MICHAEL ASCHAUER – INTERNATIONAL RESIDENCY

International Residency Program Upper Austria, Michael Ashauer

Michael Aschauer is a digital artist who proposes to work on projects that address the impact of human activities on the earth’s ecosystem. These projects, already in progress, are deployed in various media: sculpture, photography, virtual and augmented reality, and installations, among others, are used here to materialize and make visible what, at first glance, seems abstract. The artist’s works are articulated around the concept of the Anthropocene and are part of a critical approach to the fragility of the current global system. 

For Aschauer, the arts can contribute to a paradigm shift and the creation of new economic and social ideas. They must be able to overcome, bypass, even divert, the existing systems based on growth, on the conquest and exploitation of humans, animals and nature. While the virtual installation Petro/Cultures – Petro$culptures deals with the encounter between classical sculpture and objects of recent oil culture, the work X-Realites (temporary title) explores the field set up between the contrary meanings of XR, both an acronym for Extended Reality, as well as Extinction Rebellion.

// Artist exchanges and workshop-residencies between Quebec and Upper Austria //

Considering the importance for the government of Quebec to develop sustainable cultural links with Upper Austria, the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec (CALQ) concluded in 2014 a two-year partnership agreement with the government of Upper Austria to carry out an exchange of creation and resourcing residencies in visual and digital arts. These residencies aim to foster the establishment of lasting ties and the confrontation of points of view between Quebec and Upper Austrian artists, thus contributing to the development of their artistic approaches.

Within the framework of this exchange, a Quebec artist will have the opportunity to spend two months in one of the nine studios of the City of Linz’s International Artist Residency and an Austrian artist will do a creative residency of the same duration at the SPOROBOLE center in Sherbrooke.