May 15 until June 26

Ioana Păun «Natalia, turn the light on»

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Ioana Păun focuses in her work on making visible the undocumented services performed by migrants, many of them unregistered aliens working for low pay in European households. In the project “Natalia, turn the light on” calorie counters are used to symbolically store the energy expended by the illegal housekeeper and use it to turn on the light in the exhibition space. The light thus only works through migrant labor, and as soon as they stop working, darkness reigns. We are also showing in the exhibition Ioana Păun’s film “Romania Enterprise,” which drafts a dystopian scenario of Romanian society, a society that is no longer conducted as a state but as a private enterprise.

Ioana Păun’s pieces are part of the EU project Performigrations, which has been co-organized by the Department of Media and Communications at Alpen Adria University in Klagenfurt and which seeks to open up new perspectives on migration, mobility and space through exchanges between academic institutions and the art world. In cooperation with the association lend|hauer, Klagenfurt will also feature the performative art project “Close to the skin,” with migrants performing under the direction of Ioana Păun in a production at the Lendhafen harbor on June 26 at 7 pm. A symposium hosted by the Department of Media and Communications titled “The Art of Migration: Media, Performance and Everyday Life” will pursue questions such as ways in which art can make migration tangible in a new and different way. The all-day symposium will take place on June 29 at Kunstraum Lakeside and on June 30 in the Stiftungssaal at Alpen Adria University.

Curators: Nora Leitgeb, Hemma Schmutz

Ioana Păun (b. 1984,  Romania) is a live artist and theatre director working and researching internationally. She mixes theatre, technology and social sciences to destabilize the seemingly permanent aspects of reality. Trained at Goldsmiths College London and UNATC Bucharest, the artist uses performance, media and ready-mades attempting to crack perception around monolithic structures of power. She focuses on injustice and all its derivatives. Ioana’s presents work in Romania, UK, USA, Germany, Italy, Greece. She is currently developing a visibility platform for immigrant domestic workers and their arsenal of affective strategies, employing live art, wearable technology and socio-digital archiving.
Ioana’s projects and performances were presented in UK, France, Romania, Czech Republic, Greece, Germany, Sweden, Italy and were supported by Theater Royal Stratford East and Live Art Development Agency (London), Schaubuehne Theatre (Berlin), Fondazione Maxxi (Roma), UK Young Artists (Nottingham), British Council, Pépinières européennes pour jeunes artistes (Paris), Medeea Electronique (Thessaloniki), Onassio Centre (Athens), National Theater and Film University (Bucharest), Romanian Cultural Institute Networks around Europe, Mecklemburg Inspires and Schloss Broellin (Pomerania Region), Romanian Cultural Fund Administration (Bucharest).

Coder: Grig Burloiu, Teodor Stoenescu

Project team Performigrations:
MK/AAU Klagenfurt: Elena Pilipets, Tina Perisutti, Eve Schiefer, Matthias Wieser, Rainer Winter
Kunstraum Lakeside: Nora Leitgeb, Hemma Schmutz
Verein lend|hauer: Claudia Isep, Nora Leitgeb
In collaboration with students as part of a seminar at the Department of Media and Communication Sciences at the University of Klagenfurt