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Publikation: Selbsterzählungen und Umbruchspuren im Œuvre von Künstler:innen aus der DDR

Posted on | by Max Böhner

Publikation: Selbsterzählungen und Umbruchspuren
im Œuvre von Künstler:innen aus der DDR

Herausgegeben von Melanie Franke

Mit Beiträgen von Elske ­Rosenfeld, Anne Bernhof, April Eisman, Marie Egger, Melanie Franke, Viola Hildebrand-Schat, Joachim Jäger, Angela Lammert, Luise Thieme, Burak Üzümkesici

Biografische Selbstzeugnisse, die besonders oft kritische Lebensereignisse thematisieren, können Aufschluss über gleichzeitige Richtungswechsel im künstlerischen Schaffen geben. Die in diesem Buch versammelten Beiträge, hervorgegangen aus dem Forschungsprojekt »Geschichtsbilder in der Gegenwartskunst« an der Universität Potsdam, bieten Material für vergleichende kunsthistorische Untersuchungen, indem sie sich mit künstlerischen Selbstreflexionen aus der Zeit des gesellschaftlichen Wandels um 1989/90, mit seinen Vorläufen und Folgen beschäftigen.
Die in den vorgestellten Werken angelegten transformativen Situationen und deren Funktion als Umbruchspuren offenbaren sich als Fragen an die eigene Erzählung samt ihrer Abhängigkeit von Kultur und Gesellschaft. Die Beiträge widmen sich Künstler:innen aus der DDR wie Tina Bara, Manfred Böttcher, Harald Metzkes, Núria Quevedo, Cornelia Schleime, Gabriele Stötzer, Elisabeth Voigt und Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt. Sie erforschen, wie persönliche Erfahrungen und einschneidende Lebensereignisse das künstlerische Œuvre beeinflussen und wie Kunst als Medium der Selbstreflexion und Gesellschaftskritik dient.

Selbsterzählungen und Umbruchspuren
im Œuvre von Künstler:innen aus der DDR

Herausgegeben von Melanie Franke

Mit Beiträgen von Elske ­Rosenfeld, Anne Bernhof, April Eisman, Marie Egger, Melanie Franke, Viola Hildebrand-Schat, Joachim Jäger, Angela Lammert, Luise Thieme, Burak Üzümkesici

Gestaltung: Claudia Kugler, Andreas Koch
208 Seiten
deutsch
Schweizer Broschur
16,5 x 22 cm
27,80 Euro

November 2024
978-3-910541-14-6

Narrative constituting in art since the 2000s (three case studies)

Posted on | by Max Böhner

Narrative constituting in art since the 2000s (three case studies)

Participants: Max Böhner, Marie Egger, Melanie Franke, Byung-Chul Han, Stephan Hauser, Gabriele Knapstein, Oliver Krätschmer, Matías Martínez, Catherine Nichols, Helene Romakin, Maya Schweizer, Simon Starling

→ Short biographies

The workshop on Narrative constituting in art since the 2000s (three case studies) will take place in the scope of the Images of History in Contemporary Art research project, funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) in Berne:

October 19, 2023, 05:00 p.m. – 08:00 p.m.
October 20, 2023, 11:00 a.m. – 06:00 p.m.

VENUE
Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart, Berlin
Invalidenstraße 50–51
10557 Berlin

Present-day narrative patterns and their influence on the arts of today after the end of the “grand narratives” are to be examined. Language is not the only possibility for narration; images, objects and films also narrate. The philosopher Byung-Chul Han attests to a crisis of narrativity, since, from his perspective, narratives are increasingly transforming into forms of consumption, and communicating on social media platforms is being substituted for narrating. Against this backdrop of transformation in the information society and the disappearance of narration, the emphasis is placed in the scope of this workshop on various artistic narrative forms. The aim of the workshop is to elaborate on the heterogeneous characteristics of artistic storytelling: first, narrrating and remembering – how fluid connections result in utopian moments (I), second, the absence of narrative as a reaction to the unavailability of the world (II), and third, disintegrated conceptual contexts and vibrating referentiality (III). How do artists deal with historical narratives that have been reduced to silence?

Simon Starling, Black Drop, 2012, 35 mm film transferred to HD with sound, 27:24 min., film still © Simon Starling.

