Liberate

Related posts

• Valencia en Stuttgart (0)
• e-VIVA VALENCIA (0)
• Respuesta al Macba. Exposición Desacuerdos. (0)
• e-valencia y los movimientos sociales en Valencia (0)
• e-Projekte (0)

Related posts

• Where is Now? (0)
• Wealth of Nations (0)
• Ways of Working. Iris Dressler vs Daniel G. Andújar (0)
• Subversive Practices. Art under Conditions of Political Repression (0)
• On és la bretxa? Debat obert sobre el funcionament de la cadena de valor en les Arts Visuals (0)

Related posts

• An Approach to the Confluences between Art, Architecture, and Design in Catalonia (0)
• Subversive Practices. Art under Conditions of Political Repression (0)
• Where is Now? (0)
• Kirsten Wagner: “Postcapital” or What Follows the City? (0)
• Workshop. Transforming Information into Knowledge (0)

Subversive Practices
Art under Conditions of Political Repression
60s–80s / South America / Europe
Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart
May 30 – August 2, 2009

Curators: Valentín Roma, Daniel García Andújar

Ricardo Bofill/Taller de Arquitectura, Eugeni Bonet (Archive), COAC Archiv, Enric Franch (Archive), Antoni Muntadas, Pere Portabella, Grup de Treball, Sala Vinçon (Archive)

This project sets out to reconstruct the aesthetic and political dimension acquired by conceptual practices in Catalonia during the nineteen-seventies. With this in view, the analysis has been oriented toward a set of proposals developed in a variety of areas—art, architecture, design, film, and education—which nevertheless all shared the same circuits of visibility, closely related language and attitudes, and certain ideological positions that were characterized by their spirit of protest and antagonism. The core of the project consists of five pieces by the Grup de Treball that in some sense point to the disciplines mentioned above. In order to contextualize these, a heterogeneous archive has been put together, drawn from the documentary holdings of (amongst others) the COAC (Association of Architects of Catalonia), the Sala Vinçon gallery, the FAD decorative arts association, and the Elisava and Eina design schools, along with a number of art projects—the film Esquizo (Schizo) by the Taller de Arquitectura and Reflexões sobre a morte (Reflections on Death) by Antoni Muntadas, among others—and also a selection of visual and bibliographical documents from those years. (Valentín Roma, Daniel García Andújar)

WORKS (SELECTION)
All texts unless otherwise noted: Valentín Roma

Ricardo Bofill/ Taller de Arquitectura
Esquizo (Schizo), 1970
Film on DVD, 80’
—
A study of the relationship between art and madness. An experimental documentary on the structure of a brain, the disquiet of an artist and his distorted vision of the world. The film describes the horror of the human condition, a mere instant between nothingness and nothingness.

COAC Space, Barcelona
The exhibition hall of the COAC (Association of Architects of Catalonia) was during the 1970s a space which held numerous performances, workshops and lectures that discussed the role of the new artistic languages in Barcelona.

Manuel Vázquez Montalbán
Report about information, 1965
—
In 1965, during his imprisonment in Lerida, Vázquez Montalbán wrote the Report about information, perhaps the first book that analyzes the political and economic role of the media in Spain. This study was strongly perceived by some conceptual artists who, at that time, began to critically question the role of the media.

Antoni Muntadas (USA; 1942, E)
Reflexões sobre a morte (Reflections on Death), 1973
Slide projection with 80 slides
Courtesy: Muntadas/Collection: Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil

Pere Portabella
Miró, l’altre (Miró, the other), 1969
Script: Pere Portabella, Photography: Manuel Esteban, Music: Carles Santos, Editing: Teresa Alcocer, Production: José Pedro Villanueva / Colegio Oficial de Arquitectos de Barcelona (COAC) / Films 59
—
One of the most significant projects at COAC was the film Miro, the other (1969) by Pere Portabella, who recorded the action paintings of Joan Miró at the front glass of the building – and the removal of the same, carried out by the artist himself.
see also: Diego Trerotola, in: www.pereportabella.com/eng/laltre_esp.html)

Grup de Treball
Francesc Abad, Jordi Benito, Jaume Carbó, Alícia Fingerhut, Xavier Franquesa, Carles Hac Mor, Imma Julián, Antoni Mercader, Antoni Munné, Muntadas, Josep Parera, Santi Pau, Pere Portabella, Àngels Ribé, Manuel Rovira, Enric Sales, Carles Santos, Dorothée Selz and Francesc Torres
The appearance of Grup de Treball marked a turning point in Catalan culture. First, for their work as a collective and, second, for their interest in moving away from conventional artistic practices and joining a critical current where art had to fulfil a social function. Their brief contribution was made in a setting characterised by an unstable political climate, which coincided with the hardening of repression that marked the last years of the Franco dictatorship.
Grup de Treball set out to distance itself from the usual distribution channels of works of art. Whenever possible they used the press to publish their communiqués and set up information centres at their exhibitions.

Champ d’attraction. Document. Travail d´information sur la presse illégale des Pays Catalans. 9è Biennale de Paris (Field of Attraction. Information work on the illegal press in Catalonia. 9th Paris Biennial), 1975
Photography, sticker of colours, 11 copies, each 143,5 x 92,5 cm
Courtesy: MACBA, Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona
—
Shown for the first time at the IX Paris Biennial (1975) and later at the 1976 Venice Biennale and the exhibition Venice Biennale. Art avantgarde and social reality in Spain 1936-1976 (1976-1977), this work contains an analysis of the situation of the Catalan illegal press through images, graphic elements, texts and a wide selection of copies of underground publications.
The passing of the terrorism law in 1975 and the declaration of the state of emergency meant that the work had to be presented unsigned, which, once the Paris Biennial had finished, brought about the end of the activities of Grup de Treball. Owing to the Spanish political situation and the dangerously political character of the work, the text that was designed to appear in the Paris catalogue was not published; two pages were left blank for fear of repression.

