Denise Parizek is an independent curator and art historian based in Vienna but who’s working internationally. She studied theater, art history, philosophy and comparative literature in Vienna and lived in Hamburg during the Konrad Adenauer Fellowship. She is the founder of pogmahon.art.club (2000-2006), co-founder of zuhaus with Renate Huber (2005-2008) and was a member of Artist Run Space Vienna 12- 14 contemporary (2009-2022). She writes critical texts for the magazines Alumni / Alma Mentor Science of Theater, Revista Arta, Im7ten and Souterrain Magazin.

In her curatorial practice, Denise Parizek seeks to support emerging artists and create the space and platforms necessary for experimentation and dialogue. Some of Denise Parizek’s most known exhibitions are TRAUMA (Castelnuovo Rangone / Italy, 2023, MONOLOG Gallery Belgrade, Serbia, 2023, DG Kunstraum München, Germany, 2021) – a traveling exhibition about the traumas caused by experiences of war, gender discrimination, xenophobia, violence; WITTGENSTEIN (Vienna 2018, Bulgaria 2019, Serbia 2020, Hungary 2020, Italy 2021) – a traveling exhibition designed around Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, which aimed to break down the boundaries of thought and geography, as well as the limits of visual arts genres; Utopia of Transformation (Vienna, 2020) – an exhibition addressing feminism, human rights and gender violence. 

Marina Paladi: Can you tell me about your background in the arts and how you ended up working as an independent curator?

Denise Parizek: I studied theater science, art history, and philosophy and decided in the end that I wanted to work in a theater. After my master’s, for which I had a residency in Hamburg, I worked at Burgtheater, first as an intern and later as an assistant to two directors, but after just 9 months, I had to leave and got a job in a Viennese gallery. This was my shift to fine arts. I worked for one year for the Union of Fine Artists at their gallery in Vienna, but soon after this, in 2000, I found myself at a kind of crossroads. I had to decide how I would continue. The Viennese independent art scene was quite precarious at that time; there were no employed jobs in the art field, so I decided to be self-employed and founded thus pogmahon.company.

I created the pogmahon.art club with a friend, and we started by cooking food (we wanted to sensitize visitors through healthy food for art and design), and we were having openings every week, for nearly 2 years. Then we split up, and I moved to a new space, where I continued with 2 openings a month. This I did for more than 3 years. Besides, another friend involved me in a project where we paid attention to exhibitions in community buildings, old houses such as the Storchenschule (Jewish school) or Kornhäuselvilla, i.e. in special old buildings before they were renovated. We also started to organize exhibitions in foreign countries.

In 2009, some of the artists I was working with had the idea of an artist-run space, which we finally opened on 1.4.2009 in Schleifmühlgasse. This worked for nearly 14 years.

M.P.: The role of the curator is continuously in development. According to you, what does it mean to be a curator today and what do you see as challenges for curators?

D.P.: When I started in 2000 as a curator, it was not easy, and the public funds were okayish but not enough to survive. So we started to sell viennese designs as there were no design shops in town managing thus to gather enough money to continue our activity. But it was never enough to have a regular salary. From 2008 on, it became tougher and harder to sustain yourself in the contemporary art field because, on the one side, the artist community grew, and design shops popped up, which is really amazing, but the amount of public funds stayed at the same level. The economic crisis influenced the art scene as well.

But during the Covid pandemic, we artists had a brief period of recovery because we were financially supported by the state. This has shown that an unconditional basic income for artists (probably for all people) would be a relief for our lives and could take away the permanent existential fear.

Survival for artists in Austria is not possible without a part-time job. Existential fears rob artists of creativity and energy and side jobs become burdensome and eclipse the creative and inspirational moments.

After Corona, we in Vienna had the impression that the government’s upcoming austerity measures would primarily affect the art industry. Although Austria makes a living from art and cultural tourism, it only spends a tiny proportion of its GDP on art. The state theaters, operas, large museums, brass bands and folk dance groups, off-spaces and independent artists have to share this small portion. In addition, the art scene is constantly growing, more and more artists are moving to Vienna, and even though the budget is slightly growing, it is being eaten up by inflation. For some years now, there has been a law that artists must be paid, and there are payrolls for this, but the state budget for this is far too small and often, not even museums and public institutions adhere to it.

So, the challenge for curators and artists is to survive and have enough time for art and art projects.

M.P.: Which exhibitions influenced you most as you were starting to curate your own exhibitions, and how would you define your curatorial process?

D.P.: Hans Ulrich Obrist and Marina Abramović influenced me theoretically, as did David Silvester. But when I started curating, I wanted to create something new, crossover media, more for the visitors than for reputation.

My objective was to show that art is essential like food or drinks.

Horizon Field Hamburg (https://www.deichtorhallen.de/ausstellung/antony-gormley-horizon-field-hamburg ) was one show which touched me sustainably, even though it was kind in the middle of my career. It was an immersive installation made by the British artist Antony Gormley, that was presented during the documenta 2012. In the open and empty space of a hall, there was a vast, black, reflective structure floating above the floor, creating a new structure and a new space. The suspended, slightly oscillating platform exploits the structural potential and architectural context of the Deichtorhallen building, taking visitors into a new spatiotemporal matrix. Gormley explained that inside this void, ”we can stay in an underworld or climb skywards. Both scenarios put the human subject into a dynamic position of jeopardy.”