WORKSHOP PROGRAM
Thursday, October 19, 2023

5:00 – 5:15 p.m.
WELCOME
Dr. Gabriele Knapstein, Deputy Director, Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart
Prof. Dr. Melanie Franke, head of Images of History in Contemporary Art

5:15 – 6:15 p.m.
CASE STUDY I – NARRATING AND REMEMBERING – HOW FLUID CONNECTIONS RESULT IN UTOPIAN MOMENTS
Maya Schweizer in conversation with Prof. Dr. Melanie Franke, head of Images of History in Contemporary Art

6:15 – 8:00 p.m.
APERÓ

 

Friday, October 20, 2023

11:00 – 11:15 a.m.
ARRIVAL AND COAT CHECK

11:15 – 11:30 a.m.
WELCOME
Prof. Dr. Melanie Franke, head of Images of History in Contemporary Art

11:30 – 12:30 a.m.
ON THE SPECIFICS OF NARRATION RESEARCH IN THE ARTS OF THE FIRST DECADE OF THE 2000S
Prof. Dr. Matías Martínez, narrative researcher, Center for Narrative Research, Bergische University of Wuppertal

12:30 – 2:00 p.m.
LUNCH BREAK IN THE RESTAURANT OF THE HAMBURGER BAHNHOF

2:00 – 3:00 p.m.
CASE STUDY II – THE ABSENCE OF NARRATIVE AS A REACTION TO THE UNAVAILABILITY OF THE WORLD
Presentation and response from Dr. Stephan Hauser, Schaulager Basel

3:00 – 4:00 p.m.
CASE STUDY III – VIBRATING REFERENTIALITY
Simon Starling in conversation with Dr. Catherine Nichols, Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart

4:00 – 4:30 p.m.
BREAK

4:30 – 5:30 p.m.
CRISIS OF NARRATION IN THE ARTS?
Prof. Dr. Byung-Chul Han, University of the Arts Berlin

5:30 – 6:00 p.m.
FAREWELL AND END OF THE EVENT

Concept development for the workshop is by Melanie Franke; it has been organized jointly with the art-historical research group “Images of History in Contemporary Art”.

REGISTRATION
If you are interested in attending the workshop, please register by October 17, 2023 via the e-mail address max.boehner@uni-potsdam.de to participate. The number of participants is limited.

SHORT BIOGRAPHIES
BYUNG-CHUL HAN first studied metallurgy in Korea, then philosophy, German and theology in Freiburg, Breisgau and Munich. After his residency, he taught philosophy, media theory and cultural studies at the University of Basel, HFG Karlsruhe and the Berlin University of the Arts. His books have been translated into more than 20 languages.

Dr. STEPHAN E. HAUSER (b. 1963). Studied art history, classical archaeology and modern general history in Basel. Doctorate on the concept of the image in Surrealism. 1990-1993 in New York, NY (collaboration on Lyonel Feiniger project) and New Haven, CT (estate of Kurt Seligmann). 1997-98 one year at the CNRS in Paris (“Le Surréalisme au carrefour des modernités”). Author of the monograph “Kurt Seligmann (1900-1962). Leben und Werk”, Basel: Schwabe, 1997. Research fellow at the Schaulager, Münchenstein/Basel since 2004. At the same time, regular lecturing appointments with a focus on artist estates at the Department of Art History at the University of Basel. Since 2023, president of the sponsoring organisation ARK Archiv regionaler Künstler:innen-Nachlässe Basel. Numerous essays and articles (e.g., on Feininger, Duchamp, and on Swiss art of the modern and contemporary eras).

GABRIELE KNAPSTEIN is Deputy Director and Collection Manager at the Hamburger Bahnhof – National Gallery for the Present. She has been a Research Assistant at this institution since 2003 and Exhibition Director since 2012. Previously, she worked as a freelance curator for the Institute for Foreign Relations (ifa) and for the Galerie Neue Meister in Dresden. After receiving her doctorate in 1999 with the first scientific study on the event scores by the Fluxus artist George Brecht, she became a research museum assistant in advanced training at the Hamburger Bahnhof and in the art library of the State Museums in Berlin. She curated exhibitions such as Black Mountain. An interdisciplinary experiment 1933 – 1957, Wall Works, Architektonika and Beyond the Cinema. The Art of Projection.

