Working title: Table scenes in French paintings of the late 19th and early 20th century.
Details
Tables in painting demonstrate traditions of meeting and gathering, of community and subject formation, and of artistic design, transforming those traditions into images on the canvas. Tables provide a space for different structures, which are arranged on them, put in relation to each other, and call into question prevailing assumptions. Tables' limited space focuses the observer's eye on the objects visible on their surface, and creates scope and space for the imagination. Tables are transitional objects; an interface at which the aesthetic, the social and the reflective dimensions of the image meet. They are also at the borderline, poised between contradictory functions and representations.
The doctoral project concentrates on dining tables in occupied interiors and in the open air: tables that are part of social table scenes. Research into tables in painting has to date focused on still life and to a lesser extent on picnic scenes. Building on this basis, this project looks explicitly at life table scenes.
Dining tables in art give complex snapshot of moments at which an artistic process takes the place of actual cultural practice. Moments in which inner values and sensitivities take on a tangible outer form; in which three dimensions become two, and which thus highlight the production and reception aesthetics of tables. For dining tables, it is the social and mental environment of a meal that defines the order at the table. Set standards and value systems such as the pattern of meals, service, the order of dishes and table decorations, and table manners, distinctions drawn between the sexes and social orders, are expressed in the company at the table. As a social and material object, the table therefore takes on a stabilising, differentiating, regulating and standardising role. The table is thus a mobile, material upholder of an intangible order; an order which the table concretizes, and which is expressed in relation to the company at the table. Despite this significant function, the table is itself an inconspicuous object. It usually fades into the background behind the action, disappearing from view. As an image on the canvas, the table is a "picture within the picture". It is an unobtrusive part of a whole, and yet also emerges from the overall structure as a meaningful detail. The underlying question explored in this project is therefore what happens when tables in art become visible; when they emerge from the picture and become the focus of the observer's eye. The project combines an examination of forms of representation, reflection on their production and an exploration of the social environment at the time at which they emerged. The project examines the period from the end of the 19th century to the start of the 20th century: at this time, tables were becoming increasingly significant as independent and productive instances and, in the context of the emerging middle classes, reflected a new era of middle-class consumption.
This art research project applies methods from representation theory, the aesthetics of production, the history and theory of knowledge, the aesthetics of reception, cultural studies and visual and media studies.
Main supervisor: Prof. Dr. Beate Söntgen
Working title: Between the classic artistic ideal and avant garde theory: the role of Wilhelm Hausenstein in art criticism in the early twentieth century
Main supervisor: Jun.-Prof. Stephanie Marchal
Second Supervisor: Prof. Beate Söntgen
Easternfuturist Memory: Morphologies of the Transformation in Postsocialist Video Art
Details
This research project addresses contemporary art and its reflection of the post-socialist transformation after 1989 and 1991 respectively, aiming to analyse video art in reference to art and cultural theory. This thesis examines a selection of contemporary artworks of a pan-European generation, which experienced the downfall of socialism or the end of the Cold War primarily during childhood. It also carves out theoretical figures, models, and references that unsettle the present narrative of art history mostly characterized by two voices divided into "East" and "West". A special feature of this endeavour lies in the idea of encountering the new approaches of a performative, horizontal, and gender-critical historiography and theory formation through this transitory generation’s conceptual works, even before its artistic paradigms enter into the present post-socialist discourse.
In the context of visual culture studies, this PhD project focuses on "writing with art" (Marsha Meskimmon), noting that reception theory considers artistic works to always be in a state of becoming. In writing this thesis, it is often the first time that select artworks are the subject of discussion and contextualisation using theoretical filters such as the activation of language, the body, and indexical traces leading back to these "interrupted histories" (Zdenka Badovinac). In which ways do artists deploy words, embodiments, and indices as experimental materials and retro-utopian tools? How does the cultural memory of the post-socialist transformation come to light within contemporary video works?
Main Supervisor: Apl. Prof. Dr. phil. Ulf Wuggenig
Second Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Hanne Loreck
Third Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Melanie Franke
Working title: The reception of the north in criticism and art at the turn of the 20th century: the example of Walter Leistikow
Main Supervisor: Jun.-Prof. Dr. Stephanie Marchal
Working title: Material Matters. Contemporary Sculpture: Between the Corporeal and the Digital.
Details
This study is situated at the crossroads of art history, digital technology and philosophy, as it considers the work of three young artists who have been significantly influenced by the digital. American and British artists Alisa Baremboym, Alice Channer and Josh Kline use digital technologies as means of artistic production, as material resources and as prompts for reflections on technology’s impact on the human body. In close dialogue with the artists’ works (some of them present in Tate’s collection), and substantiated by theoretical accounts, it is the goal of this systematic and historical research to examine the impact of the digital on artistic materials and body representations.
