Books by Sarah Hegenbart
Das Operndorf Afrika ist zehn Jahre alt geworden. Was ist aus Schlingensiefs Vision, ein Operndor... more Das Operndorf Afrika ist zehn Jahre alt geworden. Was ist aus Schlingensiefs Vision, ein Operndorf im westafrikanischen Burkina Faso zu gründen, geworden? Werden dreißig Kilometer außerhalb der burkinischen Hauptstadt Ouagadougou nun Wagner-Opern inszeniert? Oder verwandelt sich das Operndorf in eine Dystopie der klassischen Entwicklungshilfe, die neo-koloniale Machtverhältnisse fortschreibt? Inspiriert von diesen und ähnlichen Fragen ist dieses Buch. Beabsichtigt ist es dabei weniger konkrete Antworten zu geben als eine Diskussion anzuregen. Ganz im Sinne Schlingensiefs, dessen Werk doch vor allem eins war: eine Oper der Ambiguitäten.
Forthcoming Books by Sarah Hegenbart
Leuven University Press, 2022
The postcolonial Gesamtkunstwerk: Disrupting the Eurocentric perspective on art history and addre... more The postcolonial Gesamtkunstwerk: Disrupting the Eurocentric perspective on art history and addressing Germany’s colonial history
Opera Village, a participatory art experiment by the late German multimedia artist Christoph Schlingensief, serves as a testing ground for a critical interrogation of Richard Wagner’s notion of the Gesamtkunstwerk. Sarah Hegenbart traces the path from Wagner’s introduction of the Gesamtkunstwerk in Bayreuth to Schlingensief’s attempt to charge the idea of the total artwork with new meaning by transposing it to the West African country Burkina Faso. Schlingensief developed Opera Village in collaboration with the world-renowned architect Francis Kéré. This final project of Schlingensief is inspired by and illuminates the diverse themes that informed his artistic practice, including coming to terms with the German past, anti-Semitism, critical race theory, and questions of postcolonial (self-)criticism.
From Bayreuth to Burkina Faso introduces the notion of the postcolonial Gesamtkunstwerk to disrupt the Eurocentric perspective on art history, exploring how the socio-political force of a postcolonial Gesamtkunstwerk could affect processes of transcultural identity construction. It reveals how Schlingensief translocated the Wagnerian concept to Burkina Faso to address German colonial history and engage with it from the perspective of multidirectional memory cultures.
This publication is GPRC-labeled (Guaranteed Peer-Reviewed Content).
Bloomsbury, 2023
What is the relevance of Dada and its artistic strategies in our current moment, one marked by po... more What is the relevance of Dada and its artistic strategies in our current moment, one marked by post-truth politics, information floods and big data? How can contemporary art highlight the neglected nuances of cultural representation in the present day? While it may feel like we are living in a period of anomaly with the rise of the alt-right, this book shows how the Dada movement's artistic response to the aggressive nationalism and fascism of its time offers a fruitful analogy to our contemporary era.
Dada's counter-cultural strategies, such as the distortion of reality and attacks on elites and rationality, have long been endorsed by artistic avantgardes and subcultures. Dada Data details how modern-day movements have appropriated such tactics in their ways of addressing the public both on- and offline. Bringing together contributions from interdisciplinary scholars, curators and artists working in global contexts that explore an array of artistic modes of persuasion and resistance, the book demonstrates how contemporary art can bring out neglected nuances of our post-truth moment. In linking the Dada movement's counter-cultural activities to modern phenomena such as post-internet art, information floods and big data mining, the book collates original propaganda with diverse artwork from such figures as Hannah Höch, Donna Kukama, Paula Rego, Tschabalala Self, Sheida Soleimani and South African artists Donna Kukama and Kemang Wa Lehulere. In doing so, Dada Data brings together a rich scrapbook of Dada resources and perspectives that are highly relevant to present-day political concerns.
With artistic contributions by IOCOSE, Donna Kukama, Kemang Wa Lehulere and Montage Mädels.