MATÍAS MARTÍNEZ is professor of modern German literary history at the University of Wuppertal and founding director of the Wuppertal Center for Narrative Research (ZEF). His research areas include narratology, romanticism and modern poetry. Some publications: Wirklichkeitserzählungen. Felder, Formen und Funktionen nichtliterarischen Erzählens (co-ed., 2010), Klassiker der modernen Literaturtheorie (co-ed., 2010), Handbuch Erzählliteratur (ed., 2011), Fiktionalität und Non-Fiktionalität (ed., 2016), Handbuch Erzählen (ed., 2017), Einführung in die Erzähltheorie (co author, 11. Aufl. 2019), Postfaktisches Erzählen? Post-Truth – Fake News – Narration (ed., 2021).

CATHERINE NICHOLS is an art and literary scholar, curator and author. She is currently working as a curator at the Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Kulturen in Berlin and recently curated the Manifesta 14 Prishtina: it matters what worlds world worlds: how to tell stories otherwise. In 2021 she was artistic director of the anniversary program “Beuys 2021. 100 years of Joseph Beuys”. In addition to numerous cultural-historical exhibitions throughout Germany on topics ranging from the Reformation to passions, from the sun to sexuality, she has realized numerous monographic and thematic art exhibitions, including “Beuys. We are the revolution” (2008), “The end of the 20th century. The Best is Yet to Come” (2013) and “Das Kapital. Guilt – Territory – Utopia” (2016) and “Every person is an artist. Cosmopolitan Exercises with Joseph Beuys” (2021). She publishes regularly on contemporary art and has co-edited several books and catalogs, including The New Designer—Design as a profession (2023), Shine on Me: We and the Sun (2018), and Black Mountain. An interdisciplinary experiment 1933–1957” (2015).

MAYA SCHWEIZER (*1976 in Paris) studied art and art history in Aix-en-Provence, at the Leipzig University of Graphics and Book Arts and at the Berlin University of the Arts, where she graduated in 2007 as a master student with Lothar Baumgarten. Her cinematic works revolve around questions of history, identity and memory. Urban spaces as interfaces of individual and collective modes of action are often the starting point of her observation. In her perception of these places and spaces, she uncovers social realities, inscribed narratives and overlapping histories. Her works have been shown in numerous international solo and group exhibitions. In 2023 she received the Dagesh Art Prize at the Jewish Museum Berlin and was honored with a solo exhibition there.

SIMON STARLING (*1967 in Epsom, UK) lives and works in Copenhagen. He studied at Maidstone College of Art (1986–7) and Trent Polytechnic, Nottingham (1987–90) before completing an MFA at Glasgow School of Art in 1992. Interested in the journeys of people and objects, the origins of desire, and the value of materials, some of Starling’s most notable works have transformed one object into another. So in 1996, Starling used the metal from an antique silver spoon to make copies of a counterfeit twenty pence piece he had found. His work has been shown worldwide, including at the Venice Biennale in 2003 and 2009. In 2005 he was awarded the Turner Prize. His most recent exhibitions include “Two Birds, No Birds” at Casey Kaplan in New York (2023) and “The Pencil of Menzel & The Path on the Wolf” at neugerriemschneider in Berlin (2021).

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With the kind support of the Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart, Berlin.

Workshop: (Self-)Narratives and Traces of Upheaval in the Œuvre of Artists

Posted on | by Max Böhner

Workshop: (Self-)Narratives and
Traces of Upheaval in the Œuvre
of Artists

Participants: April Eisman, Melanie Franke, Florian Grotz, Viola Hildebrand-Schat, Angela Lammert, Elske Rosenfeld, Anne Rieck, Luise Thieme

→ Short biographies

The workshop on (Self-)Narratives and Traces of Upheaval in the Œuvre of Artists of the GDR will take place in the scope of the Images of History in Contemporary Art research project, funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) in Berne:

September 22, 2023, 10:00 a.m. – 08:00 p.m.

VENUE
Wissenschaftsetage im Bildungsforum (Universität Potsdam)
Am Kanal 47
14467 Potsdam

The workshop sets out on the search for a precarious relationship, namely that between artistic practice and the self-narrative as a genre for narrative depiction of a life.

