Lecture

Fragrance of Difference. Spaces for Art and Cultural Diversity

2008-11-20 - 2008-11-20

ifa-Galerie Stuttgart Charlottenplatz 17, 70173 Stuttgart
Lectures and discussions in English and German will be translated simultaneously.

In 2009 Liam Gillick – an Englishman – will represent Germany at the Biennale di Venezia, invited by the Biennale commissioner and curator for Germany, Nicolaus Schafhausen. Is this a kind of staged cosmopolitanism or the result of a now global art world? Can the fine arts only really be understood if they are also anchored in a local context, or has the western art system now become an autonomous international phenomenon? Or is it the case that spaces for art, its systems, formats, and channels of distribution are being adapted to a global context, while its contents remain determined by regional and local issues?

In recent years new biennials and triennials of contemporary art have taken place in Ushuaia and Echigo-Tsumari, in Sharjah, Singapore and Beijing – to name just a few. The travelling art circus now has to play these venues too, attending them, publicising them, and bringing them into the critical discourse. International art fairs such as Art Basel and the Shanghai Contemporary are also playing an ever more important role, both in the art business and in the critical production and reception of art.

Protagonists, mediators, and art critics address the ways in which the system manages the relationship between the global and the local, and how the system utilises and shapes the simultaneity of the universal and the specific, and their mutual codetermination. How is the compression of space and time discussed, (re-)formulated, and disseminated, and how far does the system promote the now matter-of-course interdependence of the economic and the cultural? Teaching and research, exhibition institutions, and journalists and commentators are all asking whether “glocalisation” in the culture business is just a successful marketing strategy within a world where trends and hypes come and go with ever increasing speed, or whether it helps to preserve diversity and to promote cross-cultural communication.

And yet: “More than other functional systems like religion, politics, science, or law, the art system is able to accept a pluralism of ascriptions of complexity. To a greater degree and above all with greater precision than other functional systems, art can demonstrate that contemporary society and the world as seen from contemporary society can now only be described in polycontextural terms. In this way, art, makes ‘truth’ visible in society.” (Niklas Luhmann, Die Kunst der Gesellschaft, Frankfurt/Main, 1995, p. 494)

This conference will look at issues related to glocalization from both an art-critical and theoretical perspective and from the viewpoints of those directly involved in the art world – journalists, critics, publishers and curators. The conference will address the dynamic process of dealing with cultural diversity and cultural similarity, and will take a critical look at issues of cultural transfer. A particular focus will be the examination of forms of distribution and dissemination in the contemporary cultural market.

Program

1.30 pm
Welcome / Introduction
Iris Lenz and Dr. Valerie Hammerbacher, ifa Gallery Stuttgart

1.45 – 2.15 pm
Zurich – Rio and Back
The Daros-Latinamerica Collection from a Local, Regional and International Point of View
Dr. Hans-Michael Herzog, Daros-Latinamerica AG Zürich

2.15 – 2.45 pm
Destination Asia Regional Cooperations versus or towards the “Big Art World”?_
Valeria Ibraeva, Soros Center for Contemporary Art, Almaty

2.45 – 3.00 pm
Discussion

3.00 – 3.15 pm
Coffee break

3.15 – 3.45 pm
Still reading? (Visual) Publishing in the Centre of the Periphery
Els van der Plas, Prince Claus Fund, Netherlands

3.45 – 4.15 pm
Mainstream or Underground. Cultural Self-Representation for Which Public?
Nur Hanim Mohamed Khairuddin, Artist, SentAP! Contemporary Visual Art Magazine, Malaysia

4.15 – 4.30 pm
Discussion

4.30 – 5.00 pm
Coffee break

5.00 – 5.30 pm
Transnational Identities.Canonical Orders in Contemporary Eastasian Art
Prof. Dr. Jeong-hee Lee-Kalisch, Freie Universität Berlin, Institute for Arthistory, Department of Eastasian Arthistory

5.30 – 6 pm
Shaped Difference. Local, National and International Art Worlds in an African Context
Prof. Dr. Till Förster, University of Basel, Ethnology, Centre for African Studies

6.00 – 6.30 pm
Discussion

7.30 pm
Lecture
Global Art? Doing Art after the Age of Modernity
Prof. em. Dr. Hans Belting