In the series New Social Sculptures we explore in three projects and one accompanying archive the relations between “the public,” cultural producers, curators, the institution, and the specific social context.
This series in the projectroom enter starts with the Archive of Shared Interests, a collection of and research into contemporary artistic works along the thematic topic of “temporary communities.”
The Archive collects contemporary artistic positions around the theme of community. It gives the opportunity for the public to get to known artistic and theoretical positions on social interaction and community. The students of the Postgraduate Programme in Curating will develop a mediation program for this purpose. It will cover about 30 artistic dossiers, as well as 30 publications. It was compiled in collaboration with the Institute for Theory and will be presented publicly for the second time in Thun.
Artists:
Marina Belobrovaja / Ursula Biemann / Corner College / Jeremy Deller / eggerschlatter / Finger (evolutionäre zellen) / forschungsgruppe f / Heinrich Gartentor / Hanswalter Graf / Fritz Haeg / Christina Hemauer & Roman Keller / Michael Hieslmair & Michael Zinganel / interpixel / Martin Kaltwasser & Folke Köbbeling / San Keller / Pia Lanzinger / Michaela Melián / metroZones / Peles Empire / Frédéric Post / Public Works / Alain Rappaport / raumlaborberlin / RELAX (chiarenza & hauser & co) / Oliver Ressler / Shedhalle / Erik Steinbrecher / support structure (Celine Condorelli and Gavin Wade) / Szuper Gallery / tat ort / Jeanne van Heeswijk / Markus Weiss
Interviews with inhabitants of Thun.
Communities are defined by artists, scholars and urbanists as an antithesis to general society and its constraints, but they differ widely from one another in the roles they play. Whether the community is thought of as a secret utopia or as a threat to the individual, whether as a cooperative, a neighborhood or a societal group, and whether or not the res- pective community is to be dissolved – every time, a certain artistic, architectural or theoretical concept of community initiates a subtext directed toward the public. Certain actions are implicitly designated for the visitors, the users, the readers; the public is revolutionized, integrated, informed, instructed, involved or controlled. The archive is con- ceived as a project apparatus on the broad theme of “community,” an apparatus re- presenting different and contradictory approaches and points of view on the basis of which “community” can be discussed. The archive will serve prospectively as the project apparatus of a research project and is constantly expanded.
The artistic dossiers are accompanied by a project apparatus of 30 publications. They explore recent philosophical and theoretical discourses on communities.
March 2012
This project series is a collaboration between the Postgraduate Programme in Curating, Zurich University of the Arts and the Kunstmuseum Thun curated by Dorothee Richter.