Table of Contents
Introduction: From Dada Tricks to Post-Truth Politics, Mara-Johanna Kölmel (Leuphana University Lüneburg, Germany & The Courtauld Institute of Art, UK) and Sarah Hegenbart (Technical University Munich, Germany)
1. FROM DADA TO DATA
1.1. From From Dada to Data, Mara-Johanna Kölmel (Leuphana University Lüneburg, Germany & The Courtauld Institute of Art, UK)
1.2. Sheida Soleimani, Cyborg: Photomontage in an Expanding Network, Matthew Biro (Department of the History of Art at the University of Michigan, USA)
1.3. Parafictions and Immateriality: The Legacy of the Berlin Dada Media Hoaxes in Contemporary Parafictive Acts, Rebecca Smith (Liverpool School of Art and Design, Liverpool John Moores University, UK)
2. GLOBAL DADA
2.1. Drones Vs. Kites, Joshua Simon (Independent Curator, Writer and Filmmaker)
2.2. Paula Rego: A Dada Attitude against Authority in the Post-War Period, Leonor de Oliveira (Universidad Nova de Lisboa, Portugal)
2.3. Dada's African South, Roger van Wyk (Independent Curator and Director of Educentric)
3. BIG DADA DATA
3.1. Clouds, Critique & Contradiction: Performing Dissent in Dada and Data Art, Meredith Hoy (Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts, Arizona State University, USA)
3.2. Identity, Ecology, and the Arts in the Age of Big Data Mining, Roberto Simanowski (University of Basel, Switzerland)
3.3. Precarious Data Aesthetics. An Exploration of Tactics, Tricksters and Idiocy in Data, Annet Dekker (Independent Researcher, Writer and Curator)
3.4. Big Dada, Big Data: Schwitters' Merzbau as a Data Cloud, Natalie Koerner (Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Denmark)
4. DADA x ALT-RIGHT. FAKING THE TRUTH
4.1. Art as Propaganda: The Alt-Right's "Appropriation" of Dada's Fragmented Truth, Sarah Hegenbart (Technical University Munich, Germany)
4.2. Fashwave: The Alt-Right's Aestheticization of Politics and Violence, Maik Fielitz (Institute for Peace Studies and Security Policy at the University of Hamburg, Germany) and Lisa Bogerts (Independent Researcher, Germany)
4.3. Post-Internet Art and the Alt-Right Visual Culture, Vid Simoniti (University of Liverpool, UK)
5. DADA DATA TACTICS
5.1. Down the Rabbit Hole of The Alt-Right Complex: Artists Exploring Far Right Online Culture, Inke Arns (Curator and Artistic Director, Hartware MedienKunstVerein, Germany)
5.2. Pixel Pirates: Theft as Strategy in the Art of Joan Ross and Soda_Jerk, Jaime Tsai (National Art School, Sydney, Australia)
5.3. The Multiple Narratives of Post-Truth Politics, Told through Picture, Jack Southern (University of Gloucestershire, City and Guilds of London Art School, UK)
Index
Papers by Sarah Hegenbart
Bloomsbury Visual Arts eBooks, 2023
This paper explores the attempts of the political activist group Centre for Political Beauty to r... more This paper explores the attempts of the political activist group Centre for Political Beauty to restore beauty to politics. While the Centre for Political Beauty claims that their performances can be traced back to the multimedia artist Christoph Schlingensief, my contention is that their self-understanding as artists is problematic. By approaching selected interventions against the backdrop of their respective contexts in the history of the avant-garde, I develop criteria facilitating a differentiation between protest art and political activism. I posit that protest art, in contrast to political activism, need not be driven by a goal-oriented artistic intention, and must possess openness as a strategy. Rather than aiming at a direct pedagogical or educational effect on the audience, protest art desires to open up a dialogue between the artwork and the audience. The way in which shame operates in the interventions of the Centre for Political Beauty calls into question whether their ...
Zeitschrift Ästhetik und Allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft (ZÄK), 2021
Zombie formalism describes a type of art designed specifically to cater to the demands of the mar... more Zombie formalism describes a type of art designed specifically to cater to the demands of the market. I will argue that recent developments on the art market challenge the institutional theory of art since it appears increasingly questionable whether the artworld–the centrepiece of the institutional theory–is guided by a deep understanding of art rather than economic considerations. Given that the institutional theory remains rather vague about the very definition of 'the artworld', the artworld may also comprise investment-minded mega-collectors and art dealers. If, however, money becomes the driving force for the creation and exhibition of art, how does this impact on the artworld as institution that decides about whether or not something may count as an artwork? Can the institutional theory of art survive zombie formalism? In order to answer these questions, I will map out recent developments in the artworld that might force us to amend the institutional theory to be applicable also to contemporary phenomena. My summary of the main approaches to institutional theory will reveal that none of them has yet succeeded in providing persuasive account of the nature of the artworld. I will suggest as an outlook that we need to critically interrogate David Hume's standard of taste in order to work towards a curatorial standard of taste.
