Mark von Schlegell

Vortrag
Mark von Schlegell: Readings of Roussel
Donnerstag, 16. Januar 2014, 19 Uhr, Aula

In this lecture novelist and critic Mark von Schlegell hopes to return to you from a recent immersion into the works of Raymond Roussel (1877-1933) with various reports of rather miraculous news items concerning mis-readings of Roussel, and their implications in the history of art, the avant-garde etc. -- or perhaps only another romance. Let yourself be the judge!

Mark von Schlegell is the author of the novels Venusia, Mercury Station and the forthcoming Sundogz from Semiotext(e) as well as of two books of literary theory, Realometer and Dreaming the Mainstream, from Merve Verlag, Berlin. His stories and essays occupy art publications over the world. Von Schlegell has directed the Pure Fiction Seminar at Staedelschule, Frankfurt since 2012. Among other things the seminar has published three experimental fiction compendia. The latest and most ambitious of these -- Dysfyction -- will be available (at possible discount) at the lecture.

Amelie von Wulffen

Vortrag
Amelie von Wulffen über den Moment der Malerin
Dienstag, 14. Januar 2014, 18 Uhr, Aula

Anknüpfend an ihre aktuelle Ausstellung 'Am kühlen Tisch' im Portikus wird Amelie von Wulffen über ihre Kunst sprechen, die zur Zeit aus Ölbildern und Zeichnungen besteht. Auf Basis dieser Feststellung wird die Künstlerin auf andere von ihr angewandte Techniken wie Collagen, Wandbilder, Trickfilme, Zeichnungen und Fotos eingehen und der Frage nachgehen, wie es so weit kommen konnte, dass sie im Moment Malerin ist.

Von Wulffen (geb. 1966 in Breitenbrunn, Oberpfalz) lebt und arbeitet in Berlin. Bekannt wurde sie mit großen fragmentarischen Bildern, in denen die Technik von Zeichnung, Malerei und Collage oftmals in einer einzigen Arbeit kombiniert ist. Sie studierte an der Akademie der Bildenden Künste München. 2000 erhielt sie den Villa-Romana-Preis, 2002 den Ars-Viva-Preis. Sie war auf der 50. Venedig Biennale und der Manifesta 5 vertreten, Einzelausstellungen fanden u.a. 2012 im Aspen Art Museum, Colorado, 2009 im Kunstraum Innsbruck, 2006 im Kunstmuseum Basel und im Kunstverein in Düsseldorf sowie 2005 im Centre Pompidou, Paris, statt.

Im Anschluß an den Vortrag findet die Veröffentlichung der neuen Publikation 'Amelie von Wulffen - Am kühlen Tisch' um 20 Uhr im Portikus in Anwesenheit der Künstlerin statt.

Reza Negarestani

Vortrag
Reza Negarestani: How can you make me better?
Montag, 13. Januar 2014, 19 Uhr, Aula

"Withdraw into yourself, as far as you can. Associate with those who will make a better man of you. Welcome those whom you yourself can improve." —Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Building on a now neglected tradition of philosophy as a discipline for forging questions whose sheer insinuative power does something irreversible to the mind, this discussion entertains the idea of posing a question so extreme it would not leave any room for a neutral attitude. Posed at the intersection of philosophy as an experiment in the ascesis of cognition and ethics as a design of conduct, the inciting and hypothetical dimensions of this question are concealed within the informal demand of an innocent query or solicitation: "How can you make me better?"

Reza Negarestani is an iranian philosopher and writer who currently lives and works in the United States. He has contributed extensively to journals and anthologies and lectured at numerous international universities and institutes. His current philosophical project is focused on rationalist universalism beginning with the evolution of the modern system of knowledge and advancing toward contemporary philosophies of rationalism. He is author of Cyclonopedia. Complicity with Anonymous Materials.

Ray Brassier

Vortrag
Ray Brassier: The Catastrophe of Time
Dienstag, 17. Dezember 2013, 19 Uhr, Aula

This talk will examine the logic of catastrophe in J.G. Ballard's 1960 story "The Voices of Time".
In Ballard's tale, catastrophe creates a temporal involution that throws linear time out of joint, generating unanticipated opportunities for cognitive discovery. These discoveries are charted through the various metaphorical transpositions that are the central resource of Ballard's writing.
Through these transpositions, catastrophe is raised from the level of aesthetic trauma into the realm of cognitive experience.

