The unprotected art space

Since April 2012, the publicly accessible event spaces of Vienna's Jazz & Music Club Porgy & Bess have hosted regular monthly work shows by photographers, sculptors, painters and performance artists.

Visual poetry, sound graphics and interdisciplinary artistic spatial designs complement the exhibition program.
Since October 2012, there has also been a space in the entrance area dedicated exclusively to the visual arts: the "public domain."

With the newly founded "puplic domain", a further event track is to be integrated into the Porgy & Bess and visual art is to become a further mainstay of the house.

Monthly exhibitions will be organized that do not require exhibitors to have an age limit, a national affiliation, or an obligatory degree from an art university. In this way, a wide variety of artists will be given an audience that is fundamentally different from that of a gallery.

On the one hand, the premises differ from usual exhibition spaces, since they are located in public space and thus must obey other laws:

Where there is freedom
those who appear in public must
must also be treated and negotiated publicly
and sometimes also be maltreated.
This strength of mind,
this virtue he must have.
If he does not like it,
he should sit down in his workshop
and sew shoes and skirts.

Ernst Moritz Arndt

Since the exhibition conditions differ in essential areas from the conventional gallery business (in particular by the integrated lively public influx within the different exhibition areas due to the daily various concert programs of the house) an intensive art discourse and a unique work reception in the quasi (unprotected) public space develops: Treatments, negotiations are guaranteed, abuses are not excluded...

Furthermore, the artists are not selected according to their value on the art market, but according to their focus, which is partly determined by the music section, partly by the visual arts, but also partly by the new dance section of the house. In this way, the various art genres are interdisciplinarily networked and combined into a whole. In the fall of 2013, for example, the country of Albania will be thematized by the various art movements, thus reflecting the country's most diverse characteristics.

In addition, intensive networking of the visual arts, music, dance and new media is being promoted. Thus, the vernissages are introduced with musical contributions to connect the different sections. In addition, the exhibition spaces are distributed throughout the building and decorate not only the gallery space "public domain", but also the entrance area, the staircase leading to the large stages and the walls of the "Strengen Kammer", which offers a weekly public to Austrian music on a "pay as you wish" basis. Furthermore, direct cooperation is to take place in particular through the common focal points. For example, the visual artists will design stage sets and furnishings for performances in the house.

Another activity of the "public domain" will be cultural and art education. For example, the musical children's program on Sunday will be accompanied by workshops for children and young people led by the exhibiting artists. In addition, projects for young people, marginalized groups and people with special needs will be organized to convey both Austrian and international art and culture. In this way, the projects will also be thematized in other venues, such as the Schöpfwerk, and visits to the Porgy & Bess by the participating people will be forced as a consequence.

Another part of the cultural and art mediation shall be symposia on different focal points. In this way, certain countries and topics are to be given a platform and discourses in aesthetic and ethical terms are to take place. (Renald Deppe, 2010)