21: INQUIRIES INTO ART, HISTORY, AND THE VISUAL #2–2021, 2021
This paper explores the attempts of the political activist group Centre
for Political Beauty to r... more This paper explores the attempts of the political activist group Centre
for Political Beauty to restore beauty to politics. While the Centre
for Political Beauty claims that their performances can be traced back
to the multimedia artist Christoph Schlingensief, my contention is
that their self-understanding as artists is problematic. By approaching
selected interventions against the backdrop of their respective
contexts in the history of the avant-garde, I develop criteria facilitating
a differentiation between protest art and political activism. I posit
that protest art, in contrast to political activism, need not be driven
by a goal-oriented artistic intention, and must possess openness as
a strategy. Rather than aiming at a direct pedagogical or educational
effect on the audience, protest art desires to open up a dialogue between
the artwork and the audience. The way in which shame operates
in the interventions of the Centre for Political Beauty calls into
question whether their interventions actually allow for the open and
dialogical engagement that is promoted by protest art.
This paper introduces the participatory art museum and discusses some of the challenges it raises... more This paper introduces the participatory art museum and discusses some of the challenges it raises for philosophical aesthetics. Although participatory art is now an essential part of museological programming, an aesthetic account of participatory art is still missing. The paper argues that much could be gained from exploring participatory art, as it raises fundamental challenges to our understanding of issues in aesthetics, such as the nature of aesthetic experience, the value of art, and the role of the spectator. Moreover, participatory art fundamentally questions the status of the museum as an exhibition space for contemporary art practices.
Art History
Volume 39, Issue 3, pages 609–611, June 2016
The analytical connection between beauty and love, as argued for by Alexander Nehamas, faces seri... more The analytical connection between beauty and love, as argued for by Alexander Nehamas, faces serious challenges. In addition to the problems already identified by Malcolm Budd, Berys Gaut and Carolyn Korsmeyer, I will raise another concern, which is based on the problem that Nehamas borrows the Platonic concept of love while similarly rejecting Plato's theory of forms. My question is whether Nehamas' argument can work without reference to the forms that constitute the axiomatic foundation, on which Plato's deductive argument for the analytical relation between beauty and love is based.
Book Chapters by Sarah Hegenbart
Art Criticism in Times of Populism and Nationalism, 2021
»Gefühle sind von Haus aus Rebellen« Musiktheater als Katalysator und Reflexionsagentur für gesellschaftliche Entwicklungsprozesse Thurnauer Schriften zum Musiktheater (fimt.), Bd. 42, 2020
The interior that Christoph Schlingensief’s Animatograph facilitates is a very distinctive
one. I... more The interior that Christoph Schlingensief’s Animatograph facilitates is a very distinctive
one. It is constituted by a series of compartments on a rotating stage through which one
can wander. Each compartment contains various stimuli, such as film projections, writings,
photos and other kind of imagery, which is often linked to local mythologies or historical
events of the respective location where Schlingensief placed his Animatograph.
These stimuli might trigger memories in those who enter the Animatograph. The
Animatograph Iceland Edition (2005), for example, invites its visitors to take a seat on
a couch in a compartment reminiscent of an old-fashioned living room where they are
surrounded by graphs written on a wall, chalk notes on a blackboard and the visual reminders
of a performance, which might even be ongoing, depending on when one enters
the compartment. Thus, the spectators are relocated from their world into the world of
Iceland and encouraged to engage with its long history – which is hinted at through the
information that the Animatograph is erected at the place where the oldest national parliament
assembled from 930 on – and mythology, the Nordic Edda saga in particular. The
Icelandic traces one is confronted with when entering the interior of the Animatograph
appear intuitive rather than factual. Somehow they seem like eruptions from the unconscious,
which then elicit novel associations. So the visitor of the Animatograph is not
only entering the living environment of someone else but also his mental world.
