TransArts: Herwig Turk

Herwig Turk Künstler, Wien
Flood Pulse

Since 2017, Herwig Turks artistic research has focused on the Tagliamento in northern Italy and on other river ecologies, such as the Danube in the Viennese area, or the rivers in the Bolzano area for which he regularly collaborates with a number of artists, scientists, and environmental organisations. Central topics revolve around landscapes as more-thananthropocentric laboratories, as exemplary ecological assemblages characterised by various conflicts between economy, technology, culture, and non-human agencies, between appropriation, exploitation, and care. Turk uses the term ‘interstitial space’ [Lückenraum] to frame the frictions, the differences between these different systems of practice and knowledge, as well as to describe a common ground for actors and agencies who largely remain invisible when articulating the conflict in the first place.

Herwig Turk lives and works in Vienna. His projects investigate possibilities for interconnecting the fields of art, technology, and science. Since 2017 he has been conducting artistic research on river systems across Europe. Since 2021 he leads the development of the project Rift//Landscape//Read with Zdravko Haderlap and the multidisciplinary Art and Research Group in Lepen/Carinthia Austria. In the last years his work has been shown at venues such as the Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna; the Seoul Museum of Art; the Neues Museum Weserburg in Bremen; Museum Sinclair Haus in Bad Homburg; the Media Art Laboratory TESLA in Berlin, Lungomare in Bolzano, Listasafn Árnesinga – LÁ Art Museum Iceland; Lentos Kunstmuseum Linz; Gallery rauminhalt_harald bichler In Vienna; the Gallery Georg Kargl in Vienna, and the Transmediale in Berlin, among others. From 2014 – 2022 he worked as Senior Artist at the department Social Design at the University of Applied Arts, Vienna.