Weekly Conversations…with Manuel Minch
This Wednesday, we are pleased to introduce you to our current Artist in Residence Manuel Minch. This exchange program is realized in cooperation with Orbital Residency, based in Santander (ES).
Your residency started on October 2, 2018. Have you enjoyed your stay so far?
I am very grateful to be here. It is my first time in Vienna and even if I only spent some weeks here, it is enough time to say that I love this city and its cultural environment. I am also very happy to work at Hegelgasse 14, my studio is charming and I am surrounded by great artists who inspire me in my practice. During my residency I will try to spend most of my time in the studio and take advantage of these perfect working conditions. In addition, the apartment that studio das weisse haus provided, is near the Danube in a in a beautiful environment and not far from my studio. So, in conclusion, I am looking forward to developing my projects in this inspiring city!
Could you give us some idea about the project you focus on during your residency?
Right now, I am developing “There is no alternative“, a project I started a few months ago in Edinburgh. At this time my practice can be summarized as awaiting the impossibility of fighting the structure. I was born in 1993 in a developed society. Hence I consider myself as a product of a neoliberal society without access to any alternative or real expectations of change. This makes me reflecting my personal and collective abilities. The increasing lack of resources, as well as the unsustainability of the current system in opposition to the comfort offers me to lead a life far away from dystopias. In these conditions, I think it is too late to criticize the dynamics of production. Therefore, my artistic practice exposes the facts that can happen, imagining possible futures or ruins of what is now but will be gone soon.
Due to my background fully linked to digital practices, I am focusing on the formalization of these ideas through technology after its useful life. These e-waste artefacts are subjected to restructuring processes through actions such as burning or encapsulating them, creating fossils or studying the routes of illegal marketing of electronic waste.
You are the founder and curator of the “Moon Gallery”, a project you’ve stared in 2016. Could you tell us more about it?
“Internet Moon Gallery“ is a non-profit art community hosted on the moon. The whole gallery works as an online exhibition space, where artists and curators can make 360 degrees site-specific pieces. It’s starting point was a personal research about digital art exhibition practices. Back then, my own work was mainly digital, and the screens and projectors were arranged on the wall.
In addition, I am interested in the conceptualization of the project while it is developing. In this way, it proposes a continuous research, in which each exhibition is thought through by the contributions of the participating artists for the duration of one lunar phase. Through this creative process, the whole gallery is understood as a site-specific artwork of multiple authorship.
In one year I curate around 13 online exhibitions. I collaborate with a lot of artists around the world and create new environments. In addition, I find it interesting that the natural cycle becomes an integral part of the project, and to connect myself with natural phenomena.
Apart from your participation in the Open Studio Day on November 24 and your presentation on December 12, 2018 at studio das weisse haus, when do we get the chance to see other projects?
I am preparing an exhibition on IR11 (Edinburgh), taking place at the end of February, where I would love to include some of my last works from Vienna. In addition, you can follow my online collaboration projects on www.internetmoongallery.com with a new exhibition every full moon or check the previous exhibitions at www.internetmoongallery.com/archive.