Treball col·lectiu que consisteix a verificar la distribució de 44 professions entre 113 persones segons una nota apareguda últimament a la premsa (Collective work consisting of checking the distribution of 44 professions among 113 people according to a report which had appeared recently in the press), 1973
Paper work, 7 pages, each 29,7 x 19,3 cm
Courtesy: MACBA, Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona
—
This work is a distribution of the professions of the 113 members of the Catalan Assembly—two of whom belonged to Grup de Treball—who were arrested in the church of Santa Maria Mitjancera in Barcelona in August 1973 and was included in the catalogue-dossier for the exhibition Terrassa, Art Information. It is therefore a proposal in which specific condemnation is approached from procedures related in some way to visual poetry.

Homenatge a l’arquitectura (Homage to Architecture), 1975
Paper work, variables dimensions
Courtesy: MACBA, Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona
—
This intervention was done using the official poster for the exhibition Homage to Architecture as support. From a kind of conceptual diagram, Grup de Treball analyses its participation and makes a frontal attack on the exhibition organization structures and their mechanisms for controlling the artists.

Cartell del col.lectiu “Solidaritat amb el moviment obrer” (Poster by the “Solidarity with the Workers Movement” collective), 1973
Paper work, 50 x 80 cm
Courtesy: MACBA, Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona
—
Published by the Solidarity with the Workers’ Movement collective to raise funds, this poster was distributed clandestinely on the occasion of the anniversary of the Second Spanish Republic of 1934. The work, which includes the entries repressió (‘repression’), repressiu-iva (‘repressive’) and repressor -a (‘repressor’), taken from the Pompeu Fabra Catalan Dictionary, recalls works that reflect on the relation between language and art.

Sala Vinçon, Barcelona
Postcard collection, 1973-83
Courtesy: Eugeni Bonet
—
Between 1973 and 1983, the La Sala Vinçon in Barcelona was a place that held many exhibitions, workshops and conferences related to conceptual art. From Wolf Vostell to Isidoro Valcárcel Medina, from Alessandro Mendini to Muntadas, from Bigas Luna to Àngel Jové were many who participated in the planning of this meeting point around which gathered several generations of artists and designers.

Dates

Subversive Practices
Art under Conditions of Political Repression
60s–80s / South America / Europe
May 30–August 2, 2009

Press Conference
Friday, May 29, 2009, 11 am

Opening
Friday, May 29, 2009, 7 pm

Symposium
May 30–31, 2009

Curators’s Tours
with Hans D. Christ / Iris Dressler
Wednesday, June 10, 2009, 6:30 pm
Wednesday, July 15, 2009, 6:30 pm
Sunday, August 2, 2009, 4:30 pm

Related posts

• 1969–1979. An Approach to the Confluences between Art, Architecture, and Design in Catalonia (0)
• Subversive Practices. Art under Conditions of Political Repression (0)
• Where is Now? (0)
• Kirsten Wagner: “Postcapital” or What Follows the City? (0)
• Workshop. Transforming Information into Knowledge (0)

Artists
Carlos Altamirano, Gábor Altorjay, Lucy Angulo, Ângelo de Aquino, Luis Arias Vera, Autoperforationsartisten, Artur Barrio, László Beke (Archiv), Horia Bernea, Ricardo Bofill/Taller de Arquitectura, Teresa Burga, CADA, Ulises Carrión, Dalibor Chatrný, Carlfriedrich Claus, COAC Archiv, Attila Csernik, Lutz Dammbeck, Guillermo Deisler, Eugenio Dittborn, Juan Downey, Jorge Eielson, Diamela Eltit, Miklós Erdély, Roberto Evangelista, Constantin Flondor, Fernando França Cocchiarale, Enric Franch (Archiv), Die Gehirne, Carlos Ginzburg, Ion Grigorescu, Claus Hänsel, Rafael Hastings, Paulo Herkenhoff, Emilio Hernández Saavedra, Taller E.P.S. Huayco, Joseph W. Huber, Pavel Ilie, Indigo Group, IPUT (superintendent: Tamas St.Auby), Iosif Kiraly, Jiri Kocman, Kollektive Aktionen, Carlos Leppe, Gastão de Magalhães, Oskar Manigk, Francisco Mariotti, Alfredo Márquez, Gonzalo Mezza, Ivonne von Mollendorff, Muntadas, Paul Neagu, Olaf Nicolai, César Olhagaray, Clemente Padín, Letícia Parente, Grupo Paréntesis, Catalina Parra, Gyula Pauer, Luis Pazos, Dan Perjovschi, Julio Plaza, Féliks Podsiadly, Robert Rehfeld, Herbert Rodríguez, Juan Carlos Romero, Lotty Rosenfeld, Jesús Ruiz Durand, Juan Javier Salazar, Hugo Salazar del Alcázar, Valeri Scherstjanoi, Cornelia Schleime, Grupul Sigma, Petr Stembera, Gabriele Stötzer, Grup de Treball, Regina Vater, Cecilia Vicuña, Edgardo Antonio Vigo, Sala Vinçon (Archiv), Krzysztof Wodiczko, Ruth Wolf-Rehfeld, Horacio Zabala, Sergio Zevallos

Idea and Concept
Iris Dressler, Hans D. Christ

Cocurators
Ramón Castillo / Paulina Varas (Santiago de Chile / Valparaíso); Fernando Davis (Buenos Aires); Cristina Freire (São Paulo); Sabine Hänsgen (Bochum); Miguel Lopez / Emilio Tarazona (Barcelona / Lima); Ileana Pintilie Teleaga (Timisoara); Valentín Roma / Daniel García Andújar (Barcelona); Annamária Szöke / Miklós Peternák (Budapest); Anne Thurmann-Jajes (Bremen)

Introduction

From May 30 to August 2, 2009 the Württembergischer Kunstverein in Stuttgart devotes itself to experimental and conceptual art practices that had established between the nineteen-sixties and eighties in Europe and South America under the influence of military dictatorships and communist regimes. Both the exhibition, comprising around eighty artistic positions, as well as the related complementary program have been developed by a team of thirteen international curators in close collaboration with the Kunstverein over a two-year process.