My hypothesis is that the Animatograph reveals the psychic interior to us while
simultaneously formatting it anew.
Guy Debords normative Kritik, die er in Die Gesellschaft des Spektakels (1967) vorbringt, ist mo... more Guy Debords normative Kritik, die er in Die Gesellschaft des Spektakels (1967) vorbringt, ist motiviert durch die Besorgnis vor der ideologischen Infiltrierung durch Bilder, die den Betrachter überwältigen und somit seine Fähigkeit kritisch zu denken einschränken. Ein solches Verständnis des Spektakels ignoriert jedoch zwei fundamentale epistemische Aspekte. Zum einen beschränkt die synästhetische Potenz des Spektakels nicht zwangsläufig die rationale Kritikfähigkeit. Zum anderen besitzt das Spektakel das einzigartige Potential sinnliche und mentale Prozesse miteinander zu verschmelzen und verfügt somit über eine epistemische Potenz, die anderen ästhetischen Erfahrungen nicht unbedingt gegeben ist. Worin diese epistemische Potenz des Spektakels besteht möchte ich anhand einer Analyse von Christoph Schlingensiefs African Twin Towers (2005) in Namibia herausarbeiten.
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Books by Sarah Hegenbart
Forthcoming Books by Sarah Hegenbart
Opera Village, a participatory art experiment by the late German multimedia artist Christoph Schlingensief, serves as a testing ground for a critical interrogation of Richard Wagner’s notion of the Gesamtkunstwerk. Sarah Hegenbart traces the path from Wagner’s introduction of the Gesamtkunstwerk in Bayreuth to Schlingensief’s attempt to charge the idea of the total artwork with new meaning by transposing it to the West African country Burkina Faso. Schlingensief developed Opera Village in collaboration with the world-renowned architect Francis Kéré. This final project of Schlingensief is inspired by and illuminates the diverse themes that informed his artistic practice, including coming to terms with the German past, anti-Semitism, critical race theory, and questions of postcolonial (self-)criticism.
From Bayreuth to Burkina Faso introduces the notion of the postcolonial Gesamtkunstwerk to disrupt the Eurocentric perspective on art history, exploring how the socio-political force of a postcolonial Gesamtkunstwerk could affect processes of transcultural identity construction. It reveals how Schlingensief translocated the Wagnerian concept to Burkina Faso to address German colonial history and engage with it from the perspective of multidirectional memory cultures.
This publication is GPRC-labeled (Guaranteed Peer-Reviewed Content).
Dada's counter-cultural strategies, such as the distortion of reality and attacks on elites and rationality, have long been endorsed by artistic avantgardes and subcultures. Dada Data details how modern-day movements have appropriated such tactics in their ways of addressing the public both on- and offline. Bringing together contributions from interdisciplinary scholars, curators and artists working in global contexts that explore an array of artistic modes of persuasion and resistance, the book demonstrates how contemporary art can bring out neglected nuances of our post-truth moment. In linking the Dada movement's counter-cultural activities to modern phenomena such as post-internet art, information floods and big data mining, the book collates original propaganda with diverse artwork from such figures as Hannah Höch, Donna Kukama, Paula Rego, Tschabalala Self, Sheida Soleimani and South African artists Donna Kukama and Kemang Wa Lehulere. In doing so, Dada Data brings together a rich scrapbook of Dada resources and perspectives that are highly relevant to present-day political concerns.
With artistic contributions by IOCOSE, Donna Kukama, Kemang Wa Lehulere and Montage Mädels.
