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Department Storage/Study Room/Exhibition Gallery and exhibition “Jochen Lempert / Peter Piller Reconsidering Photography: Birds”

26 October 2017

exhibition runtime: 27 October 2017 to 4 February 2018

On 26 October 2017, the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg (MKG) will reopen its Photography and New Media
Department. This marks the conclusion of the first phase of the extensive renovations made possible by a grant of
600,000 euros from the Hermann Reemtsma Foundation within the framework of the initiative Kunst auf Lager. MKG
owns one of Germany’s foremost collections of photography, comprising some 75,000 works spanning the entire history
of photography from its invention to the present day. At around 120 square meters, the storage area has been expanded
substantially. This means that the museum finally has the necessary space and facilities for proper storage and optimal
climatic conditions for its precious holdings. In a study room adjoining the storage area, staff and registered guests can
now examine and work with the original photographs. A new, centrally located 140-square-meter exhibition gallery will
let MKG present its photographic collection in dialogue with contemporary themes and authors. Kicking off the series are
photographers Jochen Lempert and Peter Piller with the exhibition Reconsidering Photography: Birds, whose opening
will coincide with the reopening of the collection on 26 October 2017. Including the grant from the Hermann Reemtsma
Foundation, MKG has been able to raise a total of one million euros to safeguard the future of the Photography and New
Media Department. The funds were contributed by various sponsors for the restoration and framing of the historical
photographs, for the scholarly study of the collection, for the survey show ReVision in 2016, for a collection catalogue,
and for work on MKG Sammlung Online, where 9,000 works are already available in digital form.

Prof. Dr. Sabine Schulze, Director of MKG: “Thanks to the museum’s progressive collection activities and its great
openness to contemporary art since its inception, MKG houses today unique testaments to the history of photography. I
am grateful for the generous support of the Hermann Reemtsma Foundation, which helps us to preserve these precious
holdings for subsequent generations. The new study room is a particularly useful addition, substantially improving the
accessibility of the collection and thus the opportunities for scholarly research. And the permanent exhibition gallery we
now have available to us will give the splendid Photography and New Media Department a stronger presence as visitors
make their way through MKG.”

Dr. Sebastian Giesen, Managing Director of the Hermann Reemtsma Foundation: “The two museum fathers
Justus Brinckmann (MKG) and Alfred Lichtwark (Kunsthalle) shared a fondness for photography. MKG reflects the
passion of these two photographic pioneers in its collection. After the foundation was laid circa 1900, the following
decades saw the growth of one of the leading photography collections in Germany. Thanks to the long-term storage that
has now been established, the in-depth study of the holdings, their scholarly discussion and especially the improved
accessibility, we are now becoming aware for the first time of the full scope of this unique treasure trove. A wonderful
project for the Kunst auf Lager alliance. Thank you, MKG, for this marvelous opportunity!”

MKG was the first museum in Germany to begin toward the end of the 19th century to acquire photography as an
independent medium, presenting it in exhibitions starting in 1911. The museum thus played a pioneering role in this
field. Since those early years, the holdings have grown in quality and scope to comprise a unique assortment of
photographs, including an unrivaled collection of daguerreotypes as well as the Juhl Collection of gum bichromate prints
from the era of Pictorialism still in their original frames. From the 1950s onward, MKG acquired key examples of classical
modernism, among them works by Erich Andres, Herbert Bayer, Willi Beutler, Alfred Ehrhardt, Hugo Erfurth, Andreas
Feininger, Heinz Hajek-Halke, Walter Hege, Fritz Henle, Lotte Jacobi, Peter Keetmann, Erna Lenvai-Dircksen, Helmar
Lerski, Madame d’Ora, Albert Renger-Patzsch, August Sander, Franz Schensky, Otto Steinert, Alfred Tritschler, Edward
Weston, and Paul Wolff.

In early 2014, fourteen partners (primarily foundations) joined forces to form the nationwide initiative Kunst auf Lager.
Bündnis zur Erschließung und Sicherung von Museumsdepots, with the aim of supporting museums in preserving and
researching their valuable cultural assets. In a unique pilot project initiated by this group, the Hermann Reemtsma
Foundation, the Kulturstiftung der Länder, the Wüstenrot Foundation, and the ZEIT-Stiftung Ebelin und Gerd Bucerius
are working together to ensure the lasting conservation of the endangered photographic collection of MKG. In addition to
setting up new storage facilities, a study room, and an exhibition gallery, the measures also include restoring selected
historical core holdings and the step-by-step scholarly investigation of the extensive collection with the aim of providing
better public accessibility. For further information on the alliance, see www.kunst-auf-lager.de.

