Reading for Writing or How to do Things with Theory - evening lectures
17 April 2012
lecture by Fareed Amraly
20 March 2012
feature film, Facs of Life (2009) by Silvia Maglioni & Graeme Thomson
7 February 2012
The Riskiest Moment. Kafka and Freud by Mladen Dolar
Curated by Alena Alexandrova
Many of Kafka’s novels and stories begin with the moment of waking up, but what does one wake up to? The moment of awakening entails the encounter of something that doesn’t belong any longer to the logic of dreams and doesn’t belong yet to the constituted reality. Kafka’s heroes seem like stuck on the edge in between, in a protracted nightmare and a struggle for wakefulness. Something appears on this edge that can be seen as a strange ontological opening to a new experience. Awakening is ‘the riskiest moment’, says Kafka, and it takes a great presence of mind to get through it without being dragged out of place. This strange encounter can then be considered from the point of view of Freud’s interpretation of dreams, as a moment which lies beyond the realm of interpretation, and further linked to what Jacques Lacan has called the logic of the missed encounter. The moment of awakening will be put into a larger perspective of the emergence of modernity, as its peculiar wake-up call, and considered in relation to some of its other prominent figures. At the same time this demands an analysis of the ambiguous and ideological nature of various wake-up calls and a scrutiny of their logic.
10 January 2012
The Precious History of the Sonsbeek Exhibitions by Marga van Mechelen
Curated by Alena Alexandrova
Van Mechelen will talk about The history of the Sonsbeek (Arnhem) exhibitions. After a short introduction of the first series by showing 2 minute films produced for the Dutch film theatres at that time, Marga van Mechelen will discuss the curatorial concepts of the second series, its spatial metaphors, the art works shown in the exhibitions, as well as its public response and the cultural policy of the city of Arnhem.
29 November 2011
Container: photography by other means by Milica Tomić
Curated by Doreen Mende
Tomić will talk about her ongoing project CONTAINER which has been realized recently at the Octobersalon in Belgrade through the question: How to exhibit CONTAINER that is considered to be a performative object, with us in the middle? How to exhibit CONTAINER that has been an instrument to re-construct a crime?
18 October 2011
How to do theory with things by Ruth Noack
Curated by Alena Alexandrova
Is it possible to think of language and image, discourse and art works as equally valent? This question might not even address itself to practitioners of theory or art, many of whom have, in the past decades, transgressed the boundaries of genre and medium. I am, however, socialised as art historian and practised as curator. Both professions have particular relations to text and image discourse and art work, theory and things. How to integrate these two professional attitues, or shall we say: experiences, continues to be of considerable interest to me. The lecture will not theorise on this point but give an example of ‘doing’, focussing on Nasreen Mohamedi’s work.