Table of Contents
Introduction: From Dada Tricks to Post-Truth Politics, Mara-Johanna Kölmel (Leuphana University Lüneburg, Germany & The Courtauld Institute of Art, UK) and Sarah Hegenbart (Technical University Munich, Germany)
1. FROM DADA TO DATA
1.1. From From Dada to Data, Mara-Johanna Kölmel (Leuphana University Lüneburg, Germany & The Courtauld Institute of Art, UK)
1.2. Sheida Soleimani, Cyborg: Photomontage in an Expanding Network, Matthew Biro (Department of the History of Art at the University of Michigan, USA)
1.3. Parafictions and Immateriality: The Legacy of the Berlin Dada Media Hoaxes in Contemporary Parafictive Acts, Rebecca Smith (Liverpool School of Art and Design, Liverpool John Moores University, UK)
2. GLOBAL DADA
2.1. Drones Vs. Kites, Joshua Simon (Independent Curator, Writer and Filmmaker)
2.2. Paula Rego: A Dada Attitude against Authority in the Post-War Period, Leonor de Oliveira (Universidad Nova de Lisboa, Portugal)
2.3. Dada's African South, Roger van Wyk (Independent Curator and Director of Educentric)
3. BIG DADA DATA
3.1. Clouds, Critique & Contradiction: Performing Dissent in Dada and Data Art, Meredith Hoy (Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts, Arizona State University, USA)
3.2. Identity, Ecology, and the Arts in the Age of Big Data Mining, Roberto Simanowski (University of Basel, Switzerland)
3.3. Precarious Data Aesthetics. An Exploration of Tactics, Tricksters and Idiocy in Data, Annet Dekker (Independent Researcher, Writer and Curator)
3.4. Big Dada, Big Data: Schwitters' Merzbau as a Data Cloud, Natalie Koerner (Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Denmark)
4. DADA x ALT-RIGHT. FAKING THE TRUTH
4.1. Art as Propaganda: The Alt-Right's "Appropriation" of Dada's Fragmented Truth, Sarah Hegenbart (Technical University Munich, Germany)
4.2. Fashwave: The Alt-Right's Aestheticization of Politics and Violence, Maik Fielitz (Institute for Peace Studies and Security Policy at the University of Hamburg, Germany) and Lisa Bogerts (Independent Researcher, Germany)
4.3. Post-Internet Art and the Alt-Right Visual Culture, Vid Simoniti (University of Liverpool, UK)
5. DADA DATA TACTICS
5.1. Down the Rabbit Hole of The Alt-Right Complex: Artists Exploring Far Right Online Culture, Inke Arns (Curator and Artistic Director, Hartware MedienKunstVerein, Germany)
5.2. Pixel Pirates: Theft as Strategy in the Art of Joan Ross and Soda_Jerk, Jaime Tsai (National Art School, Sydney, Australia)
5.3. The Multiple Narratives of Post-Truth Politics, Told through Picture, Jack Southern (University of Gloucestershire, City and Guilds of London Art School, UK)
Index
Papers by Sarah Hegenbart
for Political Beauty to restore beauty to politics. While the Centre
for Political Beauty claims that their performances can be traced back
to the multimedia artist Christoph Schlingensief, my contention is
that their self-understanding as artists is problematic. By approaching
selected interventions against the backdrop of their respective
contexts in the history of the avant-garde, I develop criteria facilitating
a differentiation between protest art and political activism. I posit
that protest art, in contrast to political activism, need not be driven
by a goal-oriented artistic intention, and must possess openness as
a strategy. Rather than aiming at a direct pedagogical or educational
effect on the audience, protest art desires to open up a dialogue between
the artwork and the audience. The way in which shame operates
in the interventions of the Centre for Political Beauty calls into
question whether their interventions actually allow for the open and
dialogical engagement that is promoted by protest art.
Book Chapters by Sarah Hegenbart
one. It is constituted by a series of compartments on a rotating stage through which one
can wander. Each compartment contains various stimuli, such as film projections, writings,
photos and other kind of imagery, which is often linked to local mythologies or historical
events of the respective location where Schlingensief placed his Animatograph.
These stimuli might trigger memories in those who enter the Animatograph. The
Animatograph Iceland Edition (2005), for example, invites its visitors to take a seat on
a couch in a compartment reminiscent of an old-fashioned living room where they are
surrounded by graphs written on a wall, chalk notes on a blackboard and the visual reminders
of a performance, which might even be ongoing, depending on when one enters
the compartment. Thus, the spectators are relocated from their world into the world of
Iceland and encouraged to engage with its long history – which is hinted at through the
information that the Animatograph is erected at the place where the oldest national parliament
assembled from 930 on – and mythology, the Nordic Edda saga in particular. The
Icelandic traces one is confronted with when entering the interior of the Animatograph
appear intuitive rather than factual. Somehow they seem like eruptions from the unconscious,
which then elicit novel associations. So the visitor of the Animatograph is not
only entering the living environment of someone else but also his mental world.