The Hermann Reemtsma Foundation financed the new storage facilities, study room, and exhibition gallery. The
objects are still located in different parts of the building, on crowded shelves and in drawers in largely non-climatecontrolled
storage areas. In order to store the exhibits professionally and under optimal conservation conditions, the new
storage area was renovated and equipped with the necessary furnishings and climate control systems. Now the objects
can be moved to their new home. In the future, the photographs will be stored at a constant temperature of 18 degrees
and 40 percent humidity. The study room enables employees of MKG, visitors, and professionals to view the original
objects for research purposes independent of exhibitions. The provision of a central exhibition gallery on the second floor
offers the opportunity to present the holdings in the Photography and New Media Department in changing shows that
address current issues.

The construction measures were flanked by two restoration projects. The Kulturstiftung der Länder (Cultural
Foundation of the German States) sponsored the restoration of 280 daguerreotypes from the 1840s and 50s in the MKG
collection. These early photographs were affected by “glass disease,” a process of decay in which copper carbonate leaches
out and clouds the glass plates. Besides detracting from the brilliance of the objects, the disease threatened to spread
from the glass to the framed photographs. Now that the plates have been cleaned and the glass replaced, this large group
of objects of exceptional value can be moved to the new storage rooms.

The funds provided by the Wüstenrot Foundation are being used mainly to restore a premier collection of 35 original
framed gum bichromate art photography prints dating from around 1900 that MKG acquired from the Juhl Collection in
1916/17. The restoration included the historical frames and in some cases also the conservation of loose layers of paint.
The wooden rear panels, whose emissions endanger the gum bichromate prints, were replaced as well.
To enable scholarly research into the collection, the ZEIT-Stiftung Ebelin und Gerd Bucerius is sponsoring a
research assistant until 2018. This has made it possible to publish more than 9,000 important works on MKG Sammlung
Online. MKG is thus the first museum in Germany to make its photographic collection available online. Since lightsensitive
photographic works must for the most part be stored in the dark, it is all the more important to make the
holdings available for research on the internet.

In the new exhibition series Reconsidering Photography, the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg (MKG) invites
contemporary photographers to relate their own work to examples from the Photography and New Media Collection.
Kicking off the series are Jochen Lempert (b. 1958) and Peter Piller (b. 1968), two photographers whose methods could
hardly be more different. Lempert’s motifs from everyday nature and culture meet up with images of unintentional origin
contributed by Piller. In Reconsidering Photography: Birds, Lempert and Piller collaborate as artists and curators.
Drawing on the photographic collection of MKG as a resource, they have compiled from the historical material a selection
of bird pictures that they combine with their own photographs. On view from 27 October 2017, the exhibition features
around 100 exhibits. Birds are a recurring motif in Jochen Lempert’s work, and for the show at MKG he has arranged his
motion studies and observations of birds in a new room installation. Peter Piller has worked to date primarily with found
images, which he subjects to shifts in meaning. In his new series behind time (2017), which debuts at MKG, he himself
takes camera in hand to deliberately capture moments when a bird cannot be optimally seen and which would be
considered a failure in wildlife photography.

Jochen Lempert presents works in which birds are the central theme. Anschütz (2005) takes its title from Ottomar
Anschütz, who conducted motion studies of storks in flight. For Ptaki-Birds (1997–2005), Lempert photographed stuffed
birds displayed in natural history museums in profile, thus establishing new kinship relationships. Lempert studied biology
and pursues the tensions between culture and nature. Since the early 1990s, he has been investigating the ties between
photography and biology. He calls into question the objectivity of photography as a documentary medium and at the same
time underlines the poetry of scientific terminology with his image titles. His photographs appear random and incidental,
featuring creatures we often overlook: snails, aphids, fireflies, or the city pigeon Martha (2002). Lempert’s black-andwhite
photographs bear the traces of the unintended. He makes the materiality of his works palpable by installing them
unframed on the wall.

