/Secession Podcast Members: Oliver Ressler in conversation with Luisa Ziaja
Luisa Ziaja talks to Oliver Ressler about his creative practice and in particular about the videos and video installations he has produced in recent years, which focus on the collapsing climate and activist organizations seeking to combat it, offering insight into forms of climate activism and encouraging reflection on how society might be made more democratic and inclusive. Luisa Ziaja curated Oliver Ressler’s solo exhibition Dog Days Bite Back at the Belvedere 21 in 2024. Oliver Ressler was a member of the Secession's board from 2007 to 2013.
The conversation was recorded on May 16, 2025, at the Secession.
Oliver Ressler, an artist based in Vienna, produces installations, projects in public space, and films on economics, democracy, climate breakdown, racism, forms of resistance and social alternatives. He has completed forty-four films that have been screened in thousands of events of social movements, art institutions and film festivals. Ressler had comprehensive solo exhibitions at MNAC – National Museum of Contemporary Art, Bucharest; SALT Galata, Istanbul; Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporaneo, Seville; Museo Espacio, Aguascalientes, Mexico and Belvedere 21, Vienna. He has participated in more than 480 group exhibitions, including Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco and the biennials in Prague, Seville, Moscow, Taipei, Lyon, Gyumri, Venice, Athens, Quebec, Helsinki, Jeju, Kyiv, Gothenburg, Stavanger, Istanbul and at Documenta 14, Kassel, 2017. 2019–2023 Ressler has directed "Barricading the Ice Sheets", a research project on the climate justice movements, funded by the Austrian Science Fund. Configurations of the project were solo exhibitions at Camera Austria, Graz (2021); Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb (2021); Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (n.b.k.), Berlin (2022); Tallinn Art Hall, Tallinn (2022); LABoral Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial, Gijón (2023); The Showroom, London (2023). www.ressler.at
Luisa Ziaja is an art historian, curator, university lecturer, and author. She is chief curator and head of collections at the Belvedere Museum Vienna, where she worked as curator for contemporary art from 2013 to 2022. Recent exhibitions: Hans Haacke. Retrospective (2025), Dara Birnbaum. Bruckner: Symphonie Nr. 5 B-Dur, Oliver Ressler. Dog Days Bite Back (2024), Renate Bertlmann. Fragile Obsessions, On the New. Viennese Scenes and Beyond, Public Matters. Contemporary Art in the Belvedere Garden (2023), The Belvedere. 300 Years a Venue for Art (2022), Avant-Garde and the Contemporary. The Belvedere Collection from Lassnig to Knebl (2021). From 2004 to 2012, she worked as a freelance curator on several research and exhibition projects; from 2000 to 2004, she was assistant curator at the Generali Foundation Vienna.
Luisa Ziaja is co-director of the postgraduate study program for exhibition theory and practice /ecm – educating, curating, making at the University of Applied Arts Vienna (since 2006) and has taught at the Zurich University of the Arts, the Vienna University of Technology, and the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, among others. She is a member of the University Council of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna (since 2023) and was and is part of numerous expert juries and advisory boards.
In her curatorial and discursive practice, she deals with the relationship between contemporary art, society, and politics (of history), as well as with the history and theory of exhibitions. Luisa Ziaja is co-editor of the peer-reviewed Belvedere Research Journal as well as the author and co-editor of numerous exhibition catalogues and anthologies on contemporary art, curatorial practice, and art and exhibition theory, including the series curating: Ausstellungstheorie & praxis published by Edition Angewandte, most recently Nicht einfach ausstellen. Kuratorische Formate und Strategien im Postnazismus, Berlin/Boston 2024.
Secession Podcast: Members is a series of conversations featuring members of the Secession.
The Dorotheum is the exclusive sponsor of the Secession Podcast.
Programmed by the board of the Secession.
Jingle: Hui Ye with an excerpt from Combat of dreams for string quartet and audio feed (2016, Christine Lavant Quartett) by Alexander J. Eberhard
Audio Editor: Paul Macheck
Executive Producer: Jeanette Pacher & Bettina Spörr
Portrait: © Željko Lukunić / Pixsell