The exhibition’s nine sections will be focused on various contexts and strategies of artistic production along with their positioning vis-à-vis political and cultural repression in the GDR, Hungary, Romania, the Soviet Union, Spain, Chile, Brazil, Argentina, and Peru. Of equal concern here are both the particularities of and the relations between the different temporal and local environments.

The exhibition undertakes the experiment of a shifted cartograph and an extended understanding of conceptual art, which has become established well beyond the Anglo-American canon. In this respect, the related interdisciplinary, collaborative, and sociopolitical potentials are particularly emphasized—that is, the paradigm shifts between visual arts, politics, society, academia, architecture, design, mass media, literature, dance, theater, activism, and so forth, which have been educed by these potentials.

Furthermore, the focus is on artistic practices that not only radically question the conventional concept of art, the institutions, and the relationship between art and public, but that have, at the same time, subversively thwarted structures of censorship and opposed the existing systems of power. Here, body, language, and public space represent the pivotal instruments, of resistance, symbolic and performative in equal measure. The appropriation of media and distribution channels—especially the postal service—has in turn played a distinctive role in the establishment of the widely ramified networks between (Eastern) Europe and Latin America.

Another core theme explored by the project is the problem in presenting conceptual art forms and their equally ephemeral and processual, time- and location-specific dimensions. Crucial here is to do justice not only to the sensuous and participative distinctiveness of the works but also to their radicalism and their sociopolitical backgrounds.

In lieu of conceptualizing a comprehensive and homogenized design, the various curators will each develop individual presentational models for their respective exhibition section. Thus, the exhibition will not only be introducing different approaches to the restaging of conceptual practices but will emerge as a polyphonic parcourse, experienced as multidimensional cartograph.

A publication on the project will be released in fall 2009.

Sections

Progressive Images: Art in Chile under Dictatorship, 1973–1990
Curators: Ramón Castillo and Paulina Varas
Artists: Carlos Altamirano, CADA, Guillermo Deisler, Eugenio Dittborn, Juan Downey, Diamela Eltit, Carlos Leppe, Gonzalo Mezza, Letícia Parente, Catalina Parra, Lotty Rosenfeld, Cecilia Vicuña

Ramón Castillo and Paulina Varas explore the play on content-related and formal discontinuities, contradictions, and de- and recontextualizations that characterized Chilean art from the nineteen-seventies to nineties. At issue here are both the artistic potentials related to a rearticulation of the cognitive and symbolic world—worlds that were at that time engaged by the ideologies of the military dictatorship—and the question as to how these potentials continue to be relevant today.

Political Bodies, Territories in Conflict

Curator: Fernando Davis
Artists: Carlos Ginzburg, Luis Pazos, Juan Carlos Romero, Edgardo Antonio Vigo, Horacio Zabala

Fernando Davis is concerned with the artistic appropriation of the body and of public space in the scope of the military dictatorship in Argentina. The body was negotiated as an instrument of political resistance. Artists countered the measured order of urban space, dictated by dictatorial violence, with strategies of a poetic dèrive. Both cases involved the subversion of the precepts of meaning imposed by the state apparatus.

Alternative Networks

Curator: Cristina Freire
Artists: Ângelo de Aquino, Artur Barrio, Ulises Carrión, Dalibor Chatrný, Attila Csernik, Roberto Evangelista, Fernando França Cocchiarale, Paulo Herkenhoff, Jiri Kocman, Gastão de Magalhães, Clemente Padín, Julio Plaza, Féliks Podsiadly, Petr Stembera, Regina Vater, Krzysztof Wodiczko

Cristina Freire centers in on the collection of conceptual artworks at the Museum of Contemporary Art of the University of São Paulo. During the military dictatorship period, the museum played a decisive role in providing space for free artistic expression and in forming a hub for the international mail art scene. Photography, as a documentation and distribution medium for performances, actions, and situations, along with the subversive use of the body are posited at the heart of her investigation.

Collective Actions: Trips out of Town, 1976–2009

Curator: Sabine Hänsgen
Artists: Collective Actions (Andrej Monastyrskij, Nikolaj Panitkov, Nikita Alekseev, Elena Elagina, Igor’ Makarevič, Georgij Kizeval’ter, Sergej Romaško, Sabine Hänsgen)

Sabine Hänsgen focuses on the performances of the group Collective Actions, that is, on their “Trips out of Town,” which have been carried out since 1976 in rural areas surrounding Moscow. The actions have most frequently taken place on an empty snow-covered field, a terrain “liberated” from symbols and meanings. Hänsgen developed an “installation as diagram” for the exhibition that comprehends an index of all previous actions along with documentary materials and more recent satellite images of the action spaces.

Crosscurrent Passages: Dissident Tactics in Peruvian Art, 1968–1992
Curators: Miguel López and Emilio Tarazona
Artists: Lucy Angulo, Luis Arias Vera, Teresa Burga, Jorge Eielson, Rafael Hastings, Emilio Hernández Saavedra, Taller E.P.S. Huayco, Francisco Mariotti, Alfredo Márquez, Ivonne von Mollendorff, Grupo Paréntesis, Herbert Rodríguez, Jesús Ruiz Durand, Juan Javier Salazar, Hugo Salazar del Alcázar, Sergio Zevallos

Miguel López and Emilio Tarazona investigate two phases of aesthetic-political practices in Peru: first, during the military dictatorship from 1968 to 1975 and, second, during the no-less-violent guerilla war in the nineteen-eighties. While the nineteen-seventies were characterized by the dawn of institutional critique and participative art forms, art was later viewed first and foremost as a space for political protest, for the re-elaboration of Andean modernity, as well

as a means of processing the repercussions of violence.