Peter Piller’s high-resolution C-prints by contrast seem like a testament to the technical possibilities of photography. Bird
watching was already a hobby in his youth, and now he has outfitted himself with high-tech equipment with which he lays
in wait for his feathered subjects. The waiting and boredom are a constitutive part of the artistic process. In behind time
(2017), Piller captures in this way moments that a wildlife photographer would describe as ‘too late’: the moment when the
bird flies away and all hopes of a sharp, detailed image are dashed. Piller has worked thus far mainly with found images,
which he arranges together in new ways to produce shifts in meaning, for example in the series In Löcher blicken, in which
men stare into holes in the ground. As a collector of imagery, Piller is intrigued by the myriad possibilities and associations
that can be evoked by a picture – whether in constellation with others or as the one crucial photographic moment.

What the two photographers share is their penchant for a new and creative combinationing of images into new
compositions that convey meanings that are more than the sum of the individual parts. While Lempert associatively groups
his pictures, combining them in different ways and thus encouraging comparisons, Piller appropriates existing material
and arranges it as a tableau or series.

The selection made by the artists gives only an inkling of the almost infinite possibilities of the archive. In the presentation,
a table uses bird pictures to give viewers an idea of the some 75,000 photographs in the MKG collection. The works chosen
by Lempert and Piller range in date from the turn of the last century to the 1960s. Photos of a Manchurian crane, a wattled
crane, an eagle owl, and a tawny owl originated in the Hamburg studio of J. Hamann. Taken circa 1905, the colorized
photographs show stuffed birds displayed in dioramas. Walter Hege’s bird images were featured in 1933 in the Nazi
publication Deutsche Raubvögel (German Birds of Prey). Hege also produced a number of bird documentaries, for example
Am Horst der wilden Adler (Aerie of the Wild Eagle, 1932) and Uhu als Jagdhilfe (The Eagle Owl as Hunting Companion,
1934), from which he extracted photographic stills. Karl Stülcken in turn published his photos in scientific photo series for
scholarly publications, and his photos became known to the general public through his book Der kleine Vogel Greif (The
Little Raptor,1958).

Photographs: The exhibition shows recent works by Jochen Lempert and Peter Piller as well as historical photographs by
Harold Egerton, Johann H. W. Hamann, Walter Hege, Karl Stülcken, Hedda Walther, and others.
The exhibition accompanies the inauguration of new facilities for the Photography and New Media Department, made
possible by the Hermann Reemtsma Foundation within the framework of the Kunst auf Lager alliance. In addition to new
climate-controlled storage and a study room, an exhibition area has now been created for the regular presentation of the
photographic department. The exhibition on the subject of Birds curated by Jochen Lempert and Peter Piller is the first in
the new series Reconsidering Photography.

Artist talk
10 December 2017, 3 pm, with Jochen Lempert and Peter Piller

Curator-guided tours
7 December 2017, 7 pm, Dr. Esther Ruelfs, Head of the Photography and New Media Department
21 January 2018, 3 pm, Dr. Cathrin Hauswald, Photography and New Media Department

Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich, 26. 10. 2017 ‐ 04. 03. 2018

Japanese artist Nobuyoshi Araki (b. 1940) is one of the most prolific and provocative photographers of our time. His work spans a wide range of topics, from highly erotic representations of women to artificial still lifes, botanical portraits, photo-journalistic depictions of everyday life, and architectural photography – and almost diary-like shots of himself and his late wife.

Composed of 28 diptychs, “Tokyo” (1969–1973) is the template for one of Araki’s first book projects and stands at the beginning of his long-term engagement with Tokyo’s lifestyles and urban environment. Opposites such as anonymous and familiar, clothed and nude, interior and exterior worlds function as subtle references to the separation between public and private life, between dream and reality.

In 2004, the original edition of the book “Tokyo” (1973) was acquired with the support of PIN. The exhibition introduces the Tokyo series, supplemented by additional early experimental photographs, as well as artists’ books from the sixties and seventies.

