XCURRENCY

XCurrency Exhibition Opening
January 12, 2017
5:00 PM
Art|Sci Gallery | CNSI 5th floor

Art|Sci's current artists-in-residence Lucie Strecker and Klaus Spiess present the performative installation XCurrency as a work in progress. Their artistic research explores experimental currency systems that can negotiate value through their liveness when mediated by interfaces with consumers and their affective resources.

XCurrency is based on Lucie Strecker’s and Klaus Spiess’s previous work ‘Hare’s blood+’ which reflected on artworks incorporating animal relics. The artists designed a synthetic gene from a Joseph Beuys multiple that contained hare’s blood and spliced it into living cells which were put up for auction. The bids at the auction were linked to the living and dying processes of the cells, positioning them as agents in the making of value, in line with a counter-economy envisioned by Joseph Beuys.

Whether proposing exchange by liveness within an auction or as now relating the informational virtuality of the expanded genetic alphabet of XDNA with speculation on the financial markets, the artists always propose a reciprocal qualitative dependency between currencies and their consumers.

Lucie Strecker and Klaus Spiess have been developing transdisciplinary performances and installations that address biopolitical issues for many years. A former endocrinologist, psychosomaticist and medical anthropologist, Klaus Spiess now works as an artist and associate professor at the Medical University of Vienna. Lucie Strecker is an performance artist and researcher and holds a senior postdoc position at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. Performances and installations by both artists have been shown at Budascoop Kortrijk, Tanzquartier and Belvedere/21er Haus, Vienna, at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, the BEALL Center for Art + Technology, Irvine, the Onassis Cultural Center Athens and the OK Center, Linz, where the duo were awarded an Honorary Mention (2015) at the Prix Ars Electronica. They have published numerous articles on their transdisciplinary performances in Performance Research, Kunstforum International, Springerin and The Lancet, among others.