Thomas Scheibitz’s paintings and sculptures play with abstraction and readability. The artist describes what he does as “‘second nature’ nature” thus pointing to the fragile core of art: artistic invention. Even though his works seem to reveal a creative universe of their own, a homogenous and hermetic play of shapes, a construction of figures and spaces that are hard to decipher, his subtle use of symbolic, indexical or iconic references from first or second nature sources denote, depict, represent, counteract, combat – or at least challenge – the possibility of free artistic invention, just as intuition has to be read as well as seen. Creating a grammar of one’s own competes with the visual world that surrounds us: the formal language that is inflicted on us can be integrated or rejected. Intuition is synthetic.
After an initial stage of model-building and material selection, Thomas plans, with his class, to research visual strategies and possibilities of simulating materials. The aim is to produce a brief, focused booklet resulting from and documenting the week’s work.
Thomas Scheibitz was born in Radeberg in 1968 and currently lives in Berlin. He studied at the Dresden Academy. His work was presented at the German Pavillon of the Venice Biennial in 2005. Recently, he has exhibited at the MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst Frankfurt, the Musée d’Art Moderne Luxembourg, the Camden Arts Centre London, and the IMMA Irish Museum of Modern Art Dublin.
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!
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.