Thematic focus

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The artistic program for Lakeside pursues a thematic focus that acts as discursive space framing the relationship of the various projects to one another and guaranteeing the conceptual identity of the whole. Taking as its point of departure the usage profile of Lakeside (business/technology/research) as well as its spatial coordinates (a region outside of an urban center but part of an international network), the program examines a complex of issues involving the conditions of work, economy, knowledge production and communication in the tension between local and global, physical and virtual space and addresses both their positive potentials and their downsides. As a place for critical engagement with economic facets as factors of social and political reality, Kunstraum Lakeside undertakes to present and discuss artistic and theoretical positions. “Does it really benefit all of us when the economy is doing well?” This question, from a lecture at the end of the first semester program, is an example of the kind of discussion we would like to spark here on the pros and cons of economic reality and their effects on individuals and groups.

Christian Kravagna, Hedwig Saxenhuber