Hypervigilant

Constant vigilance can develop as a response to racial discrimination and transgenerational trauma, allowing potential threats to be recognized in advance. This fi ght-or-fl ight state activates the nervous system and can lead to chronic muscle tension and bruxism.

Teeth grinding occurs as a way of coping with stress during sleep, often driven by societal expectations to suppress fear or anger.

Hypervigilant addresses this suppressed anger. Aluminum teeth suspended from the ceiling form a space similar to a cage that oscillates between protection and exposure. Shaped as gong-like instruments, the oversized representation of the artist’s bite is set into vibration during a sound performance to release embodied pressure and reduce tension in the nervous system.

About the exhibition:

Memory is not a stable record of the past. Rather than functioning as a static archive, it unfolds as a dynamic process in which traces are continuously reshaped by perception, narration, and material conditions.

[REVERBERATED] explores notions of memory as the annual exhibition of the master’s program Art & Science. The exhibition approaches this process through the metaphor of reverberation. Reverberation describes the reflection of sound from multiple surfaces, producing many overlapping echoes at once. Just as sound continues to resonate within a space, memories reverberate through bodies, media, and environments long after the events that created them.

Taking this physical phenomenon as its conceptual point of departure, the exhibition explores how memories move across temporal, spatial, and technological contexts. Memory is never something fixed, but rather a living trace that unfolds over time. It continuously changes depending on context, interpretation, perception, and the ever-shifting present moment. Within this framework, the participating artworks investigate different modes of remembering: some address the role of images, storytelling, and artificial intelligence in shaping narratives of the past, while others engage with ecological and material traces: from disappearing species and botanical archives to residues embedded in landscapes and infrastructures.

Yet for this fluidity of memory to persist, structures are necessary – a mind, a community, or an archive. These structures are required similarly to sound waves, requiring surfaces in order to reverberate. At AIL, the exhibition unfolds across two interconnected spaces that function as the surrounding structures. Each space gathers works that resonate with one another while simultaneously echoing across the architectural interior of the historic Kassenhalle. Through this spatial arrangement, the exhibition itself becomes part of the inquiry, staging memory as a process of resonance, interference, and transformation.

Across these artistic approaches, [REVERBERATED] invites visitors to consider memory not as something simply preserved, but as something continuously produced through interactions between bodies, technologies, and environments. The exhibition thus explores how the past continues to reverberate within the systems of the present.

With contributions by:

Agustina Belén Agüero, Lobna Awidat, Phin Anibal, Rimon Alyagon Darr, Ronnie Danaher, Tatiana Del Valle, Hasti Ghasedi, Leah Barbara Mukui Giertz, Hanna Hofmann, Tal Horesh, Mauritius Itzinger, Laura Isselhorst, Dina Karaman, Moritz Klarer, Anna Buchner, Leonard Otterbein, David Ristić, Rajarshi Sarkar, Agnes Schyberg, Aryan Shahabian, Majedeh Shahvelayati, Mehrta Shirzadian, Pauline Simon, Laura Chalabi, People of Soil

An exhibition by the University of Applied Arts Vienna, initiated by the Department Art & Science in collaboration with the AIL.