Win-Win Lottery

Kassel, 2022

From 18 June to 25 September 2022, artists Hannes Egger and Thomas Sterna have rented an exhibition space at KulturBahnhof Kassel and given other artists a chance to win a one-week presentation slot during documenta fifteen. Leaving the decision up to chance rather than a panel of experts, any artist, curator or exhibition organiser interested could enter the prize draw by simply purchasing a raffle ticket. The 13 winners, selected in a total of four draws, were then free to show their works without any requirements regarding content and/or aesthetic input. But not all winners decided to exhibit their own works: Some organised group exhibitions, others gave their slot away. The results varied greatly and were surprising, often breaking with conventional notions of art and standards of evaluation.
The project ended with a panel discussion in the ruruHaus at documenta fifteen with the curatorial team ruangrupa.

About

Hannes Egger

Hannes Egger‘s artistic practice is, in essence, characterised by a conceptual approach that aims to involve and interact with his audience. As such, his performances, installations and participatory projects invite us to adopt unusual attitudes, positions and points of view in order to reflect on the reality that surrounds us and the way in which we share the spaces we inhabit. His notion of art does not depart from a work of art in the traditional sense; instead, it involves the creation of situations on an open platform in-the-making, allowing us to observe just how those situations may develop and evolve as a result of participation. He frequently provides coordinates or instructions to be followed, and in doing so turns the participants’ actions into a work of art in and of itself.

Thomas Sterna

Autobiographical occasions aside, Thomas Sterna’s work tends to focus on exploring the current conditions of autonomous artistic production and on questioning their social and political foundations, all the while interweaving the inward gaze and the sociological bird’s-eye view. If Adorno’s famous words are to believed, an essential motive behind both approaches is “to let neither the power of others, nor our own powerlessness (…), stupefy us”. From Sterna’s perspective, this also includes strategies of self-empowerment that transcend one’s own artistic practice such as devising and presenting entirely new exhibition formats, adopting activities that may seem to be wholly unrelated to art and authoring theoretical texts, to name but a few.