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Civa 2026
postacceleration
Civa highlights the interplay between contemporary technologies, realities, and experiences across digital, physical, and hybrid spaces. In its sixth edition, Civa once again presents an exhibition at the Belvedere 21, alongside a diverse program of talks and discussions, film screenings, and live performances. Civa 2026, titled postacceleration, explores the dynamics of speed and simultaneity. The term postacceleration refers to a condition in which acceleration has become the default setting—an essential premise of contemporary existence.
With works by: Eyez Li (Mingtong Li), Nolan Oswald Dennis, Kyriaki Goni, Silke Grabinger, Letta Shtohryn
Civa is made possible through a joint effort by Belvedere 21 and Eva Fischer (sound:frame).
Curated by Eva Fischer.
Assistant curators: Vasilena Stoyanova und Anna Ewa Dyrko
Belvedere 21
Opening Hours
Address
Arsenalstraße 1, 1030 Vienna
Getting thereIn cooperation with
Impressions
The Exhibition
The pace of contemporary life has steadily intensified: (technological) acceleration is no longer experienced as a sequence of events, but as a turbulent, recurring state that shapes how we perceive, attend, and engage. Against this backdrop, the exhibition brings together five international perspectives that evade optimization-driven logics. Rather than reproducing extractive or even accelerationist strategies, their diverse artistic approaches challenge dominant temporalities, proposing instead alternative narratives, relational counter-propositions, and practices of resonance.
Further Reading
Armen Avanessian and Robin Mackay, eds., #Accelerate# (Falmouth, UK, and Berlin, 2014).
Armen Avanessian and Robin Mackay, eds., #Akzeleration#2 (Berlin, 2014).
Karen Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning (Durham, NC, 2007).
Karen Barad, “Quantum Entanglements and Hauntological Relations of Inheritance: Dis/continuities, SpaceTime Enfoldings, and Justice-to-Come,” Derrida Today 3, no. 2 (2010), pp. 240–68.
Kodwo Eshun, More Brilliant Than the Sun: Adventures in Sonic Fiction (London, 1998).
Jack Halberstam, In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives (New York, 2005).
Byung-Chul Han, The Burnout Society, trans. Erik Butler (Stanford, CA, 2015).
Byung-Chul Han, Vita Contemplativa: In Praise of Inactivity, trans. Daniel Steuer (Cambridge, UK, 2024).
Katherine McKittrick, Dear Science and Other Stories (Durham, NC, 2021).
Fred Moten and Stefano Harney, The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning & Black Study (Wivenhoe and New York, 2013).
Jenny Odell, Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock (New York, 2023).
Rasheedah Phillips, Black Quantum Futurism; Space-Time Collapse I; From the Congo to the Carolinas (Philadelphia, 2014).
Rasheedah Phillips, Recurrence Plot and Other Time Travel Tales (Philadelphia, 2020).
Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration: A New Theory of Modernity, trans. Jonathan Trejo-Matys (New York, 2013).
Paul Virilio, Open Sky, trans. Julie Rose (London and New York, 1997).
Sylvia Wynter, “Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom: Towards the Human, After Man, Its Overrepresentation—An Argument,” CR: The New Centennial Review 3, no. 3 (2003), pp. 257–337.
Special thanks to: AIL – Angewandte Interdisciplinary Lab, Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien / Forschungscluster | Digitale Kulturen, Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien / Institut für Bildende Kunst | Post-digitale Kunst, ATC – AUSTRIAN TRUSS CONSTRUCTIONS, MUTEK Montréal (Canada) / Electronic Music & Digital Arts Festival, Österreichisches Kulturforum Pretoria (South Africa), Universität für angewandte Kunst Vienna / Weibel Institut für digitale Kulturen, VIENNA SHORTS