The self-narrative is examined as a social form of knowledge and as a cultural pattern arising from the history of ideas that engenders concepts of individuality and identity in the form of a range of materials. The relationship between narrative and artistic practice that is envisaged presumes less an illustrating or mediating relationship than a performing one. This is because for both the narrative and the artistic practice, what is not said and not shown is also meaningful. Precisely the omissions and emphases can show something of the configuration of the self, in particular its embedding into the lifeworld of the GDR. Hence, a self-narrative is neither pure fiction nor a faithful rendering of all of a life’s actions and coincidences, but rather a plausibility test of narrative contexts that constantly renews itself.

Self-narrative sources include diary entries, photographs, artists’ books, notes, letters, postcards, posters, (literary) writings, films and oral history, such as interviews with artists. The workshop examines self-narratives of this type with a view to artists in the GDR and their works, investigating how artistic convictions feed into descriptions of one’s own life, and vice versa, how autobiographical experiences feed into art: where does the oeuvre begin and where does it end? How can the oeuvre of artists from the GDR be seen and (re-)interpreted through the lens of their autobiographical writings? Do autobiographical self-thematisations of critical life events provide insight into more or less concurrent changes in direction in the artistic work?

Seiichi Furuya, Berlin-Ost 1987, Copyright the Artist, Courtesy Galerie Thomas Fischer.

WORKSHOP PROGRAM
Friday, September 22, 2023

10:00 – 10:30 a.m.
Arrival

10:30 – 11:00 a.m.
Welcome & introduction
TELLING ABOUT ONESELF: PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS
Melanie Franke (head of “Images of History in Contemporary Art”)

Artistic and poetological forms of expression of autonomy

11:00 – 11:30 a.m.
ARCHIVE OF GESTURES: ARTISTIC RESEARCH ON GESTURES OF THE POLITICAL IN REVOLUTION AND PROTEST STARTING IN 1989-90
Elske Rosenfeld (Berlin/Halle)

11:30 – 11:40 a.m.
Discussion

11:45 a.m. – 12:15 p.m.
IN SEARCH OF AUTONOMY. SELF-REFLECTIONS AND EVOLUTION OF THE WORK OF EAST GERMAN ARTISTS IN THE CONTEXT OF POLITICAL UPHEAVALS
Florian Grotz (Helmut Schmidt University of the Federal Armed Forces, Hamburg)

12:15 – 12:25 p.m.
Discussion

12:30 – 2:00 p.m.
Lunch break

In the (hand) mirror of history. The retrospective focus on one’s (own) artistic biography as a construct

2:00 – 2:30 p.m.
MARKED BY LIFE – ELISABETH VOIGT AS MOTHER COURAGE
Anne Rieck (Philipp University of Marburg)

2:30 – 2:40 p.m.
Discussion

2:45 – 3:15 p.m.
RADICAL INTIMACY – SELF-ARCHIVING PRACTICES IN THE WORKS OF GABRIELE STÖTZER AND TINA BARA
Luise Thieme (Friedrich Schiller University Jena)

3:15 – 3:25 p.m.
Discussion

3:30 – 4:00 p.m.
Break

The visuality of biography. (Self-)reflectively following traces in the archive

4:00 – 4:30 p.m.
THE SUB-TEXT OF THE OBVIOUS. THE AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL IN CORNELIA SCHLEIME‘S OVERPAINTED PHOTOS
Viola Hildebrand-Schat (Goethe University Frankfurt am Main)

4:30 – 4:40 p.m.
Discussion

4:45 – 5:15 p.m.
“30 YEARS OF EXILE“ – THE GERMAN BIOGRAPHY OF NURIA QUEVEDO
April Eisman (Iowa State University)

5:30 – 5:45 p.m.
Break

5:45 – 6:45 p.m.
ALTERNATIVE NARRATIVES. ARE THE BLACK PICTURES AN INVENTION OF THE EAST?
Angela Lammert (Academy of Arts, Berlin)

6:45 – 7:00 p.m.
Discussion

7:00 p.m.
Final discussion & wrap-up

Concept development for the workshop is by Melanie Franke; it has been organised jointly with the art-historical research group “Images of History in Contemporary Art”.