The Italian Copenhagen-based art historian, curator and critic Diana Baldon has been named Director of Fondazione Modena Arti Visive, one of Italy’s newest visual arts institutions based in Modena. The new foundation brings together three of the city’s key cultural institutions: the Galleria Civica di Modena—one of Italy’s oldest and most respected Italian contemporary art centres—together with the more recent Fondazione Fotografia Modena and the Museo della Figurina. Already at the helm of the Fondazione Fotografia Modena since June 1 2017, between 2011 and 2016 Diana Baldon was Director of Malmö Konsthall and Index – The Swedish Contemporary Art Foundation where she staged solo exhibitions by Nina Beier, Cornelius Cardew, Joan Jonas, Goshka Macuga, Ad Reinhardt, Lili Reynaud-Dewar and Heimo Zobernig among others. Prior to her appointments in Sweden, she worked at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna as Curator-in-Residence and as a member of the scientific and artistic teaching staff (2007–2011). After receiving a Master’s degree in Creative Curating from Goldsmiths College, University of London, in 2002, she has curated exhibitions internationally for many institutions and Biennials, such as MIT List Visual Art Center in Cambridge, MA, and Mudam Luxembourg – Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean (both 2017), the Generali Foundation in Vienna (2012) and the Second Athens Biennale (2009). Her critical writing has been featured in numerous artists’ catalogues and international magazines such as Artforum, Texte zur Kunst, and Afterall. Fondazione Modena Arti Visive  Coinciding with Baldon’s nomination, Fondazione Modena Arti Visive has been founded by the City of Modena and the private philanthropic foundation Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Modena to present contemporary art and visual culture within the framework of the heritage and the driving forces of three cultural institutions, namely the Galleria Civica di Modena, the Fondazione Fotografia Modena, and the Museo della Figurina. While reflecting the individual paths of these public and private cultural institutions with a view to strengthening their individual identities, the aims of the new foundation include the showcasing of the most innovative international artistic practices of the twenty-first century, the promotion of forms of activation and contamination between various disciplines and contexts, and the valorisation of the collections with which it is entrusted. Furthermore, through theoretical and critical research, it will investigate the radical transformation that art and imagery have undergone over recent decades in the wake of the impact of new technologies as well as the new contexts and platforms available for the sharing of information and services.

Albertina, Vienna, 25. 10. 2017 – 21. 01. 2018

“The Americans”, a group of photos shot by Robert Frank between 1955 and 1957, made photographic history: these works, which Frank took on a series of road trips through the United States, illuminate the post-war “American way of life” in grim black and white, revealing a reality of pervasive racism, violence, and consumer culture. Due to his images’ failure to uphold America’s self-image at the time, it was at first only possible to publish the synonymous book in Europe. But with “The Americans”, Robert Frank did ultimately succeed in creating one of the most influential photographic works of the post-war period while also effecting a sustained renewal of street photography.

The Albertina, in its exhibition, is showing selected groups of works that make it possible to retrace Robert Frank’s development as an artist: from his early travel photos to “The Americans” and on to his introspective late oeuvre, central aspects of his work are placed front and centre.

Guided Tour by the Curator Walter Moser (in German)
13 December 2017, 5.30 pm

Guided Tour with Walter Moser, curator of the exhibition, and Michael Loebenstein, Director of the Austrian Filmmuseum
17 January 2018, 5.30 pm

Photographer Trevor Paglen has been announced as one of twenty-four recipients of the MacArthur Fellowship 2017. The MacArthur Fellows Program is intended to encourage people of outstanding talent to pursue their own creative, intellectual, and professional inclinations. In keeping with this purpose, the Foundation awards fellowships directly to individuals rather than through institutions. Recipients may be writers, scientists, artists, social scientists, humanists, teachers, entrepreneurs, or those in other fields, with or without institutional affiliations. They may use their fellowship to advance their expertise, engage in bold new work, or, if they wish, to change fields or alter the direction of their careers. Although nominees are reviewed for their achievements, the fellowship is not a lifetime achievement award, but rather an investment in a person’s originality, insight, and potential. Indeed, the purpose of the MacArthur Fellows Program is to enable recipients to exercise their own creative instincts for the benefit of human society. The Foundation does not require or expect specific products or reports from MacArthur Fellows and does not evaluate recipients’ creativity during the term of the fellowship. The MacArthur Fellowship is a “no strings attached” award in support of people, not projects. Each fellowship comes with a stipend of $625,000 to the recipient, paid out in equal quarterly installments over five years.

New York-based Duane Michals is honoured with the 2017 Culture Award by the German Photographic Association (DGPh), a distinction that marks the association’s recognition of one of America’s most significant contemporary artists. The award ceremony will take place on 21 October 2017 at the Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur in Cologne. The laudatory speech will be made by Dr. Söke Dinkla, director of Lehmbruck Museum in Duisburg. The award, which has been handed out annually by the DGPh since 1959, honors significant photographic achievements, particularly in the artistic, humanitarian, social, technical, educational or scientific field.

Highly active to this day, the artist Duane Michals has been working with the medium of photography since the end of the 1950s. Born in 1932 in McKeesport, Pennsylvania, USA, he studied Graphic Design at the University of Denver between 1949 and 1953; after that, he served in the US Army and was stationed in Germany, among other places. From 1956 onwards he built on his studies at the Parsons School of Design. Michals took his first shots in 1958 on a journey to Russia. From that moment on, the medium of photography was to become an important means of expression for him, and continues to be so to the present day.

