Art "In-Formation"
Communication Aesthetics and Network Structures in Art from the 1960s to
the Present

30th November - 1st December, 2007

A Conference of the Research Association Artists - Publications at the
Weserburg - Museum for Modern Art Bremen, Teerhof 20, 28199 Bremen, Germany

Information, program, registration:
http://www.nmwb.de/nmwb_deu/1tp_aspc.php?aspc=5

With the emergence of new communication media, a wide variety of
conceptual art practices pursued the proliferation of their works via
channels of mainstream media. Since the late 1960ies artists have
strategically explored the possibilities of inserting critical information
into communication systems as impulses of empowerment to establish a
critical counter public. Based on old and new communication channels,
including print media (newspapers, journals, artists' books, art editions,
copy art, billboards), postal services (Mail Art), television or fax
transmission and computer technology (Net Art) as tools for critical and
political engagement, artworks in fusion with communication media bear
witness to the rapid transformation of interaction modes in the 20th and
21st centuries. "Art In-Formation" explores the alternative dimensions of
established technological facilities in terms of their creative potential
and as platforms for the formation of internationally networked artist
initiatives, particularly in Eastern Europe, and Latin America whose
dissident group structures anticipated new forms of international
collaborations. In distinction to artist group formations of the classical
avant-garde, strategic media usage since the 1960ies has clearly
contributed to rather inclusive than exclusive new forms of
collaboration.The symposium intends to confront the most current
developments in communication and information based artworks with
pioneering historical works, which will allow for a better examination and
contextualization of key debates on conceptual developments and
collaborative systems in late 20th and early 21st century culture.

Program

Friday, 30th November

09:30 Registration

10:00 Welcome and Introduction
Carsten Ahrens (Director Weserburg)
Anne Thurmann-Jajes and Ursula Frohne

Session I: Art as Information Politics

10:30 Barbara Kunz (Basel), Dan Graham\'s In-Formation: Photography as Cliché

11:15 Coffee Break

11:45 Heather Diack (Toronto), Nobody can Commit Photography alone: Early
Photoconceptualism and the Limits of Information

12:30 Lunch Break
Possibility for a Guided Tour of the Museum or of the Research Centre for
Artists' Publications and the Exhibitions

Session II: Collective Art Projects

14:00 Rachel Mader (Zurich / Bern), "question the entire culture we take
for granted" (Group Material, 1980) - Strategies of Radical
Counter-Information in the New York of the 1980s

14:45 Anja Gossens (Karlsruhe), The Kitchen and Automation House -
Collaborative, Didactic, Subversive Artistic Involvement in Information
and Communication Media 1966-1976 in New York City

15:30 Coffee Break

16:00 Sabine Hänsgen (Cologne), Collective Actions: Event and
Documentation in the Aesthetics of Moscow Conceptualism

Session III: Counter Cultural Networks

16:45 Cristina Freire (São Paulo), Mail Art as an Open System during
Military Dictatorship in Brazil

17:30 Kornelia Röder (Schwerin), The Mail Art Network as an Action and
Communication Space for Cultural Counter Movements in the 1960s and 1970s
and its Relevance to Contemporary Art

18:15 Break

19:00 Keynote Lecture: Eric de Bruyn (Groningen), Dynamic Labyrinths and
Network Errors: Trajectories of the 1960s

Dinner

Saturday, 1st December

Session IV: Art by Communication Media

10:30 Louis Kaplan (Toronto), Art by Telephone: Of Telecommunication
Aesthetics and Prank Callers

11:15 Benjamin Greenman (Glasgow), "Expose Your Self" / "I am Still
Alive": Ethics and Finitude in the New Communicative Art of 1970

12:00 Coffee Break

12:30 Antje Krause-Wahl (Mainz), Distributing Ideas with Magazines - Andy
Warhol's Interview and Ike Ude's aRude

13:15 Isabelle Schwarz (Hannover), Artistic Networking: Early Digital
Media Projects

14:00 Coffee Break with Snacks

15:00 Tobias Vogt (Berlin), TV-Nightwatch. "Visible World" by
Fischli/Weiss as Unseen at Documenta X

15:45 Keynote Lecture: Astrit Schmidt-Burkhardt (Salzburg), Maciunas
Diagrammatic Net-Works

16:45 Concluding Discussion

17:00 Possibility for a Guided Tour of the Museum or of the Research
Centre for Artists - Publications and the Exhibitions

The Conference is organized by the Research Association Artists
Publications, which is founded by University of Bremen, Jacobs University,
University of the Arts, Research Centre for East European Studies and
Research Centre for Artists Publications / Weserburg, Museum for Modern
Art and in cooperation with the University of Cologne.

Contact person: Syelle Hase, Studienzentrum für Künstlerpublikationen /
Research Centre for Artists Publications at the Weserburg -
Museum for Modern Art, Teerhof 20, 28199 Bremen, e-mail: haseweserburg.de