Artists & Agents – Performancekunst und Geheimdienste. Antworten auf häufig gestellte Fragen

2019/20 zeigte der Hartware MedienKunstVerein in Dortmund die Ausstellung „Artists & Agents – Performancekunst und Geheimdienste“. Die von Inke Arns, Kata Krasznahorkai und Sylvia Sasse kuratierte Ausstellung ging zurück auf Ergebnisse des mehrjährigen Forschungsprojekts „Performance Art in Eastern Europe 1950–1990. History and Theory” am Slavischen Seminar der Universität Zürich. Seit nach 1990 viele Geheimdienstarchive der ehemaligen Ostblock-Länder für die wissenschaftliche Forschung geöffnet wurden, war es erstmals möglich, die Dokumentation von Kunst durch Spitzel und die Einflussnahme der Geheimdienste auf künstlerische Arbeiten zu untersuchen. Die Ausstellung versammelte z. T. noch nie gezeigte Beispiele künstlerischer Subversion und geheimdienstlicher Unterwanderung und wollte vor allem die Interaktion von Geheimdienstaktionen und Performancekunst zeigen, jener Kunstrichtung, vor der sich die sozialistischen Staaten Osteuropas am meisten fürchteten. Der Beitrag ist ein Auszug aus dem die Ausstellung begleitenden Magazin

Heritage Requires Citizens’ Knowledge : The COST Place-Making Action and Responsible Research

This chapter reflects on responsible science with an eye toward concrete research practice. To this end, we briefly introduce the RRI paradigm (Responsible Research and Innovation) and then highlight seven EU research projects in the con- text of a transnational COST Action project. This COST Action will investigate how placemaking activities, like public art, civil urban design, and local knowledge pro- duction, reshape and reinvent public space, and improve citizens’ involvement in urban planning and urban design, especially in the context of heritage sites. The chapter introduces heritage case studies that either contrast, differentiate, and add to existing knowledge and practices in placemaking through specific initiatives, or enable the establishment of common ground within a wider constellation of societal actors and both, as we see, contribute in different ways to responsible research. We analyze how the four criteria of RRI, namely anticipation, reflexivity, inclusion, and responsiveness are considered and implemented, and the extent to which digital tools are supportive. Obviously, coproduction of knowledge is not sufficient when we call for responsible science in the narrow sense, hence the development of com- mon ground also appears necessary.Peer reviewe

Heritage Requires Citizens’ Knowledge : The COST Place-Making Action and Responsible Research

This chapter reflects on responsible science with an eye toward concrete research practice. To this end, we briefly introduce the RRI paradigm (Responsible Research and Innovation) and then highlight seven EU research projects in the con- text of a transnational COST Action project. This COST Action will investigate how placemaking activities, like public art, civil urban design, and local knowledge pro- duction, reshape and reinvent public space, and improve citizens’ involvement in urban planning and urban design, especially in the context of heritage sites. The chapter introduces heritage case studies that either contrast, differentiate, and add to existing knowledge and practices in placemaking through specific initiatives, or enable the establishment of common ground within a wider constellation of societal actors and both, as we see, contribute in different ways to responsible research. We analyze how the four criteria of RRI, namely anticipation, reflexivity, inclusion, and responsiveness are considered and implemented, and the extent to which digital tools are supportive. Obviously, coproduction of knowledge is not sufficient when we call for responsible science in the narrow sense, hence the development of com- mon ground also appears necessary.Peer reviewe

