theoretical performance, peripatetic symposion
part of the exhibition New Materialisms (Station 1)

Thursday 23rd July 2015, 22 h. 

Armin Medosch will carry out the theoretical performance, peripatetic symposion titled What is History? Hommage to Praxis journal, Praxis group and Korčula Summer School that reflects on the mutuality of interrelations among these phenomena. Through series of site specific performative lectures, Armin Medosch will be exploring various notions of materialism(s), historical, dialectical and new. Medosch's performative lecture is an improvised free speech, putting forward the question: “What is History?”.

The topic of the second Korčula Summer School gathering, “What is History?” will also be Armin's topic. To speak freely means to get back to the origins of philosophy, to the form of friendly conversation. There will be no script and there should also be no recording going on. One core topic will be Praxis’ specific understanding of reflection theory, according art and culture semi-autonomy in relation to the productive apparatus. Medosch will seek to place Praxis in this respect in a context with Western Marxism and its art theories, including Adorno, Marcuse, Lefebvre, Williams, Jameson and others.

The collective of critical thinkers around the journal developed a singular trajectory of humanist Marxist and socialist analysis in the context of non-aligned Yugoslavia. Together with the affiliated Korčula summer school the journal functioned as a hub for the exchange of critical perspectives between the East and the West in the years 1963-1974. In the proceedings of the summer school and the journal participated many prominent figures of the period, a.o. Ernst Bloch, Herbert Marcuse, Henri Lefebvre, Karel Kosik, Jürgen Habermas, Lucien Goldmann.

"New Materialisms" exhibition, featuring a.o. Praxis (Digitized) archive, created by Ante Lešaja and digitized by Tomislav Medak. If in Korčula you can copy the archive there, otherwise you can find it here: https://praxis.memoryoftheworld.org/.

Presenting Praxis legacy in manifold forms is also a part of the project History of Contemporaneity, conceptualized and carried out by the informal platform kor::net (Korčula Network), and which includes historiographic research and mapping of highly relevant artistic and cultural practices that marked the promotion of contemporary trends on the island of Korčula in the 20th Ct. (More at: http://korculanetwork.info/kornet/pages/praxis)

Exhibition New Materialisms (Station 1): http://grey-area.org/exhibitions/NM1

Armin Medosch, PhD, MA, is Professor of Theory and History of Art and Media at the Faculty of Media and Communications at Singidunum University, Belgrade. He is an artist, curator and author working in art and media art theory and network culture. His work as curator includes exhibitions such as: Waves (Riga, 2006; Dortmund, 2008); and Fields (Riga Culture Capital 2014). He is initiator of the Technopolitics working group in Vienna and initiator and maintainer of the cooperative web-space thenextlayer.org. His book under the tentative title “New Tendencies – Art at the Threshold of the Information Revolution” is expected to be published by MIT Press in early 2016.