The study revolves around three central themes related to the art works’ genre, conceptualisations of form and discursive environment. The first chapter argues that the work of Baremboym, Channer and Kline points towards an embodiment of the digital, which is understood as both immaterial and at the same time solidly material. Within the discourse of sculpture, these artists thus prompt us to re-conceptualise the relationship between the digital and physical, between materiality and immateriality. Reworking historical debates about formlessness, the abject and the post-human, the second chapter develops a differentiated understanding of how the artists’ (im)materials and representations of corporeality are altered by the increasing digitisation since the late 1960s. Turning to debates about Post-Internet Art, New Materialism and Speculative Realism, the third chapter discusses the opportunities and challenges offered by the art works’ discursive frame.
The aim of this threefold study is to theorise how the digital and the physical, the material and immaterial, are bound together in the artists’ work and how they transform existing notions of materiality and corporeality within contemporary art production. How do the three artists’ conceptualisations of (im)materiality and corporeality alter and incorporate discourses on sculpture, immateriality and the informe? The study thus contributes to an understanding of the ‘technological condition’ (Hörl 2011) of our present.
Supervisors: Prof. Dr. Beate Söntgen and Prof. Dr. Susanne Leeb
Working title: The institution of institutional critique.
Details
This doctoral project, which covers aspects of both art history and the sociology of art, explores received discourses in art from the field of "institutional critique", which have over recent years been increasingly historicized. Despite the in-depth artistic, curatorial and theoretical discourse ranging from the legitimacy and meaningfulness of institutional critique and its actual implications above and beyond the intentions of its protagonists, to institutionalisation and ultimately relevance to discourse, we have not to date seen a more detailed presentation, analysis and critique of the genesis of that discourse. "The institution of institutional critique" (WT) aims systematically to explore what role relevant contributions from the fields of art criticism and art history and not least texts written by artists have played and continue to play in the historicization, valorisation and consecration of artistic production now labelled "institutional critique". Following Pierre Bourdieu, it is assumed that major changes in the field of art that are also expressed in discursive strategies and terms only occur in connection with external changes and conflicts. Instead of following a genealogical or global approach, the thesis therefore focuses on significant periods.
Main supervisor: Prof. Dr. Ulf Wuggenig
Working title: Hiroshi Sugimotos Photogenic Drawings & La Boite-en-Bois.
Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Beate Söntgen
Working title: Relational dramaturgy.
Details
Dramaturgy is a widespread and oft-used term. In general, it assumes that each and every ritual or theatrical action is based on and preceded by specific conceptual reflections. The term is therefore to be assigned to the sphere of production. In some modern productions, however, the level of audience participation is such that the audience is to be considered as a co-producer of the event (and of its dramaturgy). In these cases, dramaturgy does not emerge until the moment of reception, and almost exclusively at that moment. It is participative, ephemeral and highly performative. There has been little theoretical exploration of these dramaturgical processes, and the methods for analysing and describing those processes are limited.
The doctoral project "Relational dramaturgy" seeks to respond to this need in four stages:
1) Firstly, by exploring the structure and functions of relational dramaturgy using relevant, real-life case studies from the field of performing arts.
2) Secondly, by analysing and discussing existing theories on dramaturgy, relational aesthetics, participatory art, social art, etc. and examining those theories on the basis of relevant, real-life case studies (performances, urban spaces, organisations, …).
3) Thirdly, by exploring the forms of relational dramaturgy in phenomena, events and organisations, primarily those that are part of everyday life or the urban environment rather than the cultural context.
4) Fourthly, by seeking to develop a theory of relational dramaturgy on the basis of the preceding research. This theory is to be applicable in both artistic and non-artistic spheres.
Main supervisor: Prof. (apl.) Dr. Ulf Wuggenig
Second supervisor: Prof. Dr. Timon Beyes
Working title: Economic strategies in the work of Maria Eichborn.
Details
Since late 1980s Maria Eichhorn has devised a body of work which address the political, economic and cultural context specific to each situation where she has been invited to exhibit. With reference to the tradition of conceptual art and institutional critique, the present research focuses especially on the use of documents and financial tools in her work. Analyzing the legal practices and the economic structures typical of capitalist economy which the artist employs in her projects, the study aims at investigating what kind of critique Eichhorn performs on the frame of the art institution and the present economy of artistic production.