Lectures:

October 12, 2009

"Shadows of Violence"

Sharon Paz, Berlin, Tel Aviv

The video installation artist Sharon Paz works with common collective images, a mixture of everyday news and historical image data found online. Investigating ideas about the human psychological perception of home, land, nation and culture with her personal history in mind, she explores personal history in relation to the political and historical currents that shape the patterns of group and individual migration. In her most recent video and installation, “IS THIS A GOOD DAY TO START A WAR”, human figures are represented as abstract shadows of violent action. Formally alluding to video games and cartoon animation, her video work intersects diverse political realities and cyberspace; flat icons are created inside a flat but layered landscape.

October 19, 2009

"Warm-up: body, voice, space"

Danica DakicDüsseldorf, Sarajevo

In her inaugural lecture as guest professor, the artist Danica Dakic will explore the cultural, political and geographical conditions of speech and identity in her recent video and sound installations, objects and photographs, examining the question of how identity and home are constructed. In her projects in public space, Dakic focuses on cultural memory and social changes, researching motifs from a transnational perspective within globalization processes and war. Transience, migration, urbanization and communities of diverse cultures are addressed, while ideologies and structures of dominance are deconstructed in a search for a "new memorial".

 

November 2, 2009

"Dancing with tears in my eyes"

Miriam Visaczki and Claire Waffel, Berlin/Prague

Miriam Visaczki and Claire Waffel’s work deals with memory on a personal as well as historical level. Their recent collaboration “Dancing with tears in my eyes“ concerns family history and its narration. What may be described as the place of origin of a family and does this place continue to bear relevance after several generations? The artists researched the German and Jewish history of the Czech town Pobezovice, which is situated close to the German border. They selected 8 places that form part of their own family histories in the Czech Republic, Germany, England and the Ukraine and documented these towns. In cooperation with different family members they have started to develop a narration that links Pobezovice with these places. The project which Is still ongoing will be presented for the first time in Germany.

 

November 2, 2009

Amit Epstein - Like it used to be

Amit Epstein presents his film “SansSouci” a video work from 2002 in which his grandmother´s flat in Tel Aviv becomes the spot to weave the artists own memories and experiences with the life of his grandmother who survived the holocaust with great precision. The artist was born in 1977 in Tel Aviv, Israel. He studied at the Bezalel Academy for Art and Design in Jerusalem Stage Design and continued his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Berlin with Vivienne Westwood. He had a DAAD artist grant to further his career in Berlin and since lives there and works as a fashion designer, set (costume) designer and filmmaker. Epstein also presents a new work „Stockholm Syndrom" about jewish identity which has not yet been realesed.

 

November 17, 2008

Sabine Eling-Saalmann, Magdeburg

“Lesezeichen Salbke”: An open space bookmark

In October 2005, two days changed Salbke, a district of Magdeburg. A temporary full-size model of a "bookmark" was constructed on the site of a former public library. Following the design that was developed in a citizens' workshop, 1,000 beer crates were built up and formed a kind of open-space bookshelf.

The bookshelf was filled with donated books that were gathered from all over the city in a promotional process. As well as the form-finding process, the structure of the process in general was created by communication and interaction: the beer crates for the full size model came from a local retailer, many residents and employees of the local administration were directly involved in the actual construction of the Bookmark. All of this ensured widespread awareness of the project among the city’s residents.

Although the improvised library was part of the cityscape for only two days, it has had a lasting effect. The residents took up the idea and installed their own informal citizens' library in Salbke. The stock of the library has grown to nearly 20,000 books today. There are tangible ideas for the development of the derelict site following the ideas originally developed in the citizens' workshop. A federal Government research project has provided the necessary funding for the construction of an open-air library as a permanent part of the cityscape of Salbke. The actual construction of the Bookmark is presently underway.

