Only in English // Cologne _ March 21, 2018 _ 2.00 pm to 6.00 pm _ House of Foundations / Haus der Stiftungen
Light in Fine Arts: Research On Curatorial Strategies
Invitation to an Open Roundtable Discussion
Exhibiting and performing light art has reached a thriving force within the broad field of both contemporary art and contemporary curating. In the recent decade, a rising number of projects and festivals, exhibitions and collections dedicated to intervention, installation and performative formats embrace light as artistic material, as medium or either as metaphor. 21th Century light art encompasses a plethora of artistic practices that integrate natural or artificial light for quite different artistic goals. Without a doubt, the current artistic approaches to light are more heterogeneous than ever, oscillating between personal artistic interest and artistic research, referential discourses on art/art-in-theory, various aspects of sciences, and eventually broad fields of related techno-culture aesthetics, too.
The ongoing production of light art has been shaped by interdisciplinary forms of collaboration since art movements of the 1960s onwards and has shifted from artistic-technical innovation, kinetic positions and optical illusions to the playground of performative, participatory and post-conceptual approaches presented at festivals, biennials, or at specifically developed formats. Within this shift, the practice of adequate curating has gained ground and become an integral part of the artistic endeavor. So far, guiding interests and settings that engender curated light art exhibitions are transitory. They usually stay unexplained, undocumented, and without critical reflection or link to a theoretical discourse. The shifting developments in the artistic realm demand an alteration of curatorial perspective and standards.
The Cologne Roundtable asks for the state of the art of documentation on curatorial strategies on light in fine art that has been developed so far, especially over the last 10 years. The curator Bettina Pelz and the art historian Silke Walther take on the initiative to invite curators as well as artists, art historians, art mediators, art producers to discuss their personal approach and experience, to share observations, and to analyze current and future challenges for curating. A fruitful discussion could pave the way for an international network for critical discourse and collective research, international meetings and publishing.
Programm
1.30 pm
Welcome at House of Foundations / Haus der Stiftungen
2.00 pm:
Opening of the Roundtable by Bettina Pelz and Silke Walther
2.30 pm
Brief statements of all participants of their observations on communication, documentation and discourse on curatorial strategies
3.30 pm
Coffee Break
4.00 pm
Brain storming on interests, needs and possibilities
5.00 pm
Summary and agreements on the next steps
5.30 pm
Diner [We will reserve a table at the very good Chinese Restaurant GINGER nearby and will ask you to cover your meals yourself]
7.00 pm
COLLUMINA Speed Preview: MAKK [7.00 pm] _ KHM-Flexzone [8.00 pm] _ Schokoladenmuseum [8.30 pm] _ Holzmarkt 1 [9.00 pm]
10.00 pm
Finish
Place
Haus der Stiftungen / House of Foundations
Art Gallery Seippel / Galerie Seippel
Zeughausstr. 26, 50667 Cologne / Köln >>
Restaurant
Ginger
Steinfelder Gasse 1 / Friesenstraße / 50670 Köln >>
Contact
Bettina Pelz
Artistic Director of COLLUMINA
Email bettina@bettinapelz.de
Phone +49 171 17 23 237
Silke Walther
Art Historian
with focus on modern and contemporary art and exhibition cultures
Email: silke.walther@rub.de
Phone + 49 176 60 99 88 783