Tom Engels: Imagination Needs Brick and Mortar Too Interview by Luca Büchler Photos by Marie Haefner Almost a year ago, Grazer Kunstverein announced its new artistic director, Tom Engels, whose exhibition program distinguishes itself by nourishing yet humble gestures and a deep-rooted engagement with the existing space and structure. Questions of community and how bodies come together carefully encircle the program, which takes place on the ground floor of the historical Palais Trautmansdorff in the centre of Graz. In conversation with Luca Büchler, Tom Engels talks about how he navigates the (legal) constitution of this special institutional form of a "Kunstverein”, its purpose and his vision. Full interview online 📶 Luca: „we sat rigid except for the parts of our bodies that were needed for production“ was the title of the first exhibition at Grazer Kunstverein under your artistic direction. If we look beyond the context of the show – in which way can this statement be applied to you? Tom: Through my background in performance and choreography, I’ve always paid particular attention to the ways bodies both shape and are shaped by modes of labor, production, and gathering. At Grazer Kunstverein, I intend to reflect on this inextricable pull between claiming and being given form. It’s an aesthetic and theoretical concern of mine, as much as it is an infrastructural and administrative one. The Kunstverein’s member-based nature, for example, is a particular legal embodiment that is based on forms of assembly—what can such a structure afford today, both socially and politically. [...] @tom.leo.m.engels @47l58uca @marie_haefner @grazer_kunstverein #pwmagazine #pwmag #artperformancemusic #tomengels #grazerkunstverein