PCAI is glad to announce that PCAI Collection artists and researchers, Markus Hanakam and Roswitha Schuller’s exhibition titled “The Water Cabinet” opens at the Kunstforum Wien on February 25, 2025, questioning the rules of the visual arts. In videos and objects, the artists develop unconventional orders and new concepts of the world. In doing so, they reflect and ironize historical and contemporary artistic strategies and means of expression. Hanakam & Schuller have been working as a duo since 2004 and their home base is Vienna. “The Water Cabinet” in the tresor of the Bank Austria Kunstforum Wien is their first solo presentation in a Viennese exhibition venue. In audiovisual episodes, the duo’s new four-channel film work deals with topics such as labor relations, situated knowledge, climate fiction (Cli-Fi), water supply and microecology based on the Anima Garden in Marrakech. The focus of interest was the question: How can gardens be reinterpreted as cultural artifacts, as something that goes beyond the physical transformation of landscapes and in doing so stimulates critical reflection on power, knowledge and cultural identity in contemporary art?
“The Water Cabinet” (2023/24) is the duo’s new four-channel film work, created in collaboration with Stella Reinhold-Rudas and Anima Garden, Marrakech. Issues like labor relationships, situated knowledge, climate fiction (cli-fi), water supply, and microecology are addressed in audiovisual vignettes*. Gardeners and horticultural technicians talk, each in their respective language, about their workday, routines, their motivation, about techniques and their favorite spots in the garden.
Listen to gardeners in their languages.
Look at beauty as a technique, look at technics as a beauty.
Gloves make ritual.
Think about ecology not only as a supply system.
Un-blueprint Eurocentric motifs.
Decolonize the Garden.
This collaboration was informed by Hanakam & Schuller’s fascination with gardens as places where nature and culture, migration and the history of colonialism all come together. The Anima Garden was considered prototypical of the “oasean garden.” The focus of interest was the question of how to reread gardens as cultural artifacts, as something beyond the physical transformation of landscapes that inspires critical reflection on power, knowledge, and cultural identity in contemporary art.
The works of Hanakam & Schuller have previously been shown by Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin; Eyebeam, New York; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow; MAK, Vienna; MAK Center for Art and Architecture, Los Angeles; National Art Center, Tokyo, a.o.
Exhibition curator: Bettina M. Busse
Opening: February 25, 2025
tresor im Bank Austria Kunstforum Wien
Activity aligned with Goals 3, 4, 6, 7, 10, 11, 12, 13, 15, 16, 17
