The Exhibition - Politics of a Ritual

The workshop will proceed from Dorothea von Hantelmann’s sociocritical understanding of art exhibitions in terms of ritual spaces, in which values and abstract principles of modern societies are negotiated. Starting from the definition of exhibitions as a specifically modern form of relating artworks, objects, time, space and bodies that reflects the structure of our societies, the workshop will concentrate on issues and questions raised by specific exhibition formats. In this respect, a link will be established with Michela Sacchetto PhD research on the politics of visualization in Harald Szeemann’s exhibitions of the 1970s, in particular The Bachelor Machines (1975/76), an exhibition devoted to the supposedly modern myth of the « bachelor » and its related themes of life, love and art.

Program:

• 3:00 – 3:15 pm: Alexander Streitberger and Michela Sacchetto, Introduction
• 3:15 – 3:45 pm: Michela Sacchetto, Considerations about the “mythical” exhibitions designed by Harald Szeemann in the 1970s
• 3.45 – 4.30 pm: Dorothea von Hantelmann, A sociocritical approach to exhibition studies and the embodiment of abstract principles within the exhibition as a space/time/object ritual
• 4.30 - 4.45 pm : Break
• 4.45 – 6:00 pm Discussion

The workshop will be in English - active participation is welcomed

To register please contact Alexander Streitberger by mail

Dorothea von Hantelmann is Professor of Art and Society at Bard College Berlin. She has been researcher at the Collaborative Research Center « Aesthetic Experience and the Dissolution of Artistic Limits » of the Free University in Berlin and previously Documenta Professor at the Kassel University. She is the author of How to Do Things with Art (2010, JRP/Les Presses du réel) and coeditor of Die Ausstellung: Politik eines Rituals [The Exhibition: Politics of a Ritual] (2010, Diaphanes). Her current book project is entitled The exhibition: Transformations of a ritual and it explores exhibitions as ritual spaces in which fundamental values and categories of modern, liberal, and market-based societies historically have been, and continue to be, practiced and reflected.