ART HISTORY
Jonathan Watkins,
direktor of IKON Gallery, Birmingham
Thursday, 8 March 12, 5pm
New Seminar Room, Old Fine Art Building
Newcastle University
For too long in the west those working with contemporary art have tended to repudiate art history. This is a legacy of modernism, an ideology that insisted on every new art movement surpassing the one before, and thus young, emerging artists tend to be fetishised. Like vampires, exhibition curators crave fresh virgin blood, and what has gone before is deemed uninteresting, unadventurous. Students here are rarely taught about any art that is dated before 1900, by which time the seeds of modernism had been well and truly sown.
Art practice without art history is doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past? Well, maybe, maybe not, but certainly a constant emphasis on the avant garde means that a lot of good art work gets overlooked due to eyes being fixed on what lies ahead. For myself, I am concerned to be part of a global art conversation in which it is important to make statements that are pertinent, relevant and not detached from current (art) affairs, but this doesn't mean that art history has nothing to offer.
Postmodernism wasn't so bad. The word itself ("postmodernism") became tired and uncool, and certainly aesthetic crimes were committed with a superficial understanding of the theory, but the postmodern attempt to reset the whole artistic machine was laudable. The cut-and-paste styles, the camp appropriations were awful, but the idea that we could be eclectic, instead of purist - that we could have both David Bowie and Beethoven on our playlists - was like a breath of fresh air. 'Why not?' was the right question, and it still is because, still, the aspiration to the condition of fashion in art persists.
Art itself is a kind of fashion, as history teaches us that there hasn't always been art. Kitagawa Utamaro, recently shown at Ikon, had no idea of "art", as we now understand it, when he made his beautiful woodblock prints. Art came later, with Europeans, c.1850. Utamaro's pictures were not made by him to be put in frames on museum walls but instead to be collected for a very small amount of money (the equivalent of three bowls of rice) and then passed around, hand to hand, amongst a group of friends. As art they sell for thousands and thousands.
I have come to the conclusion after many years of working in the art world that, paradoxically, those artists who don't care so much for art are the most interesting ones. The ones who aren't so precious, not so married to an artistic identity, are usually the best, and this encourages me to think that art, as a kind of pseudo-religion, will not always be with us.
Jonathan Watkins has been Director of Ikon Gallery since 1999. Previously he worked as Curator of the Serpentine Gallery and Director of Chisenhale Gallery. His tenure at the Chisenhale Gallery saw a rise in its international profile, with a number of its artists moving on to win the Turner Prize. He was Artistic Director of the Biennale of Sydney in 1998 and has worked internationally in Beijing, Venice, Turin, Milan, Shanghai, Sharjah and Palestine. He was also on the curatorial team for Facts of Life: Contemporary Japanese Art (Hayward Gallery, London 2001). Watkins is a prolific writer on contemporary art, his recent essays focusing on the work of artists such as Giuseppe Penone, Martin Creed, Yang Zhenzhong, and Noguchi Rika. He was the author of the Phaidon monograph on Japanese artist On Kawara.
http://www.ikon-gallery.co.uk
'The neuralgic point'
Prof Tina Haase and Yvonne Leinfelder, Munich
Tuesday, 21 February 12, 4pm
New Seminar Room, Old Fine Art Building
Newcastle University
This presentation focuses on art in the context of particular spaces or locations. By means of simple and often minimal interventions, such art aims to bring into focus the particular quality or "neuralgic" point of a space or location. In this way, a space or location can be endowed with a completely different mood, thus inviting a second consideration of its nature and function, which in turn often reveals the viewer's own expectations.
The sculptor Tina Haase investigates the qualities and properties of objects, spaces, and locations. On the basis of their specific physical, visual, or contextual features, she creates a variety of artworks, including objects, installations, percent-for-art projects, performances, and short films. The search for the essence of something - or, indeed, its idiosyncrasy, its specificity - is often accompanied by a shift in identity. On occasion, this interface between recognition and reappraisal can give rise, as a by-product, to something very much akin to humour, or even joy.
