Schlagwort-Archive: art

publication, research

Popularisation & Populism in the Visual Arts

Popularisation and Populism in the Visual Arts, Ed: Anna Schober, London: Routledge, 2019.

Including a text of mine: „Facing Everybody? Composite Portraiture as Representation of a Common Face“ (Raul Gschrey)

This book investigates the pictorial figurations, aesthetic styles and visual tactics through which visual art and popular culture attempt to appeal to “all of us”. Scholars from several European countries discuss a key figure these practices bring into play—the “everybody”—in an interdisciplinary way. The contributions focus on the operation and genealogies of popularisation and communication practices, which can assume populist forms, in contemporary democracies. They also address the ambivalences of attraction, i.e. the ways in which visual creations evoke for example desire as well as hatred, invite identification or produce rejection and trigger mimicry as well as conversion processes.

exhibition, research, review

the others are we : interview

“the others are we” : video composite portrait of a city

Interview with the German artist Florian Tuercke during the exhibition “the others are we” at con[SPACE] video gallery, Atelierfrankfurt, Frankfurt/Main, Germany. For the exhibition, the artist produced a composite video portrait of faces from Frankfurt and other European cities. Exhibition curated by Michaela Filla Raquin and Raul Gschrey, interview conducted and produced by Raul Gschrey. Additional material by Florian Tuercke, Nicholas Singleton & Raul Gschrey. Historical photographic material by Francis Galton, Special Collections, University College London. www. conspace.wordpress.com : www.gschrey.org : www.floriantuercke.net

conference, lecture

Addressing each and every one

Workshop: Addressing each and every one: Popularisation/populism through the visual arts

April 21 and 22 2016, Justus Liebig University Gießen, Main Building (Ludwigstrasse 23), 3th floor, Seminar-Raum

The workshop brings together scholars from art history, film studies, theatre studies, political theory, sociology and philosophy of religion from several European countries. It discusses the ways (iconic figurations, aesthetic styles, rhetoric figures etc.) through which visual culture addresses its audience and gets involved in the constitution of a public sphere. It is in particular interested in how the visual arts – understood as both visual popular culture as well as fine arts – becomes involved in popularisation practices and populist criticism.

The workshop approaches this subject by focusing on the central iconic figure that these practices bring into play: the “everybody” (which stands for “all of us”, but is at the same time also a “nobody”, a “common man”, a “common woman” and sometimes even a “new man” or a “new woman”). It presents spotlights of a genealogy and an iconography of the everybody and discusses political and philosophical theories about how the mediating force of this iconic figuration can be understood and valuated. In doing so, the workshop pays particular attention to the ambivalent role this figure plays, especially in most recent history, in triggering both desire and enthusiasm as well as resentment and hate.

Programme below Addressing each and every one weiterlesen →

exhibition

„the others are we“

Florian Tuercke : Die Anderen sind wir / the others are we con[SPACE] @ Atelierfrankfurt, Schwedlerstrasse 1-5, 60314 Frankfurt am Main, curated by Michaela Filla Raquin & Raul Gschrey

Opening: 26. 02.2016 19.00, duration: 26.02. – 04.04.2016, opening times: Tue., Wed., Thurs. 16.00 – 19.00

In his series of composite videos entitled „the others are we“, Florian Tuercke, whose participatory media art projects are usually situated in public space, deals with the human face. The artist explores, which collective features remain, when the individual visual characteristics of people are merged; the sole link being the place where they reside temporarily or permanently.

Tuercke_conspace01 Tuercke_conspace02 Tuercke_conspace03

After compiling videos in Ragusa (Italien), Wakefield (England) and Schweinfurt (Germany), Florian Tuercke produces a video portrait of the ‘typical Frankfurter’ in collaboration with the gallery con[SPACE] in Frankfurt (Germany). With a posing chair, camera and lights he strolls through the urban space and asks passers-by to sit for a portrait. Every participant sits on the chair, looking straight into the camera, while the artist remains standing, equally motionless, behind the camera. Through the transparent superimposition of the individual takes, the urban backgrounds are condensed into abstract structures of colour, light and movement; the slightly fluctuating facial superimpositions dominating the centre of the composite video.

lecture

Visualizing “Law’s Pluralities”: Artistic Practice and Legal Culture

Interactive lecture by Raul Gschrey (Frankfurt and Giessen, GCSC, artist and curator) in the context of Prof. Greta Olson’s lecture series „Cultural Approaches to Law and US American Legal Culture”

15.06.2015 16.00 ct  – Liebig University Giessen, Phil I, A4

The interactive lecture series “Cultural Approaches to Law and US American Legal Culture” invites its participants to understand law not as an independent body of rules but as inseparable from culture, narrative, images, and political economy. The particular focus of the individual lectures will be on US American legal culture(s). Guest lectures by scholars in cultural legal studies, political science, anthropology, and US American history will enable participants to examine law from several perspectives.

conference, exhibition

Law’s Pluralities

Law’s Pluralities ׀ Conference & Exhibition 06.05. – 09.05.2015

In May 2015 the conference “Law’s Pluralities” will take place at Justus Liebig University Giessen/Germany. In a series of keynote presentations by experts and in panel sessions and discussions, as well as in an exhibition it will explore cultural constructions of law.