Between Limits: Escaping into the Concept

Curator: Ileana Pintilie Teleaga

Artists: Horia Bernea, Constantin Flondor, Ion Grigorescu, Pavel Ilie, Iosif Kiraly, Paul Neagu, Dan Perjovschi, Grupul Sigma

Ileana Pintilie Teleagă highlights artistic “survival techniques” and subversive strategies that originated in Romania during the era of the communist regime, or Ceauşescu’s dictatorship. Evoking the body as an equally private and political realm for artistic experimentation counted among these strategies, as did ephemeral, ironic, and sociocritical approaches. Moreover, despite extreme isolation, access to international mail art existed in Romania.

1969–1979: An Approach to the Confluences Between Art, Architecture, and Design in Catalonia

Curators: Valentín Roma and Daniel García Andújar
Artists: Ricardo Bofill/Taller de Arquitectura, COAC Archiv, Enric Franch (Archiv), Muntadas, Grup de Treball, Sala Vinçon (Archiv)

Valentín Roma and Daniel García Andújar fathom the interplay between critical conceptual practices in art, architecture, and design in Catalonia during the final decade of Franco’s dictatorial reign. At the core are six works by Grup de Treball in which interdisciplinary working methods are reflected. These works are contextualized by an archive compiled from various sources, by other artistic works, and by interviews specifically conducted for the exhibition with players from the period in question.

Tomorrow Is Evidence!

Curators: Annamária Szöke and Miklós Peternák

Artists: Gábor Altorjay, László Beke (Archiv), Miklós Erdély, Indigo Group, IPUT (superintendent: Tamas St. Auby), Gyula Pauer

Annamária Szöke and Miklós Peternák exploratively question the present-day relevance of subversive potentials presented by experimental and conceptual art of the nineteen-sixties through nineties in Hungary. In this context, they primarily focus on works that were destroyed, lost, or never realized, that is, those necessitating a reconstruction or restaging. In some cases, the artists are directly involved in the process and are thus effectuating a reevaluation of their earlier projects.

Playing with the System: Artistic Strategies in the GDR from 1970 to 1990

Curator: Anne Thurmann-Jajes
Artists: Autoperforationsartisten, Carlfriedrich Claus, Lutz Dammbeck, Die Gehirne, Claus Hänsel, Joseph W. Huber, Oskar Manigk, César Olhagaray, Clemente Padín, Robert Rehfeld, Valeri Scherstjanoi, Cornelia Schleime, Gabriele Stötzer, Ruth Wolf-Rehfeld

Anne Thurmann-Jajes spotlights the alternative art forms that succeeded in becoming established, beyond the sphere of official art doctrine and censorship, in the nineteen-seventies and eighties in the GDR. Access to the international networks of mail art, along with the so-called living-room galleries or original-graphic magazines, opened up opportunities for artistic experimentation with image, language, performance, sound, and film.

Subversive Practices

Art under Conditions of Political Repression

60s–80s / South America / Europe

May 30 – August 2, 2009

Dates

Press conference

Friday, May 29, 2009, 11 am

Opening

Friday, May 29, 2009, 7 pm

Symposium

Mai 30–31, 2009

Press Release and Press Images

http://www.wkv-stuttgart.de/en/press

Press Contact

Iris Dressler

Fon: +49 (0)711 – 22 33 711

dressler@wkv-stuttgart.de

Idea and Concept
Iris Dressler, Hans D. Christ

Co-curators

Ramón Castillo / Paulina Varas, Santiago de Chile / Valparaíso

Fernando Davis, Buenos Aires

Cristina Freire, São Paulo

Sabine Hänsgen, Bochum

Miguel Lopez / Emilio Tarazona, Barcelona / Lima

Ileana Pintilie Teleaga, Timisoara

Valentín Roma / Daniel García Andújar, Barcelona

Annamária Szöke / Miklós Peternák, Budapest

Anne Thurmann-Jajes, Bremen

A Project by
Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart

Partners
Centre for Culture and Communication Foundation, Budapest
Arteleku, San Sebastian

Main support by

Further Support by

Ministerium für Wissenschaft, Forschung und Kunst des Landes Baden-Württemberg

Kulturamt der Stadt Stuttgart
Bundesstiftung zur Aufarbeitung der SED-Diktatur, Berlin
SEACEX, Sociedad Estatal para la Acción Cultural Exterior, Madrid

Institut Ramon Llull, Barcelona

Kulturinstitut der Republik Ungarn, Stuttgart
Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen, Stuttgart

Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart

Schlossplatz 2, 70173 Stuttgart

Fon: +49 (0)711 – 22 33 70, Fax: +49 (0)711 – 29 36 17, info@wkv-stuttgart.de

www.wkv-stuttgart.de

Hours

Tue, Thu–Sun: 11 am–6 pm; Wed: 11 am–8 pm

PROGRAMM SYMPOSIUM

May 30 + 31, 2009

Languages: English and Spanish

Entrance fees: Single day: 10 / 5 Euro; Single event: 4 / 2 Euro

——————————————————————————————————————————————————-

Saturday, May 30, 2009

——————————————————————————————————————————————————-

1 p.m.

Exhibition tour with the artists and curators

4 p.m.

The Strategy of Anonymity: Some Remarks on Artistic Practices in Peru

Lecture by Juan Javier Salazar (video recording)

Subsequent conversation with Miguel López and Emilio Tarazona

5 p.m.

Critical Rereading of So-Called Catalan Conceptualism

Conversation with Valentín Roma, Daniel García Andújar and others

6 p.m.

Traces of the Hungarian Exhibition(s) at the C AYC (Center for Art and Communication), Buenos Aires, 1973–74

Lecture by Mercedes Kutasy

19:30 Uhr

Performance

Marta Minujin, Gabor Altorjay

——————————————————————————————————————————————————-

Sunday, May 31, 2009

——————————————————————————————————————————————————-

1 p.m.

Around 1970 Art Was a Prison

Lecture by Horacio Zabala

2 p.m.

