Nominees for the 2015 Anni and Heinrich Sussmann Artist Award Copy

The Anni and Heinrich Sussmann Foundation is very happy to present the list of artists / artist groups who were chosen as a nominees for Anni and Heinrich Sussmann Artist Award. The Sussmann Foundation is a Vienna based foundation that gives grants and prizes to artist that make work that politically committed to democracy and anti-fascism.

The winner artist(s) will be chosen from a shortlist of nine Artist(s) recommended by a diverse group of advisers who were selected based on their commitment to the principles of the Anni and Heinrich Sussmann Foundation Continuing the legacy of the Foundation. The group of advisers choose you as one of the nine. On the 4th of November 2015, we will announce the winner at a press conference in Vienna.The Winner will receive 5000 Euro award for their current artistic work.

 

List of Nominees 2015:

1.) Nomination: Ahmet Ogut

Ahmet Öğüt (born in 1981 in Diyarbakır, Turkey) is a sociocultural initiator, artist, and lecturer who lives and works in Berlin and Amsterdam. He is the initiator of the Initiator of The Silent University, is an autonomous knowledge exchange platform by refugees, asylum seekers. Working across a variety of media, Öğüt’s institutional solo exhibitions include Forward!, Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven (2015); Happy Together: Collaborators Collaborating, Chisenhale Gallery, London (2015); Apparatuses of Subversion, Horst-Janssen-Museum, Oldenburg (2014); Stacion – Center for Contemporary Art Prishtina (2013); Künstlerhaus Stuttgart (2012); SALT Beyoglu, Istanbul (2011); The MATRIX Program at the UC Berkeley Art Museum (2010); Künstlerhaus Bremen (2009); and Kunsthalle Basel (2008). He has also participated in numerous group exhibitions, including the British Art Show 8 (2015-2017); the 13th Biennale de Lyon (2015); 2nd Kyiv Biennial (2015); 8th Shenzhen Sculpture Biennale (2014); Performa 13, the Fifth Biennial of Visual Art Performance, New York (2013); the 7th Liverpool Biennial (2012); the 12th Istanbul Biennial (2011); Trickster Makes This World, Nam June Paik Art Center (2010); the New Museum Triennial, New York (2009); and the 5th Berlin Biennial for Contemporary Art (2008). Ögüt has completed several residency programs, including at the Delfina Foundation and Tate Modern (2012); IASPIS, Sweden (2011); and Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam (2007–2008). He has taught at the Dutch Art Institute, Netherlands (2012); the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts, Finland (2011–ongoing); and Yildiz Teknik University, Turkey (2004–2006), among others. Öğüt was awarded the Visible Award for the Silent University (2013); the special prize of the Future Generation Art Prize, Pinchuk Art Centre, Ukraine (2012); the De Volkskrant Beeldende Kunst Prijs 2011, Netherlands; and the Kunstpreis Europas Zukunft, Museum of Contemporary Art, Germany (2010). He co-represented Turkey at the 53rd Venice Biennale together with Banu Cennetoğlu (2009).

www.ahmetogut.com

 

2.) Nomination: DAAR collective

Sandi Hilal and Alessandro Petti are both architect and researcher in urbanism, founding member and co-director of DAAR, an architectural office and an artistic residency program that combines conceptual speculations and architectural interventions. DAAR was awarded the Price Claus Prize for Architecture (2010), the foundation for Arts initiative Grant (2011), shortlisted for the Iakov Chernikhov Prize (2010), Nominated for Visible Award (2015), the Anni and Heinrich Sussmann Artist Award (2015), the Curry Stone Design Price (2015) and The New School’s Vera List Center Prize for Art and Politics (2014) and showed in various biennales and museums around the world (www.decolonizing.ps). Alongside research and practice, Hilal and Petti are engaged in critical pedagogy, they established an experimental educational program in Dheisheh refugee camp Bethlehem in partnership with Al Quds University and hosted by the Phoenix Center (www.campusincamps.ps). More recently they co-authored the book Architecture after Revolution (Sternberg, Berlin 2014) an invitation to rethink today’s struggles for justice and equality not only from the historical perspective of revolution, but also from that of a continued struggle for decolonization.

www.decolonizing.ps
www.campusincamps.ps

 

3.) Nomination: Artikisler video collective

artıkişler [leftoverworks] is a video collective tries to create collective production and distribution spaces in the fields of contemporary visual culture and arts. Follows the principles of collective working, exhibition and screening strategies in collaboration with other groups that have similar orientations on the breaking point issues of Turkey’s near social history such as; urban transformation, gentrification, forced migration, refugees, labor in urban space, archiving and collective social memory.

http://artikisler.net/

 

4.) Nomination: Silvia Mariotti.

