free school for art theory and practice
How can „autonomous work” and personal dependency on the clients be reconciled? What possibilities art criticism has today? Does the generational gap exist?
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The March seminar of the Free School for Art Theory and Practice launched by tranzit.hu is led by Georg Schöllhammer, Vienna-based critic, leader of the documenta 12 magazinproject, and project leader of tranzit.at. In the seminar our guest will be László Beke, art historian, the head of the Research Institute for Art History of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, with whom we will discuss art criticism.
Traits of Servility?
Working in documenta 12 and the Magazine project
Institutions of the art system continually face the problem of representation. According to Foucault institutions can be considered as places of power-knowledge disposition, where exclosure processes function repeatedly, but where “speakable” and “not speakable”, “true” and “not true” is discussed again and again.
In the time of “event-society” and “attention-economy” cultural institutions come under the suction effect of consumer demands and expectations. The consequences of these processes have an effect on the form and structure of the production and mediation of knowledge in these institutions, and on the recruitment of resources and staff for this production. The cultural work is carried out in a dense network of hierarchical relations, among which the personal dependency on the clients or customers is determining. To that extent “the autonomous work” assumes “traits of servility” (Virno). This is true for (almost) every participant of the art field.
Georg Schöllhammer, who was the leader of the documenta 12 magazine project – a network of more than 100 online and printed media – will speak about the possibilities and problems of cooperation with such a big institution as documenta.
Furthermore on the seminar Schöllhammer will give the outline of art criticism.
Date of the seminar: March 7-9, 2008
To take part in the seminar, please send a motivation letter to the office@tranzitinfo.hu address until the 3rd of March.
Participation in the seminar is free.
Georg Schöllhammer lives and works in Vienna. He is an independent author, curator and editor-in-chief of the magazine springerin - Hefte für Gegenwartskunst, which he co-founded in 1995. Georg Schöllhammer was editor in chief of documenta 12 and head of d12 magazines, an international cooperation project of more than hundred magazines worldwide, and editor for visual arts at the daily Der Standard and professor for visual culture at the University of Arts in Linz. Numerous publications on contemporary art, architecture, and art theory, as well as talks and lectures. Curator of exhibitions and projects, including: Lokale Modernen - Architektur an den Rändern der Sowjetunion, Frankfurt/Berlin; OSTWEST, Tanzquartier Wien, Vienna; formate. Wien ca. 2004, Bukarest/Vienna; Adieu Parajanov, Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna; Parallel Actions: Conceptual Tendencies in Central Europe from 1965 to 1980, New York and Leipzig; du bist die welt, Wiener Festwochen, Vienna; Parallele Realitäten, Yerevan; translocation (new) media/art, Generali Foundation, Vienna.
Georg Schöllhammer is project leader of tranzit.at and corresponding member of the Vienna Secession.