My curatorial goal is to support the work of artists on several levels by constantly exploring current themes and genres, in-situ projects, creating space for discursive and experimental formats. “I hear you, but I can’t understand you” is one of the key sentences of the play “Fantasma” by René Pollesch. In our optimised, fast-paced time, we find no free space to really listen, think and reflect. The new challenge to us is to listen with both ears, to introduce questioning as a daily tool, and to change perspective voluntarily. That’s what I do exhibitions for.

M.P: Your curatorial work unfolds particularly around young artists. Can you please describe this approach and specify why is it important to work with emerging artists?

D.P.: The artists I started with were kind of my age at the beginning. The fact that it is hard to survive brings some artists to the limit and many of them are quitting as artists. Also, the artists I started with were mostly living in Vienna and mostly with an Austrian background. During that time, I was also kind of bored because I felt like I missed new approaches and ideas. So I started to conduct research at universities and also abroad. In the end, I found out that artists from abroad, like Eastern Europe, Italy or Canada and Mexico, have the same objectives as me. Mostly they are better educated and serious about what they are doing.

As a curator, I have to be forced and triggered by artists. If they are not interesting to me anymore, I am not interested in cooperating.

The actual group, consisting of artists from Austria, Switzerland, Mexico, Italy, Serbia, Romania, Croatia, Hungary, Canada, Belarus, Russia, Republic of Burathia,  in different ages, is a group with which I love to work because they are creating projects with me, involving me in the development of their projects and plans, and we are supporting each other.

Age, nationality, beliefs, sexual orientation, all that is not important to me, the only important thing for me is that artists arouse my interest and massage my brain.

The most important objective of mine was to establish an international spirit and to do exchanges with artist-run spaces, communities, institutions from abroad and to do travel exhibitions.

Traveling exhibitions intensify the connection between artists and curators. Spending time together, traveling, setting up together in new spaces, bringing art into situ – all this strengthens collaboration. In addition, traveling exhibitions are experiences with other processes and procedures, encounters with other audiences, usually more interested than in Vienna, as well as a kind of reward for the artists.

The internationalization of my art group was important for me. That’s why I always try to bring together artists living in Vienna with artists from other countries. This creates new connections and further projects and exchange exhibitions.

I also always tried to combine well-known artists with newcomers, as this helps the new artists to be seen in a professional international environment.

M.P.: Can you tell us a bit about how you build relationships with artists?

D.P.: Mostly we find each other by accident, through friends, other artists or curators, related institutions or galleries.

For example, I discovered the artist Rafael Lippuner while I was on an art trip in U10 in Belgrade. There was a show of art and science with artists from the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. I fell immediately in love with his installation and checked him out at a university show. Or artists from here, living in the States or somewhere abroad are suggesting to me friends of theirs who remained to work in Vienna. For example, Gabriel Luciani, whom I met at the SWAB Fair in Barcelona because we were neighbours with our booths.

My relationship with artists is a combination of professional cooperation and friendship. I like to be part of their lives and to involve them in mine as well.

This approach is necessary for me to understand their thinking and acting, and to develop common projects out of our experiences.

M.P.: Tell me about pogmahon.company’s activity. Its approach focuses on art, but it also involves other disciplines including architecture, activism, poetry, choreography, design, and performances. How is it to work at the intersections of multiple and various disciplines and how important it is to have a transdisciplinary approach especially nowadays?

D.P.: I could never decide between theater and the visual arts. At the beginning of 2000, the term crossover media had entered the art scene, which was good for me. Combinations of different genres enliven the art scene and show different approaches and realisations of themes.

Basically, I am in favour of broadening my horizons and opening up new possibilities. The collaboration between art and science has been known at least since Leonardo da Vinci. But today we celebrate Art&Science as a new invention.

Whether with other genres of art or collaborating with science, anything that broadens our horizons and knowledge should be welcome in art projects. I don’t like geographical or intellectual boundaries. Borders are there for us to think about how we can overcome them, so they are superfluous, in my opinion.

Especially nowadays international and transdisciplinary approaches are so important to fight against this nationalistic and fascistoid development.

Our common enemy is the neoliberal, neocolonial development and we, from the art scene as well as from science, should fight together. In my opinion art and science has always a political approach, because we are dependent on the goodwill of the political leadership.

Artists are seismographs of the social and political situation. They notice early on what is going wrong and translate this visually through their art.

But scientists are also dependent on state funding and are abused on various occasions, such as the pandemic. Over the past two years, Austria has celebrated the fact that two Nobel Prize winners have roots in Austria. However, funding for science has been cut, and the situation at universities is precarious. I get angry when I realize how much money is available for war and never for art, science, or social issues like hospitals, schools, public transport and so on.

Cover photo: Portrait Denise Parizek. Credit image: Carla Fausti, 2023.

This journalistic material was produced within the framework of the Power Station++ programme | Mobilities for Cultural Professionals. The mobility is part of the National Cultural Programme “Timisoara – European Capital of Culture in 2023” and is financed by the Power Station++ programme, implemented by Center for Projects of the Municipality of Timișoara, with funds allocated from the state budget, through the Ministry of Culture budget.