REGISTRATION
If you are interested in attending the workshop, please register by 20 September 2023 at the e-mail address max.boehner@uni-potsdam.de to participate. The number of participants is limited.

SHORT BIOGRAPHIES
Prof. Dr. APRIL EISMAN is a professor of art history at Iowa State University and co-founder of the Transatlantic Institute for the Study of East German Art. She studied art history at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London and received her PhD from the University of Pittsburgh on ”Bernhard Heisig and the Cultural Politics of East German Art“. Since then, she has been researching and publishing in particular on the art of the GDR.

Prof. Dr. FLORIAN GROTZ is a professor of political sciences, particularly comparative government, at the Helmut Schmidt University of the Federal Armed Forces, Hamburg. Prior to that, he worked at the Universities of Heidelberg, Berlin (FU), Würzburg and Lüneburg, and was a visiting scholar at various research institutes within Germany and abroad. His academic interest is in the workings and reform of democratic institutions in Germany and Europe.

Prof. Dr. VIOLA HILDEBRAND-SCHAT is a professor of art history at the Goethe University in Frankfurt. Her teaching and research focus is on modern and contemporary art; her particular interest is in the relationship between text and image. This includes the significance of texts for artistic work, and the use of the book as a medium of expression and mediation. Worth mentioning here: her publications on the artist’s book and on Sigrid Sigurdsson’s open archives and, most recently, the performative space. She is currently researching models of the narrative and their significance for contemporary Russian art.

Dr. ANGELA LAMMERT is a university lecturer at the Institute for Art and Visual Studies at the Humboldt University Berlin and head of interdisciplinary special projects in the Visual Arts Section of the Academy of the Arts, Berlin. She has developed the concepts for and organised scientific symposia for many years together with renowned institutions in Germany and abroad; in addition, she has been the responsible curator of numerous exhibitions. The focal areas of her research are in the history and theory of photography and sculpture, in space and notation theory and in the history and theory of modernity.

ANNE RIECK, M.A., studied art theory and criticism at the HBK Braunschweig until 2014 and is currently pursuing her PhD at the Philipp University of Marburg on “Strategies of self-presentation in Elisabeth Voigt‘s late work. New beginning after 1945 in the field of tension of cultural policy developments in the GDR“. From 2011 to 2019, she was an employee of the DFG-funded digitalisation projects for the purpose of protecting cultural assets at the Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel and the Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum Braunschweig.

As an artist, author and cultural worker, Dr. ELSKE ROSENFELD researches the history of dissidence in Eastern Europe and the events of 1989-90. In “A Vocabulary of Revolutionary Gestures“, her current artistic research project, she investigates bodies as the site and archive of political events. Since 2018, she has been a board member of the Stiftung Haus der Demokratie und Menschenrechte, a foundation dedicated to promoting the ideas of the citizens’ movements of the GDR. In 2019, she co-curated the “Palast der Republik” festival at the Haus der Berliner Festspiele.

LUISE THIEME, M.A., studied art history at the University of Leipzig until 2020, and is currently pursuing her PhD at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena on “Counter-narratives. Artistic feminist practice in the GDR starting in 1970“. From 2018 to 2020 she worked as co-curator and research assistant at the Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst in Leipzig, and was a lecturer at the Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design Halle in 2022.

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With kind support of

(Self-)Narratives and Traces of Upheaval in the Œuvre of Artists of the GDR

Posted on | by mffhnwokok1

Workshop: (Self-)Narratives and
Traces of Upheaval in the Œuvre of
Artists of the GDR

Spetember 21 and 22, 2023

Location
University of Potsdam
Campus III – Griebnitzsee
August-Bebel-Straße 89
14482 Potsdam

The workshop of the “Images of History in Contemporary Art” research project funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) in Berne will take place in the second half of September 2023. Besides invited guests, young researchers can also apply to this call with a paper.

With the title “(Self-)Narratives and Traces of Upheaval in the Oeuvre of Artists of the GDR”, the workshop will embark on the search for a precarious relationship, namely that between artistic practice and the self-narrative as a genre for narrative depiction of a life.

Seiichi Furuya, Berlin-Ost 1987, Copyright the Artist, Courtesy Galerie Thomas Fischer.

