On the occasion of the first 20 years of the Berlin-based magazine Texte zur Kunst a symposium organized by Isabelle Graw and André Rottmann asks the question of art criticism’s potential as social criticism. When the magazine was founded in Cologne in 1990 the methods of ‘Social Art History’ promised to present contemporary art in an extended social, economic and ideological context. Even if this approach remains fundamental for many of the regular authors and editors at Texte zur Kunst, new models of theoretically advanced reflection with contemporary art have come into being: The ongoing debates on bio-politics and immaterial forms of work under the circumstances of post-Fordism have radically challenged the long-held assumption that (post-)avant-garde-art in capitalism has an antagonistic role per se. At the same time there has been a revision of the category of aesthetics. For a long time it seemed discredited due to its vicinity to idealist ideas, but now it has its comeback with a new concept of an ethically based apology of art-experience and an emphatically claimed attention to formal details. The symposium takes this situation as its starting point to debate about the possible power and methods of art criticism as social criticism. Full program here.
Wo stehst Du, Kollege? Kunstkritik als Gesellschaftskritik
Symposium on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of Texte zur Kunst (all talks in English)
Participants: Franco Berardi, Luc Boltanski, Benjamin H.D. Buchloh, Sabeth Buchmann, TJ Clark, Diedrich Diederichsen, Helmut Draxler, Andrea Fraser, Isabelle Graw, Gertrud Koch, Jutta Koether, Sven Lütticken, Christoph Menke, Juliane Rebentisch, André Rottmann, Martin Saar
11.12.2010, 4 pm
HAU 1
Stresemannstrasse 29
10963 Berlin
Tickets: 7 €, reduced 5 € – book tickets here