My hypothesis is that the Animatograph reveals the psychic interior to us while
simultaneously formatting it anew.
Opera Village, a participatory art experiment by the late German multimedia artist Christoph Schlingensief, serves as a testing ground for a critical interrogation of Richard Wagner’s notion of the Gesamtkunstwerk. Sarah Hegenbart traces the path from Wagner’s introduction of the Gesamtkunstwerk in Bayreuth to Schlingensief’s attempt to charge the idea of the total artwork with new meaning by transposing it to the West African country Burkina Faso. Schlingensief developed Opera Village in collaboration with the world-renowned architect Francis Kéré. This final project of Schlingensief is inspired by and illuminates the diverse themes that informed his artistic practice, including coming to terms with the German past, anti-Semitism, critical race theory, and questions of postcolonial (self-)criticism.
From Bayreuth to Burkina Faso introduces the notion of the postcolonial Gesamtkunstwerk to disrupt the Eurocentric perspective on art history, exploring how the socio-political force of a postcolonial Gesamtkunstwerk could affect processes of transcultural identity construction. It reveals how Schlingensief translocated the Wagnerian concept to Burkina Faso to address German colonial history and engage with it from the perspective of multidirectional memory cultures.
This publication is GPRC-labeled (Guaranteed Peer-Reviewed Content).
Dada's counter-cultural strategies, such as the distortion of reality and attacks on elites and rationality, have long been endorsed by artistic avantgardes and subcultures. Dada Data details how modern-day movements have appropriated such tactics in their ways of addressing the public both on- and offline. Bringing together contributions from interdisciplinary scholars, curators and artists working in global contexts that explore an array of artistic modes of persuasion and resistance, the book demonstrates how contemporary art can bring out neglected nuances of our post-truth moment. In linking the Dada movement's counter-cultural activities to modern phenomena such as post-internet art, information floods and big data mining, the book collates original propaganda with diverse artwork from such figures as Hannah Höch, Donna Kukama, Paula Rego, Tschabalala Self, Sheida Soleimani and South African artists Donna Kukama and Kemang Wa Lehulere. In doing so, Dada Data brings together a rich scrapbook of Dada resources and perspectives that are highly relevant to present-day political concerns.
With artistic contributions by IOCOSE, Donna Kukama, Kemang Wa Lehulere and Montage Mädels.
Table of Contents
Introduction: From Dada Tricks to Post-Truth Politics, Mara-Johanna Kölmel (Leuphana University Lüneburg, Germany & The Courtauld Institute of Art, UK) and Sarah Hegenbart (Technical University Munich, Germany)
1. FROM DADA TO DATA
1.1. From From Dada to Data, Mara-Johanna Kölmel (Leuphana University Lüneburg, Germany & The Courtauld Institute of Art, UK)
1.2. Sheida Soleimani, Cyborg: Photomontage in an Expanding Network, Matthew Biro (Department of the History of Art at the University of Michigan, USA)
1.3. Parafictions and Immateriality: The Legacy of the Berlin Dada Media Hoaxes in Contemporary Parafictive Acts, Rebecca Smith (Liverpool School of Art and Design, Liverpool John Moores University, UK)
2. GLOBAL DADA
2.1. Drones Vs. Kites, Joshua Simon (Independent Curator, Writer and Filmmaker)
2.2. Paula Rego: A Dada Attitude against Authority in the Post-War Period, Leonor de Oliveira (Universidad Nova de Lisboa, Portugal)
2.3. Dada's African South, Roger van Wyk (Independent Curator and Director of Educentric)
3. BIG DADA DATA
3.1. Clouds, Critique & Contradiction: Performing Dissent in Dada and Data Art, Meredith Hoy (Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts, Arizona State University, USA)
3.2. Identity, Ecology, and the Arts in the Age of Big Data Mining, Roberto Simanowski (University of Basel, Switzerland)
3.3. Precarious Data Aesthetics. An Exploration of Tactics, Tricksters and Idiocy in Data, Annet Dekker (Independent Researcher, Writer and Curator)
3.4. Big Dada, Big Data: Schwitters' Merzbau as a Data Cloud, Natalie Koerner (Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Denmark)
4. DADA x ALT-RIGHT. FAKING THE TRUTH
4.1. Art as Propaganda: The Alt-Right's "Appropriation" of Dada's Fragmented Truth, Sarah Hegenbart (Technical University Munich, Germany)
4.2. Fashwave: The Alt-Right's Aestheticization of Politics and Violence, Maik Fielitz (Institute for Peace Studies and Security Policy at the University of Hamburg, Germany) and Lisa Bogerts (Independent Researcher, Germany)
