“Reparations” – Steve Kurtz
2017-01-31 DCRL Semester theme: Design and Repair, Winter Semester 2016/2017
6–8pm
Venue: Freiraum Lüneburg Salzstr. 1 / 21335 Lüneburg
“Reparations” is a lecture that explores concepts of repair that are outside of pragmatic discourses on technical objects, processes, and systems, and instead, focuses on those that address social, political, and ecological spheres of operation. Using the work of Critical Art Ensemble as a framework, “Reparations” questions the value of common outcomes associated with repair such as function, normativity, efficiency, and resolution, and suggests to the contrary that the notion of repair links as well to chaos, subversion, provocation, or perhaps, in the right circumstances, revolution.
Steven Kurtz, PhD, Professor Emeritus, is a founding member of the interventionist art and theater group Critical Art Ensemble (CAE). Founded in 1987, CAE is an award-winning collective of artists of various specializations—including digital imaging and web design, wetware, film/video, photography, text art, book art, and performance—dedicated to exploring the intersections between art, technology, political activism, and critical theory.