Ray Brassier is author of Nihil Unbound. Enlightenment and Extinction (2007). He is professor of philosophy at the American University in Beirut.

Der Vortrag findet in englischer Sprache statt.

Georgia Sagri

Vortrag
Georgia Sagri
Dienstag, 10. Dezember 2013, 19 Uhr, Aula

There it is: productions of subjectivities, techno-dandyism, role-collage; expressiveness is a tool. Automatons of colors, timings, states of grasping things or letting them go. What’s the matter with her? Do I really need to be she/ he or it now? I am a river. I am clicking this for you and you say hi with a certain voice of connection that assumes connecting-ness. It is horrible when you don’t know where your hand is when your mouth speaks. Although I know you have nothing to do with me, we had sex many times and I recognized we were both dead, from where it comes your horniness!? What a weird question. –Tell me. Muscle Mountain. Sunny cereal bars of the 90c, means “training a generation of individuals capable of organizing a free life for free men.” (1) Preciado calls it pharmaco-porn-power and continues: “The new pharmacological and surgical techniques set in motion tectonic construction processes that combine figurative representations derived from cinema and from architecture (editing, 3D modeling or personality design, etc.), according to which the organs, the vessels, the fluids and the molecules are converted into the prime material from which our corporality is manufactured.”(2) Is this the undoing of dialectics? What about the a-gender and the a-performance? For the sake of distancing and absence, and for the multiplicity of options I move. She moves. 

(1) G. Yvetot, Emancipation. From the Anarchist Encyclopedia — S. Faure (2) Pharmaco-pornographic Politics: Towards a New Gender Ecology Beatriz Preciado, parallax, 2008, vol. 14, no. 1, 105–117

Georgia Sagri, born 1979 studied music and art in Athens and New York. At the center of her practice lies the exploration of performance as an ever-evolving field within social and visual life, interconnected, though distinct from the dialectics of representation in theatre, music and dance. In addition to performance pieces she has been developing in the past fifteen years, a great part of her artistic output comprises video and computer works, texts, installations and drawings. She was included in the Biennale de Lyon (2013), ProBio, Expo 1: MoMA PS1, New York (2013) and the Whitney Biennial (2011). She is the founder of the audio-only magazine FORTÉ (magazineforte.com) and the founder of SALOON, an on-going collaborative project.

Der Vortrag findet in englischer Sprache statt.

Susan Grayson

Vortrag
Susan Grayson: Introduction to Lecture - On About Around Starting a Body of Work
Mittwoch, 4. Dezember 2013, 19 Uhr, Aula

The focus of my presentation will be about starting a body of work using my work and my milieu. Are we more influenced by history or what is simultaneously going on around us.

Artists are the best art historians. Artist needs to know what is old, what has been done, to know what is new to push the boundaries of art. In my generation and before, art history was another material and tool for making art. And every artist made their own take on art history. My generation was the first TV generation. When video became accessible, artists looked at it like TV and the potential to reach a wider audience. The students are the first generation to be born with the computer and internet. Their pool of information is infinite and immediately accessible.

Interaction and collaboration with peers are a way of dialoguing the present with art history. Some of my collaborations will be shown, including a film by Isa Genzken, Zwei Frauen Im Gefect, 1974. Other artists included in the presentation are Kathryn Bigelow, Sigmar Polke, Reiner Ruthenbeck, Mario Merz and Neil Jenney.

Susan Grayson is an artist who lives in New York working mainly with photography. She has exhibited her work in a group shows at Gagosian Gallery, Kunstverein Dusseldorf, and Queens Museum. She made the first exhibitions on a cross cultural history of sports photography in the United States and Germany.


Der Vortrag findet in englischer Sprache statt.

Douglas Gordon

Vortrag
Douglas Gordon (& special guests): DOLCE AND GABBANA OR…
Mittwoch, 27. November 2013, 19 Uhr, Aula

Douglas Gordon, born 1966 in Glasgow, Scotland, is one of the most influential contemporary video artists. Performances, sculptural installations and conceptual texts also number among his modes of expression. With his analyses and reconstructions of images drawn from collective memory and everyday culture, he lays bare fundamental patterns of perception. His oeuvre is dominated by polarities such as life and death, good and evil, guilt and innocence, as well as temptation and fear. Gordon won the Turner Prize in 1996 among many other art prizes and the following year he participated in the Venice Biennale.
He is Professor of Film at the Städelschule since 2010.

