Mz* Baltazar’s Generational-change-manifestation-moment
Works, Videos, Sounds and Objekts showcasing the composition of the collective Mz* Baltazar’s across time. FeaturingPatrícia J. Reis, Margo Dubovska, Stefanie Wuschitz, Olivia Jaques, Erika Farina, Lale Rodgarkia-Dara, Evamaria Müller, Anna Watzinger, Sarah Wilhelmy
WHEN:
Curated by Mz* Baltazar’s Laboratory.
30. November 2025, 19:00 Uhr
ABOUT
This event brings together a collection of works done by members and affiliates of the Mz* Baltazar’s collective. Their diverse approaches span a lively network of feminist art practice. The works challenge, disrupt and reimagine the stories we tell about power, technology and bodies through media formats including video, sound, installation, performance and digital experimentation. Together, they form a shifting landscape of aesthetics, resistance and possibility.
FEATURING
COLLECTIVE WORK
A collective work of the Kollektiv Mz* Baltazar’s Laboratory from 2019/2020 shown at Permanent Galerie Kargl, Vienna, Sept/Oct 2019 and at the VBKÖ, Vienna, August 2020
TALE OF DELUSION, COLLECTIVE EXHIBITION BY MZ* BALTAZAR’S LABORATORY with Ana Loureiro, Lale Rodgarkia-Dara, Patrícia J. Reis, Stefanie Wuschitz, Taga Torosyan and special participation of Yonka Dragomanska Tsvetkova, Sarah Howorka, Christina Krämer, Maria Petrova, Magdalena Salner, Theda Schifferdecker
In Tale of Delusion, the Mz* Baltazar’s Laboratory collective claims an anti-narcissistic approach of de-hierarchising the codes of legitimacy in the perspective of feminist, female* and non-binary artists. This is done by means of a programmed bot that searches and displays the names of those* artists found online. A female professional singer strengthens the work’s visibility with her loud voice. The data bank is open to the audience to contribute.
Patrícia J. Reis
Patrícia J. Reis will present a selection from her individual artistic practice, with a particular focus on works developed at Mz* Baltazar’s Laboratory or shaped through the collective’s involvement. Her interactive art explores human-machine interfaces, with a strong emphasis on haptics and sensoriality through a feminist lens. Often inviting participants into intimate, embodied encounters, her works activate technologies to provoke perceptual experiences that would otherwise remain inaccessible. By addressing non-normative bodily phenomena — what she refers to as glitches of the body — her practice challenges dominant models of perception and proposes alternative modes of knowing and feeling through technology.
Patrícia J. Reis is a Vienna-based media artist and researcher whose practice explores human and more-than-human entanglements with technology through feminist hacking, sensory interaction, and embodied interfaces. Her installations investigate touch, consent, and care, often inviting intimate, active participation. Seeking to subvert visuality as the dominant mode of experience, she employs physical computing and haptic art to expand corporeal perception. Her work is marked by the combination of contrasting media and materials, spanning ceramics, sculpture, photography, video, and interactive systems.
She studied Painting (ESAD, Portugal, 2004), Media Art (Lusófona University, Portugal, 2011), and she holds a Ph.D. in Art (University of Évora, Portugal, 2016). She was a post-doc researcher at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna (2020-2023), a guest post-doc researcher at the Weizenbau Institut at TU in Berlin (2022) and a lecturer the Art University in Linz, (AT) (2015-2023). Currently she is a Post-doc Senior Researcher recipient of the Grant Elise Richter-Programm (Peek) as the leader of the artist-based research project Hacking the body as the black box at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna where she also lectures since 2015.
Margo Dubovska
to the one I was not let to become, 2024
hair, pewter (30×30)
“to the one I was not let to become” shows a non-linear process of healing and coping with trauma or experiencing war by encoding personal experiences of dealing with anger, grief, loss and despair into a mourning necklace, braided of fake hair from “l will find myself waiting” (2022). Dedicated to someone potentially (not) existing, the work is made using the technique of the hairwork, which was used during the 15-18th centuries to create mourning jewellery from the hair locks of dead and loved ones.
Margo Dubovska is a Kyiv-born artist, currently based in Vienna.