Prof. Tina Haase (*1957) initially studied German and Education in Cologne. From 1979, she studied Art at the Academies of Art in Muenster and then Duesseldorf, where she graduated as a master scholar of Fritz Schwegler. She has been awarded travel scholarships to work in the U.S. and Italy. Thanks to regular exhibitions, largely in Germany, but also in Spain, Belgium, the U.S., the Netherlands, Austria, and Poland, her work is now well known. In addition to works of sculpture, she also produced short films in the 1980s (Paranose Produktion) and space-specific choreographies in the 1990s. She was appointed Professor of Basic Design at the Hochschule Niederrhein in 2004 and has been Professor of Visual Arts at the Faculty of Architecture of the Technische Universitaet Munich since 2007.
Yvonne Leinfelder's videos and photographs bear the fictional qualities of a documentary as well as a reliable artificiality. Light and time have a pivotal function. It's not important which object is apparent, but in what light it appears.
Yvonne Leinfelder (*1972) studied at the Akademie der Bildenden Kuenste Munich.
Recent exhibitions and projects include: Interference/DVD Project, De Blinde Muur Breda NL,
es diu que les dones son romantiques, Fundacio Vallpalou, Lleida E (2011), Ausstellung zur
PIN.-Versteigerung, Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich, Nonstop, Raum 58, Munich (2010),
Dimke Egger Engl Erb Leinfelder, Kunstarkaden, Munich (2009), Connecting Principle,
Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK (2008).
Divas and Grandmothers: Kracauer's 'Photography' as Screenplay
Prof Winfried Pauleit, Bremen
Tuesday, 21 June 11, 2pm
New Seminar Room, Old Fine Art Building
Newcastle University
Siegfried Kracauer's essay 'Photography' was published on October 28th, 1927 in the Frankfurter Zeitung. Kracauer starts his essay by analyzing two photographs, a contemporary shot of a film diva and a historical photo of his grandmother taken in 1864. This essay was appropriated as part of his critical and theoretical writing on the media that also lays out grounds for his later 'Theory of Film' (1960).
I would like to demonstrate that this essay is not only a sustained philosophical reflection on photography, but that its writing is also informed by the very techniques of the cinema: travelling shots, montages, superimpositions. My hypothesis is that Kracauer's hidden agenda is to turn writing into a kind of screenplay – and in so doing, to transform our understanding of critical and analytical writing by means of a cinematic shift.
Kracauer's essay was published in Critical Inquiry, Spring 1993, Vol. 19, No 3, pp. 421–436, English translation by Thomas Y. Levin.
Art and Invisibility
Ludwig Seyfarth, Berlin
Thursday, 12 May 11, 5pm - 6pm
New Seminar Room, Old Fine Art Building
Newcastle University
Different types of invisibility can be classified. For example, radiation and other things which physically exist but are not visible. Or abstractions such as the national product or global peace, culture repressed things or official secrets. Invisibility can be temporal: what has already or nor yet happened. Or if something remains at the same place for a long time, it will be overlooked and is therefore invisible. Or people or objects can be invisible when they are hidden in a big crowd.
Visibility and invisibility are anchored in social processes and are called into question by artistic means. The lecture will discuss art and photography concerned with invisibility, including works by Douglas Huebler, Andreas Gursky, Richard Misrach or Georg Polke.
Ludwig Seyfarth is a freelance author and curator living in Berlin. Since 1987 he has regularly been producing articles for several magazines and exhibition catalogues. He conceived several exhibitions, recently „The Fate of Irony“ and „Transformed Objects“ together with Zdenek Felix at KAI 10 – Arthena Foundation, Duesseldorf. Seyfarth was a visiting professor from 2000-2001 at the Braunschweig School of Art and at the Hamburg School of Art 2002-2004. He also taught at the Stuttgart State Academy of Art and Design from 2004-2006. Since 2010 he is a visiting professor at the Muenster School of Art. In 2007 he has received the ADKV-ART COLOGNE price for art critic.
“Help me, Hurt me, Anthropology… Help me, Hurt me, Sociology”: Artists’ research and social research – Or, picturing irrationalities, picturing inequalities.
Alistair Robinson
Tuesday, 3 May 11, 5pm - 6pm
New Seminar Room, Old Fine Art Building
Newcastle University
Alistair Robinson is Programme Director at Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art.