Artistic Strategies in the GDR, 1970–1990

Conversation with Anne Thurmann-Jajes and artists from her section

3:30 p.m.

Moscow Conceptual Art Online

Lecture by Sergey Letov

4:30 p.m.

Subversive Art as Viewed in Eastern European Romania

Lecture by Ion Grigorescu

Related posts

• Postcapital. Archive 1989-2001 (0)
• Postcapital Stuttgart (1)
• On Difference #3: Politics of Space (0)
• An Approach to the Confluences between Art, Architecture, and Design in Catalonia (0)
• Als der Westen seinen “Tanzpartner” verlor (0)

Film and lecture program

Curated by Katrin Mundt
16 and 17 January 2009, 7 – 10:30 pm

Mary Koszmary, Yael Bartana

Postcapital: Vortragsreihe, Workshops, Filmprogramm
Württembergischer Kunstverein, Schlossplatz 2, 70173 Stuttgart, Fon: +49 (0)711 22 33 70, info@wkv-stuttgart.de

“Where is Now?” picks up at the archive as a repository for the present— a medial place where reality is not only stored and formatted in images and documents but also interpreted and configured anew through each individual access. Here, time itself becomes a malleable substance, the material of playful intervention and radical reinterpretation. From the perspective of different presents—from the nineteen-sixties through today—the films and videos in this program frustrate the linear progression of time.

Historical crises and turning points in particular, which still today determine the rhythm of our time calculations, are encountered by the works with skepticism. Their protagonists develop strategies for overcoming history—by proclaiming new beginnings, by inhabiting the permanent crisis of a precarious present, or by staging a retro-future against the backdrop of dated utopias. The works problematize the state of experience and perception as well as of agency and representation under archive conditions: in the images self-created by societies in order to ensure their presentness, in the ways in which embodied memory becomes manifest, and in the medial exploration of deviance and dissent.

PROGRAMME

Friday, 16th January

7 pm

Auf der Suche nach einer praktisch-realistischen Haltung, Alexander Kluge, BRD 1983, 12′

An amateur pilot is training for fleeing to the Kerguelen Islands in the Antarctic Ocean in case of a rocket war. An attempt at anticipating history.
Courtesy: the artist

Emergency Needs, Kevin J. Everson, USA 2007, 7′

Archival material from a news conference held by the first African-American mayor of a large city, Carl Stokes, in response to a violent outbreak of civil unrest in a Cleveland working-class neighbourhood in the summer of 1968 is confronted with its reenactment.
Courtesy: the artist

Geldsorgen, Walter Heynowski/Gerhard Scheumann, DDR 1975, 6′

After the putsch in 1973 the new president of the Chilean Central Bank, General Cano, explains why new money has to be printed.
Courtesy: Progress Filmverleih, Berlin

Chic Point, Sharif Waked, PAL 2003, 7′

In a state of crisis the individual body becomes a latent threat, its sense of control a direct imperative. Sharif Waked presents fashion for an occupied country.
Courtesy: Vtape, Toronto

Little Figures, Sarah Vanagt, B 2003, 16′

Three statues on the Mont des Arts in Brussels: a king, a queen and a medieval knight. Three newcomers to Brussels: a Philippino boy, a Rwandan refugee girl, and a Moroccan boy. An imaginary conversation.
Courtesy: Argos Centre for Art and Media, Brussels

Mary Koszmary, Yael Bartana, PL/NL/IS 2007, 11′

An abandoned stadium in Warsaw. A young, radical Polish leftist calls for three million Jews to return to Poland.
Courtesy: Archive of the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen

8.30 pm

Kempinski, Neil Beloufa, F/Mali 2007, 14’

A science fiction documentary: the portrait of a mystic place in the future of which its residents speak in present tense.
Courtesy: Archive of the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen

Kobarweng, or Where is your helicopter?, Johan Grimonprez, B/USA 1992, 24′

The tape assembles archival footage and oral histories depicting the first encounter between the villagers of a remote island in the highlands of New Guinea and the outside world. The anthropologist becomes the Alien.
Courtesy: Argos Centre for Art and Media, Brussels

Valise, Lewis Klahr, USA 2004, 14′

Part1 of the Daylight Moon Quartet assembles vestiges of collective memory, subjective associations, and visual truisms into a narrative of the future’s past: a re-animation.
Courtesy: LUX, London

A Study of Relationships between Inner and Outer Space, David Lamelas, UK 1969, 20′

An analysis of the architectural, social, and geographical vicinity surrounding an exhibition site that is continually casting further circles—all the way to the forthcoming first lunar landing.
Courtesy: LUX, London

Saturday, 17th January

7 pm

About the strategic value of presence
Lecture by Johannes Maier (London)
(in German)

Johannes Maier’s lecture thematizes the merging of historical moment and absolute now in media images based on his own video works as well as other filmic samples. In Facing, Maier portrays the BBC cameraman Darren Conway, who accompanied British soldiers during the last war in Iraq as an “embedded” journalist. In the film, Conway reflects on the situation in Iraq and on his own personal perception of the events. Further examples will be Richard Serra’s Boomerang (1974) and Werner Herzog’s Grizzly Man (2005).

