Atmospheric Drafts of Intimacy addresses the discourse between society and the individual shaped by new technologies. It questions the influences and dependencies of information and the seemingly autonomously operating communication systems. The concrete human body illustrates the conflict between affirmation and resistance, between becoming a machine and posthuman existence. In the video, gases occurring on Earth escape into space and form extracorporeal bodies. These structures are created when molecules or particles reinforce and interact with each other as well as with the electromagnetic field. Here, Bruckner dissolves the body into synthetic particles and connects them to space. The artist calls this state polymorphous care or polymorphous desire. How can these emerging nonhuman bodies and their poetics be imagined? What aesthetic narrative forms can be found for these crystallizations causedby the forces and traces of light energy, solar and planetary winds – between matter, atmosphere, technology, and indeterminate desire? What can we learn from their affective knowledge? How can they help imagine possible future worlds, languages, and practices of care beyond the tangible? Speculative scenarios of atmospheric escape hold a mirror to the world, revealing but also harnessing the sublime forces affirmed in the global machine of techno-physical practices. And what infrastructures and systems of coexistence can we imagine based on these transformations? Imagination is a central catalyst of this series, to enable infrastructures that allow us to better live with the synthetic, toxic order of the world and its bodies.

Bruckner is an internationally exhibited artist. Recent exhibitions, screenings, and performances include Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt (2020); Digital Art Center, Taipei (2020); Löwenbräukunst, Schwarzes Cafe at LUMA Westbau Zürich (2020); Arebyte Gallery London; ZKM | Zentrum für Kunst und Medien, Karlsruhe (2020); Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin (2020)’ Pylon Lab, Dresden (2020); transmediale (2020); Kunstraum Niederösterreich Wien (2020); the 57th Venice Biennale (2019); Museum for Modern and Contemporary Art, Geneva (2019); EIGEN+ART Lab, Berlin (2019); Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zürich (2018); KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2018); Villa Croce, Museum for Contemporary Art, Genoa (2017); Kunsthaus in Hamburg (2017); the Kunstverein Harburger Bahnhof; and dOCUMENTA (13). She will show new work at the Biennale Mediterranea in 2021. Bruckner was a fellow at the Swiss Institute in Rome (2020) and is currently a fellow at the Jan Van Eyck Academie. In 2020 she received the recognition award for Fine Arts of Lower Austria. Atmospheric Drafts of Intimacy has been produced with generous support by Pro Helvetia, Swiss Arts Council.

Rome/Italy — Web Resident »Engineering Care,« 2019