Andree Korpys and Markus Löffler: Investigating Media Reality and Power Structures at Secession

This exhibition by Andree Korpys and Markus Löffler delves into how reality is constructed and staged in media-mediated images, questioning the truthfulness of these portrayals. The artists focus on sites and structures of power, using video, drawings, photography, and installations to create alternative narratives.

Since the early 1990s, Andree Korpys and Markus Löffler have investigated the construction and staging of reality in media-mediated images, challenging their presumed truthfulness. Their work critically examines sites and structures of power, their representation through architecture, hierarchies, control mechanisms, and the exercise of violence. Instead of focusing on the obvious, the artists draw attention to seemingly secondary aspects of historical-political events and the incidental actions of figures involved. These seemingly minor moments reveal how power operates, often invisibly and shielded from public view. Korpys/Löffler blend fiction, biography, and documentary elements in their videos, drawings, photographs, and complex installations to craft new narrative strands and image references that diverge from officially dictated mass-media campaigns. The exhibition features six filmic works, including a new site-specific video production. The artists' developed exhibition architecture also inverts perspectives and foregrounds, such as a 'corridor' in the main room where the visible supporting structure is on the inside, making the inner walls appear as outer walls, questioning the nature of space and perception. Their previous works, such as the 'America films' (World Trade Center / United Nations / Pentagon, 1997), targeted internationally known institutions, presciently focusing on sites that would later become central to geopolitical developments. Through their filming of architectural details, everyday objects, traffic, and passersby near these power centers, and by emphasizing security measures and bodyguards, they create dramatic tension and a conspiratorial atmosphere reminiscent of thrillers, yet the images remain enigmatic. For the 2002 state visit of George W. Bush in Berlin, their film 'The Nuclear Football' (2004) focused on the formal, protocolary events and security measures, using a monotonous whisper voice to deliver information that is publicly accessible or even banal, revealing how political power is represented today through formalisms and encryption. The title for a 2007 work, 'Eure Kinder werden so wie wir!', taken from a protest chant at the G8 summit in Heiligendamm, documents the events with an 'other' perspective, including close-ups of nature and indifferent insects alongside images of helicopters and demonstrators, aiming to reveal the core of events through a detached, amoral stance.

Visitor information and tickets can be found via a link to eventjet.at. The Secession's opening hours are Tuesday-Sunday, 10 AM - 6 PM, and it is 'open today'. Specific exhibition ticketing details are not provided beyond this general direction and opening times observation from the page context. The page does not offer direct ticketing information for this exhibition. Visitors are directed to a general ticketing link and opening hours are stated for the institution itself, not specifically for this exhibition beyond its dated context as a past event displayed in an archive format or historical overview on the current site.