8.30 pm

Afternoon (March 22, 1999), Steve Reinke, CAN 1999, 24′

The artist spends the afternoon in his tiny apartment listening to music he dislikes and ruminating on what it means to be an artist at the end of the millenium. A performance for Reinke’s brand new digital video camera.
Courtesy: LUX, London

Industrial Synth, Seth Price, USA 2000-2001, 16’30”

An experimental video collage reflecting on the pathos of a digital culture, which permanently revolves around notions of death and transience despite its aspirations toward innovation.
Courtesy: Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), New York

Hotel Palindrome (before R. Smithson), Bernd Behr, UK 2006, 10′

The recollections of two contemporary witnesses to Robert Smithson’s slide presentation Hotel Palenque (1972) entangle us in a mind game reflecting architecture and entropy, presence and duration.
Courtesy: the artist

A Short Video about Tate Modern, Emma Wolukau-Wanambwa, UK 2003-2005, 5′

A video about the boundaries of visibility in public culture, about the spaces and moments where people and events become visible only to disappear again.
Courtesy: the artist

9.30 pm

Dissident Sunset, Gail Pickering, UK 2007, 8′

Entombed within a claustrophobic cardboard set, a group of young anarchists stage a carnivalesque performance around representations of political resistance.
Courtesy: the artist

Basking in what feels like an ‘ocean of grace’, I soon realise that I am not looking at it, but rather that I AM it, looking at myself, Emily Wardill, UK 2006, 8′

A symmetrically designed film that questions the public representation and the ideological framing of the personal by example of a focus group.
Courtesy: LUX, London

What you see is where you’re at, Luke Fowler, UK 2001, 25′

A collage from found material about the Kingsley Hall experiment (1965–69), an alternative living and housing space initiated by R.D. Laing for people undergoing severe mental distress.
Courtesy: LUX, London

Related posts

• Kirsten Wagner: “Postcapital” or What Follows the City? (0)
• Subversive Practices. Art under Conditions of Political Repression (0)
• Ole W. Fischer: Post-Structural, Post-Critical, Post-Political? (0)
• Keiko Sei: Border Crossing (0)
• Felix Stalder: Remixing and the Culture of Networked Society (0)

The Knowledge City
Postcapital: Vortragsreihe, Workshops, Filmprogramm
Württembergischer Kunstverein, Schlossplatz 2, 70173 Stuttgart, Fon: +49 (0)711 22 33 70, info@wkv-stuttgart.de
Lecture (german)
Thursday, January 15, 2009, 7 pm

Abstract
With the advent of the so-called information age, much seemed prone to vanish: the body, the space, the city, the book along with its institution, the library. But everything returns, and not only as visual metaphors on monitor surfaces. While the physical body has proved to be an equally ineluctable and refractory factor in technical thing ensembles, megacities—notably illustrated by media geography through their radiant diagrams and maps—have asserted themselves as spatial and economic centers of a globally networked media culture. And despite an increasing digitalization that includes historical text and image inventory, libraries have been experiencing an unexpected renaissance over the past years, as attested to by a series of spectacular newly erected libraries.

The city was already emerging in the nineteen-seventies as visual metaphor and spatial organization model in the framework of computer-supported data management. Based on the various data management systems of the Architecture Machine Group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and augmented by the self-denoted “urban” network associations of the nineteen-eighties, a literal tide of digital cities of information and knowledge came forth in the nineteen-nineties. The practice of classifying knowledge spatially and demonstrating it by means of architectural image models such as the city now boasts a long tradition.
A critical examination of digital knowledge cities naturally includes these historical forerunners as well as the limits and utopias of spatial knowledge organization.

Bio
Kirsten Wagner studied art history, German studies, and sociology at Braunschweig University and Oldenburg University (1989–1996). From 1997–1998 she was artistic director of the Oldenburger Kunstverein; 1998–2000 postgraduate program on “Political Iconography,” University of Hamburg; 2001–2002 doctoral scholarship from the state of Schleswig-Holstein; 2004 doctorate; since 2002 research associate in cultural sciences at Berlin’s Humboldt University; member of the German Research Foundation (DFG) network Urban Spaces: Perspectives on an Art-Historical Exploration of Space; current research project in special research field 447 Cultures of the Performative on library architecture. Further areas of expertise: spatial models of knowledge from early modernism to the present, spatial perception in aesthetics and architecture theory of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, urban representation.

Related posts

• Where is Now? (0)
• Subversive Practices. Art under Conditions of Political Repression (0)
• Ole W. Fischer: Post-Structural, Post-Critical, Post-Political? (0)
• Keiko Sei: Border Crossing (0)
• Felix Stalder: Remixing and the Culture of Networked Society (0)

Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart
December 13 + 14, 2008, each day: 12 – 6 pm
Workshop (english)
Registration till Monday, December 1, 2008
at: zentraleremove-this@remove-thiswkv-stuttgart.de

The aim of the workshop is to facilitate reflection on the structures of the “archive culture” process. We will delve into the methods of exploring and reinterpreting the archive along with the possibilities these present, intervening artistically using various methods. We are also going to test new public participation models of understanding and working with the archive. This process takes shape as a platform, understood as a cooperative space, enabling the work done to be shared through workshops, actions, and other instruments, opening up a vast range of possibilities for collective intervention and participation. During the workshop period, forms of creative, critical, and subversive handlings of media and new technologies, in both theory and practice, shall be developed. The focus of the workshop thereby additionally lies in the specific information and archive situation of our society. The project furthermore offers an opportunity to examine strategies of “artist practice in the Postcapital Archive”—a new public space having long been influenced by new information and communications technologies.

Prize
for two days including lunch and drinks
25 Euro / 16 Euro reduced / Members 10 Euro

Related posts

• Postcapital Archive 1989 – 2001: Lecture series, Workshops, Film program (0)
• Workshop. Transforming Information into Knowledge (0)
• Sergi / Atölye. Gerçekliğin PostKapital Arşivden Algılanması (0)
• Postcapital. Archive 1989-2001 (0)
• Postcapital Stuttgart (1)

Postcapital, Exhibition View, WKV Stuttgart, 2008

Postcapital. Archive 1989 – 2001 Program

Related posts

• Von der Kunst im Bilderrauschen (0)
• Postcapital. Archive 1989-2001 (0)
• Postcapital Stuttgart (1)
• Linda Hentschel: Das gefährdete Sehen oder das Gefährdete sehen? (0)
• Helmut Draxler: Kapitale und postkapitale Kunst (0)

Eine Ausstellung ist eine Ausstellung, ist eine Skulptur, ist eine Analyse, ist eine Frage, ist ein Forschungsfeld – und als solches bei allen Erkenntnisversuchen durchaus Gegenstand der Repräsentation. Auch dann oder vielleicht erst recht, wenn der gefundene Titel “Postcapital” lautet – und entsprechend viele Assoziationsräume eröffnet.

