Design plays a crucial role in the functioning of our consumer society. But the work of designers can also be a key to an ecologically and socially sustainable way of life. DESIGN WITH A PURPOSE shows examples of how design can take responsibility, even though it is a tool that was developed in the course of destroying the planet.

The objects and projects presented by DESIGN WITH A PURPOSE create ways to value materials, energy, and humans without relying on exploitation. They tell stories and create relationships instead of promoting superficial consumption. And they challenge existing systems with fresh solutions – all without losing sight of aesthetics and functionality.

With its ‘Immediate Matters’ area of activity, the Klima Biennale Wien is turning towards radical local knowledge and the viewpoints and courses of action associated with it. Strategies from the Alpine region to the Pannonian plain, grassroots activism and community projects will open up opportunities for action that systematically address the future issues raised by the climate crisis. A network of activities, exhibitions, performances, participatory art projects, living labs and forums of encounter will stretch from the Biennale site at Nordwestbahnhof across the city’s entire urban space and offer creative,utopian, but also practical solutions. The Klima Biennale Wien is well aware of the importance and creative potential of the local art scene.

A joint exhibition of the Kunsthalle Wien and the Wiener Festwochen.

In the eighteenth century, the term “revolution” came to designate a “violent overthrow of the existing political and social order,” a meaning fixed by the French Revolution. Before that time, astronomers had long used it to describe the orbits of the celestial bodies.

This essayistic group exhibition is dedicated to works of art and artistic theories that connect the cosmos, and especially the sun – the most important provider of energy for life on earth – to social and political movements. In light of the decentering of the human being as the subject of history, we inquire into the extent to which not just the natural environment on our earth but, on a grander scale, even the universe contributes to historical processes. For instance, is there a linkage, as the Soviet cosmists asserted, between increased solar activity (more sunspots and solar winds) and revolutions on earth? And which speculative and eminently enjoyable reflections on such questions can be found in contemporary visual art and poetry?

This exhibition is a project jointly undertaken by the Weltmuseum Wien (WMW) and the private Museu de Arte Indígena (MAI) in Curitiba, Brazil. The show’s curators, Claudia Augustat (WMW) and Julianna Polodan Martins (MAI), engage these two museum collections in dialogue, reflecting thereby the manner in which autonomous works of art have evolved from functional and ritual objects.

Dystopian situations with people standing on the edge of an abyss, landscapes devoid of humans, and deserted villages—it takes a second look to realize that these photographs depict crowds of protesters, remains of civilization-related interventions after flood disasters, or traces of fires that have ravaged forests and landscapes. These events did not take place just anywhere on the globe in the past years; they all happened in Germany.

For her solo exhibition at Belvedere 21, Angelika Loderer is designing a site-specific installation that uses soil as the common ground, highlighting its ecological, economic, political, and cultural narratives.

An interest in the subterranean and the stories that lurk there, the tension between what is visible and what is hidden, what is ephemeral and what is permanent run like a thread through the work of sculptor Angelika Loderer. For her critical examination of the concept of sculpture with regard to form and authorship, the artist occasionally engages in a creative dialogue with non-human beings whose habitat is the earth: she uses natural caves and passages shaped by animals as molds for casting or incorporates the transformative properties of fungal mycelium to alter and shape materials. The result of this creative process gives rise to a chance-driven and posthumanist coexistence of living beings.

vanishing structures. Politics of Disappearance examines the issues and social, political and environmental conditions associated with the disappearance of architecture, landscapes, people and traditions. The artistic and research-based approaches brought together in the exhibition open up different perspectives on local and geopolitical issues and contexts.

In this context, disappearance refers to both gradual processes that often go unnoticed, or are only noticed by a few, and rapid upheavals that result in sudden, immediate and tangible changes. Fading, fading away and disappearing are considered synonymous in the context of the project and are united in vanishing structures. The concept of structure here stands for tangible arrangements such as urban space, existing systems such as the environment or economic cycles, but also for social structures or collective memories that are less tangible but nevertheless affected by the politics of disappearance.