Genossin Sonne (Comrade Sun)

The exhibition Genossin Sonne (Comrade Sun) was created in 2024 at the invitation of Milo Rau, artistic director of the Vienna Festival, as a collaboration between the Kunsthalle Wien and the Vienna Festival | Free Republic of Vienna. In 2025, Genossin Sonne will now be presented in an expanded form and on twice the exhibition space at the HMKV Hartware MedienKunstVerein.

Before the term ‘revolution’ was used in the 18th century - under the influence of the Haitian and Caribbean, French and North American revolutions - to describe a ‘violent overthrow of the existing political or social order’, it was used in astronomy to describe the rotation of celestial bodies.

The essayistic group exhibition Genossin Sonne (Comrade Sun) is dedicated to artistic works and theories that link the cosmos and in particular the sun, the energy supplier for life on earth, with social and political movements. Against the background of the decentring of the human being as a historical subject, we ask to what extent not only the environment on earth but also the cosmos plays a part in historical processes. Is there, as the Soviet cosmists – in particular Alexander L. Chizhevsky in 1924 – claimed, a connection between solar storms and terrestrial revolutions? And what speculative, pleasurable considerations can be found in contemporary art and poetry?

The works of international artists focus on the moving image - on cinema, film and video as media of light. But the works in other media also radiate hypnotic, feverish, glowing, threatening affects. Overall, the sun functions on the one hand as a source of life and energy for political struggles and on the other as a warning figure whose sheer mass and lifespan emphasise the brevity of human life on planet Earth. And also: What if it never sets or rises again and time becomes even more unhinged than it already is?