Alistair Robinson joined NGCA in 2002. Prior to this he held posts at the Victoria & Albert Museum, National Museum of Photography, and The Lowry. He has given the first public shows to emerging UK artists who have secured widespread recognition such as Mark Titchner, Spartacus Chetwynd, Daniel Sinsel, and Alice Anderson, and also to artists internationally who have achieved critical acclaim and subsequently shown more widely in public spaces such as Harun Farocki,Claire Fontaine, Laurel Nakadate, Agathe Snow and Ursula Biemann. His publications include ‘Rank: picturing the Social Order’, and monographs on artists including David Harrison, Daniel Silver, Peter Liversidge, Paul Housley and Tim Brennan.
The title is part of the spoken text from Bruce Nauman’s ‘Anthro/Socio (Rinde Facing Camera)’, 1991.
'Between private and public', working collaborative as an artist duo with passers by.
EMPFANGSHALLE, Corbinian Böhm, Munich
Tuesday, 29 March 11, 5pm - 6pm
New Seminar Room, Old Fine Art Building
Newcastle University
The seminar focuses on collaborative strategies and methodologies in current fine art practice, exemplified in the work of EMPFANGESHALLE. The artists team of EMPFANGSHALLE develop their projects through conversation. The process is like playing ping-pong with an idea. Social structure is the 'sculptural raw material', conversation becomes the 'carving tool'. The seminar will give an inside into the practice of EMPFANGSHALLE focusing on the advantages of working in a team.
Munich based artists Corbinian Böhm and Michael Gruber have worked together since 1996 under the name EMPFANGSHALLE. EMPFANGSHALLE (reception hall) works not in hermetically sealed spaces but perceives itself as own space in the midst of society, an independent display that docks on to society and embraces it. Infrastructural interventions make invisible or unknown elements visible. The projects are temporary and precise staging that call upon moments of coincidence. The work of EMPFANGSHALLE is exhibited in museums and galleries internationally, including He Xiangning Art Museum, Shen Zhen, China (2010); the 3. Moskow Bienale, NCCA Moskow (2009); the 52nd Biennale d´Arte di Venezia (2007); and the 'Ars Electronica', Linz, Austria (2006).
“Expanded Cinema - Refusing and Seduction”
Dr. Cornelia Gockel, Academy of Fine Arts, Munich
Tuesday, 15 March 11, 5pm - 6pm
New Seminar Room, Old Fine Art Building
Newcastle University
Expanded Cinema was an attempt in the 60s and 70s to challenge the borders of traditional cinema. During that time artists and film makers dealt with different strategies like abstraction and interaction with the public as well as the use of different media. Some of those ideas go back to the early history of the cinema. Especially German film makers like Karl Valentin, Lotte Reininger, Walter Ruttmann and Oscar Fischinger were pioneers with their experimental films in the 20s. But Expanded Cinema is more than an experiment with a new medium, it’s a critical approach and a self-reflective artistic practise. The lecture shows how the ideas of Expanded Cinema still influence contemporary art with examples from Kara Walker, Wolfgang Tillmanns and Janet Cardiff & Georges Bures Miller.
Dr. Cornelia Gockel
Video games: Aesthetics and Phenomenology
Antonio Riello
Monday, 11 May 10, 11.00am - 12.30pm
Space 7, Culture Lab, Newcastle University
International artist Antonio Riello will discuss the video game in contemporary art.
"Basically I am interested in the video game as autonomous media. I think it is an important and significant opportunity for contemporary artists. Every time has had its own specific media and video games are marking the culture of this era in a significant way".
His presentation will include basic ideas and concepts about the medium, a brief overview of the history of art and video games, as well as an introduction to new approaches in this area.
Antonio Riello is an artist based in Asiago (Italy) and London (UK). He studied chemistry and architecture in Venice. In 1997 he designed and realized one of the first video game artworks in Europe: "ITALIANI BRAVA GENTE".
He teaches Video game Art at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera (Milano) and at Domus Academy (Milano). Antonio was a visiting lecturer at the Ruskin School of Arts, Oxford; the University of Reading; and Derby School of Art and Design.
As a teacher and artist, he is interested in the interface between contemporary art and video games. His artistic approach is based on the paradoxical inner nature of contemporary culture and way of life. The contemporary Italian society, with all its controversial issues, is the main playground of his artistic research. His most recent work is the Net Art project “ONLYTHEGOOD.ORG”.
