Ines Doujak : Twisted Language

A close examination of the realities of the current economic, microbiological, and ecological crises through political and aesthetic strategies.

In the context of Ines Doujak’s exhibition Geistervölker, Kunsthalle Wien and Sternberg Press publish a book that looks deeply into the artist’s practice. In the exhibition, curated by What, How & for Whom / WHW, the artist traced, in fragments, the origins of pandemics throughout history and linked them to a global economy that is based on logics of extraction facilitated by colonial legal mechanisms and late capitalism. 

These subjects have always been present in Doujak’s works. Therefore, it felt crucial to have a book that allows several writers, theoreticians, and poets from different geographies to reflect on the political and aesthetic strategies that Doujak has been using during these past thirty years. The book is not a monograph nor a catalogue but rather a mosaic of texts in dialogue with Ines Doujak’s Oeuvre, which engage with burning and urgent topics such as how we relate to the world around us and to each other.

Contributors
John Barker, Maria Berrios, Alice Creischer, T. J. Demos, Danny Hayward,  Patricia Highsmith, Matthew Hyland, Ernst Jandl, Pablo Lafuente, Pedro G. Romero, Grace Samboh, Klaus Speidel, Markus Wörgötter.

Ines Doujak is an Austrian artist, researcher, and writer, working in the field of visual culture and material aesthetics with a queer-feminist, anti-racist, anti-colonial focus. Her research investigates how global histories are characterized by cultural, class, and gender conflict. She has presented internationally at Kunsthalle Wien, Liverpool Biennial, NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore, Bergen Assembly, steirischer herbst, Belvedere, Dhaka Art Summit, Para Site, Bunkier Sztuki Gallery of Contemporary Art, MACBA, São Paulo Biennial, Royal College of Art London, Busan Biennale, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía and documenta 12.