Turning (to) the Archive. Institutional Histories, Educational Regimes, Artistic Practices, and Politics of Remembrance

Symposium (German/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)
The symposium examines questions on institutional memory, the National Socialist education policies, the relation of the politics of remembrance and artistic practice as well as the archive and its materials within critical historical research and art.
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

Upcoming program:

Tue, May 3, 2016, 3:00 to 5:30 p.m., xhibit
Visiting Uncanny Materials. Founding Moments of Art Education
Visit of the exhibition in the context of the course Kunst, Öffentlichkeit und Geschichtspolitik by Belinda Kazeem-Kaminski (German)
As part of the seminar on the didactics of art, the public and political history, the students will visit the Uncanny Materials: Founding Moments of Art Education exhibition and reflect on the
work on and with the archive, including the associated politics of history and their inclusions and exclusions.

Tue, May 10, 2016, 5:00 p.m., meeting point: xhibit
1941: A Politics-of-History Walk through Vienna.
With students from the course Kunst und Öffentlichkeit taught by Elke Krasny (German)
The walk visits and discusses sites connected with the Nazi regime and the founding of the Master School for Art Education.

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)
The seminar starts off exploring the different concepts of a “monument” and “memory;” it approaches the monument as a common knowledge and memory rather than only a physical object in space. The course deals with a specific historical event related to the very institution we are working at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna: In 1938, Jewish staff, students and professors were expelled from the Academy and additionally, in the same year Jews were expelled from Schillerplatz –on the initiative of the Academy. Schillerplatz had been of one the few public spaces that remained open to Jews until then. Although the traces of their histories have been made accessible there is no
monument or manifestation to commemorate the expelled.

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

Recent program:

Wed, March 16, 2016, 4:00 p.m., xhibit
A Look Back into the Museum
Performance lecture with Imayna Caceres/Pêdra Costa/Verena Melgarejo Weinandt from Wer hat Angst vor dem Museum? (English)
While the museum is understood as an institution that cares for artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific artifacts and makes them available for public viewing, from a decolonial perspective, the museum and the academia are institutions for arts and knowledge that represent foundational moments of histories of dehumanization, supremacism and multilayered violence. Although they are key in the ongoing structural oppression of marginalized groups, the means of addressing the consequences of their ideological regimes have never developed. What tools should be produced to reflect on the museum as a Eurocentric space where a group of racialized subjects is analyzed and discussed as objects – this cultural production is the basis for the very hierarchic system that we face today? In our performative lecture we reflect from decolonial, queer, Third-world and Latin American inter sectional identities on the role of the museum, its relation to historical wounds, othering, and dehumanization, and the role that the art education institution could have in breaking with historical continuities. A performative reflection on the role of the museum, its relation to historical wounds, othering, and dehumanization; and what is the role that the art education institution can have in breaking with historical continuities?

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)
By addressing the archive as a medium we attempt to work through its im/materiality. We invite participants to question the currency of National Socialism, colonialism and (de)coloniality in relation to specific archival materials from two rather different archives: the Archive of the Austrian Association of Women Artists VBKÖ and the University Archives of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, both haunted by National Socialism and coloniality. These archives hold documents evincing the institutions’ national socialist involvements as well as pointing towards traces of coloniality. At the same time, they bear omissions that make it necessary to read into their gaps. The workshop aims to address questions such as: How could we engage with the archival materials in order to examine the constellations between National Socialism, colonialism and coloniality?
Could the analysis of said constellations help to explore possible forms of decolonial futures? In combination with decolonial studies, what do queer, feminist and postcolonial practices and theories bring to archival research? How could visual arts become a resource for decoloniality of archives? How could (de)coloniality question the meaning and method of comparativity and archival politics?

as of April 6, 2016