Kerstin Skrobanek

Vortrag
Kerstin Skrobanek: It started with a postcard: 1960s event scores between material production and conceptual art
Dienstag, 26. November 2013, 19 Uhr, Aula

In the 1960s a new category of artistic production emerged: the so called "event score", invented by Fluxus artists such as Yoko Ono, George Brecht and Benjamin Patterson. These little paper cards were not only scores for Fluxus performances but complex works which melt together the visual arts, music, poetry and theatre. These cheaply made cards refuse being precious artworks on one hand, but on the other they are not just a note on a piece of paper: Artists precisely composed their appearance and their content and created a multilayered piece of art which is not necessarily linked to a live performance. The presentation will give a survey of different kinds of event scores, will show some of their roots and will think about their role in art history after 1960.

Dr. Kerstin Skrobanek studied Art History, Applied Theatre Sciences, Archeology and the Classics in Giessen, Marburg and Thessaloniki. After a master thesis about Eva Hesse she again concentrated on the 1960s and 70s with her doctoral thesis about Mary Bauermeister and she received her PhD from Prof. Dr. Regine Prange at Goethe-University Frankfurt in 2010. Since then she worked as a museum curator at the Wilhelm-Hack-Museum in Ludwigshafen and succeeded her interest in art of the 60s and 70s with shows about Mary Bauermeister or a recently finished research project about the phenomenon of the Multiple. During the past years she published many books and articles e.g. about Yoko Ono (Schirn Kunsthalle), prints of the 1960s and 70s (Museum der Bildenden Künste Leipzig) or contemporary French art (Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe).
Kerstin Skrobanek lives and works as an independent curator and publisher in Mannheim.

Chris Kraus

Vortrag
Chris Kraus: Jason Rhoades, American Artist
Mittwoch, 6. November 2013, 19 Uhr, Aula

Recently, the ICA Philadelphia showed four installations by Jason Rhoades to be navigated by four interpretive paths or roads: Jason Rhoades, American Artist; Jason the Mason, (a biographical thread named for a childhood nickname); systems (language, scale, indexing, economies), and taboo. The exhibition aims to open up for investigation Rhoades's spectacular, overloaded installations. Immediately accessible and eye-catching, these works are at the same time deeply systematic, detailed, and rewarding of careful engagement. Using neon, plastic buckets, power tools, snaking wires, figurines, sound, and a vast range of other materials, including a V-8 engine, Rhoades's work brings the viewer in with humor, vibrancy, and the provocative audacity of his vision. Rhoades' prodigious work has always been intensely physical, gleefully vulgar, "offensive," but at the same time as affect-less as the demeanor of an idiot savant or made-for-TV serial killer.

Chris Kraus is presenting a lecture on the artist Jason Rhoades. It was originally given at the ICA. She is a writer, filmmaker, and professor of film at Eupean Graduate School in Saas-Fee. She is well known for her role as an influential film and video maker in the New York Downtown scene of the mid eighties. Kraus’ firm attention to specifically women writers is responsible for Semiotext(e), Native Agents Imprint to be a platform for groundbreaking avant-garde work. Writer and filmmaker, Chris Kraus has explored a variety of different subjects ranging from feminism, gender politics, sex workers, philosophy and love.

Der Vortrag findet in englischer Sprache statt.

Susanne Gaensheimer

Vortrag
Susanne Gaensheimer: Der Deutsche Pavillon in Venedig: Ai Weiwei, Romuald Karmakar, Santu Mofokeng und Dayanita Singh
Dienstag, 5. November 2013, 18 Uhr, Campus Bockenheim, Jügelhaus HB
Masterstudiengang Kuratieren und Kritik

Susanne Gaensheimer setzt in dem Konzept für den diesjährigen Deutschen Pavillon auf der 55. Internationalen Kunstausstellung – La Biennale di Venezia 2013 die kritische Beschäftigung mit der Bedeutung der traditionellen Form nationaler Repräsentation in den Länderpavillons fort, die sie bereits in der Zusammenarbeit mit Christoph Schlingensief für den Deutschen Pavillon 2011 begonnen hatte. Die Kuratorin schlägt vor, das Format des Länderpavillons als ein offenes Konzept und Deutschland nicht als hermetische nationale Einheit, sondern als aktiven Teil eines komplexen, weltweiten Netzwerkes zu verstehen. Aus diesem Grund hat Susanne Gaensheimer vier internationale KünstlerInnen aus unterschiedlichen Ländern eingeladen: Ai Weiwei, Romuald Karmakar, Santu Mofokeng und Dayanita Singh.

