Symposium with Beatrice von Bismarck (Leipzig/Berlin), Julia Bryan-Wilson (Berkeley), Helmut Draxler (Berlin/Nuremberg), Andrea Fraser (Los Angeles), Renée Green (Cambridge, Mass.), Hannes Loichinger (Lueneburg), Sven Luetticken (Amsterdam), John Miller (New York), Marion von Osten (Berlin), Gerald Raunig (Zurich), Stefan Roemer (Berlin), André Rottmann (Berlin), Simon Sheikh (London), and Ulf Wuggenig (Lueneburg)

Saturday, June 14, 2014, 11 am - 7:30 pm and Sunday, June 15, 2014, 11 am - 3 pm
Leuphana University Lueneburg, Lecture Hall 5, Scharnhorststraße 1, D-21335 Lueneburg

The Kunstraum of Leuphana University Lueneburg opened in 1994. Its first project was »Services«, for which Andrea Fraser and Helmut Draxler collaborated with the founding members of the institution, Beatrice von Bismarck, Diethelm Stoller, and Ulf Wuggenig. The project, also conceived as a forum for discussion, raised a number of questions that had a significant impact on the subsequent project-oriented work of the Kunstraum. The topics addressed included the type of »service« that artists render for agents and institutions of the artistic field but also for society, the way in which project-based art can be conjoined with the interests of specific addressees – cultural constituencies –, and through which actors and mechanisms artistic production is transformed into legitimate culture.

Since the 1990s, the international art field has undergone diverse transformations that according to several authors have fundamentally called its relative autonomy into question. The discourses on creativity and innovation, the problematization of the effects of so-called artistic critique, the increasing orientation towards visitors and mediation requested from exhibition venues, the transformation of the field of universities and art schools, including among other things, the installation of curatorial programs, and the implementation of »artistic research« allow conclusions on societal changes resonating in various fields of cultural production.

Against this altered background, »Art and its Frames – Continuity and Change« addresses issues that accompanied the foundation of the Kunstraum twenty years ago. The notion of frame in the symposium’s title refers to its general connotations, but also and more specifically to its use in the artistic subfield of early institutional critique by artists such as Daniel Buren and Hans Haacke or authors such as Craig Owens. In their artistic or theoretical production, they reflectively approached sites, spaces and the institutional fabric of the artistic field and to some extent also the more comprehensive field of power in which it is embedded. Today, the potentialities of the term »frame«, employed as a theoretical concept by authors covering a wide range from Jacques Derrida to Erving Goffman, appear by no means exhausted.

Critique, collectivity, forms of knowledge, and heteronomy are four of the predominant points of reference of the presentations and discussions of »Art and its Frames – Continuity and Change« taking place on June 14 and 15 at the Kunstraum of Leuphana University Lueneburg.

The event will be held in English language.

Program

Saturday, June 14, 2014

11:00 am
Address of welcome and introduction by Ulf Wuggenig

11.15 am -12:35 pm
Andrea Fraser
»Services«, W.A.G.E.: Two Moments, Two Models

André Rottmann
From the Dialectics of Decoration to the Display of Networks: The Services of »Institutional Critique«

12:35 pm -1:30 pm
Lunch break

1:30 pm-3:30 pm
Marion von Osten
A New Address: On Instituent Practices

Beatrice von Bismarck
Critical Hospitalities

Simon Sheikh
Lost in the Former West: Propositions for Reframing

3:30 pm-4:00 pm
Coffee break

4:00 pm-5:20 pm
Stefan Römer
Best Before. How to Keep it Fresh! The artist, the space, and the political in 1990s german art – about the art-activist group »FrischmacherInnen«

Hannes Loichinger
Art and Agency: readymades belong to everyone®

5:20 pm-5:30 pm
Break

5:30 pm-7:30 pm
Sven Lütticken
Cultural Revolution

Gerald Raunig
Machinics of Political Art

Helmut Draxler
The Politics of Relational Form

8:00 pm
Dinner

Sunday, June 15, 2014

11:00 am-12:30 pm
Renée Green
Other Planes of There

Julia Bryan-Wilson
Performing Labors: Handicraft in Recent Art

12:30 pm-1:00 pm
Lunch break

1:30 pm-3:00 pm
John Miller
Educational Complex

Ulf Wuggenig
Art and Some of its Social Frames

Kunstraum of Leuphana University Lüneburg
Scharnhorststr. 1
D-21335 Lüneburg