He chooses different forms of presentation, while lending particular importance to the serial-narrative aspect. In 1966, Michals took part alongside Bruce Davidson, Lee Friedlander, Danny Lyon and Garry Winogrand in the seminal exhibition “Towards a Social Landscape” at George Eastman House, Rochester. “Stories by Duane Michals” was the title in 1970 of his first solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. It became evident early on that the description “photographer” alone does no justice to Michals’s complex approach, with his imaginatively staged image production. For his concern, again and again, is the staging and heightening of impressions of reality that go beyond the concretely documentary. What chiefly attracts him is not the single image, but, right from the 1960s, the sequence created in black-and-white images, a specific form of visual narrative or photographic “stage play”.

S.M.A.K., Gent, 07. 10. 2017 – 07. 01. 2018

Symposium: 23. 11. – 24. 11. 2017

The Photographic I – Other Pictures comprises work by artists and photographers including Lewis Baltz, Tina Barney, Mohamed Bourouissa, Moyra Davey, Marc De Blieck, Sara Deraedt, Patrick Faigenbaum, Peter Fraser, Alair Gomes, Jitka Hanzlová, Roni Horn, Stephanie Kiwitt, Aglaia Konrad, Jochen Lempert, Zoe Leonard, Jean-Luc Moulène, Zanele Muholi, Jean-Luc Mylayne, Trevor Paglen, Doug Rickard, Torbjørn Rødland, Michael Schmidt, Arne Schmitt, Allan Sekula, Ahlam Shibli, Malick Sidibé, Danayata Singh, Wolfgang Tillmans, Marc Trivier, and Tobias Zielony.

The Photographic I – Other Pictures is the first part of a diptych spread over two years. The exhibition comprises new and existing work by around 20 international artists and photographers ranging from the 1960s to the present.

The selection demonstrates a lively interest in the power of the still image as a means of examining the world. It concentrates on indefinable images with an open view, whose multi-layering requires slow reading.

John Szarkowski once formulated the familiar distinction between photos that act as a window on the world and photos intended to reflect their maker. Other Pictures demonstrates that photographic images can perform both functions at the same time: they focus on the world and they invariably approach their subject in a subjective and sensory manner.

Photographic images not only show the world we live in, but are among its essential building blocks. New ways of producing and distributing images, and technological innovation in the civil and military spheres, make the medium repeatedly evolve in new directions and also seep into current artistic practice. The way photographers and artists handle these recent possibilities and challenges is one of the focal points of this exhibition.

To accompany this presentation, Roma Publications Amsterdam are publishing an exhibition magazine.

Symposium on the 23th and 24th of November 2017

A symposium organised in association with the Thinking Tools research group (KASK Antwerp) is being held on Thursday 23 and Friday 24 November 2017. In a programme comprising lectures, talks by artists and portfolio viewings, national and international speakers present a picture of where photography currently stands in the field of contemporary art. More details will follow.

Pluriversum, Museum Folkwang, Essen, 15. 9. 2017 – 7. 1. 2018

Gardens of Cooperation, Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart, 14. 10. 2017 – 14. 1. 2018

Alexander Kluge sees himself as an author. He inspires his readers, listeners and viewers with his films, texts interviews and much more besides. On the occasion of his 85th birthday, Museum Folkwang is presenting an exhaustive exhibition destined to visualize the core of his multimedia oeuvre. A comprehensive programme of accompanying events forms an integral part of the exhibition and is intended to offer a performative experience of the holistic intellectual approach underpinning Kluge’s cosmos. Like the show itself, the accompanying programme has been created with the involvement of Alexander Kluge himself.

In Stuttgart, the exhibition Alexander Kluge: Gardens of Cooperation is based on the comprehensive exhibition of the same name—devoted to the writer, filmmaker, and theorist Alexander Kluge—which was on show at the art center La Virreina Centre de la Imatge in Barcelona in 2016. In close collaboration with the director of La Virreina, Valentín Roma, and with Alexander Kluge himself, the Württembergischer Kunstverein has developed a reformulation and expansion of seven single aspects of this project. The exhibition’s two main points of reference in terms of content revolve on the one hand around the metaphor of the garden and the idea of the collective—of cooperation—in Kluge’s oeuvre and modes of operation; and on the other hand around forms of emancipation, which are not only the subject of his theoretical and artistic explorations of history, the present, and the future, but with which he himself also tirelessly engages.