Susanne Gaensheimer ist Kunsthistorikerin und Direktorin des MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt am Main. Sie ist (zum zweiten Mal nach 2011) Kuratorin für den Deutschen Pavillon auf der 55. Biennale in Venedig 2013.

Beatriz Colomina

Vortrag
Städelschule Architecture Class
Dean's Honorary Lecture
Beatriz Colomina: The Total Interior: Playboy Architecture 1953–1979
Donnerstag, 4. Juli 2013, 19:30 Uhr, Deutsches Architekturmuseum, Schaumainkai 43

The Dean’s Honorary Lecture 2013 is delivered by world-renowned architectural historian and theorist Beatriz Colomina, professor in History and Theory of Architecture at Princeton University School of Architecture, where she is also the Director of Graduate Studies, Ph.D. Program as well as the founding Director of the Program in Media and Modernity.

Colomina has taught at Princeton since 1988. Her 'Program in Media and Modernity' is a graduate programme that promotes the interdisciplinary study of forms of culture that came to prominence during the last century and looks at the interplay between culture and technology. In 2006-2007 she curated, with a group of Princeton Ph.D. students, the exhibition “Clip/Stamp/Fold: The Radical Architecture of Little Magazines 196X-197X” at the Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York and the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) in Montreal. The exhibition has also been shown at, amongst other places, the Museum of Design of Barcelona, the Colegio de Arquitectos de Murcia and the NAI Maastricht . An exhibition catalog has appeared from ACTAR. Colomina has written extensively on questions of architecture and media. Her books include Privacy and Publicity: Modern Architecture as Mass Media (The MIT Press, 1994); Domesticity at War (ACTAR and MIT Press, 2007); Sexuality and Space (Princeton Architectural Press, 1992); and Architectureproduction (Princeton Architectural Press, 1988). Colomina has written numerous other publications and presented lectures throughout the world.

Her lecture on 'The Total Interior' frames how sex, architecture and design have been inextricably intertwined in the pages of Playboy magazine. Sexual fantasies and architectural fantasies were inseparable. Architecture turned out to be more seductive than the playmates; it was the ultimate playmate. It could be argued that, with its massive global circulation and sexualization of architecture, Playboy had more influence on the dissemination of modern design than professional magazines, interiors magazines, and even institutions like the Museum of Modern Art.

Die Veranstaltung findet in englischer Sprache statt.

Ed Atkins

Vortrag
Ed Atkins: Flat and Depressed
Dienstag, 2. Juli 2013, 19 Uhr, Aula

Known for his high-definition videos that defy narrative conventions, Ed Atkins (*1982, UK) works with filmic and text-based forms in technological transition. The artist considers HD technology deathlike because of how it intensifies the visibility of the filmed subject, creating an image that prioritizes its own representation over the language, character, and emotions of the figures it depicts. Often creating installations that include collage, drawing, and other mediums, the artist deploys this bodiless movie format to highlight the conflicting intimacies that today’s mechanisms of cultural production represent and allow us to achieve.

Atkins graduated with an MA from the Slade School of Art in 2009. In 2011 he was included in the group exhibition ‘Time Again’ at SculptureCenter, NY; co-organised ‘A Dying Artist’ at The ICA, London; was shortlisted for the Jarman Award, and had a solo show at Cabinet Gallery, London. He has been commissioned by Frieze Film and Channel 4, and had a solo presentation for Art Now at Tate Britain entitled ‘A Tumour (In English)’. In 2012 his work was exhibited as part of ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ at JVA at Jerwood Space, London and he had solo projects at Chisenhale Gallery, London, Kunstverein Bonn and Isabella Bortolozzi Galerie, Berlin.  In November 2012 he was one of eight recipients of the Paul Hamlyn Award. Recent exhibitions in 2013 include "Or tears, of course", Temple Bar Gallery & Studios in Dublin, Ed Atkins - MoMA PS1 and the Venice Biennale. Atkins is based in London and represented by Cabinet Gallery.

