Email brzek@kunst.uni-frankfurt.de
Raum 05.B153
Telefon (069) 798 - 23465
Sprechstunden
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Avant-garde, Antagonism, Exit – The Socialist Art World in 1970s' West Germany and the Artistic-Political Activism of Hans-Peter Alvermann, Jochen Hiltmann, and Chris Reinecke (working title)
The 1960s figure as one of the 20th century's most far-reaching episodes for the politicization of everyday society, brought about by vocal mass movements. The 1970s, however, are regularly judged as their sober aftermath in which revolutionary vigor faced the often deadening labor of organization. The symbolism of the street was replaced by individualized groups competing along party lines. As part of this trajectory, fiery debates took place arguing over the efficacy of art and its place within society, torn between capitalist compromising and revolutionary potential. Magazines and events became the primary sites for these discussions, evolving directly out of different communist parties and sub-organizations, which spread widely across West Germany at the time. This deliberately socialist art world operating separately from the mainstream is the focus of my research, the aim of which is to document these as of yet under-explored protagonists and discourses.
In my dissertation, this network will serve as the backdrop for an analysis of the oeuvre of artists Hans-Peter Alvermann, Jochen Hiltmann, and Chris Reinecke, and their attempt at intersecting political action and artistic practice. The three artists share a supposed gap in their practice in the 1970s, as stated within art historical accounts, which repeatedly make a claim for their complete abandonment of art in favor of politics. My project focuses on this period of supposed inactivity in order to ask how the ever-bemoaned opposition between art and politics undergirding this imagined incommensurability can become the starting point for a renegotiation of 20th-century Western art history, in which a new idea of practice emerges, that could occupy artistic, quasi-artistic, and political ontologies all at once.
Sommersemester 2023:
Übung – Studiengalerie 1.357: Gemeinschaften im Blick der Kamera
Wintersemester 2022/2023:
Proseminar – Revolte, Kollektivität, Anti-Kunst: Einführung in die Kunstgeschichte der Situationistischen Internationalen und ihrer Netzwerke (ca. 1950–1972)
Sommersemester 2022:
Proseminar – Kunst als gesellschaftliches System: Institutionskritik seit 1968
2023
2022
2020
2018
2017
Avant-garde, Antagonism, Exit – The Socialist Art World in 1970s' West Germany and the Artistic-Political Activism of Hans-Peter Alvermann, Jochen Hiltmann, and Chris Reinecke (working title)
The 1960s figure as one of the 20th century's most far-reaching episodes for the politicization of everyday society, brought about by vocal mass movements. The 1970s, however, are regularly judged as their sober aftermath in which revolutionary vigor faced the often deadening labor of organization. The symbolism of the street was replaced by individualized groups competing along party lines. As part of this trajectory, fiery debates took place arguing over the efficacy of art and its place within society, torn between capitalist compromising and revolutionary potential. Magazines and events became the primary sites for these discussions, evolving directly out of different communist parties and sub-organizations, which spread widely across West Germany at the time. This deliberately socialist art world operating separately from the mainstream is the focus of my research, the aim of which is to document these as of yet under-explored protagonists and discourses.
In my dissertation, this network will serve as the backdrop for an analysis of the oeuvre of artists Hans-Peter Alvermann, Jochen Hiltmann, and Chris Reinecke, and their attempt at intersecting political action and artistic practice. The three artists share a supposed gap in their practice in the 1970s, as stated within art historical accounts, which repeatedly make a claim for their complete abandonment of art in favor of politics. My project focuses on this period of supposed inactivity in order to ask how the ever-bemoaned opposition between art and politics undergirding this imagined incommensurability can become the starting point for a renegotiation of 20th-century Western art history, in which a new idea of practice emerges, that could occupy artistic, quasi-artistic, and political ontologies all at once.
Sommersemester 2023:
Übung – Studiengalerie 1.357: Gemeinschaften im Blick der Kamera
Wintersemester 2022/2023:
Proseminar – Revolte, Kollektivität, Anti-Kunst: Einführung in die Kunstgeschichte der Situationistischen Internationalen und ihrer Netzwerke (ca. 1950–1972)
Sommersemester 2022:
Proseminar – Kunst als gesellschaftliches System: Institutionskritik seit 1968
2023
2022
2020
2018
2017