4.3. Post-Internet Art and the Alt-Right Visual Culture, Vid Simoniti (University of Liverpool, UK)
5. DADA DATA TACTICS
5.1. Down the Rabbit Hole of The Alt-Right Complex: Artists Exploring Far Right Online Culture, Inke Arns (Curator and Artistic Director, Hartware MedienKunstVerein, Germany)
5.2. Pixel Pirates: Theft as Strategy in the Art of Joan Ross and Soda_Jerk, Jaime Tsai (National Art School, Sydney, Australia)
5.3. The Multiple Narratives of Post-Truth Politics, Told through Picture, Jack Southern (University of Gloucestershire, City and Guilds of London Art School, UK)
Index
for Political Beauty to restore beauty to politics. While the Centre
for Political Beauty claims that their performances can be traced back
to the multimedia artist Christoph Schlingensief, my contention is
that their self-understanding as artists is problematic. By approaching
selected interventions against the backdrop of their respective
contexts in the history of the avant-garde, I develop criteria facilitating
a differentiation between protest art and political activism. I posit
that protest art, in contrast to political activism, need not be driven
by a goal-oriented artistic intention, and must possess openness as
a strategy. Rather than aiming at a direct pedagogical or educational
effect on the audience, protest art desires to open up a dialogue between
the artwork and the audience. The way in which shame operates
in the interventions of the Centre for Political Beauty calls into
question whether their interventions actually allow for the open and
dialogical engagement that is promoted by protest art.
one. It is constituted by a series of compartments on a rotating stage through which one
can wander. Each compartment contains various stimuli, such as film projections, writings,
photos and other kind of imagery, which is often linked to local mythologies or historical
events of the respective location where Schlingensief placed his Animatograph.
These stimuli might trigger memories in those who enter the Animatograph. The
Animatograph Iceland Edition (2005), for example, invites its visitors to take a seat on
a couch in a compartment reminiscent of an old-fashioned living room where they are
surrounded by graphs written on a wall, chalk notes on a blackboard and the visual reminders
of a performance, which might even be ongoing, depending on when one enters
the compartment. Thus, the spectators are relocated from their world into the world of
Iceland and encouraged to engage with its long history – which is hinted at through the
information that the Animatograph is erected at the place where the oldest national parliament
assembled from 930 on – and mythology, the Nordic Edda saga in particular. The
Icelandic traces one is confronted with when entering the interior of the Animatograph
appear intuitive rather than factual. Somehow they seem like eruptions from the unconscious,
which then elicit novel associations. So the visitor of the Animatograph is not
only entering the living environment of someone else but also his mental world.
My hypothesis is that the Animatograph reveals the psychic interior to us while
simultaneously formatting it anew.
Wagner and Africa, Studies in Theatre and Performance, DOI: 10.1080/14682761.2017.1421409
The second edited collection in English to come out on German theatre director, filmmaker
and performance artist Christoph Schlingensief (after Tara Forrest’s and Anna Teresa Scheer’s
Christoph Schlingensief: Art without Borders (2010)) gives space to his extraordinary, if often
controversial, engagement with two seemingly incongruous subjects: Richard Wagner and the
African continent. It is a Wagnis – a risky (ad)venture – in the true sense of the word, but where
else but Bayreuth, to bowdlerise Kipling, do these ‘twain finally meet’?
the negotiation between different concepts
of identities. At the same time,
might collaboration itself be constitutive
for a feeling of belonging, an experience
of identity? Is there something like collaborative
identity?
This lecture series investigates how the
plurality of perspectives, shaped by a diversity
of cultural, national and social experiences,
integral to collaboration, e.g.
in artist collectives, leads to novel, constantly
shifting identities that are no longer
tied to national backgrounds. What can
we learn from transnational artist groups
such as the Blue Rider Movement in
times of emerging populism demanding
a clearly fixed national identity? More
broadly, what is the link between the arts
and processes of identity construction?