Academy of the Arts of the World / Cologne, Fall Program
20. 9. – 10. 12. 2017

Exhibition:

With Yuri Albert, Kader Attia, Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Younes Baba-Ali, Ines Doujak, Tom Gould, Ramon Haze, Uriel Orlow, Gosha Rubchinskiy, Ulay

Venue: ACADEMYSPACE, Herwarthstraße 3, 50672 Cologne

Other events: (various locations in Cologne)
With Clara Balaguer, Vivek Chibber, Florian Cramer, Jan Peter Hammer, Louis Henderson, The Jitta Collective (Stephanie Thiersch & Kefa Oiro), Hari Kunzru [tbc], Gym Lumbera, Naeem Mohaiemen, Rabih Mroué, Milo Rau, and others

Exhibition concept: Ekaterina Degot

PLURIVERSALE VII is curated by Ekaterina Degot, David Riff, Aneta Rostkowska and the whole team of the Academy of the Arts of the World.

Cultural appropriation has recently become the subject of heated debate. What was until very recently considered a purely aesthetic, vaguely post-modern, individualistic device of free, playful translation and citation of texts from “other” cultures, is suddenly revealed in its frightening political economic dimension of exploitation and profit. A white dominant majority takes everything it likes to the detriment of indigenous voices, people of color, and others who are culturally and politically oppressed.

We, however, want to turn to another side of this story overshadowed by recent discussions: the strategy of cultural counter-appropriation used by the underprivileged, in postcolonial Africa or in the Europe of migrants, as well as by those on the margins of Europe in the former socialist world. The thieves, counterfeiters, and resistant appropriators in Stealing from the West show that stealing from the West and faking its glossy products is not a proof of belatedness. Instead, it is a potent tool of cultural resistance and an instrument of postcolonial retaliation. It is also a strategy to demonstrate that all-white “high culture,” paid for by the lives of millions of slaves and colonial subjects, is common property and belongs to all.

An early intervention by Ulay already made this point in 1976, when he stole one of the most popular paintings in the collection of the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin, The Poor Poet by Carl Spitzweg (1839), only to hang it in the apartment of a Turkish immigrant family. The Poor Poet , not really a high culture masterpiece, represents a territory of Western culture even more fiercely protected, the bourgeois value of sentimentality (Adolf Hitler’s favorite), as well as the hypocritical idea of “pure” noncommercial art. By symbolically giving this painting to the relatively disenfranchised, Ulay exposes the fake compassion to the non-threatening poor that is at the core of the mawkish popularity of the painting.

The exhibition opens with some historical examples of daredevil wrecking and looting that duplicates conscious and programmatic political acts, post-colonial assertions of rights, or maybe just acts of vengeance. The “Pink Panthers” are a legendary gang of diamond robbers from ex-Yugoslavia, who, as many journalists argued, take revenge on the West for the destruction of their socialist country. Perhaps the Pink Panthers are a softer and ironical Eastern European version of the Black Panthers who boast their pride in their difference by assuming violence. In the exhibition, a documentary film by Havana Marking (Smash and Grab: The Story of the Pink Panthers, 2013) tells their story.

Another cultural phenomenon is Lo Life Crew – a Brooklyn gang, formed in 1988, united by a singular passion to be dressed head-to-toe in Ralph Lauren clothes, shoplifted with artistry and rare panache. The cultural détournement consisted in appropriating Ralph Lauren of all labels, this embodiment of all-white American wealth, this territory of the quietly affluent, busy with golf, skiing, and sailing, – territory that could not be more at odds with the lifestyle of a poor black and Latino neighborhood. (In the show, they are represented by archival materials and Tom Gould’s photographs).

This appropriation of brands is a conscious artistic strategy pursued by young designers from the margins of the “big fashion world”, as Moscow-based Gosha Rubchinskiy, whose fake Tommy Hilfiger logos recently made headlines. Artist Ines Doujak’s sculptural Looters (2016) are part of her long term Loomshuttles/Warpaths project where she explores the links between textile production, colonialism, and violence.

They stand for the universal figure of a rioter whose protest against the capitalist system is immediately translated into the language of consumerism in its radical form: property theft. By stealing from the rich and culturally dominant, the looters who do not fit into the mono-ethnic idea of Europe, appropriate their place under the Western sun as well, like Younes Baba-Ali’s illegal migrant street sellers in today’s Italy who proudly display this country name on their sweatshirts (Italianisation, 2016).