Dubovska works primarily with sculptures addressing major current political and social issues through her personal experiences. Through experimentation with materiality, she encodes complex and emotional topics into intricate, often uncanny objects.
In 2021 Dubovska started her studies in University of Applied Arts Vienna in the Digital Art class. Currently Margo Dubovska is studying Transmedia Art under the supervision of Jakob Lena Knebl.
Next to her artistic practice, Dubovska co-founded the Vienna-based event series Kriegsbilder and is co-curating its program focusing on introducing Ukrainian cultural and political contexts by organising listening sessions, screenings and hybrid events, showcasing works by contemporary Ukrainian artists.
Stefanie Wuschitz
feminist strategies against data colonialism
This project unpacks how data colonialism is stealing both data (biodata, public service data, AI machine learning data) and resources (land, electricity, water, rare earth) for imperialist extractivism. Extracted materials and minerals from Indonesian mines serves the manufacturing of hardware and chips used in server farms for training AI. At the same time, it is AI powered technology that makes dissent invisible, erases and filters out protest, quietly implementing a new social order. Union members, factory workers, ecofeminists, artists, farmers, migrant workers, students, gig economy workers, human rights advocates, indigenous peoples are entangled through their silenced struggle against extractivism. Within the ongoing crises caused by dispossessions in the name of datafication they create archives, collectives and networks of solidarity. Informed by older forms of mutual self-aid these experts perform care, healing, and knowledge transfer through a vibrant creativity. The commons they create and maintain allow for a dignified, sustainable, economically and socially safe life. Each chapter describes artists, scholars and activists of different generations talking about their communities’ struggles and strategies, addressing the injustices they experience. Until today they are exposed to violence and the constant threat to see their countercultures, archives, networks and ideas yet again erased.
Stefanie Wuschitz (*1981) is a data-research based artist in Vienna. Her scholarship generates data that shapes her artistic output. She investigates the entanglement of gender, technology and power. Her degrowth-inspired artistic method entails upcycling, salvaging sustainable, locally sourced materials to create ecofeminist interactive art installations. Her drawings and animations explore new forms of storytelling, knowledge transfer and documentary. She graduated with honors in the MFA program Transmedia Arts in 2006 and completed her Master’s at NYU 2008 at Tisch School of the Arts in NYC. In 2009 she founded the hacklab and collective Mz* Baltazar’s Laboratory. She completed her Doctorate on Feminist Hackerspaces at TU Vienna in 2014. Since then she has held post-doctoral positions at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, TU Vienna, Universität der Künste Berlin, TU Berlin, and others. Her artwork was featured in solo exhibitions, film festivals and international venues.
Olivia Jaques
Phantastic Fake News
Phantastic Fake News is an art project by Performatorium (Olivia Jaques/Marlies Surtmann) with teenagers from JUK Zwentendorf. Together, we set out to find stories set in the town, whether true or fantastical. The starting points were the respondents’ favourite places. The project was realised as part of Stadt-Raum-Welt-What? 2025 by Kunst im öffentlichen Raum Niederösterreich in cooperation with JUK Zwentendorf.
Erika Farina
“7Y” is the first album by the artist duo A_Phan & FRNRKE. The album is independently produced, atmospherically dense, and charged with a quiet sense of urgency. A multifaceted statement and a debut that frames pop music as delicate, exploratory, and poetic all at once.
Erika Farina (*1990, Italy) is a Vienna-based textile artist and musician. Initially trained as a tailor, she gained experience working with several Austrian fashion labels. Since 2017, Farina has been exploring the intersection between textiles and visual art.
Her work spans a range from costume design to installation pieces and participatory projects.
Under the alias FRNRKE, she collaborates with musician and producer Manuel Cyril Bachinger, also known as A_Phan.
Farina is currently studying at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, focusing on textile art and art education.
Lale Rodgarkia-Dara
briefvision part 1 (2007), Stellvertreterkriegssonaten (2020), Numberstations(2022/2024)
Three works marking a line of literature, organisms.
Numberstations (2022/2024)
Der akustische Schatten ist die Impulsantwort.
The sonic shadow is the impulse response
There are two kinds of dedicated radio listeners.