VON NIKOLAI B. FORSTBAUER
Artikel aus den STUTTGARTER NACHRICHTEN vom 25.11.2008

pdf

Die ersten Bilder? Volkspolizisten auf der Berliner Mauer. Sicher und unsicher zugleich. Überzeugt und ratlos, Uniformierte als menschliche Zeichen des Übergangs. Nur wenige Meter weiter Uniformierte in der gleichen Haltung, mit gleicher Pose, gleicher Geste. Und doch gehen die filmischen Beobachtungen ganz anders weiter. Panzer rollen auf dem Platz des Himmlischen Friedens, Leichen werden in den Straßen von Santiago de Chile eilig weggeschleppt oder achtlos auf Lastwagen gezerrt. Die Zäsur 1989, so macht uns der spanische Medienkünstler Daniel García Andújar deutlich, ist in ihrer Ausprägung nicht denkbar ohne die Geschichte und die Geschichten zuvor.

Als Postkommunismus wird die Zeit nach dem Ende der Sowjetunion und dem Fall der Berliner Mauer meist bezeichnet. Andújar wählt einen anderen Begriff. “Postkapitalismus”. “Postcapital. Archive 1989-2001″ heißt seine Ausstellung für den Württembergischen Kunstverein Stuttgart, die bis zum 18. Januar 2009 im Vierecksaal des Kunstgebäudes am Schlossplatz zu sehen ist. Aber – wie gesagt – das mit der Ausstellung ist schwierig. “Postcapital” ist zugleich eine offene Werkstatt.

Das Archiv, das sich aus den Internet-Zugriffen Andújars speist, erschließt sich über die Teilhabe – und so ist das real präsentierte Material (Fotos, Videos, Textauszüge, historische Dokumente) nur ein Teil des Gesamtprojekts. Ja, im Grunde entsteht “Postcapital” in Stuttgart erst – in Workshops, in den zahlreichen Diskussionen, in der von Andújar angebotenen Nutzung der Materialien. Der Mauerfall 1989 und die terroristischen Angriffe auf die USA im September 2001 dienen ihm als offizielle Ausgangs- und Endpunkte seiner Beobachtungen, mehr noch aber als Identifikation von Wendepunkten in einer in alle Richtungen ausgreifenden historischen Entwicklung.

“Es geht” in “Postcapital”, so fassen es Iris Dressler und Hans D. Christ als Direktoren des Württembergischen Kunstvereins zusammen, “inwiefern sich die kapitalistischen Gesellschaften ohne ihr ehemaliges Gegenstück verändert haben und welche neue Mauern mit den globalen Politiken nach 1989 und 2001 gezogen wurden.” Was also passierte, nachdem der Westen seinen “Tanzpartner” verlor? Die Entwicklungen, so die Sicht Andújars, wiesen ablesbar nicht in ein Mehr an Demokratie und Transparenz der öffentlichen Strukturen. Anderes aber ist zugleich mit “Postcapital” angesprochen – die Kapitale als Hauptstadt. Und folglich, so Dressler/Christ, behandle Andújar in seiner Materialsammlung zugleich “die Verschiebung der urbanen Machtzentren”.

Ein Bilderfries fällt auf, ein Band, das sich an den Wänden des Vierecksaals entlangzieht. Dem Internet entnommen, sind die bloßen Zitate durch ihre Rahmung und die Einzelpräsentation wieder Teil des klassischen Bildverständnisses. Ein Vorgehen, das Andújar mit anderen teilt, nicht weniger wie das Erzeugen des Medienrauschens von Gewaltbildern auf Feldern wie Sport und Politik. Fußball kann ein Spiel sein, aber eben auch Impuls für Handlungen, die kriegerischen Choreografien folgen. Diese Beobachtung der 1990er Jahre kann Andújar im Grunde nur aufgreifen – und so folgt man gerne dem Ruf, dem Rauschen und Flimmern in und aus der zentral eingestellten begehbaren Skulptur. Denn eine solche ist das Labyrinth der Filme und Töne, eine gebaute Figuration. Zugleich Anspielung auf die Avantgarde-Träume der 1920er Jahre im deutschen Dada-Land wie im sowjetischen Konstruktivismus, wagt Andújars multimediales Wunderland die Umkehrung des Erwarteten. Das Viele wird zu einem neuen Einzelnen, das elektronische Bild, so scheint es, ist nur durch seine Privatisierung als qualitatives Medium überlebensfähig.

Schon die Darstellung dessen, dass die Erfassung des imaginären Ganzen nicht einlösbar ist, hat indes repräsentative wie spekulative Haken. Deutlich wird dies nicht weniger in Andújars Auseinandersetzung mit der Zerstörung der Zwillingstürme in New York als auch, wenn die “Internationale” frühe Propagandafilme der USA wie der UdSSR übertönt. Weiter verselbstständigen sich Motive zu Gesten – der Mensch, der sich in ein Tier verwandelt, der immer wiederkehrende Bezug auf die Türme, aber auch der Glaube an die Plattform Wikipedia als Forum der freien Kommunikation.

Daniel García Andújar reiht sich ein in das Feld der Künstlerforscher, sieht sich im Württembergischen Kunstverein vorbildlich präsentiert – und macht ungeachtet aller kritischen Fragen ein weitgehendes Angebot: Information wird erlebbar als Collage vielfältigster Interessen. Mit künstlerischen Mitteln sucht Andújar so einen Gegenpol zum bloßen Rauschen im Medienwald zu schaffen. Ob es ihm gelingt, wird abschließend auch durch die Beteiligung vor Ort beantwortet. Diese Werkstatt will benutzt werden.

Die Ausstellung als Archiv – ein Gespräch mit Kunstvereins-Co-Direktorin Iris Dressler

“Wie repräsentiert sich das Zeitalter?”