Antonio Riello has shown his work worldwide. Recent exhibitions in the North East include:
2005 The world is a safer place, Globe Gallery, Newcastle
2009 B.SQUARE!, Baltic Center for Contemporary Arts, Gateshead
2009 Ashes to ashes, Globe Gallery, Newcastle
“The crisis of public space” or “How to make art in the urban context today”
Dr. Cornelia Gockel, Academy of Fine Arts, Munich
Monday, 13 July 09,
2.00pm - 3.00pm,
New Seminar Room, Old Fine Art Building
The public space is defined as an area, which is accessible for all citizens regardless of gender, ethnicity, age, race or socio-economic level. But the meaning has changed over the last years. Due to the privatization of public spaces like shopping malls or train stations people have been excluded from these areas. On the other hand new public spaces have been opened due to new technologies like the internet. Regarding this development, Cornelia Gockel shows in her lecture, how artists deal with this new challenge.
Dr. Cornelia Gockel
Arts/Health - Practice as Research
Miranda Lawry
University of Newcastle NSW, Australia
Wednesday, 28 May 08, 12.00pm - 1.00pm,
Culture Lab, Space 7
Miranda Lawry is an artist and academic at the University of Newcastle NSW, Australia. She is a founding member of the new Arts/Health Research and Practice Centre and is currently on study leave visiting institutions in Canada, the USA and England.
Miranda will outline several projects including a recent collaboration between University of Newcastle NSW and Columbia University in New York. The New Adventures of Mark Twain- Coalopolis to Metropolis explores a random
visit Mark Twain made to Newcastle NSW in 1895 while on a world speaking tour. The exhibition features the creative work of 10 artists and four writers and explores notions of travel, the archive, gender and politics. Miranda will also outline future projects established under the Arts/Health program.
About Miranda Lawry :
Miranda Lawry is an artist and educator whose teaching interests include
historical and contemporary practice in Photomedia, traditional black and white processes, Early 19th Century processes, artist books, digital imaging, and curatorial practice. Miranda teaches across the undergraduate, Honours and post graduate programs and has an active role as a researcher within the fine art discipline.
Miranda’s executive roles over the past 10 years has offered her opportunities to contribute to the development of programs such as University/TAFE Articulation, , partnerships with Eden Gardens, Hunter Valley Gardens, Hunter New England NSW Health, regional galleries and
university international exchange. She has held positions as Head of School for Fine Art and Assistant Dean International for the Faculty of Education and Arts.
Miranda has travelled widely to visit art schools in Germany, England, Singapore, Spain, Canada and the USA.
Performance Power Politics (PPP)
Brigitte Jurack
Wednesday, 12 March 08,
12.30pm - 1.00pm,
Culture Lab, Space 7
Foreign Investment (Fremd Anlage) , a group of artists/housewives/architects co -founded by Brigitte Jurack in 1996 initially focused on appropriating language and rituals used in the market economy.
Dedicated to invest energy, resources and thinking towards -for the group- unchartered territory, Foreign Investment has been working in the field of ex-change processes and engagement ('Relational Aesthetic').
Questions of product/branding/franchising/shared ownership are as relevant to artists as they are to the manufacturing and distribution industry. Using and simultaneously rejecting these strategies has created challenges in the development of new work for real time-space co-ordinates.
The illustrated presentation will focus on a small number of recent Foreign Investment performances, including the 1st of March 2008 Moonshine Walk - a Channel 4/Helena Housing commission.
www.foreign-investments.com
Brigitte Jurack
The Body as Display -
The Meaning of New Media in Art
Dr. Cornelia Gockel, Academy of Fine Arts, Munich
Wednesday, 5 March 08,
1.00pm - 1.45pm,
Culture Lab, Space 7
Over the last years the body has become one of the favourite, but also one of the most disputed subjects in scientific research. Because of new technologies the anatomic and natural borders of the body were overcome. These are technological advances in genetic engineering, new technologies in the reproductive medicine and modelling of the body through aesthetic surgery. Ethical, scientific and technical problems were not only discussed by experts, but also by the general public because of mass media. The body has developed into a display, where social politics and social historical discourses are obvious. In my lecture I would like to show the influence of new media in art with regards to perception of the body. The images of art and mass media are cultural expressions and influence each other. They mirror social processes.