The self-narrative will be examined as a social form of knowledge and as a cultural pattern arising from the history of ideas that engenders concepts of individuality and identity in the form of a range of materials. The relationship between narrative and artistic practice that is targeted presumes less an illustrating or mediating relationship than a performing one. This is because for both the narrative and the artistic practice, what is not said and not shown is also meaningful. Precisely what is left out and emphasized can show something of the configuration of the self, in particular its embedding into the lifeworld of the GDR. Hence, a self-narrative is neither pure fiction nor a faithful rendering of all of a life’s actions and coincidences, but rather a plausibility test of narrative contexts that constantly renews itself.

Self-narrative sources include diary entries, photographs, artists’ books, notes, letters, postcards, posters, (literary) writings, films and oral history, such as interviews with artists. The workshop will examine self-narratives of this type with a view to artists in the GDR and their works, investigating how artistic convictions feed into descriptions of one’s own life, and vice versa, namely how autobiographical experiences feed into art: where does the oeuvre begin and where does it end? How can the oeuvre of artists from the GDR be seen and (re-)interpreted through the lens of their autobiographical writings? Do autobiographical self-thematisations of critical life events provide insight into more or less concurrent changes in direction in the artistic work?

If you are interested, please send an abstract for a 20-minute talk (max. 900 characters incl. spaces, one-half DIN A4 page) and a short CV by 20 May 2023 by e-mail to Anna Leonie Grimm (anna.leonie.grimm@uni-potsdam.de). Travel and accommodation costs can be subsidised if required.

The workshop will be carried out by the team of the “Images of History in Contemporary Art” research project (www.gbgk.de- led by Melanie Franke) at the University of Potsdam. It is enabled by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) in Berne and the promotion of science and technology transfer (FöWiTec) at the University of Potsdam.

Workshop: Archive, Non-Archive, Counter-Archive

Posted on | by mffhnwokok1

Workshop: Archive, Non-Archive, Counter-Archive

Participants: Knut Ebeling, Melanie Franke, Gil Hochberg, Eva Kernbauer, Armin Linke, Paul Mellenthin, Doreen Mende, Rasha Salti, Melanie Sehgal, Vera Tollmann, Oraib Toukan

→ Short Bios

As part of the Images of History in Contemporary Art research project funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) in Bern, the workshop Archive, Non-Archive, Counter-Archive will take place on:

October 6, 2022, 2:00–9:00pm
October 7, 2022, 10:00am–2:00pm

LOCATION
ZeM – Brandenburg Centre for Media Studies
Hermann-Elflein-Str. 18
14467 Potsdam
Germany

What do archives show? The two-day workshop Archive, Non-Archive, Counter-Archive investigates the shift towards archival critique in contemporary art. On the basis of a close reading of works by artists Oraib Toukan and Armin Linke, the workshop aims to explore the interrelationship between epistemic and archival practices. In particular, it will inquire into artistic practices that restore visibility to lost or suppressed forms of knowledge.

Is the medium of the archive the condition of history? No characterization could be as fitting––or as wrong. Certainly, the archive stands at the beginning of memory and history, of facts and knowledge. But on the other hand, archives also hinder the production of knowledge about the past, privileging specific forms while suppressing others. Thus, the workshop aims to reflect on artistic practices that deal with archives as epistemic zones of conflict and battlegrounds of historical semantics, rather than as neutral access points to history.

Thursday, October 6, 2022
Workshop Program

2:00–2:30pm Arrival
Welcome: Melanie Franke (project lead, Images of History in Contemporary Art funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF)) & Paul Mellenthin (Post-doc)

Workshop Panel I: Zooming Out: Archive vs. Non-Archive

Over the past decades, Armin Linke has visited countless archives, documenting from a meta-perspective what generally constitutes these places: physical and digital economies, architectures, human labour, systems of order and disorder, machine work, and so on. By zooming out on infrastructures, his photographic practice itself has given form to a vast archive that seems to revision poststructuralist thinking: How does the archive work? What is its role? Who is in charge? And what is its potential visual imaginary? Aesthetically, the complexity of grasping the archive with visual registers relates to Linke’s activities in the discussion of the New Climatic Regime (Bruno Latour). Based on Prospecting Ocean (2018), a three-year research project that resulted in an exhibition at the Istituto di Scienze Marine, Venice, the workshop panel––with art historian Eva Kernbauer, artist and scholar Armin Linke, philosopher Melanie Sehgal, and media theorist Vera Tollmann––will reflect on techniques and conventions of representation that hinge on visibility, invisibility, and scalability as key characteristics of archival art.

