Lena Violetta Leitner  

Lena Violetta Leitner invents, intervenes and cooperates. Her artistic practice, which she succinctly outlines in these words on her website, navigates the space between infiltration and care, between parasitic strategies and collective forms of coexistence. In doing so, she develops temporary agencies and participatory settings that subvert institutional logics and render them negotiable. In this spirit, as part of the BLOOM exhibition series, she is taking over Space04 at the Kunsthaus Graz with PPSsssst! Friendly Alien Infection in Progress: As a “Pop Up Agency for Agency”, her parasitic protection society embeds itself in the existing infrastructure, taps into resources and makes itself at home within the system – much like parasitic plants that attach themselves to other organisms to develop new life forms. Leitner does not view these as a threat, but as complex models for productive relationships and coexistence. In her artistic universe, the parasitic becomes a creative strategy through which she fundamentally shifts our perspective on what we perceive as worthy of protection and beautiful, or as disruptive and ugly. For: Which forms of coexistence actually seem appropriate to us? And what relationships do we wish to enter into – with both humans and non-humans?

Building on these and similar questions, an experimental project unfolds at Space04 over three days, featuring a continuous programme and participatory stations – ranging from consultation hours and fitness sessions to collective rest periods and FLINTA workshops (Become your own parasite), in which visitors become participants. In the process, one’s own body becomes a potential breeding ground for new ideas and connections. At the same time, the work extends beyond the interior space and, through the BIX façade, also engages with the urban space.

What grows and proliferates here is not a traditional exhibition format, but a charmingly subversive organism that takes root, spreads and poses the question of what fairer forms of coexistence might look like. And whether we might all need to think a little more parasitically.