A constant with my research is the analysis of the environment all around me, both on a sociological and historical point of view. Through photography and its several possible representations, I try to find the existing links in reality, giving back to the image the suggestions and feelings experienced. The (historical or sociological) context I start from to create a work of art is a central point, but in its formal expression, the image can live even without a specific reference and in a totally out-of-context way. As a matter offact, in all my works there is a significant ambiguity that creates a sort of suspension, of doubt and which opens to several interpretations and new forms of imagination. My gaze starts from reality and lingers over fleeting atmospheres, uncommon elements or enigmatic situations and, even if representing something concrete, we never have the perception of the described time or place.

http://silviamariotti.it/bio/

 

5) Nomination: Marina Naprushkina

Marina Naprushkina is an artist, activist and autor. The emphasis on the work lies on projects which works outside the white cube and has social and political impact. Naprushkina was born in Minsk, Belarus and studied art in Minsk, Karlsruhe and Frankfurt am Main.
2007 Naprushkina founded the Office for Anti Propaganda. Started as an archive on political propaganda the „Office“ drifted to a political platform. In cooperation with activists and cultural makers, „Office“ lounges and supports political campaigns, social projects, organises protest actions, and publishes underground newspapers.  Naprushkina initiated several initiatives as: Беларусь//Институт Будущего (Belarus//The Institute of the Future): series of lectures and workshops dedicated to politic, art and feminism, held by artists and activists in Minsk, Belarus. Neue Nachbarschaft //Moabit (New neighborhood//Moabit): the neighborhood initiative to support refugees, started in 2013 and now is one of the largest initiatives in Berlin. Recent exhibitions include: The School of Kyiv, Biennale, Kyiv, 2015; Progress and Hygiene, Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw, 2014; Give Us The Future, Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (n.b.k.), Berlin, 2014; Moscow International Biennale for Young Art, Moscow, 2012; Dear Art, Moderna Galerija Ljubljana, Ljubljana, 2012; How Much Fascism?, BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht, 2012; and Self # Governing, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, 7th Berlin Biennale, Berlin, 2012 and Kalmar Konstmuseum, Kalmar, 2012.

http://office-antipropaganda.com/wordpress/
http://www.zdf.de/ZDFmediathek/beitrag/video/2478704/Kein-Laberverein#/beitrag/video/2478704/Kein-Laberverein

 

6) Nomination: Minna L. Hennrikkson


Minna Henriksson (b. 1976, Oulu) is visual artist currently living in Helsinki. She often deals with hidden and underlying politics in seemingly neutral and natural processes. Her main artistic mediums are text, drawing and photography. She has an ongoing theoretical engagement on nationalism together with Sezgin Boynik since 2006.  Henriksson has produced permanent public artwork in Trabzon, Turkey, and has, among other places, exhibited in Helsinki, Belgrade, Pristina, Ljubljana, Zagreb and Istanbul. Recent exhibitions include works at the Lenin Museum in Tampere, Finland; and in the 2nd Tbilisi Triennial, Tbilisi.
http://minnahenriksson.com/works/2013-hidden/

 

