Week 1 / Course (engl./ger.) –
Marc Bijl

Marc Bijl took – to our greatest pleasure - part in our first issue of the Autocenter Summer Academy – ISAB 2009 and we are very glad having him joining us again this year! One of his most reproduced works is the illegal graffiti “t-e-r-r-o-r” he sprayed on the columns of the Museum Fridericianeum during documenta. With this action, he reenacted the subcultural gesture of occupation, marking territory that is originally supposed to show that there are two players, the one and the others and thus two struggling notions of power and/or empowerment. But maybe his ‘performance’ shows the dissolution of oppositions and the anxiety that comes with the disappearance of the other.  Minimalist and abstract modernism occupy him lately. Reflecting on the impact of Rothko’s or Mondrian’s abstraction; have they now become renown patterns in our collective memory and are thus far away from any form of abstraction? Can something not supposed to be “read” become readable just like that?

Marc is also member of the unbelievably famous rock band B-men. But other than in his band where he contents himself with the background, in his artistic work he definitely heads for the forefront.

Marc Bijl studied at the Academy for Art and Design in s’Hertogenbosch and the Rennie Macintosh School of Art in Glasgow. In 2001 he was scholar at the Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin. He took part at Manifest 4, and exhibited at the Frankfurter Kunstverein and the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and the Museum Fridericianeum, this time invited. His recent solo exhibition at Museum Groningen will be on view until April 1st. Marc Bijl was born in Leerdam in 1970 and lives in Berlin.

Week 1 / Lecture (engl.) –
Julieta Aranda

An hour is an hour, is an hour … but what’s your time?

Julieta Aranda’s work is focused on the aesthetic potential of the role played by circulation and the idea of a "poetics of circulation"; the possibility of a politicized subjectivity through the perception and use of time, and the notion of power over the imaginary. Not being media-specific, she manipulates existing circulation formats, in an effort to generate viable propositions for alternative transactions of cultural capital. These explorations have taken several forms, including printed media, installation, video and the creation of alternative spaces.

Let us quote her: “…we always think about revolutionary movements in terms of crisis: a force that surges above ground and ruptures the structure (REPLACES the structure). But one should question the usefulness of such an approach, since the force that comes above ground never becomes aware of its own weaknesses, and eventually it also has to be replaced. I believe on artists/cultural producers operating as moving targets, since this implies establishing a set of diagonal relations within the field; never fully within, never fully without. No ruptures but disruptions, no breaking the parts, but changing their function.“

Julieta Aranda’s work has been exhibited internationally in venues such as Witte de With (2013), Documenta 13 (2012), N.B.K. (2012), Gwangju Biennial (2012), Venice Biennial (2011), Stroom den Haag (2011), “Living as form,” Creative Time, NY (2011), Istanbul Biennial (2011), Portikus, Frankfurt (2011), New Museum (2010), Solomon Guggenheim Museum (2009), New Museum of Contemporary Art, NY (2010), Kunstverein Arnsberg (2010), MOCA Miami (2009), Witte de With (2010), Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (2007), 2nd Moscow Biennial (2007).

As a co-director of e-flux together with Anton Vidokle, Julieta Aranda has developed the projects Time/Bank, Pawnshop, and e-flux video rental, all of which started in the e-flux storefront in New York, and have traveled to many venues worldwide.

Week 1 / Lecture (engl./ger.) –
Thibaut de Ruyter

High Fidelity

Thibaut de Ruyter is the veritable spiritus loci of the Autocenter Summer Academy: it was he who invented its first format, which in 2009 went under the name of ISAB. QUOTE: “When asked by Autocenter if I could curate an exhibition for them in the middle of the summer, I simply replied that it was much more interesting to organize a summer academy, a site where artists – professional and amateur alike – could meet and get together!” Over and above this, Thibaut is an architect, curator and art critic based in Berlin and Frankfurt/ Main. We are thrilled he will be able to make it and to join in and share his expertise with us.

Right now he is part of the team that is literally pulling the Musem Angewandte Kunst in Frankfurt back into shape and focus after its somewhat gentle slumbers. He regularly publishes articles in catalogues and for magazines such as l'architecture d’aujourd’hui, artpress, il giornale dell'architettura, fucking good art, frieze d/e.

Any brief overview of exhibitions he has curated would have to list the following: «investigating evp» (www.radiogallery.org, London 2006), «Weniger Geld, mehr Liebe» (tmp-deluxe, Berlin 2008), «Wach sind nur die Geister» (hmkv, Dortmund 2009 & coca, Torun 2010), «Nam June Paik Award 2010» (museum kunstpalast, Düsseldorf 2010) & «Nam June Paik Award 2012» (kunstmuseum, Bochum 2012), «ghosts off the shelf» (Kunstraum Kreuzberg/ Bethanien - clubtransmediale, Berlin 2012), «The Empty House» (MAK Frankfurt/ Main 2013).

Taking as his starting point the wonderful novel (and movie) High Fidelity, Thibaut will question the prevalent habit – if not human urge – to create Top-5 Lists! Think of your Top-5 songs to seduce a wonderful woman (or man of course), your Top-5 break-ups, your Top-5 colours, your Top-5 vacation destinations … and now think about curating an exhibition. We are so curious about Thibaut’s thoughts on the Top-5 reactions to that one! 

For further information, please see: cargocollective.com/thibautderuyter.

Week 1 / Tour (engl./ger.) –
Anna-Catharina Gebbers

Anna-Catharina Gebbers is a very busy cultural theorist and visual essayist, curator and writer in the field of international contemporary art, philosophy and literature and will be the first in our touring-program to share her Berlin-insights with the students.

Just to mention very few of her activities and projects over the last years:

She worked as gallery director for Produzentengalerie Hamburg, as editor for the magazines Liebling and D-Intersection, as guest curator in London for the Zabludowicz Collection, and was curatorial member of the Forgotten Bar Project. At present Catharina Gebbers is a board member of Akademie c/o, along with the architects Arno Brandlhuber, Silvan Linden and the philosopher Christian Posthofen. She is member of the Green Acadamy, lecturer at several universities, editor for polar, a magazine for politics and theory, and she publishes regularly in various other media. With Klaus Biesenbach and Susanne Pfeffer, she is currently co-curating an exhibition about Christoph Schlingensief. The show is to be opened in the KW institute for contemporary art in autumn 2013, and will travel to PS1/MoMA in 2014.

In 2004 Anna-Catharina Gebbers founded an interdisciplinary platform for artistic and theoretical discourse called Bibliothekswohnung in Ziegelstraße, Berlin-Mitte. The project space is located just across the street from Friedrichstadtpalast, in a pre-cast concrete slab building, one of the more luxurious GDR-buildings, which was partially reserved for party officials (probably because from there you can observe the Friedrichstadtpalast dancers during practice). It sits in the midst of different stages or contexts of display: Stages as in the multiple theatres in the area, or stages for the display of power like the government area not far from it, or historical structures as displays of pre-war memory.

Anna-Catharina Gebbers was born in Hamburg in 1970 and studied German philology, philosophy, sociology and economics in Hamburg and Lüneburg.