Armin Linke, Iron Mountain, Boyers (PA), USA, 2018. Courtesy the artist and Vistamare Milano/Pescara.

© Armin Linke, Iron Mountain, Boyers (PA), USA, 2018. Courtesy the artist and Vistamare Milano/Pescara.

2:30–3:10pm
Armin Linke (artist, Berlin)

3:15–3:55pm
Eva Kernbauer (University of Applied Arts Vienna)

4:00–4:40pm
Melanie Sehgal (University of Wuppertal)

4:45–5:25pm
Vera Tollmann (Leuphana University of Lüneburg)

5:30–6:15pm
Panel Discussion

7:00–8:15pm Public Lecture
The Archival (Re-)Turn: On the Return of Archival Art as Archival Critique
by Knut Ebeling (Weißensee Academy of Art Berlin)

Introduction: Melanie Franke (project lead, Images of History in Contemporary Art; University of Potsdam)

This lecture by Knut Ebeling inquires into the situation of archival practices in the field of contemporary art. Since media-based techniques such as filing, storing, and transmitting data first appeared in artistic practices, a shift generally referred to and discussed under the term »archival turn«, the reflection on power-related theoretical implications and political effects has gained importance. Particularly against the backdrop of postcolonial theory and its medial a priori, the study of postcolonial archives, the question of counter- or even non-archives has become central. From the aesthetic point of view, a shift can be observed from the austere, data-focused and anti-narrative aesthetic of the »archival turn« towards narratological as well as poetic, speculative, and fabulatory strategies of »performing the archive«.

8:15–8:45pm Film screening: Oraib Toukan, When Things Occur, 2017, single-channel video, color, sound, Arabic with English subtitles, 28’.

Oraib Toukan’s video installation entitled When Things Occur (2017) is based upon a series of Skype conversations between the artist and Gaza-based photographers, fixers, and drivers who were behind specific images that circulated in the summer of 2014. The video dwells on the space between flat-screen monitors and their affect, exploring what lays behind the pixels that come to embody violence and destruction. It examines how documentary footage operates in the face of cruelty, and what »viewing suffering at a distance« could possibly mean.

9:00pm Apéro

Friday, October 7, 2022

Workshop Panel II: Zooming In: Counter-Archives and the Politics of History

Oraib Toukan is concerned with the inadequacy of images in contemporary history. Her inquiry takes her deep into the materiality of images, exploring pixel as a form of knowledge. By slowing down, zooming into, and reassembling material from online image banks and historical film archives, she seeks out intimate, tactile moments in the archive as a site for decolonial struggle. Thus, her work reminds us that archival art is always inevitably related to questions of power: Who defines visual culture? How is history mediated? What constitutes the present? And how can we multiply it? In this workshop panel, Middle East scholar Gil Hochberg, art historian Doreen Mende, visual arts curator Rasha Salti, and artist and scholar Oraib Toukan will reflect on counter-archival practices that represent an established form of artistic resistance to hegemonic images of history and structures of discursive oppression.

Oraib Toukan, When Things Occur, 2017, single-channel video, color, sound, Arabic with English subtitles, 28’. Courtesy the artist.

© Oraib Toukan, When Things Occur, 2017, single-channel video, color, sound, Arabic with English subtitles, 28’. Courtesy the artist.

10:00–10:40am
Oraib Toukan (artist, Berlin)

10:45–11:25am
Doreen Mende (Dresden State Art Collections/HEAD Genève)

11:30–12:10am
Rasha Salti (independent scholar, author and curator)

12:15–12:55am
Gil Hochberg (Columbia University, New York)

1:00–1:45pm
Panel Discussion

1:45–2:00pm
Final Discussion & Workshop Conclusion

The workshop is organized by Paul Mellenthin and the Images of History in Contemporary Art art historical research group at the University of Potsdam. Led by Melanie Franke and funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation.

