heaven and hell continue to live as still functioning structures in ideologies and management of our societies. But in surprisingly many and important areas the supposed opposites can merge. And what is for example extolled as redemption leads in reality to damnation. On the margins of this merging, a group of artists and theoreticians invited to the Tanzquartier Wien by the collective of the Vienna dance website CORPUS (www.corpusweb.net) and the Austrian Film Archive undertake an intensive investigation of the infernal. The participants in this research project will penetrate the grey areas and illusions of the exploitation of values, more closely investigate the interpretive parameters of suffering or happiness and likewise to what extent the common political animal is possessed or blessed by satanic or angelic metres.