Marlene Hausegger | Scabby: A Rat About Town
Scabby: A Rat About Town | Press Release | KoKo Press Release | Interviews | Installation View | New York 2044 | UNION Film Screening
October 26 – December 1 , 2024
*We will be open for regular hours through November 24th and by appointment through December 1st.
Gallery Hours: Thurs + Fri: 4-6pm, Sat + Sun: 2-6pm
Open Source Gallery is pleased to present Scabby: A Rat About Town, a site-specific exhibition by Marlene Hausegger.
Scabby, a giant inflatable rat, is a familiar sight in New York, serving as the unofficial mascot of organized labor and making an appearance on picket lines and sites of active corporate labor disputes throughout the city. Marlene Hausegger began her research on Scabby in the autumn of 2022, when she got in contact with the New York State Laborer’s Union to document the installation of Scabby as a protest against a global real estate development and investment firm that had hired workers without a contract. For her exhibition at Open Source, Hausegger deepens this research, exploring the culture of street protest and labor activism through the lens of this massive rodent.
Scabby the Rat has been a supporter of workers’ rights both here in the United States and abroad, and now it’s his turn for a moment in the spotlight. In Scabby: A Rat About Town, the inflatable rat – which, ironically, is only manufactured by nonunion employers – is the centerpiece of Hausegger’s exhibition, painted with the lyrics of Bruce Springsteen’s song “Factory” and overfilling the gallery from floor to ceiling. Three-dimensional black and white photographs surround the mascot, and collected New York “Unionvoices,” including interviews with Natalie Monarrez, activist and former worker at Amazon, and Eric Dirnbach, unionmember, organizer, and researcher, give voice to Scabby’s history and participation in fights for better working conditions.
Marlene Hausegger’s practice is interested in the hidden limitations and restricted possibilities of social situations, which she discovers in the public realm. Marlene Hausegger’s interventions and installations have been shown among others at Monira Foundation, New Jersey, Museum Belvedere21, Vienna; Chamber of Labour, Vienna; Künstlerhaus, Bregenz; Vernacular Institute, Mexico City; Biennial Konjic, Bosnia; Biennial for Architecture, Belgrade; Stedelijk Museum, s’-Hertogenbosch; , Graz; Museum Lentos, Linz; Bjcem Biennial, Skopje. She teaches at the Art University Linz and from 2019-2023 she worked as part of the Public Art Committee Lower Austria. 2018 she received the Austrian State Stipend for Fine Arts, 2023 the Gabriele Heidecker artprize.
Join us for a special event in conjunction with Hausegger’s exhibition:
Noah Fischer’s New York 2044: Sunday, November 17 @ 3pm at Open Source Gallery
Join us for this activation of New York 2044 at Open Source! New York 2044 is a speculative social sculpture in the form of an online and print newspaper conceived of by the artist, writer, and organizer Noah Fischer. Commissioned by More Art, Fischer’s research-based artwork will take the form of a newspaper that proposes the city we want to inhabit in 2044, and how to get there.
UNION film screening and Q&A: Wednesday, November 20 @ 7pm at Open Source Gallery
Through intimate cinema vérité, UNION chronicles the extraordinary efforts of an unlikely group of warehouse workers as they launch a grassroots union campaign at an Amazon fulfillment center in Staten Island, New York. We will be joined for a Q&A after the film by labor organizer Natalie Monarrez, UNION producer Mars Verrone, and Labor Arts Director Rachel Bernstein.
For press inquiries, please contact us at contact@opensourcegallery.org
This program is supported, in part, by the Federal Ministry Republic of Austria, the New York State Council on the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council.