 

November 9, 2009

"A Monument for the Women's Center"

Isa Rosenberger, Vienna

The starting point of Rosenberger's artistic investigations are often ideologically charged architectural and monumental manifestations in urban space and its public spheres, for the reason that they exemplarily reveal the changes in the prevailing orders of perception.In order to retrace these changes, the artist enters into a communicative process of exchange with contemporary witnesses, asking them about their personal experiences and views of (recent) historical events. The discussion partners not only remain protagonists, however, but repeatedly become co-authors as, for example, in "A Monument for the Women’s Centre (The Making of)", created in cooperation with the women's centre Wolfen. For this project the actual void, created by tearing down a socialist monument for female workers in front of the disused ORWO film chemical plant, is regarded as a symbolic one as well as the sign of a lost identity after the elimination of socialist ideals and the loss of jobs. The void is taken as an occasion to question role images together with the former female workers and to search for ways of new appropriation and occupation.

 

November 16, 2009

"The Inbetween"

Nadin Reschke | Lisa Glauer, Berlin/Weimar

Lisa Glauer and Nadin Reschke, who are sharing their teaching position in the MFA-Program „Public Art and New Artistic Strategies“ at the Bauhaus-University and both work with participatory strategies, unusual materials and at the interface to other disciplines, will present fields of their artistic practice by answering questions posed by each other.An interest of Lisa Glauer's, which has shaped her work these past few years, is examining the cultural and genderspecific connotations of the term "work" in the art context and outside it and how this relates to matter as it becomes material when it is grasped and pushed through different contexts. She has been active in many different contexts, most recently under the umbrella of arttransponder, an artspace she co-founded and has been co-directing since 2005. Nadin Reschke's work refers to social questions, often using participatory strategies to involve people outside the art context in the work’s development. Her process-based projects trigger communication and create a framework for social action. She is also active as an art mediator and is involved in curatorial projects such as the New Society for Visual Arts (NGBK) in Berlin.

 

November 23, 2009

"Commemoration: Participation and Education"

Anna Zosik, Berlin | Daniel Gaede, Weimar

The political scientist and Director of the Pedagogical Division of the Buchenwald Memorial Daniel Gaede and the artist and art educator Anna Zosik will each briefly present their fields of work and will then engage in a moderated dialog concerning contemporary art, education and the commemoration of the Holocaust in Germany and Poland. A contemporary artist originally from Poland, Anna Zosik has developed participatory installations and actions for the Hannah Arendt Denkraum in Berlin and most recently has been developing Gedenkraum – Space for Commemoration – in the Auschwitz Memorial. Daniel Gaede was in Israel as a volunteer from 1977/78, and has been active in the Educational Department of the Buchenwald Memorial for many years.

 

November 30, 2009

"Is there a need for global museums today?"

Ruth Noack, Vienna/Kassel

The art historian, author and curator of the documenta 12 will explore the question of whether there is a need for global museums today?Ruth Noack, art historian, author and curator, studied art history, audiovisual media and feminist theory in the US, England, Germany and Austria and has been regularly giving talks and publishing in the German speaking environment since 1990. She has been working as an exhibition maker since 1992. Since 2000, she has been teaching Film Theory at the University of Vienna, the University for Applied Arts, Vienna and the University of Lüneburg. Since 2001, her research project for the "Construction of Childhood" has been in process. She was president of the AICA (International Association for art critics) Austria from 2002 to 2003 and curator of the documenta 12 (16.6. - 23.9.2007 in Kassel) from 2005.

December 7, 2009

"Seize & Size"

Grace Bayer, Jenis Li Cheng Tien, Kimberly Meenan, Carly Schmitt, Eriphyli Veneri and Nadin Reschke (Assistant Professor)

In a three day performance students from the Bauhaus University MFA Program “Public Art and New Artistic Strategies“ program acted as security personal to rearrange the parking traffic according to their own categories at the ART.FAIR 21 in Cologne. After appropriate training; equipped with walky-talkies, a laser-measuring-device and uniformes the members of this artist team questioned and evaluated each car entering the parkinglot. According to varying aesthetic, socio-political questions, and the information gathered at the gate each auto was assigned to park in a specific space.In this presentation the team will address the development process of this work, the challenge of using oneself as an artistic medium, and the experience of working in an artist collective: encouraging questions regarding the documentation, concepualization and realization of a public art performance and project of this nature.