Those who head for their FM Soundscape while, working, reading living and those who head for numbers and morse-code on short wave. Distracting at least one of these groups may seem like an achievable aim.
While we are discussing pipeline-holes and ripped internet-cables in the Baltic sea, the neo-rebellion in Iran and circling drones, it has all been broadcasted beforehand. This Radio-show is dedicated to numberstations, a way of broadcasting encrypted information via a series of numbers or letters, using either automated voice, Morse code or a digital mode. This method has been used since WW I and is still used as these signals are not sensitive to any distortion and disturbance, and reach out via aether into the air and water. Foreign intelligence agencies underwater or overseas keep on using this practical method of information transportation.
Nida Live-Performance from Sept 28th 2022 was developed during a residency at the Nida Art Colony of Vilnius Academy of Arts and performed there. Numberstations was re-performed at Wien Modern November 24th 2024 as part of a project of the collective Institut for Transacoustic Research (Institut für Transakustische forschung).
IFTAF: AUF DEN SPUREN DER 12
Ein transakustischer Spaziergang
https://www.wienmodern.at/2024-iftaf-auf-den-spuren-der-12-de-4262
Stellvertreterkriegssonaten (2020)
Schwammige Theorien
Proxy war sonatas.
Nebulous Therories
Sendung: Sonntag, 19.April 2020,23:00, Kunstradio Ö1
Medium: Radio
Text and production Lale Rodgarkia-Dara, text contribution by Sahf Abdulrehman included.
Sound: JUUN, Wolfgang Fuchs, Lale Rodgarkia-Dara and Ingrid Schmoliner
Sound clips with interviews with Sahf Abdulrehmann and Delagha Miakhel
Voices: Peter Wetzelsberger, Nicole Sabella, JUUN, Lale Rodgarkia-Dara
Some Vocals and sounds by Marko Markovic and Eirini Tiniakou, mastering Martin Leitner
An acoustic dissected look through three generations onto the states of three communities; their phases of aggregation, merging and disruption, acting and dealing, simultaneously timeless moments and violent separations. Swimming in the acoustic medium.
The stories oscillate between the 1930s, the 1990s and the present. The setting is Austria. People in fixed-community constructions are affected by violence and try to re-aggregate like cells of a slowly forming multicellular organism; only a few manage morphogenesis and its restoration.
BriefVision (2007)
(Brief = letter in German) is the antithesis to TeleVision. A letter can be read on its own and is often read several times. A letter refers to a different reception of repetition, slowness, and even solitude. The English meaning of “BriefVision” represents the short
fictional vision of these two cities. Splitting the media in order to make it more powerful and forcing a distance between the eye and the ear. The forced-to-connect-instinct is turned off brutally.
The acoustic track of these small prose short films represents the Viennese life. This audio part is presented at the sound installation in St. Petersburg. Whereas the video track, representing the rewritten city of St.Petersburg, is shown at a video installation in Vienna at the Museumsquartier (0-port).
Lale Rodgarkia-Dara (*1976, Vienna) works as a writer, radio-maker and media-artist. She is part of the Mz* Baltazar’s Laboratory Collective, which runs a feminist art/hacker space in Vienna, the Wiener Radia Kollektiv (co-founders of radia.fm) and co-founded the Elektronik Teatime (running till 2015) and founded the Radio Ironie Orchester of Radio Helsinki, Graz, in 2019.
She has been exploring the intersection between arts and science in a number of socio-political and artistic projects in the last couple of years.
In 2023 she initiated, and co-funded the artist-run space Palais Rössl – cross-generational, polydisciplinary, queer, growing symbiotic connection of artists, musicians, designers and cultural workers in the heart of Vienna.
Till June 2025 she was running Radio Helsinki, the free radio in Graz, Austria, as a strategic CEO, passing it on in Oct 2025.
Sarah (George) Wilhelmy
Selection from “words without words“
This selection is comprised of 6 printed digital-collages, part of a larger encoded meditation on the current meaningless of words. Hand-drawn patterns on the back of each speak to the tiny, everyday labor that contributes to systemic ruptures and domination. No distinction is made between types of labor that create political, media or interpersonal language-use. Individual normalities make meaninglessness of it all.
