Simon Denny (born in New Zealand in 1982) has acquired an international reputation for his media analytical works. Television programmes, internet networks and the means of communication itself are (re)processed in his art work. That may entail examining the aesthetic transformation of the television set and other telecommunication displays over the last decade, elucidating the errors or dropouts in the frictionless flow on mass media information, or dedicating himself to the forgotten history of radio, television and internet providers. His installations, objects and projects repeatedly bring into focus the confrontation resulting from the linkages between information, commerce, aesthetics, politics, communication and the promise of the new which all too quickly seems old.
 
From 5 July 2013 on, Denny, who studied at the Städelschule in Frankfurt, will be showing a media installation specially created for the mumok. It follows on from the large-scale installation Channel Document at the Art Basel which was awarded the Baloise Art Prize. The core of Channel Document consists of two parallel events which the artist links in an impressive way. On the one hand there is the threat to the existence of the New Zeeland television station TVNZ 7 which was dedicated to supporting non-commercial, digitally-broadcast programmes on current events. Denny presents these on historical displays. On the other hand there is the introduction of the new computer-readable passports presented by Denny on the latest flat screen monitors in the form of a documentary commissioned by him in the TVNZ 7 style.
 
Curated by Matthias Michalka.

and Materials and Money and Crisis is a group exhibition that serves as an experimental proposition about the matter of capital as it exists in the artwork. Matter here has a double meaning. On the one hand flows of material and money can serve as subject matter for artwork. More importantly for this exhibition however, is the speculative question of what relationship the physical matter from which the artwork is built has to the dislocation of capital from production.
 
“Materials”, and “money”, and “crisis” are terms that demarcate a historical period in which financial systems have served to abstract notions of value. These terms function equally as key vectors in the work of the artists included in this exhibition for whom the question is not how to represent these conditions and their relations, but how the art work already exists within and through these processes.
 
The exhibition puts newly commissioned works alongside historical positions, offering up a variety of artistic ways of responding to the matter of capital. Curated by Richard Birkett, curator at Artists Space, New York, the project was developed out of a dialogue with New York based artist Sam Lewitt, and will feature new work by Lewitt, along with other artists including Gareth James, Henrik Olesen,
Pratchaya Phinthong, R.H. Quaytman and Cheyney Thompson.
 
These artists employ a range of media, often turning to technical supports and organizational systems as sites of production. They deal with the physical substructures of communication systems; questions of calculative schema; the signification of language in constructing value; new positions on appropriation; the intersection between institutional systems and the physical and sexual body; and the exchange of labour as material.
 
Curated by Richard Birkett.

In 2012 the Henkel Art.Award. went to Estonia for the first time. Film and photo artist Marge Monko—born in 1976 in Talinn—was awarded the prize of 7,000 Euros and two exhibitions. From the 25 October 2012 she will be allowing us insight into her work. The historical change over from communism to capitalism and the associated transformation of social roles lies at the centre of her interest. The artist carefully researches the everyday history of work in its political context and subjects it to a critical and analytical examination from a woman’s perspective. In the process, the propaganda and pathos of communist ideology undergoes revision just as much as the belief in progress embedded in the capitalist striving for profit.
 
The erstwhile promises of communism and its industrial culture of happiness, satisfaction and self-determination are recognised as hollow gestures destined to decay. They now return in changed conditions and new manifestations, in career-oriented, neoliberal elites. Thus as early as 2009, in the video work Shaken Not Stirred, Monko engaged in sketching the ruptures in the life of her female protagonist who, although she conforms to the image of a successful business woman, is revealed as a failure in her private life and leads a deeply frustrating existence in surroundings which exhibit deeper fissures between the different social strata than ever before.
 
Curated by Rainer Fuchs.