Chillida-Gastprofessur

Workshop:

Monuments & Mobility

- Programm

A troubled relation to the materiality of sculpture runs deep in the history of art. It can be traced back to the persistent denials of ancient sculpture's polychrome skin, to anxieties of its backside and related demands of frontality, or to calls for suspending the exuberant physicality of its “theatrical" organisation of space. In its proximity to the tools, infrastructures and mundane materials that visibly and invisibly shape our lives – from brick and clay to aluminum and optical fiber – sculptural materiality always exceeded artistic codifications.

This study day engages with the myriad manifestations and promiscuous functions of an uncontainable materi- ality that has haunted theories of sculpture since the nineteenth century.

Through a series of art historical, curatorial and artistic contributions, the one-day event will focus on how artists and art historians dramatized or downplayed sculptural mutability in the post-war era. What are the social, political and aesthetic implications of an object's material entangle- mentwiththeworld? How have the hierarchies of race, gender, class or ability that define this world effected the production, reception and circulation of sculpture? What role has technology played in expanding the understanding of the medium beyond a coherent body? How and to what ends did artists mobilize the inherent instability of sculpture and its temporal conditions between art and objecthood?

In thinking through these and other questions the study day seeks to explore the past and present potentials of sculpture to unsettle art history's taxonomic impulse.

Archive treten zunehmend nicht nur als Speicherorte, sondern auch als soziale Räume oder Netzwerke mit partizipatorischem Potential in Erscheinung. Die Arbeit mit und am Archiv bringt bestimmte Narrative hervor, zeichnet selektiv Entwicklungen nach und entwirft somit auch Perspektivierungen für Dokumentationsstrategien. Insofern sind Archive keineswegs neutral. Sie bringen durch das gesammelte Material Erfahrungs- und Erinnerungsräume mit eigenen Qualitäten und Möglichkeiten zur Wissensproduktion und -Distribution hervor.

Mit SELECT. Konzeptionen aktiver Archive findet im Rahmen der Chillida Gastprofessur am Kunstgeschichtlichen Institut im Sommersemester 2020 ein Studientag statt, der anhand von unterschiedlichen Zugängen zu Archivbeständen Modelle des Sammelns und die Kontextualisierung von Material zur Debatte stellt. Ausgehend von den unterschiedlichen Konzeptionen werden ausgewählte Materialien näher in ihren Sammlungszusammenhängen betrachtet. Im Zentrum stehen Fragen dazu, wie Archive aktiv Formen der Identitätsbildung fördern oder selbst mittels Objekten, Praktiken und Methoden hervorbringen. Auf welche Weise werden personelle oder thematische Netzwerke, politische, persönliche und künstlerische Anliegen sichtbar? Mit welchen Strategien können Ressourcen künstlerisch, kuratorisch oder wissenschaftlich aktiviert und für die Öffentlichkeit zugänglich gemacht werden? Wie werden Archive zu Orten des zeitgenössischen Diskurses, zu Plattformen des Austauschs? Wie kann ein Archiv zum aktiven, in die Gegenwart und Zukunft wirkenden Erinnerungsort einer Gemeinschaft werden?

How can national and cultural identities be formed and defended against more dominant ideologies? Which roles are assigned to artistic production, its institutions and protagonists? The panel brings together two practitioners from the Basque Country offering insights into their academic/curatorial and artistic approaches.

Since the beginning of the modern age, the use of sculptural materials and media in the visual arts has changed significantly. Individually shaped marble, bronze or iron sculptures have almost disappeared. Contemporary installations now contain such an unlimited range of means of production that this diversity has itself become a signature aspect of contemporary art.

The conference takes its starting point in the supposed primordial scenes of connecting everyday life and art: the terms papier collé, ready-made and objet trouvé have become inscribed in the history of the avant-garde. They are responsible not only for the inclusion of new materials and media that were previously used solely in everyday life, but also for an allegedly innovative moment of appropriation that posits the obsolescence of old artistic techniques and their concepts of authorship.

The conference shifts the focus to the artistic practices in their respective transcultural and technological contexts. It addresses the genealogies of terms developed in different contexts, especially the assemblage, but also the bricolage, and récuperation. It will be questioned to what extent a different story can be developed in focusing on compiling materials with a certain origin, which connects the plastic arts with their cultural and, more recently, also technological contexts.

The work of Eduardo Chillida is usually viewed in terms of modernist art. This view is reinforced by Chillida’s own highly elaborate and eloquent accounts of his artistic practice. Chillida frequently positioned his work in a field of artistic and philosophical discourse that emphasises medium specificity and

a metaphysics of form. He referred to the exemplary nature of the art of Brancusi, Braque and Giacometti for his own creative work; and, in his philosophical exchange

with Martin Heidegger, developed the notion of sculptural space as an ontological space evoking the boundless nature of „being“ itself. The conference reconsiders the prevailing interpretations of Chillida’s work, based largely on his own statements, as a seamless continuation of a modernist aesthetic. It takes its cue from the observation that Chillida has rarely ever been viewed within the context of his contemporaries, specifically minimalist and conceptual artists such as Donald Judd, Sol LeWitt or Anthony Caro.