Die Veranstaltung findet in englischer Sprache statt.

Restlessness in the Barn

Ausstellungseröffnung
Jana Euler, Anne Imhof, Cosima von Bonin, Lucie Stahl: Restlessness in the Barn
Samstag, 29. Juni 2013, 17 Uhr, Kunstverein Wiesbaden, mit einem Konzert von Anne Imhof um 19 Uhr

Ausstellungsdauer: 30. Juni bis 14. Juli 2013
Kuratiert von Oona-Léa von Maydell

Die Werke der vier an der Ausstellung beteiligten Künstlerinnen unterschiedlicher Generationen umfassen ein weites Spektrum. Die Grenze zwischen dem, was innerhalb und außerhalb des Bildrahmens passiert, gestaltet sich bei den in der Ausstellung präsentierten Werken fließend. Die Ausstellung umfasst Film, Video und Fotografie sowie Musik und Performance, verschiedene Definitionen von Malerei, Posterdruck und skulpturaler Praxis die diametral gegenübergestellt wird. Verschiedene Aspekte des permanenten Verwandlungsprozesses des Künstlertypen sollen auf diese Weise beleuchtet werden.

Cosima von Bonin entwirft seit 1990 die Plakate zu ihren Ausstellungen selbst. Zum ersten Mal wird hier die vollständige Plakatsammlung ihrer Einzelausstellungen gezeigt. Somit wird dieses Konvolut vollständig präsentiert und ermöglicht einen erweiterten Einblick in ihre Arbeit.
Mit der Portraitreihe von Jana Euler gewinnt die Ausstellung zusätzlich viele Gesichter: Dietrich Ceccaldi, Ruth Suckale, Wolfgang Koschmieder, Daniel Gnom, Harald Waechtler und Werner Denny heißen die Protagonisten. Ein zentrales Moment in ihrer gegenständlichen Malerei ist die Erschaffung von Identität.
Über Lucie Stahl schreibt Chris Kraus in dem Künstlerbuch Plakate Posters (Berlin, 2011): „Ich habe Lucie noch nie getroffen, aber wir leben in derselben Welt: Oellecks, Palmwedel, Schlüsselringe, Sportgetränke. So wie ich, ist sie eine selbst ernannte Reporterin. Stahls Poster beginnen mit ihrem seltsamen Hang dazu, zufällig aufgeschnappte Gesprächsfetzen, Hintergrundgedanken und flüchtige Beklemmungen aufzuschreiben.“
Am Abend der Eröffnung wird Anne Imhof ein Konzert spielen. Zudem werden von ihr zwei Videoarbeiten und eine Malerei vorgestellt und eine Malerei die eine Komposition zeigt. In ihrer Arbeit lotet sie die Grenzen zwischen Tanz und Performance aus. Viel mehr versteht sie ihre Arbeit als eine konzipierte Komposition.

Die Ausstellung ist das Abschlussprojekt von Oona-Léa von Maydell im Masterstudiengang Curatorial and Critical Studies der Goethe Universität und der Städelschule Frankfurt am Main. Selbst Künstlerin und Kuratorin ist es nicht in Maydells Interesse als Ausstellungsmacherin präkonzipierte Lösungen zu formulieren, sondern mit den eingeladenen Künstlerinnen und ihren Werken den Versuch einer gemeinsamen Findung zu beschreiben.

Patrik Schumacher

Vortrag
Städelschule Architecture Class
Patrik Schumacher: Communication - Architecture's core competency
Donnerstag, 27. Juni 2013, 19 Uhr, Aula

As partner in Zaha Hadid Architects and Zaha Hadid's close collaborator since 1988, Patrick Schumacher is one of the leading architects worldwide. The work of the office ranks among the most influential there is, both in the professional and academic worlds. Among the many renown projects are the MAXXI Centre of Contemporary Art and Architecture in Rome, which won the Sterling Prize in 2010, and the Vitra Fire Station in Weil am Rhein. Current projects include Kartal Pendik master plan in Istanbul as well as the master plan for Singapore One North.

