A bureau for experiments?

26.4.2025

I had little idea what Vienna had in store for me when I moved here for a PhD from New York’s quieter-than-usual Upper West Side during the pandemic, having impressed myself with an Expedia drone video on YouTube. One of the first people to hear the news was a stranger waiting next to me for take-away near Lincoln Center—probably a musician or a writer, starry-eyed: good for you! Then, like many friends I would come to know in Vienna, I just stayed. Vienna grows on you. And I want to bring one more slice of vibrancy to this city, celebrated as the world’s most livable, now in full bloom for its majestic spring. Praise the season.

So here’s BEK Forum—b for Büro, e for experiment, and forum for you. It’s like a proof-of-concept drawn from my dissertation on the history and idea of experiment in art, focused on China since the 1980s. The key idea of Büro für experimentelle Kunst is this productive, at times frustrating, tension between creating, documenting, and studying experiments. I consider it a production platform for art and scholarship but, really, for living a way of life made possible in Vienna, with art, music, performance, and serious academic work.

BEK opens its door silently on 16 May with paintings by Maja Vukoje, with individual viewing slots, followed by a sculptural performance by Elisabeth Kihlström in June, and the first comprehensive exhibition of Tan Mu’s Signalseries in September. Maja brings her large- and smaller-scale paintings on burlap, with technical processes that promise to intrigue, as always, and this time we ask you to linger for a while in that meditative space. Elisabeth will activate the architecture as a resonance chamber for its own sonic structure, through performers’ bodies and taut strings. In autumn, we turn to Tan’s “digital constellations” of communication infrastructure and collective memory. Spoiler alert: they’re submarine fiber-optic networks. Fragile networks, though, as the accompanying music performance will show.

In the meantime, a concert series organized with Musiklabor Klassik features members of the Philharmoniker and exciting musicians and composers from around the world. Some contextualized in exhibitions and some not, this season we have Benjamin Beck, Roman Kim, Sophie Steiner, and more to be announced.

I thank my kind friends and mentors, my wonderful family and colleagues, and the exciting artists who inspired me to start BEK. And I invite you to help shape and support this new platform for creating imaginative works and precious memories.