“This is art created in the heat of current times. Insights into the existential circumstances of the present await KUB visitors. During the summer weeks, Kunsthaus Bregenz is showing a special exhibition that traces the precariousness of life since the beginning of the corona crisis. It is the sciences that are attempting to offer solutions, but it is the arts that portray the predicaments of the crisis.”

In June 2020, The Centre for the Less Good Idea contributed a selection of its Long Minute films to the Unprecedented Times exhibition at Austria’s Kunsthaus Bregenz. Unprecedented Times assembled works that have either emerged during the crisis or can be read as a premonition of it.

A series of events planned for April 2020 had to be canceled due to the spread of the coronavirus. The artists originally invited to participate were instead asked to submit digital contributions. Bronwyn Lace, the director of The Centre, assembled some of the one-minute pieces into a diverse Instagram thread. At Kunsthaus Bregenz it is being shown for the first time in the form of a film, 29 Long Minutes.

The Long Minute, curated by co-founder and director of The Centre, Bronwyn Lace, is a series of online videos shared online. SERIES 1 was shared over the course of April, May and early June 2020 and SERIES 2 from August to October 2020.

The Long Minute was The Centre’s direct response to the removal of our ability to physically be with one another. The Long Minute sought to find virtual strategies of pursuing incidental discoveries and processes of sharing and responding to one another collectively and collaboratively.

The Centre views these fragments of text, performance, image, and dance from the studios and homes of artists as prompts to seek free-spirited, transdisciplinary, collaborative, and alternative realities. The combinations of body, sound, space, and technology assist us in unpacking the nature of performance, the language of loss, and the relationship between audience member, and performer.