Art and Society

Akram Zaateri: The Desert Panorama (2007)

On June 17, as part of the event series "documenta lessons. Learning from, with and without art", there will be a discussion with María do Mar Castro Varela and Luisa Standop.

In this conversation, María do Mar Castro Varela and Luisa Standop will ask how artivism - the fusion of art and activism - develops strategies and forms of expression that question or reorganize existing categories of perception. The discussion will go beyond the obvious contrasts between bourgeois aesthetics and artivism by exploring the multi-layered entanglements and contradictions on the way to a possible new definition of grace. Is art just decoration or a potential tool for social change?

Date: Tuesday, June 17, 2025
Time: 6.30 pm
Location: Heraku | WH22 documenta fifteen, Werner-Hilpert-Straße 22, 34117 Kassel

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April 23, 2025 16:30h | University of Regensburg

This keynote talk addresses the role of the archive and the courtroom as normative sites of historical memory in situations of (post)conflict and transition from violent pasts, as they interlock the levels of the state, civil society, and the individual. Both, the archive and the courtroom act and create new political subjects, normative narratives, and state practices that are involved in the dispute over historical memory. By examining how justice and, in particular, testimony are staged in contemporary visual art, for example from the Balkans and Latin America, the presentation addresses emerging artistic and (non-)institutional practices that critically reflect on the judicial space, its transfer and translation in post-conflict situations. How do artists and other civil society actors intervene in and engage aesthetically with the courtroom both as a real space and as a forum? Why do they imagine and demand alternative spaces of justice? Following the concepts of transfer and translation as transposition and resemantization of meanings, institutions, and norms, the presentation will elaborate on what is referred to as 'juridical humanity.

the conference program

Saturday, 01.03.25, 5.30 pm

Espace DIAPHANES Berlin, Dresdener Str. 118, 10999 Berlin

The presentation is accompanied by an exhibition of the plant fiber works for the book and a sound performance by Alexandra Gelis.

eBook already available as open access here
https://www.diaphanes.net/titel/eco-operations-7138

in cooperation with the Department of Art and Musicology, Center for Contemporary Art, University of Graz & Strange Tools Research Lab, University of Cincinnati

16.11.24/10.00-11.45 h Panel 5: Blindspots of Modernity 2

10:10 - 10:35 Kristopher Holland: The Bombast of Beuys is Overrated: Entangling Art, the Black Radical Tradition, and Politics After 'Duchamp's Telegram'

10:35 - 11:00 Bilgin Ayata: "Dying more elegantly": Displacement, Dehumanization of Deterrence at the EU Border

11:00 - 11:25 Liliana Gómez: Weaving Space. Entangled Modernities and Latin American Modern Art of the Postwar

11:25 - 11:45 Discussion

Further information: https://www.museum-joanneum.at/kunsthaus-graz/unser-programm/kalender/event/entanglements-the-politics-of-aesthetics-and-retelling-of-modernisms-and-modern-art

25.10.24/14-16h Panel Oceanic and Terrestrial Agents (Moderation: Julia Schade, Catherin Persing)

01 Liliana Gómez: Water Weavers and Decolonial Liquid Cartographies

02 Friedrich Balke: Death Ships. The Dark Side of the Oceanic Turn

03 Katrin Köppert: The Anthropo(s)cenes of Digital Blackface

http://www.transforminganthropo-s-cene.de/

Program (Download)

Lectures 18-20h each, Untere Königsstraße 71

Moderation: Prof. Dr. Christina Diez and Prof. Dr. Liliana Gómez

Thursday October 31, 2024, 18h Museum Fridericianum

Lectures

Prof. Dr. Dieter Pohl (Alpen-Adria University Klagenfurt)

Prof. Dr. Emad Helal (Suez Canal University Ismailia, Egypt)

Prof. Dr. Christian Fuhrmeister (Central Institute for Art History, Munich)

Moderation: Prof. Dr. Liliana Gómez

Conferencia Internacional | Universidad de Kassel

3 de julio 2024, Science Park
Universitätsplatz 12, 34127 Kassel

Lecture Liliana Gómez "Ecologías líquidas y ecofeminismo en las prácticas
artísticas contemporáneas" | 14:30h

4 de julio 2024, Bootshaus
Auedamm 27a, 34121 Kassel

Lecture Mateo Chacón Pino"Posiciones artísticas sobre el extractivismo en el desierto de Atacama" | 10:30h

3 Documentaries (20 minutes each)

Directed by George Arbid

Production: Sharjah Architecture Triennial, 2023

Tuesday 25.06.2024, 12:30-14h

Fridericianum, side wing

Transiciones en disputa. Prácticas, estéticas, políticas

June 10-11, 2024 Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Bogotá

Program: http://www.calas.lat/sites/default/files/programa_transiciones_1.pdf

Together with the student council, the Department of Art and Society of German Studies has organized a series of events on future prospects for Germanists in summer semester 24. There will be three evening events on career prospects that can show students the diverse and exciting professional fields that open up for Germanists.

