Neha Choksi

Animism. Modernity through the Looking Glass

Generali Foundation, Vienna
16 September 2011 – 29 January 2012

The exhibition, Animism. Modernity through the Looking Glass takes up the current broad-based reassessment of modernity, examining the ethnological conception of animism as it was framed in the context of colonialism as well as the concept of animism in psychoanalysis. A film program titled Phantoms. Metamorphoses. Animism in Film and curated by Wilbirg Brainin-Donnenberg accompanies the exhibition. It is held by the Generali Foundation and the Filmcasion in collaboration with the Austrian Film Museum (OeFM).

The January 15^th 2012 program will feature Neha Choksi’s newly re-edited single channel work Minds to Lose (2008-2011) using footage from her 2008 performance Petting Zoo. This film distills her examination of how to perform absence,and of what it might mean to lose 20 minutes of one’s experience permanently, through a renewed gaze at the filmed anesthetization of the artist, a sheep, a donkey, a brown goat and a black goat.