Dr. Cornelia Gockel
TimeSlicing
Brian Degger
Wednesday, 12 December 07,
12.30pm - 2pm,
Culture Lab, Space 7
TimeSlicing with FLOSS software. Brian Degger talks about his work transversions for the Connecting Principle event in May, 2007. This piece uses a technique of transposition from distance-time (x-t) (or position-time) to time-distance (t-x)tx-transforms. In effect time is turned into space and space into time in the video. There are a number of software techniques to do this, of which he has used a script based video editing software called AVI synth that allows him to shred the video into single pixel slices and regenerate new video frames which he uses to generate the new video. He hopes to explore some of the aesthetic possibilities of this technique in relation to artistic collaborations and promote discussion on where next.
Brian Degger
My Greens and Your Yellows
Paul Wetter and Tony Harrington
Wednesday, 5 December 07,
12.00pm - 12.45pm,
Culture Lab, Space 7
Vietnam Arts in Development Capacity Building Programme
A cross sectoral approach to harnessing Vietnamese creativity in social development.
In his talk Paul Zetter will describe a 3 year programme that brought together a range of people from different disciplines. The programme was designed to build capacity and understanding by creating new connections and collaborations between professionals who don’t normally work together such as artists and social scientists, actors and psychologists. Four action learning arts in development projects were built into the programme and featured at an exhibition in Hanoi in 2006. The Forge is hosting Paul Zetter on a week long visit to the UK as part of an Arts Council England North East programme called Inspiring Internationalists.
About Paul Zetter and ensemble creative training and development:
Based in Vietnam for almost 10 years, the first five at the British Council in Hanoi, Paul is now a leading arts in development pioneer building on the ground breaking Lost Child performance projects of the David Glass Ensemble with new work and collaborations in Cambodia, Vietnam, Indonesia, Singapore and the Philippines. He was also technical advisor for the innovative three year Vietnam Arts In Development Capacity Building Programme funded by the Ford Foundation. More recently expanding the ensemble’s film making arm, ensemble films, Paul has filmed and directed three documentaries with the theme of creative transformation covering Vietnam first deaf contemporary dance company Together Higher and the Hue International Arts Festival.
About Tony Harrington and The Forge:
Tony Harrington has over twenty years of experience of working in the arts, education and cultural sectors. He has worked as an actor and a teacher and has combined his skills across the two disciplines in his career. He is the Director of The Forge which is the Arts and Education Agency for County Durham and Sunderland. He spent many years working in theatre in education and established the Participation Department at Northern Stage. He is a regular lecturer at Durham and Northumbria University and is often asked to contribute to conferences. He is a specialist in developing relationships between the Cultural Sector and policy makers and has been heavily involved in the development of a number of large scale Governmental arts in education initiatives including Creative Partnerships and Cultural Hubs. The Forge is a creative organisation specialising in developing high quality participatory arts projects, working with young people, artists and educators throughout County Durham, Sunderland, nationally and internationally.
www.intheforge.com
Cashpoint
Wolfgang Weileder
Wednesday 14 November 07,
12.30pm - 1pm,
Culture Lab, Space 7
In his presentation Wolfgang Weileder will give a short introduction to his latest project Cashpoint, followed by an open discussion.
Located in the urban centre, Cashpoint is a sculptural intervention that aims to stimulate a discussion about the commercialisation and economics of public space. It provides a framework through which questions about, and understanding of public space can be generated in an unexpected and provoking way.
Cashpoint is an abstracted full-scale version of an ATM (Automatic Teller Machine) that has been designed to randomly dispense a five-pound note once in every 24 hour period. The strategic situation of Cashpoint in the city centre environment initially proposes a direct and random interaction with the general public. The pseudo economic incentive is aiming to re-direct the expected and habitual flow of people through the city. This will inevitably question the patterns of cultural experience and behaviour that define our relationship and interaction with the urban fabric.
Cashpoint will be shown as part of a collaboration with Prof Michael Tawa at 'Back to the City', Newcastle Australia in January 2008.
The software for Cashpoint has been developed by Dan Jackson, Newcastle University.
Wolfgang Weileder
