Veranstaltungen

Veranstaltungen FS 2024

Book Launch NO Rhetoric(s)

On Art and Resistance: Book Launch NO Rhetoric(s)

with special guest Mieke Bal Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences Professor (2005-2011) Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (ASCA), University of Amsterdam Reflecting on the politicization of art and the aestheticization of politics; which are their overlaps and tensions? To what extent are political or artistic practices really resistant? How does a rhetoric of «no» intersect with a «no» to rhetoric?

Program


Video Presentation: It’s About Time! Reflections on Time and Urgency (2020)

According to Mieke Bal, the title of the film is deliberately ambiguous: it is a «theoretical fiction» based around Bal’s concept of «pre-posterous history», which she developed in her book on Caravaggio and contemporary art. The exclamation mark points to another message: it’s about time we do something about the world!

 

Keynote Mieke Bal: Art and/as Thought: Image-Thinking for Art’s Political Relevance

Regarding the critique of the concept and practice of “artistic research”, it is necessary to consider how to resist the imposition of research on art-making, as well as the simplification of thought. To make art poli- tically relevant, the resistance to the indifference to the world is crucial: viewers can become witnesses instead of passive contemplators. It is not enough to deploy the imagination, albeit indispensable, but also, to coin a new verb, we must image what we imagine.jects. It is not enough to deploy the imagina- tion, albeit indispensable, but o coin a new verb, we must image what we imagine


Roundtable and discussion: Thinking Through Contemporary Global Art: A Roundtable

Sara Alonso Gómez (Aix-Marseille University)
Kendell Geers (South African Artist and Curator based in Brussels)
Charlotte Matter (University of Zurich)
Isabel J. Piniella Grillet (IHTP, Paris / CGS, University of Bern)
Nadia Radwan (University of Bern / University of Neuchâtel


Links
norhetorics.com
NO Rhetoric(s) publisher website


Date / venue: March 8, 2024 (4.15–6pm) followed by Apéro, Lerchenweg 36, Bern, Unitobler F-121

Flyer (PDF, 396KB)

Globality

Global Studies & ICS Lecture : Globality

Public Lecture (25 April):

Contemporary Art at the Nexus of Cultures

Alexander Alberro's paper engages decolonial theory to explore the dynamic exchanges that materialize today at sites where the aesthetic ideals and values of disparate art frameworks meet. He acknowledges Western art’s epistemic dominance and proliferation but supplant its illusion of universality by recognizing a multiplicity of equally valid coexisting art formations with their own artistic narratives and practices. Many of these configurations are geographical, evolving outside the Western context. However, some are cultural and ideological, developing within the dominant formation’s domain. He sees the Western framework as at once crucial and insufficient for understanding contemporary art and seek to relativize its significance by bringing into focus the complex negotiations that transpire at its boundaries. Alberro's thesis is that the sites of encounter between the Western and other art frameworks are where artists produce much of today’s most innovative and transformative art.

Colloquium (26 April):

or PhD students and advanced Master students of the University of Bern

Part 1 of the colloquium is dedicated to the discussion of the lecture and the texts suggested by the guest. In Part 2, a core group present their PhD thesis, speaking for about 20 minutes on how concepts like “Globality" and related concepts ("Spatiality", "Transfer" etc.) connect to their research questions and which aspects of the texts are of particular relevance to their own work. The presenters raise questions for the discussion with their peers, which should contribute to the development of their thesis. Finally, in Part 3, the conversation will open up again so that the other PhD or advanced MA-students have an opportunity to address issues related to their projects.

 
Required reading:
Chinua Achebe, “The African Writer and the English Language,” in Isidore Okpewho, ed., ThingsFall Apart: A Casebook (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2003), 62-63;
Ngūgī wa Thiong’o, “Decolonizing the Mind,” Diogenes, 184:46/4 (Winter 1998), 101-104;

Stuart Hall, “Cultural Identity and Diaspora,” in Jonathan Rutherford, ed., Identity: Community, Culture, and Difference (Lawrence and Wishart, 2001), 222-237.

____________________ 

Alexander Alberro, Virginia Bloedel Wright Professor in the Departments of Art History at Barnard College and Columbia University, has written widely on modern and contemporary art and theory. He is the author, most recently, of Interstices: At Contemporary Art's Boundaries, forthcoming with University of Chicago Press in 2024. He is also the founding editor of the University of California Press’ book series “Studies on Latin American and LatinX Art,” and sits on the editorial boards of Art Margins and Journal of Curatorial Studies. Along with Interstices, his books include Abstraction in Reverse (2017); Working Conditions, edited (2016), Luis Camnitzer In Conversation with Alexander Alberro (2014); What is Contemporary Art Today? edited (2012); Institutional Critique, co-edited (2009); Art After Conceptual Art, co-edited (2006); Museum Highlights, edited (2005); Conceptual Art and the Politics of Publicity (2003); Recording Conceptual Art, co-edited (2001); and Conceptual Art: A Critical Anthology, co-edited (1999). He has also published in a broad array of journals and exhibition catalogues, and delivered many lectures internationally.

Columbia University webpage: http://www.columbia.edu/cu/arthistory/faculty/Alberro.html

Flyer (PDF, 211KB)

Global Studies Coffee

The monthly Global Studies coffee break will take place every last Tuesday at Café Sattler. It will be a place to share and exchange ideas (e.g. for planning a workshop, suggestions for upcoming events), ask questions on the Global Studies program or just have a nice chat with your fellows with a cup of coffee.

Poster (PDF, 31KB)