Patrick Schumacher studied architecture at Stuttgart University (1990) and the Southbank in London. He completed his Ph.D. at the Institute for Cultural Sciences at the University of Klagenfurt in 1999. Together with Brett Steele, he went on to lead the Design Research Laboratory at the Architectural Association in London from 1996. For a number of years, this postgraduate programme was highly successful and very influential in the academic world. Together with Zaha Hadid, Patrick Schumacher has taught a number of postgraduate studios at different universities, including University of Illinois in Chicago, Columbia University in New York, the Graduate School of Design at Harvard, and the Angewandte in Wien. He is a tenured professor at Innsbruck University.

His own books, the The Autopoiesis of Architecture, Volume 1 and 2 (John Wiley & Sons, 2010 and 2012) revolve around the question of parametric thinking and design and derive a series of consequences of this technology and methodological procedure in architecture. The second volume set forth what Schumacher refers to as 'a new agenda for architecture.'

Die Veranstaltung findet in englischer Sprache statt.

Dorit Margreiter

Vortrag
Dorit Margreiter: Methoden der Beschreibung
Dienstag, 25. Juni 2013, 19 Uhr, Aula

Dorit Margreiter *1967, lives in Vienna and is Professor for Video and Videoinstallation at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste Vienna since 2006.
For Margreiter, debate about the preservation of late-modernist architecture provides the occasion for probing larger issues shaping our contemporary socio-cultural context: the legacy of the Modernist Movement; the ways that media representations of the built environment inform our collective imaginary; the consequences of the growing interdependence of architecture and spectacle culture.

Exhibitions (Selection): Performing Histories, Museum of Modern Art New York (2013), Tomorrow was already here, Museo Tamayo, Mexico City (2012), Description, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía Madrid (2011), Modernologies, Museum Moderner Kunst, Warschau (2010) and MACBA Baercelona (2009), 53rd International Art Exhibition/La Biennale di Venezia, Österreichischer Pavillon, Venedig (2009), Locus Remix: Dorit Margreiter, MAK Center for Art and Architecture, Los Angeles (2009), Poverty Housing. Americus, Georgia, MAK Wien with Rebecca Baron (2008), analog, Galerie für zeitgenössische Kunst, Leipzig (2006), 10104 Angelo View Drive, Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien (2004).

Die Veranstaltung findet in englischer Sprache statt.

Jürgen Mayer H.

Vortrag
Städelschule Architecture Class
Jürgen Mayer H.: Could Should Would
Donnerstag, 20. Juni 2013, 19 Uhr, Aula

After having studied architecture at Stuttgart University, the Cooper Union in New York and Princeton University, Jürgen Mayer H. founded his architectural firm in Berlin in 1996. About their work, the office states that it is situated ‘...at the intersection of architecture, communication and new technology. From urban planning schemes and buildings to installation work and objects with new materials, the relationship between the human body, technology and nature form the background for a new production of space.’ This has a resulted in a distinct style with a subtle emphasis on the profile of the buildings and a frequent, continuous flow across and through the surface envelopes.

Among Jürgen Mayer H.’s recent and much published buildings are the Metropol Parasol in Sevilla, Spain, and the New Airport Building in Mestia, Georgia. Both MoMA New York and SF MoMA have collected work by the office, and it is the recipient of numerous prizes, including: the Mies van der Rohe Award Emerging Architect (Special Mention, 2003), Holcim Award Bronze (2005) and Audi Urban Future Award (2010). Jürgen Mayer H. has taught at Princeton University, University of the Arts Berlin, Harvard University, Kunsthochschule Berlin, the Architectural Association in London, the Columbia University, New York and at the University of Toronto, Canada.

Pamela Lee

Vortrag
Masterstudiengang Kuratieren und Kritik
Pamela Lee: Pattern Recognition circa 1947
Mittwoch, 19. Juni 2013, 19 Uhr, Aula

Pamela M. Lee is Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art in the Department of Art and Art History at Stanford University, Stanford, California. She is the author of *Object to Be Destroyed: The Work of Gordon Matta-Clark* (The MIT Press,2001); *Chronophobia: On Time in the Art of the1 1960s* (The MIT Press, 2004); *Forgetting the Art World* (The MIT Press, 2012); and most recently, *New Games: Postmodernism after Contemporary Art* (Routledge, 2012). Professor Lee is an art historian and critic whose work variously considers the relationship between art and technology, politics and aesthetics. She is a frequent contributor to magazines and journals such as Artforum, Texte zur Kunst, OCTOBER and Grey Room. Her current research concerns the aesthetic interests of the cold-war think tank as a reactionary model for interdisciplinary thinking and visual culture studies, and its implications for the art and the academy today.

