Uncanny Materials | Founding Moments of Art Education

On July 9, 1941, a decree stipulating the foundation of a “master school for art education and the training of secondary school art teachers” was issured by  the Reichsministerium für Wissenschaft, Erziehung und Volksbildung (Reich Ministry for Science, Education, and People's Education) in Berlin to the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. The beginning of the institutionalization of a program for art teachers at the Academy, which is still largely unappraised seventy-five years later, has now been made the subject of a curatorial exhibition, research and education project.

Based on research by the historians Ina Markova, Rosemarie Burgstaller, and Sophie Bitter-Smirnov, the project’s curators, Elke Krasny and Barbara Mahlknecht, have conceived of an open archive for the exhibition. This installation allows for an understanding how National Socialism informed art education: materials from the Academy’s University Archive – personnel sheets, lists of students, curricula, exam regulations, minutes of professorial staff meetings, budgets, lists of master school awards and materials to be provided – document the institutional routine.

Activists and artists, many of whom have studied at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna or are teaching there now, were invited to present works or develop performances related to the subject. The artists’ positions articulate activist interventions into the memory of institutions, relate to the standardization and disciplining of bodies through education, and reveal how women’s politics were implicated in National Socialism. Some of the works reflect present-day changes in the realm of “multidirectional memory” (Michael Rothberg) and the meaning of “migrants’ situated knowledge” (Ayse Güleç) in regard to politics of history.

On April 20 and 21, 2016, an international symposium with lectures, talks, and workshops will explore issues of institutional memory, National Socialist educational policy, the connections between politics of remembrance and artistic practices and question critically hegemonic histories in the field of art education.

PROGRAM: UNCANNY MATERIALS

Wed, March 16, 2016, 4:00 p.m., xhibit
A Look Back into the Museum
Performance lecture with Wer hat Angst vor dem Museum? (Imayna Caceres, Pêdra Costa, and Verena Melgarejo Weinandt)
(English)

Tue, April 5, 2016, 1:30 to 5:30 p.m., xhibit
In Haunted Archives: (Post-)National Socialist Times, Decolonial Futures
Secretariat for Ghosts, Archival Politics, and Gaps (Nina Höchtl and Julia Wieger)
Workshop (English)

Wed, 20.04.2016, 9.30–21.00 h, Multi-Purpose Space (Studio building)
Thur, 21.04.2016, 10.00–16.00 h, Multi-Purpose Space (Studio bulding)
Sat, 23.04.2016, 15.00-19.00 h, Aktsaal (Main building)
Turning (to) the Archive. Institutional Histories, Educational Regimes, Artistic Practices, and Politics of Remembrance
Symposium
Lectures, discussions and workshops by: Tal Adler/Friedemann Derschmidt/Elisabeth Samsonow/Karin Schneider/Anna Szöke/Niko Wahl, Eva Blimlinger, Zsuzsi Flohr/Benjy Fox-Rosen/ Eduard Freudmann/Eva Reinold/Luisa Ziaja, Minna L. Henriksson, Gila Kolb, Elke Krasny, Martin Krenn, Barbara Mahlknecht, Verena Pawlowsky, Birgit Peter, Sabine Plakolm-Forsthuber, Suely Rolnik, Dirk Rupnow, Anna Schürch, Bernadette Settele, Nora Sternfeld

Tue, May 3, 2016, 3:00 to 5:30 p.m., xhibit
The course Kunst, Öffentlichkeit und Geschichtspolitik visits the exhibition Belinda Kazeem-Kaminski (German).

Tue, May 10, 2016, 5:00 p.m., gathering place: x hibit
1941: A Politics-of-History Walk through Vienna
With students from the course Kunst und Öffentlichkeit taught by Elke Krasny (German)

Wed, May 11, 2016, 11:00 a.m., xhibit
The Missing Monument - Commemoration in Progress
Workshop as part of Zsuzsi Flohr’s course Commemoration in Progress (English)

Fri, May 13, 2016, 4:00 p.m., xhibit
Curators' tour (German/English)

Special thanks for their support and cooperation extend to

Eva Blimlinger and Andrea B. Braidt; the University Archives, the University Library and the Graphic Collection of the Academy, as well as the many others who have supported this project.

as of Feb 2, 2016