Gemeinsam mit Hans D. Christ leitet Iris Dressler seit 2005 den Württembergischen Kunstverein Stuttgart. Retrospektiv angelegte Ausstellungen – zum Werk etwa von Antonio Muntadas und Stan Douglas – antworten im Programm von Dressler und Christ in gesellschaftspolitische Fragen ausgreifende Themenausstellungen. “Postcapital” ist das aktuelle Beispiel.

Frau Dressler, “Postcapital” ist die umfassende Einzelausstellung zum Werk des Spaniers Daniel Garcia Andujar – und zugleich ein Themenprojekt zu Begriffen wie Postkapitalismus und zu Verschiebungen urbaner Strukturen. Ist ein solches Vorhaben überhaupt in Gänze fassbar?

Das Projekt berührt tatsächlich unglaublich viele Themenkomplexe. Zu den von Ihnen genannten Punkten kommen ja die Erweiterungen im Rahmenprogramm. “Postcapital” geht von einer konkreten künstlerischen Position aus, zugleich aber wird das Thema bewusst aus anderen Perspektiven beleuchtet.

Entsteht dadurch nicht wieder so etwas wie ein Ereignis?

Das ist eine Frage, die sich stellt. Aber in dem Sinn, dass hier eine andere Kommunikationsstruktur zur Diskussion gestellt wird. Das Medienrauschen ist eine Realität – und damit auch die Kommerzialisierung von Realität. Dies macht Andújar bereits mit dem den Vierecksaal umlaufenden Bilderfries deutlich, wo er sich insbesondere Bilder aus der Werbung aneignet – die sich selbst wiederum vorhandener Ikonen bedienen, wie etwa der Twin Towers. Fragen die sich hier stellen, sind: Wie repräsentiert sich dieses Zeitalter? Welche Zynismen sind dieser Repräsentation eigen?

Sie wollen den Titel “Postcapital” nicht auf die wirtschaftspolitische Position bezogen wissen, sondern sehen auch Strukturen des Urbanen berührt. Inwiefern?

Unter dem Begriff der Kapitale verstehen wir klassisch eine Hauptstadt. Was wir aber seit einiger Zeit beobachten, ist eine erhebliche Ausdifferenzierung von Begriffen und Diskussionen. Wir sprechen, bezogen auf die Größe, über Megacities – vor allem in Lateinamerika und in Asien. Wir sprechen von Shrinking Cities als gegenläufiger Entwicklung und von Smart Cities als einem Ideal auch neuer kommunikativer Bezugssysteme. Und wir sehen auf einer sehr einfachen Ebene, dass etwa New York inmitten dieser Entwicklungen etwas Museales bekommt. Paris war die Kapitale des 19. Jahrhunderts, New York die Kapitale des 20. Jahrhunderts. Für die Gegenwart können solche Zuschreibungen kaum mehr gelten. Die Fragen aber bleiben – und werden von Künstlern gestellt: Was sind heute öffentliche Räume. Sind Handlungsräume auch Räume des freien Handelns? Ist Kommunikation in diesem Sinn auch die Wiederaneignung privater Handlungsräume?

Und die politische Ebene?

Ich weiß nicht, ob sich dies heute noch so trennen lässt – die wirtschaftliche, die gesellschaftliche, die politische Ebene. Daniel García Andújar macht dies ja sehr deutlich, indem er einerseits die Entwicklung seit 1989 bearbeitet, andererseits aber ein sehr viel weiter ausgreifendes Archiv anbietet. Andújar bezeichnet die Zeit nach 1989, die Zeit nach dem Zusammenbruch der Sowjetunion und dem Fall der Berliner Mauer als Postkapitalismus. Man feierte das Ende des Ost-West-Konfliktes ja als Sieg der westlichen Demokratien und ihres kapitalistisch orientierten Wirtschaftssystems. Durch Erschütterungen von außen wie von innen scheint diese Sicht aber zunehmend als zu einseitig identifiziert. Was uns interessiert, sind jetzt die Fragen, die Andújar daraus ableitet. Wie wichtig etwa wird die Wissensproduktion als Arbeitsfaktor?

Fragen von Nikolai B. Forstbauer

Das ist Daniel García Andújar

Der Katalane Daniel García Andújar (geboren in Spanien, 1966) begann mit seinen künstlerischen Unternehmungen in den späten 1980er Jahren; er arbeitete hauptsächlich mit Video. Seine Projekte waren Interventionen im öffentlichen Raum und thematisierten Rassismus und Fremdenangst sowie den Missbrauch öffentlicher Überwachungsanlagen. Nachdem er sich mit Computern und deren interaktiven Möglichkeiten vertraut gemacht hatte, begann er 1996 die Arbeit an einem Projekt namens Technologies To The People (TTTP), das seinerseits zu neuen Entwicklungen führte. Andújar lotet in seinen Arbeiten – Installationen, Videos, Workshops oder Netzprojekte – die neuen Kommunikationstechnologien im Hinblick auf ihre demokratischen und emanzipatorischen Versprechungen aus. Auf kritische Weise setzt er sich dabei mit den Kontrollmechanismen auseinander, die sich hinter ihren transparenten Strukturen verbergen. „Hack the System“ ist dabei eine Strategie, die er nicht nur im Hinblick auf digitale Kommunikationssysteme, sondern auch auf Institutionen, politische, kulturelle oder ökonomische Machtverhältnisse anwendet. Dabei geht es sowohl um die kritische Analyse oder ironische Freilegung dieser Verhältnisse als auch um die Erprobung kollaborativer und unabhängiger Formen der Kunstund Wissensproduktion. In Stuttgart bietet Andújar zu „Postcapital“ unter anderem einen Workshop und Diskussionen an.

Related posts

• Postcapital. Archive 1989-2001 (0)
• Postcapital Stuttgart (1)
• Postcapital. Archive 1989 – 2001 (0)
• Postcapital Archive 1989 – 2001: Lecture series, Workshops, Film program (0)
• On Difference #3: Politics of Space (0)