06.05. – 24.05.2015 exhibition at „Neuer Kunstverein Giessen“ & during the conference „Law’s Pluralities“ at Liebig University Giessen, Germany. Artists: Il-Jin Choi ׀ Raul Gschrey ׀ Mi You ׀ Manu Luksch

The interrogation of the cultural construction and negotiation of legal practices in the conference „Law’s Pluralities“ offers an interesting occasion for the presentation of an exhibition of artistic works dealing with the topic. The international artistic positions reflect on the social and legal frameworks and find means to visualise phenomena that often remain abstract. Furthermore here the artistic interventions themselves contribute to the differentiation and development of “legal writing”. Through their explorations, contestations and subversions, they participate in an alternative production of knowledge and function as mediators of and shape legal practices. The exhibition will be located at the conference venue and in the close-by “Neuer Giessner Kunstverein”, a local art association. This will expand the exhibition’s and conference’s reception towards a non-academic public open the discourse on the politically and socially relevant topic to a larger public.

The conference and exhibition is organized at Justus Liebig University Giessen by the International Graduate Centre for the Study of Culture (GCSC) in cooperation with the  Department of English, the Rudolf-von-Jhering Institute, and in cooperation with the Neuer Kunstverein Giessen.

publication

Experiencing Space – Spacing Experience

The publication Experiencing Space – Spacing Experience: Concepts, Practices, and Materialities of the GCSC conference at  Ruhrtriennale 2013 was finally released. The book is available at WVT Verlag. My article is on art and surveillance and also refers to artistic strategies of subverting face recognition:

Raul Gschrey: “Opening the Closed Circuit: Artistic Practices in Spaces under Surveillance.” In: Experiencing Space – Spacing Experience: Concepts, Practices, and Materialities.Berning, Nora; Schulte, Philipp; Schwanecke, Christine (eds.) Trier: WVT, 2014, 259-273.

Table of Contents

Interdisciplinary approaches to the intersection of space and experience, which comprise an emerging research topic in the study of culture, are few and far between. This conceptual volume maps the rapidly developing international field of research related to the presentation and representation of spatial experience as well as the experiential interfaces of space and experience – particularly in light of new directions in research, which include the exploration of space as a ‘cultural-theoretical’ or ‘psychogeographical’ category. Experiencing Space – Spacing Experience weiterlesen →

review

Künstlerisches und wissenschaftliches Forschen

Interview von Raul Gschrey mit Michaela Filla im BiG (Büro für interdisziplinäre Gesprächskultur) im ATELIERFRANKFURT. Das komplette, bebilderte Interview zu künstlerischem und wissenschaftlichem Forschen und zu Räumen der Gegenwartskunst in Frankfurt, sowie der aktuellen Ausstellung im Atelierfrankfurt gibt es auf Pudding Explosion.

Michaela: Raul, Du bist Künsler, Lehrer und Forscher und arbeitest zur Zeit an Deiner Promotion zum Thema “Composite & Eigenface: Histories and Continuities of Human Measurement between Arts and Science” und beschäftigst Dich besonders mit der Technik der Kompositfotografie. Was genau beutet Kompositfotografie und warum beschäftigst Du Dich damit?

Raul: Also die Kompositfotografie ist eine ganz merkwürdige fotografische Technik. Sie wurde Ende des 19. Jahrhundert von dem viktorianischen Wissenschaftler Francis Galton entwickelt. Durch die Überblendung von menschlichen Gesichtern versuchte Galton auf visuelle Spezifikationen zu schließen und darüber Typisierungen herzustellen. Er ging davon aus, dass sich durch diese Technik zeigen lässt, wie zum Beispiel der typische Verbrecher oder ein gesunder Soldat des damaligen Empire aussieht. Dahinter liegt natürlich die Idee, von äußerlichen Charakteristika auf innere Dispositionen schließen zu können, d.h. anhand der Größe von Nase, Augen, Mund usw. psychische Probleme oder kriminelle Eigenschaften zu erkennen. Galtons Kompositfotografie bezieht sich auf ältere physiognomische Konzepte, als man die Maße und Proportionen vom menschlichen Kopf bzw. Gesicht nahm, um anhand dieser auf Charaktereigenschaften zu schließen. Galton gilt übrigens heute als Begründer der Eugenik, also einer Vererbungspolitik die darauf abzielte, den Anteil positiv bzw. negativ bewerteter Erbanlagen zu vergrößern bzw. zu verringern. Seine Theorien wurden später zum Bezugspunkt nationalsozialistischer Rassenlehre.

Was mich besonders an der Technik interessiert, ist, dass sie zu Beginn der Fotografie entstand. 1870 war die Fotografie ein junges Medium im Findungsprozess und bewegte zwischen einer mechanischen, objektiv-wissenschaftlichen Darstellung der Realität und künstlerisch kreativen Ansätzen, bei denen es eher darum ging Stimmungen auszudrücken. Kompositfotografien, die zur vermeintlich wissenschaftlichen Analyse eingesetzt wurden, tatsächlich aber eher wie Geisterbilder aussahen, lagen irgendwo dazwischen. Künstlerisches und wissenschaftliches Forschen weiterlesen →