Recent projects, such as the Humboldt
Forum in Berlin, have highlighted the dilemma
that identity still appears to be
tied to a form of national belonging and
creative production. Without an awareness
of identity politics, however, the perspectives
of non-Western minorities will
still be marginalised. What should a museum
that enables the presentation of
multiple perspectives be like? Is there a
way for identity to be global and local at
the same time?
Seminar untersuchen wir Parallelen
zwischen Brutalismus und Pop Art
in England. Brutalismus, ein sich seit
den 1950er Jahren entwickelnder
Architekturstil, propagiert neue
Formen des sozialen Wohnungsbau,
um den Alltag aller lebenswerter zu
gestalten. Ebenso wie im Brutalismus
Beton als Baustoff des Alltags zur
Kunstform deklariert wird, fokussiert
sich die Pop Art auf die Objekte
des Alltags und lässt sich von der
Konsumkultur der 1960er Jahre
inspirieren. Gleichzeitig hinterfragen
Brutalismus und Pop Art so aber
auch konventionell herrschende
gesellschaftliche und ästhetische
Normen. Während wir auf unserer
Exkursion nach England ausgewählte
Fallbeispiele brutalistischer
Bauwerke und Kunstwerke der Pop
Art analysieren werden, vertiefen
wir im Seminar Kenntnisse der
Literatur zu Brutalismus und Pop Art
sowie der Kritik an kapitalistischer
Konsumkultur und ästhetischen
Dogmen.
the aesthetics of propaganda
against the backdrop of a new
wave of populism. What are the
aesthetic strategies populists
adopt to infiltrate audiences
with their propagandistic
messages? Taking the Gesamtkunstwerk
(total artwork) as a
starting point for analysing the
relation between art and propaganda,
the course will survey a
number of art movements, such
as Dada, Fluxus and Participatory
Art, that operate in opposition
to the aesthetics of propaganda
by targeting self-critical
reflection rather than manipulative
infiltration. Having explored
historic counter-movements
to populism, a central focus
of the seminar will be on the
role contemporary art plays in
times of emerging populism in
different global regions. This
involves a discussion of art‘s
role in recent political debates
centering on concepts and
ideologies, such as identity
(politics), ‚the people‘ versus
‚the elite‘, feminism, postcolonialism
and political correctness.
While movements such as
socially engaged art or internet
art initially aimed at an increase
of democratic participation,
there is reason to suspect that
they resulted in the reverse.
Finally, the course will attempt
to formulate responses to the
following pressing questions:
firstly, to what extent did developments
in the arts contribute
to historical and contemporary
populism? And secondly, is
there a way in which art engagement
can encourage audiences
to become more critical?
The course
Frank Bowlings Map Paintings
verweisen auf die Notwendigkeit
einer neuen Kartografie der
Welt - eine Konsequenz aus
den historischen Prozessen der
Dekolonisation in der Nachkriegszeit.
Inwieweit erfordert
diese neue Kartografie ein
neues Verständnis von Schönheit
in der Kunst? Während
Schönheit als normatives
Ideal in der Nachkriegszeit ein
verabscheuter Begriff war, wird
uns eine Analyse von Frank
Bowlings Gemälde sowie eine
Betrachtung seines Diskurses
mit dem Kunstkritiker Clement
Greenberg eine neue Form der
Schönheit - möglicherweise
eine genuin schwarze Schönheit
- eröffnen. Im Rahmen des
Seminars ist eine Auseinandersetzung
mit Theorien des
Postkolonialismus intendiert.
denen kulturelle Identitäten und Symbole
neu verhandelt werden. Ausgehend von
Homi Bhabhas Konzept des ‚Third Space‘
werden wir untersuchen, wie hybride Räume
die Entstehung neuer kultureller Formen
ermöglichen. Welcher Wissenstransfer findet
in hybriden Räumen statt? Können hybride
Räume dazu beitragen, dominante Narrative
umzuschreiben und einen eindimensionalen
Wissenstransfer zu korrigieren?
This lecture series aims to provide a platform to discuss inspirational art and architecture projects in the Global South. This will illuminate the contribution of artists and architects in processes of facilitating environments for democratic engagement.