Lena Violetta Leitner


writes, performs, curates and makes art. In 2017 she graduated from the Class for Digital Art (Ruth Schnell).
In her works she explores power structures and social patterns using the means of irony and humour. The works, which range from installations and interventions to (sculptural) performances, scrutinise our constructions of what is ‘natural’ and ‘foreign’ or ‘alien’. They employ language in the form of code, text and sound, hacking objects, systems and structures.
www.lenaviolettaleitner.com
www.izmp.eu

Current Project: May I introduce: Alien! at AIL

WORKSPACE:
The Body
Outworn bras from friends are attached and vertically fixed on the ceiling. A motor stretches the bras and slowly release them, so that an organic rhythm is being produced.
Photo: eSel
Exhibition space: das weisse haus, Vienna (AT) („digital frictions“)

WORKSPACE:
The Nature
„If I had to flee,
could I bring my home with me?“
This series of videocollages grows during every new residency. It consists of collages of my body and the landscape and reflects on the stories that I find there.
My head, my house. The artist and her houshold.Sometimes it feels as if all those battles for equality are being erased again and we step behind. My postcards send messages of pausing and moving, migration and retreating into „idyllic scenes“.

WORKSPACE:
The Language Lab
Welcome to the Language Lab of IZMP (Integrationszentrum für Migrierte Pflanzen)! Green-leafed aliens are invading our country, pushing native species away - Once introduced as an economic resource, now treated and tested here in the lab, we integrate all foreign plants. How do we decide who stays?
Is their value of resistance low, they are welcome to stay.
Visit www.izmp.eu for more informations!
Photo: Universalmuseum Joanneum/N. Lackner

WORKSPACE:
The Lab
Since my diploma work I am obsessed with labs, microscopes, and scientific equipment!
At the moment I am looking into new collaborations with biologists to found a „choir of foreign plants“. We would penetrate the plants with our cameras, adapt their cells and create sound with the plants‘ biofeedback (plants have ususally a lot of mouths- stomata). But if the invasive aliens do not behave- we send them back in the Language Lab of IZMP.

WORKSPACE:
The Net
(it‘s the virtual space!)
The virtual space has become more and more one of my favourite working spaces (not just in times of pandemics)!
Here, in our webshop „ALIenexpress“ you find it all- from integrated plants to dodo eggs and your new home with pigs in 2025!
This shop is part of „May I introduce: Alien!“ at Angewandte Innovations Lab, a project with contributions by Solmaz Farhang, Alexandra Fruhstorfer, Ege Kökel, Andrea Palašti and me.

Portrait Photo on the right (c) Lena Marinova
leitner