"Pattern Recognition circa 1947" throws new light on an episode in the recent history of art: namely, the relationship between abstract expressionism, the cold war and mid-century anthropology. While a considerable literature on New York School painting describes anthropology's investment in such work in terms of terms of its primitivist sensibilities, Lee offers a radically new approach to the topic, considering the ways in which a Jackson Pollock might license approaches to the visual image formulated in the cold-war think tank. In particular she considers the work of Ruth Benedict, Margaret Mead and their colleagues at the RAND Corporation to unpack the novel new techniques and methods deployed by social scientists to test  the range of contemporary visual culture from "high" art to popular culture.

Heiner Goebbels

Vortrag
Heiner Goebbels: AN UNGUIDED TOUR - on 'aesthtics of absence' and the program of the Ruhrtriennale - International Festival of the Arts 2013
Mittwoch, 12. Juni 2013, 19 Uhr, Aula

Internationally acclaimed composer and director Heiner Goebbels, whose works epitomizes the intermedia tendencies of contemporary Performing Arts, is Professor in the Institute of Applied Theatre Studies at the University of Gießen and Artistic Director of the Festival Ruhrtriennale (2012-14); he is member of several Academies of Arts and recieved numerous awards and two Grammy Nominations.

Heiner Goebbels will discuss the Aesthetic Principles of his performances and installations, which shift 'presence' from the Visual to the Acoustics; he presents ontemporary Strategies in Performing Arts, including new works for the Festival Ruhrtriennale by Ryoji Ikeda, Douglas Gordon, William Forsythe aswell as 'Stifters Dinge - an unguided tour' by Heiner Goebbels, co-comissioned by Artangel, London.

André Rottmann

Vortrag
André Rottmann: Spectacle and Speculation. The Tactics of John Knight.
Montag, 10. Juni 2013, 19 Uhr, Aula

On the occasion of John Knight’s current exhibition at Portikus, the lecture discusses two earlier, closely interrelated projects by the Los Angeles-based artist, both of which are based on the appropriation of media images. These works, each in its own way, address the history of US politics in the Cold War period: Worldebt (1994-2008) consists of slightly oversized credit cards issued tose the nation states in debt to the IWF and displaying images from the respective country; the work chronicles the development of the global economic system established at Bretton Woods in 1944 and by the same token, it would seem, defines the art work itself as an object of financial speculation; the installation Coldcuts (2008) conflates information on covet military interventions executed by the CIA after World War II with cookbook recipes from these "areas of operation" in a spectacular exhibition design. In tracing the shared genealogy of these two works (as well as in view of other topical projects by the artist), the talk will make the attempt to gain further insights into Knight's radical redefinition of the categories of site, image, medium and object in contemporary art and the concomitant dialectic of spectacle and speculation.

André Rottmann is an art historian and critic based in Berlin; he is a research fellow at the Institute of Advanced Study “BildEvidenz. Geschichte und Ästhetik” and a lecturer at the Department for Art History at the Freie Universität Berlin; currently, he is working on a comprehensive monograph on the work of John Knight and is the editor a collection of essays devoted to the artist (forthcoming in the OCTOBER Files series, MIT Press); his essays and reviews regularly appear in journals such as Texte zur Kunst and Artforum as well as in anthologies and exhibition catalogues (most recently on Nairy Baghramian, Florian Pumhösl, and Gabriel Orozco).

JOHN KNIGHT & MICHAEL KREBBER

Gespräch
John Knight in discussion with Michael Krebber
Montag, 10. Juni 2013, 14 Uhr, Aula

Michael Krebber and John Knight publicly continue their discussion, which they began one month ago during Knight´s time in Frankfurt. 
After the discussion, Brian Mann and André Rottmann will join them to spend the afternoon discussing the exhibition at Portikus among other things.