We have therefore invited representatives from the Literaturhaus Kassel, Staatstheater Kassel and the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) to present the cultural and academic work of these institutions, which is often carried out by Germanists.

Liliana Gómez | Liquid Turn: New Approaches from Environmental Aesthetics, Friday 26.04.2024 13-14h.

Liliana Gómez:"'Who's Afraid of Representation?': Dissonant Archives and the Aesthetics of Dissent in Art," January 26-27, 2024, University of Regensburg

The CELA 2025 conference focuses on the concept of the oceanic as "thinking with water" to explore counter-currents in hegemonic systems and ideologies, and discussing notions of liquefaction and fluidity as metaphors and allegories. The gathering addresses petrified economic and political models such as colonialism and extractivism, and the counter-currents that take on aesthetic forms of care. The discourse of globalization implements a "hydraulic order" in which flows are framed as universal developments while ignoring the counter-currents and frictions of this "liquid modernity" (Bauman 2000), just as it disregards environmental harm.

The conference seeks to juxtapose critical epistemological perspectives and aesthetic approaches on care, fabulated and formulated by arts, literature as social praxis, and other cultural practices, in a productive way that unveils aquatic relationships and dismantles notions of petrified aesthetic forms, thereby creating new common spaces. With the intention of fostering sustainable relationships and immersing ourselves in aquatic ecologies, we aim to enable, identify, and imagine practices of "thinking with care" (Puig de la Bellacasa 2012). "Thinking with water" allows us to surface the contested territories of extractivism and the hegemonic developmentalist currents along with their economic implications. At the same time, we propose reflecting on new fluid dynamics beyond a world of exploitation.

The workshop aims to initiate a discussion from the perspective of ecological humanities and critical reflection to rehearse collaborative relations with the oceanic, including more-than-human beings, beyond the instrumentalization of water: the oceanic not only as an abstract concept and a metaphor, but as a praxis recognizing that "waters are carefully placed or embodied in specific materialities and spacetimes" (Chen 2013).With the perspective of the oceanic, the conference wants to initiate a search for a common vocabulary to recognize aquatic ecologies as eco-social spaces relevant for a transformation beyond an extractivist model.

Wednesday July 2 // 14-19h
ZUB, Gottschalkstr. 28a

Thursday July 3 // 9-14h
Bootshaus der University of Kassel
Auedamm 27a

Program

Global Modernities

Prof. Dr. Liliana Gómez, Dr. Charlotte Bank, Lada Nakonechna

Since the turn of the century and the so-called "global turn" in cultural history, the notion of modernity as a purely Western phenomenon has been widely critiqued and the importance of re-thinking modernity as global and interconnected stressed by numerous authors. This has included debates about appropriate terminology.[1] Whether we chose to talk about "other", "global", "multiple", "alternative" or "non-Western" modernities, the need to redefine this phenomenon that has left no region untouched and studying its historical connections to colonialism and imperialism remains as important as ever. In the field of art history more specifically, this has led to numerous research projects and publications that have centered on artistic production outside the art centres of the West, while still keeping the interdependent nature of the international and global art scene and market in mind. As Piotr Piotrowski has argued, art history must be horizontal and open to all peripheries as well as to the former centres.[2 ] This approach is discerned in the work of numerous art historians, who have examined the rise of local artistic movements and theoretical approaches of locations outside of the Western centers, as well as educational endeavours, with each study adding to our understanding of the history of modern art as a rich and diverse global field of scholarship.

With this lecture series, we will examine art historiography as part of global modernization processes and invite scholars focusing on different regions in the Global South and Eastern Europe whose work is and has been seminal to these debates in order to discuss how notions of modernity were shaping art practices throughout the twentieth century.

[1 ] E.g. Appadurai, A., Modernity at Large, Cultural Dimension of Globalization, Minneapolis/London: University of Minnesota Press, 2010 (1996); Chakrabarty, D., Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000; Gaonkar, D. P. (ed.), Alternative Modernities, Durham & London, Duke University Press, 2001; Mitchell, T. (ed.), Questions of Modernity. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000.

[2] Piotrowski, Piotr: In the Shadow of Yalta. Art and the Avant-garde in Eastern Europe, 1945-1989, trans. Anna Brzyski, London: Reaktion Books, 2009

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