 

December 14, 2009

"You make it hurt so good"

Rajkamal Kahlon, Berlin

"You make it hurt so good", a line from an American pop song, forms part of the title and opens the lecture which explores the cultural and historical implications of autopsy reports and death certificates emerging from U.S. military bases and prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan, first made public on the ACLU's website in 2004 under the Freedom of Information Act. The texts highlight relations of abuse and power through descriptions of anonymous Iraqi and Afghan male prisoners, young and old, that have died in U.S. custody. The reports employ a rational scientific language cataloguing the internal and external details of the men's bodies while attempting to determine a cause of death, ranging from "natural" to "undetermined" to "suicide."The lecture examines how power is enacted on the body in the globalized present, rendering it docile, anonymous, punished and ordered.

 

january 11, 2010

"TODAY: PRIVATE PARTY"

Kate?ina ŠedáBrno (CZ)

"I only work with what really bothers me – I don’t know any better reason. I often feel alone, even though I have a great family. My parents are getting old - my father has recently lost his zest for life and frequently just lies in front of the television. I’m worried that he got this from my grandmother, who spent much of the last ten years of her life just lying on the couch. I used an effective activity to pull her out of her lethargy, but I really don't know what to do with my father. My mum always wants to do something, but she doesn't have anyone to do it with. Our next-door neighbours moved away and didn't even stop by to say goodbye. The new owner of the garden across the way selfishly fenced in the shared path. Why have most of the people in the town built such high fences so that nobody can see them? And what am I to do with the dog that began to pine for my grandmother when she passed away last year? These things envelop me and it seems cowardly to run away from them. I keep seeing before me the sign that I'd often put out in front of the corner pub when I was a child and which in my view perfectly captures the present atmosphere – “TODAY: PRIVATE PARTY”. Yes, the fence around our country is gone, but I'm convinced that it didn’t disappear: the people just divided it up amongst themselves. We’re once again closed in – not altogether, but each separately."

 

January 18, 2010

"VON DER ABWESENHEIT DES LAGERS - Of the Absence of the Repository”

Christiane Mennicke-Schwarz, Kunsthaus Dresden

„Of the Absence of the Repository” an exhibition in the Kunsthaus Dresden 2006, presented an international selection of artistic positions, that deal with the crimes of the Nazi period. In an exemplary way, the exhibition dealt with the timeliness of memory in Germany and Europe in the meanwhile second and third generation, and explored different forms of commemoration. Here, the term of the repository stood not only for the memory of the concentration and forced labor camps, but is also, according to Giorgio Agamben, understood as a metaphorical bracket for the step by step disenfranchisement and persecution of people. The construction and reconstruction of history has been a theme for additional projects since then. Christiane Mennicke-Schwarz is an art historian, curator and artistic director of the Kunsthaus Dresden since 2003.The lecture examines how power is enacted on the body in the globalized present, rendering it docile, anonymous, punished and ordered.

 

February 8, 2010

"Deconstruction of Monuments | Clash of Memories"

Dunja Blazevic, Sarajevo

Dunja Blazevic, director of the Sarajevo Center of Contemporary Art (SCCA) gave an introduction into the recent history of Bosnia Herzegovina and the situation of art and artists after the Bosnian war. She highlighted the importance of the Sarajevo Center of Contemporary Art, which since its foundation in 1996 started to give funding and help to artists to realise projects in the public realm that dealt with questions concerning cultural memory, such as the war and the end of socialism. The Center has been exploring a new understanding of art through the development of various activities since it’s founding directly after the end of the Bosnian war. A special focus was developed by the project “Deconstruction of Monuments”, organized in 2005 by the SCCA. The project researched memorials and the ideologies and structures of dominance expressed therein as well as forms for a “new memorial” on multiple levels.