Conny Zenk is a Vienna-based media artist working with performance, video and sound art in the context of urban architecture, social and city environments. Her working method is transdisciplinary and artistically explorative, using digital and analogue interfaces, vehicles and media. Conny Zenk is the founder of the participatory event series RAD Performance. Under the title Dance your Bike! she is developing a new composition format for the bicycle as part of an artistic research pilot project at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna. In 2021 and 2019 RAD Performance will take place in Timisoara/ Romania and in Upper Austria at the Festival of Regions as part of the Creative Europe project Centriphery. Conny Zenk has presented her work at numerous national and international festivals, including Donaufestival Krems (AT), Rencontres Internationales (FR), Festival du Nouveau Cinema Montreal (CN), Mapping Festival Geneve (CH), Ars Electronica Festival (AT) and many more). She received various residencies such as Red Gate Residency (Beijing/China), Body Embedding (Yogyakarta/Indonesia), Künstlerresidenz Chretzeturm (Stein am Rhein/Switzerland), Wormhole International (Xiamen/China) and others. Conny Zenk studied Digital Art at the University of Applied Arts Vienna and is currently developing her artistic research in the PhD in Art programme at the University of Applied Arts Vienna.
project in process
RAD Performance – Driving Voices of Resistance
RAD Performance sets concerts and sound art in motion with a multitude of loudspeakers at the center of artistic research. The bicycle becomes a medium for experimental music, activism, DIY culture, urban games and performance. Different places and squares are playfully occupied: the city becomes a stage and the bicycle is a vehicle, instrument and actor at the same time. The acoustics of the urban space complement, overlay and extend the experimental electronic compositions. Particular interest lies in the contrast between the soundscapes of different territories and regions and the linked social and historical environment. The utopia of a social and sustainable landscape that spreads and reclaims a bit of space, using the bicycle as a medium and carrier, that is above all audible.
Artistic methods and strategies such as interviews and workshops, performances and experimental concerts are created to immerse and negotiate the soundscape of the city. Questions of appropriation of space, participation, negotiation of the city and urban history, inclusive, feminist spaces, and new forms of music production and participation will be explored. Along selected routes and squares, temporary concerts are created that question the sonic image and thus the atmosphere, landscape and architecture of the city.