We are pleased to announce a collaborative event between the Austrian Cultural Forum London and Pushkin House. We invite you to join us at the ACF for a screening of “_n Haus” (2025) by Russian conceptual artist Arsen Zhilyaev, followed by a panel discussion between curators Denis Maksimov, Sasha Shevchenko and Pia Zeitzen. On the occasion of the ACF’s current exhibition Of course I know eternity: Wilhelm Traeger + Gray Wielebinski and PH’s exhibition _n Haus, which concluded on June 26. The evening is dedicated to the politics of memory, speculation and time and the conceptual considerations of two exhibitions in dialogue with the physical spaces that house them. 

 

Drawing on the visual and architectural similarities of the two exhibition spaces, the event directly interferes with the curatorial constants of time and space by screening Arsen Zhilyaev’ silent film with German subtitles, first shown at Pushkin House in a 16mm pseudo-archival format between 26 March – 26 June 2025. The ACF’s salon, currently occupied by historical collages by Austrian post-war artist Wilhelm Traeger and site-specific installations by London-based American multidisciplinary artist Gray Wielebinski, turns into a space of encounter between the artists' speculative dialogues, framed by Georgian architecture – just like in Pushkin House. 

 

The screening will be followed by a conversation between curators of Of course I know eternity Pia Zeitzen and Sasha Shevchenko of Kollektiv Collective and co-curator of _n Haus Denis Maksimov, discussing curatorial methodologies in the context of both exhibitions’ thematic underpinnings and their intersections, such as Zhilyaev’s interest in pataphysics as a language of political and institutional critique, Wielebinski’s approach towards deconstructing the aesthetics of power and control, and Traeger’s legacy of navigating the promises of progress in the aftermath of human devastation. In a space that is at once before and after the respective end date, the conversation extends into geopolitical discourses on cyclical time.

Kollektiv Collective is a London-based curatorial collective founded by independent curators and writers Pia Zeitzen and Sasha Shevchenko in 2019. Kollektiv Collective specialises in site-specific curatorial projects with a research- and process-led collaborative practice. Zeitzen and Shevchenko’s work is rooted in their fascination with space – architecturally, conceptually and socio-politically – through which they engage with contemporary anxieties in order to critically and communally contextualise different modes of being in the present. Working site-specifically, the underpinnings of their projects are developed with and against a given exhibition space and setting.

Kollektiv Collective has previously exhibited in galleries and institutions including Palo Gallery, New York; Inspection Pit, Sussex; Generation & Display as part of London Design Festival; Des Bains, London; General Assembly, London; Tabula Rasa Gallery, London; Guts Gallery Projects, London; Kupfer, London; SET Woolwich, London; Christie’s, London; and Swiss Church, London.