Another mode of “stealing from the West” is represented by artists from the formally not colonized, but nevertheless culturally marginalized outskirts of the “big world,” Eastern Europe or East Germany, who mockingly “counterfeit” the Western modernist canon while confessing openly that this imitation is bad and technically poor. This ironic narrative of the failure to be original is central to Moscow-born Yuri Albert. One of his seminal series, begun in the 1980s, engages in self-deprecating tongue-in-cheek “failed imitations” of international textbook artists’ styles – while proclaiming his originality: I am not Jasper Johns, I am not Lichtenstein, I am not Andy Warhol.

KW Institute for Contemporary Art

14. 9. – 17. 12. 2017

Willem de Rooij (born 1969 in Beverwijk, NL) investigates the production, contextualization and interpretation of images. His multifaceted practice includes photography, films, videos, sculpture, soundrecordings, and writing. Appropriated materials, such as found images, objects borrowed from art historical or ethnographic collections, or works by other artists play an important role. De Rooij’s works take the form of installations or temporary groupings that reflect on the physical and contextual qualities of the space they occupy. Willem de Rooij has been Professor at the Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main since 2006. In 2015, he founded BPA // Berlin Program for Artists together with Angela Bulloch and Simon Denny, and since 2016 he is a Visiting Advisor at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam.

This fall, KW Institute for Contemporary Art presents Whiteout—a selection of de Rooij’s production from the last twenty years. The exhibition connects recent work with seminal pieces made together with Jeroen de Rijke (1970–2006), with whom de Rooij collaborated from 1994 to 2006 under the name de Rijke/de Rooij.

Lothringer13 Halle, Munich, 11. – 15. 10. 2017

Theme: ME:WE

Partner country: USA

The exhibition ME:WE will be opened on October, 11th, 2017 in the urban art space Lothringer13 Halle and is the start of the intensive festival with discussions, lectures, screenings and workshops.

Participating Photographers:
Endia Beal (US)
Michael Danner (DE)
Tim Davis (US)
Thomas Dworzak (DE)
Annie Flanagan (US)
Gregory Halpern (US)
Paul Kranzler (AT)
Kristin Loschert (DE)
Mike Mandel and Chantal Zakari (US)
Harris Mizrahi (US)
Stefanie Moshammer (AT)
Andrea Ellen Reed (US)
Richard Renaldi (US)
Ruddy Roye (US)
Lisa Riordan Seville and Zara Katz (US)
Sofia Valiente (US)
Christina Werner (AT)

With the topic ME:WE Fotodoks 2017 illuminates, in dialogue with the partner country USA, the relationship between the individual and the collective. Documentary photographic positions show how social communities are shaped by external influences, such as politics or conflicts, and create the potential for a hopeful connection. The view is directed at what connects or separates people, opposition, diversity and solidarity, and the search for motifs that define attributions and identities in a complex time. Virtual participation is observed critically and influences of nationalism on society and the media are shown. In the same way, the personal behavior of photographers is discussed and the role they can play in social coexistence. The projects of the selected photographers tell of the search for security and love, describe exceptional situations, analyze political commitment and positions, observe boundaries and transgressions, and last but not least, they use the medium of photography as an escape ahead – ME:WE describes a movement, a dynamic process.

Fotodoks is an international and ambitious festival that reflects and discusses contemporary documentary photography in a lively and personal atmosphere. Focusing on a different theme and partner region for each edition, Fotodoks perceives itself as an independent forum, which takes place in Munich every second year and has established itself since 2008 as the largest festival for documentary photography in the German-speaking world. In 2017, Fotodoks presents itself in a space for contemporary art: in the Lothringer13 Halle & Rroom, the group exhibition, the events of the supporting program and a café with photo books are gathered together to create a place for dialog.

ABOUT US
For the first time at Fotodoks, a pool of 150 discussed projects – among thus the 19 photographers selected by the jury – drew up from the proposals of renowned nominators, who we are grateful for their cooperation.

With Michaela Obermair from Vienna, Sabine Schwarzenböck from Munich and Lene Harbo Pedersen from Copenhagen, the Fotodoks Headquarter 2017 has been expanded and becomes even more international.

