Group Art Exhibition
Part of Vienna Art Week 2024
Vernissage: November 9th, 6-10pm
Exhibition opening times: 1-7pm, November. 10th-15th
At WEST, Augasse 2-6, 1090 Vienna
Seven minutes to midnight was the time set on the Doomsday Clock upon its creation in 1947. The position of the minute hand on the clock serves as a metaphor for how close humanity is to self-inflicted global catastrophe. The clock is updated in January of every year by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (BAS), and is closer to doomsday than at any other time in history: the time is now only 90 seconds to midnight. VCAS - Vienna Contemporary Art Space presents 90 Seconds to Midnight, a group art exhibition featuring works made by invited artists and VCAS artists in response to the threat of imminent worldwide self-destruction.
The subjective perception of time plays a significant role in human motivation and behaviour. Temporal Discounting is the psychological phenomenon that the more delayed a future reward or consequence is, the less it affects decision-making in the present. For example, a consequence of a current decision loses its perceived meaning when it won’t occur for another decade or more. In using the language of seconds and minutes rather than years and decades, the Doomsday Clock brings those future consequences into focus - it should make us acutely aware of how precarious our situation is and how deeply we are all connected not only to one another but to everything around us:
“We are living textbooks on global warming and nuclear materials, crisscrossed with interobjective calligraphy.” (Timothy Morton)
… But it seems that we don’t notice. 90 Seconds to Midnight is thus intended to encourage artists to address, with time running out, themes of: the environment and climate change, political upheaval, technological and scientific developments as a whole, and ecological catastrophe. None of these, by virtue of size, distribution in space, and lack of clear boundaries — politics, for instance, bleeds into environment and biology — are easy to pin down; none feel as if they’re really our responsibility. And yet, time is running out, we may soon have neither chronos nor kairos enough.
90 Seconds to Midnight
Curators: Ziegi Boss and (I) Instructor
Exhibition Team: Anthony Kroytor, (I) Instructor, Melina Steiner, Oliver Cloke, Ziegi Boss
Special thanks to:
Bezirksvertretung Alsergrund for sponsoring the event, and WEST for providing the exhibition space.
Vincent Entekhabi, Hello World, animation, still image (cropped), 2024
Participating Artists:
Anthony Kroytor
(I) Instructor
Max Mustermann
Melina Steiner
Oliver Cloke
Q_plus_I
Rotko & Rotko
Vincent Entekhabi
Ziegi Boss
(I) Instructor, Stopwatch, marker pen on paper, 2024