7) Nomination: Jonas Staal

Jonas Staal (1981) has studied monumental art in Enschede NL and Boston USA. He currently works on his PhD research entitled Art and Propaganda in the 21st Century at the PhDArts program of the University of Leiden, the Netherlands. Staal is the founder of the artistic and political organization New World Summit that develops alternative parliaments for stateless organizations banned from democratic discourse and, together with BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht, of the New World Academy, that connects stateless political organizations to artists and students. He is further the co-initiator of the Allegories project (2011-ongoing, with Carolien Gehrels and Hans van Houwelingen) that organizes debates and collaborations between artists and progressive political organizations, as well as of the Artist Organizations International platform (2015-ongoing, with Florian Malzacher and Joanna Warsza), which connects artist-led organizations through conferences and international exchanges. Staal is currently constructing a new permanent public parliament in collaboration with the autonomous Democratic Self-Administration of Rojava (Syrian-Kurdistan), to be inaugurated late 2015. Staal’s work further includes interventions in public space, exhibitions, lectures, and publications, focusing on the relationship between art, politics and ideology. His essay Post-propaganda (Fonds BKVB, 2009) and publication Power?… To Which People?! (Jap Sam Books, 2010) provides the theoretical basis for this line of work. His most recent books are Nosso Lar, Brasília (Jap Sam Books, 2014), a research into the relationship between spiritism and modernism in Brazilian architecture, The Art of Creating a State (BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, 2014, with Moussa Ag Assarid), on the role of art in the representation of the unacknowledged state of Azawad and Stateless Democracy (BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, 2015) with Renée in der Maur and Dilar Dirik), on the cultural revolution in Rojava. The first overview of the New World Summit was exhibited in Moderna Galerija, Ljubljana SL (Art of the Stateless State, 2015) and the first overview of the New World Academy in Centraal Museum Utrecht NL (New World Academy, 2015). Staal’s projects were further exhibited in the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven NL (Trickster’s Tricked, 2010; Freethinkers’ Space Continued, 2012); the David Roberts Art Foundation in London UK (History of Art, the, 2010); Extra City Kunsthal Antwerpen BE (1:1, 2011; Allegories of the Cave Painting, 2014); Kadist Art Foundation in Paris FR (Enacting Populism, 2011); Lunds Konsthall, Lund SE (Don’t Embarrass the Bureau, 2014); Museum for Contemporary Art Belgrade (Invisible Violence, 2014); BAK, Utrecht NL (How Much Fascism?, 2012; New World Academy, 2013; New World Embassy, 2014); de Appel, Amsterdam NL (Vote Back!, 2012); the 7th Berlin Biennale in Berlin DE (2012), the 1st Kochi-Muziris Biennial in Kochi IN (2013) and the 31st São Paulo Biennale in São Paulo BR (2014). He regularly publishes in books, newspapers and magazines – his written work appeared in e-flux journal, Manifesta journal, Frakcija magazine, Metropolis M, nY, NRC Handelsblad and de Groene Amsterdammer.

http://www.jonasstaal.nl

http://www.newworldsummit.org

http://www.artistorganisationsinternational.org

 

8) Nomination: Zentrum für Politische Schönheit (Centre for Political Beauty)

The Center for Political Beauty (CPB) is an assault team that establishes moral beauty, political poetry and human greatness, while aiming to preserve humanitarianism. The group’s basic understanding is that the legacy of the Holocaust is rendered void by political apathy, the rejection of refugees and cowardice. It believes that Germany should not only learn from its History but also take action. For several years now, the CPB has engaged in a parallel (more beautiful) German approach to foreign politics that uses humanity as a weapon. From Bosnia-Herzegovina and Aleppo straight to the mountains of Melilla, the group’s interventions demonstrate how art can be a fifth state power. The Center for Political Beauty engages in the most innovative forms of political performance art- an expanded approach to theatre: art must hurt, provoke, and rise in revolt. In one basic alliance of terms: aggressive humanism. The CPB‘s exhibitions and plays were shown at Gorki Theatre, the 7th Berlin Biennale, ZKM Karlsruhe, SteirischerHerbst, NGBK, and HMKV, amongst others. In 2010, the Center presented a memorial against the United Nations on behalf of 6,000 survivors of the Srebrenica genocide: the Pillars of Shame. In 2011, the artists revealed the nihilistic beliefs of Deutsche Bank in terms of food speculation (German Web Video Award). In 2012, the secretive weapon dealers of the Leopard II battle tank involuntarily gained fame across the country thanks to a bounty of EUR 25,000. In 2014, the CPB presented the “Federal Emergency Programme“- a ready-to-use rescue plan exposing the German government’s rejection of refugees that made it to the Federal Chancellery within 48 hours. For the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, a memorial was removed directly from Berlin’s government quarters and was brought to the EU’s external borders. This was followed by a storm on the EU’s external borders: the First Fall of the European Wall.

http://www.politicalbeauty.com/

9) Nomination: Mykola Ridnyi

Mykola Ridnyi was born 1985 in Kharkiv, Ukraine where he currently lives and works. He was a member of the artistic collective SOSka group and curator of the SOSka gallery-lab in Kharkiv. Current focus of his artistic practice incarnase in site-specific installations, sculptures and short films reflecting social and political reality through a research in people’s individual life experience and traumas of the society His works have been shown in exhibitions including “The School of Kyiv” – Kyiv biennial for contemporary art (2015), “All the World’s Futures” at the 56-th Venice biennial for contemporary art (2015), “Lest the two seas meet” at Museum of modern art in Warsaw (2015), “Through Maydan and beyond” at Architekturzentrum Wien in Vienna (2014), “The Ukrainians” at DAAD gallery in Berlin (2014), “Ten thousand wiles and hundred thousand tricks” at Institute of African studies in Moscow (2014), “Global activism” at Centre for art and media in Karlsruhe (2013) and others. Ridnyi curated a number of international group exhibitions in Ukraine. Among them are “The New History” at State Museum of art in Kharkiv (2009), “After the Victory” at CCA Yermilov centre in Kharkiv (2014) and others.

www.mykolaridnyi.com