When: 5.9.2017, 7pm
Where: EIKON Schaufenster, Q21 in MuseumsQuartier Wien / Schauräume, Museumsplatz 1, 1070 Vienna

The third EIKON issue of the year marks the beginning of fall with main articles of Jürgen Klauke, Jaakko Kahilaniemi, Elisabeth Czihakund Karin Fisslthaler, as well as an extensive interview with Gerald Bast and Patrick Werkner on the occasion of 150 Years of the University of Applied Arts Vienna.

In Focus: On Publishing Photography – already anticipating the 100th issue of EIKON, launched in November – addresses the question why contemporary photography magazines still hold on to print production in times of digitalization and commercialization and which programmatic strategies they pursue. For this purpose, together with Camera Austria International, EIKON invited selected international photography magazines to present themselves and their ideas and to allow the reader a glimpse behind the scenes.

Alongside discussions, i.e. of the solo exhibition by Shirin Neshat at Kunsthalle Tübingen and the group exhibition “How To Live Together” at Kunsthalle Wien, as well as reviews on new publications, you will find current announcements, open calls and exhibition recommendations.

About the artists and projects

Exploring ideas around gender, poetry, and disobedience, Beatrice Gibson’s new film is a collaboration with two of US-America’s most significant living poets—CA Conrad and Eileen Myles—and draws inspiration from the work of a third – the US-American novelist Gertrude Stein and her unrealized script Film: Deux Soeurs qui sont pas Soeurs (1929). Exploring poetry as a means to reckon with the present, Gibson uses Stein’s script as a talismanic guide through a contemporary moment of social and political unrest.

Beatrice Gibson lives and works in London. Gibson has twice won the Rotterdam International Film Festival Tiger Award for Short Film. In 2013 she was shortlisted for the 2013–15 Max Mara Art Prize for Women, and in 2015 won the 17th Baloise Art Prize, Art Basel, Basel (CH). Recent solo exhibitions include MUDAM – Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean, Luxembourg, 2016; Grazer Kunstverein, Graz (AT), 2016; Collective Gallery, Edinburgh (GB), 2015. Gibson’s films have been screened nationally and internationally, and venues include the Rotterdam International Film Festival, Experimenta, London, Wavelengths, Toronto, Projections, The New York, Light Industry, Anthology Film Archives, and LA Film Forum.

‘KW Production Series’ is made possible with generous support by the Julia Stoschek Collection and OUTSET Germany_Switzerland.

KW Institute for Contemporary Art is institutionally supported by the Senate Department for Culture and Europe.

BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht and Valiz, Amsterdam are proud to announce the release of Marion von Osten: Once We Were Artists (A BAK Critical Reader in Artists’ Practice). To mark the launch of the publication, the symposium “Once We Were Artists” takes place on Saturday 24 June 2017 from 10.30 till 18.00 hrs at the Centraal Museum, Utrecht (Agnietenstraat 1).

The reader critically maps the political commitment of von Osten’s influential work to feminism, theories of labor, knowledge production, education, and (post)coloniality. Von Osten’s practice systematically escapes strictures of canonization by scrutinizing, obstructing, and unsettling divisions categorizing art, art object, history making, theory, authority, curating, organizing, and teaching, opening up routes to radical re-readings of the contemporary. The contributions to this book discuss some of the many aspects of this situated, collaborative, process-oriented work so as to provide a locus from which to further engage her transversal practice, as well as the subject of the artist at present.

On the occasion of the reader’s publication, BAK organizes the symposium “Once We Were Artists,” taking place on Saturday 24 June 2017 from 10.30 till 18.00 hrs at the Centraal Museum, Utrecht (Agnietenstraat 1). The symposium addresses the shifting nature of artistic practices that lay claim to the public sphere and political space, and a collaborative, process-oriented ethos that revolves around issues of feminism, migration, education, and (post)coloniality. Contributors include E. C. Feiss (writer, Berkeley), Tom Holert (art historian, curator, and writer, Berlin), Sven Lütticken (writer and curator, Utrecht), Marion von Osten (cultural producer, Berlin), Maria Papadimitriou (artist, Athens), Farid Rakun (artist, writer, editor, and teacher, member of ruangrupa, Jakarta), and Joanna Warsza (curator, Berlin).

To register for the symposium (€8 per ticket and €6 for students, including lunch), please click here.

On view at BAK from 24 June till 9 July is ABiotic Factors, the MaHKU (Utrecht Graduate School of Visual Art and Design, Utrecht) graduation show, curated by von Osten.

To order a copy of Marion von Osten: Once We Were Artists (A BAK Critical Reader in Artists’ Practice), please e-mail info@bakonline.org or visit the website of Valiz.