The team members are: Christoph Balzar, Alex Bykov, Melanie Franke, Ulrike Gerhardt, Sophie-Marie Gruber, Verena Kittel, Oliver Krätschmer, Luisa Mann and Paul Mellenthin.

Registration
If you are interested in participating in the workshop, please register before October 5, 2022: luisa.renee.mann@uni-potsdam.de. The number of participants is limited.

Project website
www.gbgk.ch

Prof. Dr. KNUT EBELING is Professor of Media Theory and Aesthetics at the Department of Theory and History at the Weißensee Academy of Art Berlin. Numerous publications on contemporary theory, art and aesthetics, including Archivologie. Theorien des Archivs in Philosophie, Medien und Künste (Kulturverlag Kadmos Berlin, 2009) and together with Georges Didi-Huberman Das Archiv brennt (Kulturverlag Kadmos Berlin, 2007).

Prof. Dr. GIL HOCHBERG is Ransford Professor of Hebrew and Visual Studies, Comparative Literature, and Middle Eastern Studies as well as Chair of the MESAAS (Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies) at Columbia University. Her book Becoming Palestine: Toward an Archival Imagination of the Future (Duke University Press, 2021) explores how artists, directors, dancers, and writers engage with the archive to imagine the future of Palestine. The book won the prestigious René Wellek Prize for best book in Comparative Literature, 2022.

Prof. Dr. EVA KERNBAUER is professor of Art History at the University of Applied Arts, Vienna. Her research focuses on artistic engagements with history (Art, History, and Anachronic Interventions Since 1990, 2022; Kunstgeschichtlichkeit, 2015). She has led the FWF-funded team project A Matter of Historicity. Material Practices in Audiovisual Art, pursuing an interest in the intersections of art and film, and is interested in how film has shaped other artistic practices since the 1960s.

ARMIN LINKE is a contemporary photographer and filmmaker. He is working on a continuously completed archive about human life and various natural as well as human-made landscapes. His work documents situations where the boundaries between fiction and truth become blurred or invisible. He is currently guest professor at ISIA, Urbino (IT), and artist in residence at the KHI Art History Institute in Florence.

Prof. Dr. DOREEN MENDE is head of the research department at Dresden State Art Collections (SKD) since 2021 and director and professor of the research-based master’s program and PhD forum CCC – Critical Curatorial Cybernetic Research Practices – in the Visual Arts Department at Haute école d’art et de design (HEAD) in Geneva since 2015. Her work focuses on geopolitical conditions in image production and display processes.

RASHA SALTI is a freelance researcher, writer, and curator of art and film. Her research projects design a critical model that rewrites hegemonic narratives by reflecting on artistic production in the Arab world, including the exhibition Past Disquiet: Narratives and Ghosts from the Exhibition of International Art for Palestine, 1978, which she co-curated with Kristine Khouri and was presented in 2016 at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MACBA) in Barcelona and the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) in Berlin.

Dr. MELANIE SEHGAL is a philosopher with a research focus on process philosophy, science and technology studies, the history and historiography of philosophy, as well as aesthetics and the environmental humanities. Since 2021, she is Director of Research at the Institute for Basic Research into the History of Philosophy (IGP) at Bergische Universität Wuppertal. She is currently working on a book titled The Arts of a New Climatic Regime as well as an edited volume, together with Alex Wilkie (Goldsmiths), on More-Than-Human Aesthetics. Rethinking Aesthetics Beyond the Bifurcation of Nature (Bristol University Presse 2023).

Dr. VERA TOLLMANN completed her PhD in 2020 with the study View from Above. ‘Powers of Ten’ and Image Politics of Verticality (Spector Books, 2022). Since 2021, she has been a visiting scholar at Leuphana University Lüneburg in the Department of Media and Culture Studies. Her research interests lie in the politics of visibility, history, and theories of digital cultures.

ORAIB TOUKAN is an artist and scholar. She holds a PhD in Fine Arts from Oxford University, Ruskin School of Art. Until fall 2015, she was head of the Arts Division and Media Studies program at Bard College at Al-Quds University, Palestine, and visiting fellow at the International Academy of Fine Arts in Ramallah.

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Thanks to
Sophie-Marie Gruber
Luisa Mann
Fritz Schlüter and ZeM
Lily Wittenburg

With kind support of