Genossin Sonne (Comrade Sun)

Magazine accompanying the exhibition Genossin Sonne (Comrade Sun).

The exhibition Genossin Sonne (Comrade Sun) was created in 2024 at the invitation of Milo Rau, artistic director of the Vienna Festival, as a collaboration between the Kunsthalle Wien and the Vienna Festival | Free Republic of Vienna. In 2025, Genossin Sonne will now be presented in an expanded form and on twice the exhibition space at the HMKV Hartware MedienKunstVerein.

The essayistic group exhibition Genossin Sonne (Comrade Sun) is dedicated to artistic works and theories that link the cosmos and in particular the sun, the energy supplier for life on earth, with social and political movements. Against the background of the decentring of the human being as a historical subject, we ask to what extent not only the environment on earth but also the cosmos plays a part in historical processes. Is there, as the Soviet cosmists – in particular Alexander L. Chizhevsky in 1924 – claimed, a connection between solar storms and terrestrial revolutions? And what speculative, pleasurable considerations can be found in contemporary art and poetry?

The 211-page HMKV exhibition magazine Genossin Sonne (DE/EN) documents more than 30 works by 20 artists that were presented in Vienna in 2024 and in Dortmund in 2025-26. In addition to contributions by Etel Adnan, Inke Arns & Andrea Popelka, Diane di Prima, Mikhail Gorbanev, and Gary Zhexi Zhang, it also contains extensive photographic documentation of the exhibition at the HMKV Hartware MedienKunstVerein as well as numerous other illustrations (design: Running Water; HMKV, Dortmund, 2025).