Montag, 25. April 2016

Antek Walczak: ARTISTS’ COLLECTION

Vortrag
Antek Walczak: ARTISTS’ COLLECTION
Mittwoch, 27. April 2016, 19 Uhr, Aula

Compared to a “normal” network based on a few centralized access points, mesh networks connect directly to each other by forming and operating nodes to share and contribute resources without passing through any central authority or centralized organization. As an increasingly popular way to rethink our unilateral dependency on systems governed by top-down regulation and control, meshwork autonomy provides a bottom-up perspective on the social impact of peers (or individuals as users of infrastructure) who self-organize into communities. The barriers to this are numerous, not only in terms of complexity of set up and maintenance, but most immediately in the political and power struggles around confronting an establishment which, whether nefariously or simply because of structural circumstances, seems committed to ideological biases promoting exclusion. Deploying itself on an ad hoc basis, this talk will work through the rationale of art-collecting as a domain exclusive to institutional and financial elites in order to consider community-based network structures that promote democratic access.

Antek Walczak is a New York-based artist. His work spans text-based art, visual poetry, painting, film, information theory and radical politics. He has contributed writing to several art magazines. Walczak was a founding member of Bernadette Corporation.

Der Vortrag findet in englischer Sprache statt.

Dienstag, 19. April 2016

Shahryar Nashat

Vortrag
Shahryar Nashat
Mittwoch, 20. April 2016, 19 Uhr, Aula


Within his artistic practice, Swiss artist Shahryar Nashat (*1975, lives and works in Berlin) uses means and ways to steer or interrupt the contemplative gaze, thereby directing the focus on the unheeded, the unsolicited. To achieve this, the artist resorts to various media such as video, photography and sculpture. Shahryar Nashat is a guest professor at Städelschule since winter semester 2015.

Der Vortrag findet in englischer Sprache statt.
Am Freitag, 22. April, 20 Uhr, eröffnet im Portikus die Ausstellung Shahryar Nashat: Model Malady.



Ausstellungseröffnung
Shahryar Nashat: Model Malady
Freitag, 22. April 2016, 20 Uhr, Portikus

Ausstellungsdauer: 23. April – 19. Juni 2016


english text

Der Portikus freut sich, die Ausstellung Model Malady des Schweizer Künstlers Shahryar Nashat (*1975, lebt und arbeitet in Berlin) anzukündigen. In seiner Arbeit zielt Nashat darauf ab, den Blick des Betrachters zu lenken oder zu unterbrechen und legt dabei einen Fokus auf das Unbeachtete oder Ungebetene. Dabei bedient sich der Künstler unterschiedlicher Medien wie Video, Fotografie und Skulptur.

Seine Ausstellung Model Malady im Portikus präsentiert zwei neue Werke: Present Sore (2016) und Chômage Technique (2016).

Die Videoarbeit Present Sore kann als fragmentiertes Portrait eines Körpers des 21. Jahrhunderts gelesen werden, welcher durch organische und künstliche Substanzen vermittelt wird. Entstanden für den Portikus und das Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, wird die Arbeit für kurze Zeit auf dem Walker Online Kanal gezeigt, um nun als Installation in Frankfurt präsentiert zu werden. In Present Sore wird der menschliche Körper nicht als Ganzes, sondern nur im Detail dargestellt, zum Beispiel durch eine Nahaufnahme des Knies oder der Hand. Der Fokus liegt auf diesen Fragmenten, die als sich mechanisch bewegende „Teile“ des Körpers gezeigt und so auf ihre Funktion als Werkzeuge reduziert werden.

Chômage Technique ist eine neue Skulpturengruppe, die Nashat für den Portikus und seine kommende Ausstellung im Walker Art Center geschaffen hat. Sie besteht aus Sockeln, die auf speziell für sie gestalteten Metallstrukturen „relaxen“, so der Künstler. Ihrer Funktion enthoben, müssen diese nun obsoleten Objekte keine Kunstwerke oder Körper mehr tragen. Auf diese Weise symbolisieren die Sockel freigestellte Arbeiter, die in der ersten Reihe sitzen und sich entspannen, während sie in Present Sore eine digitale Beschreibung jener Körper sehen, die sie früher hätten tragen müssen.

Die Ausstellung wird unterstützt von Pro Helvetia, Schweizer Kulturstiftung. 

Montag, 11. April 2016

Lucy McKenzie

Ringvorlesung Institut für Kunstkritik:
Do it yourself. Deskilling and Reskilling in the Digital Techno Age

Sommersemester 2016:

Lucy McKenzie (12. April)
Benjamin Buchloh (22. Juni)
Beatrice von Bismarck (23. Juni)
Julia Gelshorn (12. Juli)

This lecture-series (conceptualized by Isabelle Graw) revolves around the question of artistic skills in a digital world. What do they actually consist of? While it always mattered how an artist performs herself since the Modern Age, it seems that the „Auftritt des Künstlers“ (Beatrice von Bismarck), namely, her public staging of herself, has become increasingly important in a Media Society. Has the modeling of her „personality“ turned into a skill that is required from her? Or should one rather argue that artistic practices still represent other competences, attitudes and ways of life that question the ideal of an entrepreneurial self? What have traditional skills been replaced by?
It seems that the deskilling of the arts that is usually associated with the „Duchamp-effect“ and post war practices allowed for a reskilling that is currently quite popular in the artworld. Is it a historical necessity that deskilling entails reskilling? Historically speaking, „deskilling“ was a male privilege in the 1950´s and 1960´s. Many male artists opted for anti-subjective aleatory procedures that rejected skills, whereas women artists practiced another form of deskilling in the 1970´s by reintroducing formerly devaluated, „female skills“ into their work. Could one argue, at least in retrospect, that it is precisely these lower or soft skills associated with the sphere of reproduction that are have risen to the status of a valuable resource in our New Economy?


Vortrag
Lucy McKenzie: Civilised Woman: skill, image and agency in the 1920s and the present.
Dienstag, 12. April 2016, 19 Uhr, Aula

Lucy McKenzie is a Scottish-born, Belgium-based artist, whose work could formally be described as collaborative and interdisciplinary. Crudely formulated, the artist is interested in how to learn, un-learn and extend structures. Recurring undercurrents in McKenzie's practice can thus be recognized as appropriation, self-appropriation and mastery of craft, manifested through trompe 'oeil paintings, mystery writing, interior and fashion design.
McKenzie (*1977, Glasgow) graduated from Duncan of Jordanstone School of Art & Design in Dundee in 1999. From 2007 to 2008 she studied decorative painting at Van Der Kelen Logelain in Brussels. She formed the interior design company Atelier E.B. with Edinburgh-based designer Beca Lipscombe and illustrator Bernie Reid. Solo shows have been held at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2013), the Museum of Modern Art, New York (2008) and the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven (2004). McKenzie was a guest professor at the Düsseldorf Kunstakademie in 2011–13.

Der Vortrag findet in englischer Sprache statt.