The time spent drawing is calculated and repeated again in non-metaphorical efforts to combat such complicity.
Sarah (George) Wilhelmy ist eine in Wien lebende Künstlerin, Kuratorin und Forscherin. Sie arbeitet mit Strukturanalyse, historischer Neuorientierung und interpretativer Hermeneutik. Ihre Kunst befasst sich mit unsichtbaren Kräften, die im Alltag sichtbar werden, sowie mit praktischen Formen kollektiver Macht und Vorstellungskraft. Zu ihren Ausstellungen zählen eine Einzelprojekt-Duo-Show im Fabrikraum Wien, das Criatech Festival in Aveiro, Portugal, „Fragile Foundations” bei Improper Walls Wien und die Zusammenarbeit „X Frames per Space” zwischen dem Vienna Contemporary Art Space und dem Ludwig Boltzmann Institut. Ihre Arbeit im Bereich experimentelles 3D-Scannen und Animation umfasst mehrere Projekte im Rahmen des FWF PEEK-Projekts „Knitted Body Materiality”. Zu ihren kuratorischen Arbeiten gehören zwei Kooperationen mit dem Independent Space Index Festival (2023 und 2025) und mehrere Projekte mit Mz*Baltazar’s Laboratory, dessen Vorstandsmitglied sie ist. Sie hat Gastvorlesungen über postmoderne Kulturanalyse gehalten und wird 2026 mit Beiträgen in mehrere Publikationen vertreten sein.
Evamaria Müller
Feld 200
Feld 200 is based on a call for projects issued by the city of Feldkirch to mark the 100th anniversary of the merger of the surrounding municipalities. For this occasion, the city invited artists to explore the future of Feldkirch and to develop visions for coexistence in the coming century. FELD 200 symbolizes ideas of community in the form of exchange rather than separation, removed from rigid dualisms by including non-human entities. The field recordings collected over the course of a year at different times of the year and day at a few selected locations in Feldkirch that are important for the ecological balance form the basis of the 8-channel composition.
Evamaria Müller’s soundscapes continuously explore new compositional approaches to investigate the complex composition of (and relationship to) our environment through field recordings and sound experiments with found objects. They explore the formation of landscapes and the associated natural, technical and cultural processes of mixing. In direct engagement with the places visited, their histories and acoustic signatures, they examine the sounds, structures and objects of our environment in order to highlight the voices contained within them.
Anna Watzinger
Zwischen Virtualität und Körperlichkeit
Anna Watzinger will present a documentation from her exhibition in 2024 showing a selection of works from 2016-2024. Her works are unified by the recurring theme of the mirror. In her series of video essays she explores the mirror as far more than a simple reflective surface. For Watzinger, the mirror is a liminal space— one that is intangible, elusive, and inherently invisible, an interface between reality and virtuality. The mirrored image only exists through the gaze of an observer. As this embodied gaze moves and shifts, the mirror’s reflection— just like the reality it captures— transforms, presenting viewers with a virtual image in constant motion, as the artist calls it— a “livestream mirror scan”.
The concept of corporeality and sensoric perception is central to Watzinger’s work, as her body becomes a key element in this interplay. At times, her body is the mirror itself, the object of animation reflected on the surface, while at others, it assists the mirror, pushing her physical abilities to the very limit. In Watzinger’s works, the mirror is understood beyond metaphor— it becomes an obsessive theme that she explores to the very limits of the physical and the perceptible.
Anna Watzinger, based in Vienna (A), graduated from the Vienna Art School with a diploma in art, focusing on sculpture and spatial practice and completed a Master’s degree in Media Art (Digital Art) at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. She works across a wide range of topics, media and often in collaboration, with an artistic focus on the fluid (poetic and political) in-between space and the encounter of diverse (non-human) phenomena. Anna Watzinger has presented her work in numerous exhibition spaces and places in Vienna and as well some internationally, including artist-in-residency programs abroad. She has been an active member of various art collectives and is currently a board member of Mz* Baltazar’s Laboratory. In this role, she regularly organizes and curates exhibitions and workshops and teaches (collectively) at the University of Applied Arts Vienna with a focus on data protection and AI.