Fluxus, Action Art, Anti-art and Performativity – Tomas Schmit Retrospective – Symposium

About

In German and English
Admission is free, please register in advance.
3G rule applies: participants must be vaccinated, recovered or tested.

Location: Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart – Berlin

On the occasion of the Tomas Schmit Retrospective, an international symposium will highlight the work of artist and author Tomas Schmit on Saturday, October 23, 2021. The focus is on Schmit's work and role as a co-creator of the early Fluxus festivals, his demands for conceptual stringency, and his performative approaches. In his early Fluxus pieces, Schmit uncompromisingly questioned hierarchies between authors, performers, and audiences. He rejected the institutionalized, elitist understanding of art and countered it, first through the conception of actions (1962–1965), which focused on elementary processes, sensory experiences, and everyday actions, and later in his books, texts, and editions (from 1965), as well as in his drawings (from 1969), which also center on the activation of the viewer and investigate modes of perception. What relevance do Schmit’s pieces have today, more than half a century since their creation? How have their impact, the context in which they are performed, and their audience changed, so that questions concerning the relationship between art and everyday life can be posed anew? The symposium at Hamburger Bahnhof will discuss the relevance of Schmit's aesthetic approaches and the legacy of Fluxus in contemporary art and cultural production, deliberately giving space to a linkage with contemporary discourses.

Saturday, October 23, 2021, 1–8 pm

1 pm
Reception
Marius Babias, director n.b.k., and Gabriele Knapstein, curator and head of Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart – Berlin

1.15 pm
Introduction
Jenny Graser, curator for contemporary art, Kupferstichkabinett – Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

1.30 pm
Keynote lecture
Kristine Stiles, professor of Art, Art History and Visual Studies, Duke University, Durham, NC

2.30 pm
Performativity in the Work of Tomas Schmit
Jenny Graser, Susanne Rennert, art historian, author and curator, Dusseldorf, Dieter Mersch,
philosopher, aesthetic theory, Zurich, moderated by Julia Friedrich, curator Museum Ludwig, Cologne

4.30 pm
The Legacy of Fluxus – the Role of Artists and Anti-art today
Zdenka Badovinac, curator and author, Ljubljana, Karen Moss, professor of Critical Studies at the Roski School of Art and Design, University of Southern California, Kristine Stiles, 
moderated by Beatrice von Bismarck, professor of Art History and Visual Culture, Academy of Fine Arts, Leipzig

6.30 pm
Thinking in Hybrid Patterns
Gerhard Rühm, artist, Cologne, Alexandra Pirici, artist, Bucharest, 
moderated by Krisztina Hunya, curator and project manager n.b.k.