In an exhibition I expect to be widely popular across the St. Norbert campus and community, Oliver Ressler merges art, politics, economics and social activism into an impressive interactive gallery experience: Oliver Ressler–Catastrophe Bonds.

Ressler, hailing from Vienna, Austria, was invited to both the St. Norbert College and University of Wisconsin-Green Bay campuses as part of a joint project between the two institutions, the International Visiting Scholars Program, created to enrich the educational experiences of Green Bay and the surrounding communities.

Ressler’s work will be shown on both campuses and both SNC and UWGB will hold several events regarding the artist’s work, all of them open to the public.

The pieces being shown in SNC’s Baer and Godschalx Galleries include Alternative Economics, Alternative Societies (2003-2008), a 16-channel video installation exploring just what the title suggests as rejections to the rule of capitalism, Fly Democracy (2007), an installation paralleling the drop of the leaflets the U.S. Military deposited in Iraq and Afghanistan, and finally, Emergency Turned Upside Down (2016), a 16 minute film inspired by the migration of Syrian and Middle Eastern refugees to European states, posing the question “what is the true emergency: the new presence of refugees in Europe, or the wars that drove them here?”

Oliver Ressler: Catastrophe Bonds is now open in the SNC galleries there will be several events on Thursday, March 1 to celebrate its opening: at 4 p.m. in the Michels Commons Ballroom there will be a panel discussion entitled Art. Social Action and Grassroots Democracy, sponsored by the Norman Miller Center for Peace, Justice & Public Understanding and will feature the artist himself. Following the discussion there will be an opening reception for the exhibition with a special opening-night screening of The Right of Passage in the Bush Art Center Galleries from 5-7 p.m. 

For a full list of public events connected with this exhibition, please refer to the poster below:

The SNC exhibition runs from Feb. 26-March 29 in the Bush Art Center.