Photo I Brut . Artistic Practices Between Visual Culture and Health: Museums, Markets and Artists
Conference
Medicine has never been a purely scientific endeavor. It is deeply rooted in cultural imaginaries, visual regimes, and aesthetic practices—from anatomical atlases, hospital architecture, and early medical photography to contemporary imaging technologies and artistic engagements with illness and care.
As part of the exhibition Photo I Brut, the question is explored at which points photography not only represents but actively produces and simultaneously constructs medical knowledge, bodily norms, as well as notions of health, normality, risk, and deviation.
The conference offers insights into questions surrounding the economization of art by people with mental illness and how institutions and estates address these issues.
Speakers:
Nina Ansperger (Director, Museum Gugging)
Sebastien Lifshitz (Collector and Filmmaker, Paris)
Sophie Thun (University of Applied Arts Vienna)
Katarzyna Karwańska / Karolina Maria Wojciechowska (Tomasz Machciński Foundation, Warsaw)
Moderation:
Monika Pietrzak-Franger (University of Vienna)
Felix Hoffmann (Foto Arsenal Vienna)
Date: June 17, 2026, 3–7 p.m.
Further dates: Click here
Credits: Hand mit Ringen (Hand with Rings): a print of one of the first X-rays by Wilhelm Röntgen (1845–1923) of the left hand of his wife Anna Bertha Ludwig. It was presented to Professor Ludwig Zehnder of the Physik Institut, University of Freiburg, on 1. Januar 1896.