Since 2019 Cordula Daus and Charlotta Ruth investigate the art of questioning. Their interest lies in hacking into the default system of language, into habitually gendered and self-centered forms of speaking, feeling and doing. Inspired by phenomenological practice,whichcraft, malfunctioning technology and midwifing, their work spans participatory environments, performances, artistic research, workshops and writing. Together they create situations where language and ideas become material to be touched and processed between people.

The zine Questionology – Are you here?, commissioned andpublished by Errant Bodies Press, consists of three parts. In their opening text Daus & Ruth explore how language, and specifically questions, perform in and on us. In the second part they go into conversation with sound artist and editor Brandon La Belle about the participatory work Questionology – Program for Applied Questioning (co-production brut 2021). The third part takes the reader on a ride through the ups and downs of artistic research: Where and how, if not in art, can we fabricate methods that question rather than produce facts and conclusions?

Cordula Daus works across literary fiction, performance and field research. She has exhibited and performed her artist books and works internationally. Currently Cordula leads the artistic research Outer Woman at the University of Applied Arts Vienna (with Sebastian Bark, [M] Dudeck and Charlotta Ruth, FWF: V 797). Her novel SEHR is upcoming (Ritter Verlag).

Charlotta Ruth works with choreography and ludic structures. Her works takes a media independent but site and context-specific approach ranging between stage, gallery, public space, institutional in-between spaces and online. At the University of Applied Arts Vienna, she co-leads the research project Archives in Practice together with Olivia Jaques & Marlies Surtmann (INTRA).

The first iteration of their ongoing art project Questionologywas presented at the research Pavilion #3 in Venice 2019 and has ever since manifested in different forms and formats. Questionology has been realized with the kind support of brut wien, Künstlerhaus/Factory Wien, Angewandte Performance Laboratory Vienna, MDT Stockholm, Society for Artistic Research SIC, Der Blöde dritte Mittwoch, Errant Bodies Press/Berlin, the City of Vienna’s Department of Cultural Affairs and the Federal Ministry of Arts, Culture, Civil Service and Sport.