Mach einen Stuhl! Der neue Geist des Kapitalismus und die Kunst der Verweigerung

Seit den 1980er Jahren werden die Arbeits-, Lebens- und Produktionsweisen von Künstlern verstärkt auf das Rollenverhalten von Managern projiziert, die den neuen Geist des Kapitalismus maßgeblich gestalten und prägen. Die Figur des flexiblen Künstlers, der sich in offene Prozesse wagt, ohne deren genauen Verlauf vorhersagen zu können, der risikofreudig, mit hoher Mobilität, intuitiv und unhierarchisch agiert und sich gegen die bürgerliche Moral stellt, fungiert nach einer in den Sozialwissenschaften inzwischen kanonisch gewordenen These von Ève Chiapello und Luc Boltanski als neuer Idealtypus des kapitalistischen Arbeiters in führender Position.1 Gleichzeitig werden Künstler immer vernetzter, immer professioneller in ihrer Kommunikation und Produktion und fügen sich in ein System des mobilen, projektbasierten Arbeitens ein. Künstlerische Strategien wie die von Tamás St.Turba und Tehching Hsieh verweigern sich diesem neuen Künstlertypus und üben radikale Kritik an den neuen kapitalistischen Strukturen. Im Fokus des Artikels steht die Frage: Wie verhalten sich diese Strategien zu Chiapellos/Boltanskis These, dass Künstler «gerade in den Dienst jener Kräfte gestellt [werden], deren Zerstörung sie eigentlich beschleunigen wollten»?

Spitze der Blitze. Das Lightning Field zwischen Bild- und Technikgeschichte

Walter de Maria’s gigantic sculpture in the desert of New Mexico with its 400 stainless steel poles became an icon of post-war American art. The Lightning Field (1974-77) is not only the most expensive post-war artwork but according to the artist’s intention the „best sculpture of the 20th century“. This iconic status resulted from the power of its images: the moment when lightning strikes the poles, attracted by their tips. The whole setting, the reproductions and the highly restricted circumstances of the work’s reception all put the focus on these tips of the lightning, a fact which has never before been questioned by art historians and critics.This essay is the first to analyze the form of the lightning and of the lightning rods employing formanalytical methods in order to prove that the tip of the lightning and of the lightning rods are both constructs based on the iconographical tradition of how lightning has been depicted since antiquity. This power of the iconographic maelstrom of the form is so strong that it defines the form of the lighting rods up until the present day – although it has been scientifically established in the 1990s that blunt ends of lightning rods would attract lightning much more effectively. The confidence in this form proves the power of artistic and cultural roots based on images which overwrite technical pragmatism.This interdisciplinary focus on analyses of both form and material of a single work of art and the sedimentation of its layers of topics addressed provides new perspectives on how to approach an art form that credits oceans, lightning or other natural catastrophes as its material and precedes the so called “information era” on a global scale by giving a form to these seemingly un-representable natural phenomena.These insights make a new horizon of layers of meaning pertaining to the Lightning Field visible, allowing us to explore the conditionality and compulsivity of the form and to constitute a reasoning for the meticulous execution of the stainless steel rods’ tips. A formal analysis is the key embedding Lightning Field in an image history of lightning and lightning conductors - this is to show how this form can be re-activated in a specific place in the southwest of the USA, at a specific time in the 1970s. A further analysis could anchor the Lightning Field in the context of present-day developments in military technology (e.g. radio telescopes among other things) and examine the impact of media when dealing with such iconographically loaded images.The essay concludes with the statement that this research can give a whole new field of interpretation of this unique movement pertaining to 1970s America through the close-reading of a monographic approach to a single piece of art. Thus the essay does not only contribute to a new interpretation of this icon of American art, but also provides an example how art historical research can contribute to the understanding of a broader historical context situated between the histories of art, technology and nature. Keywords: Land Art; Walter De Maria; Nature; Art History; Scientific images; technology and art; US

Surveilling the Public Sphere. The First Hungarian Happening in Secret Agents Reports

Happenings in the public sphere were considered as major threat on the socialist order of society in Hungary from the late 1960s up until the mid 1970s. The State Security mobilized their agents to surveille these activities in order to find arguments to legally ban them from the public. The paper analyses the parallel strategies of the State Security and the happeners – both acting secretly but both targeting the public sphere – on behalf of State Security Reports on the first Hungarian Happening 1966. The paper concludes that tracking the surveillance radius of these activities indicates a new dividing line within the public sphere

David Bowie behálózva. (David Bowie gefangen im Netz)

Ausstellungsrezension der David Bowie-Retrospektive im Martin Gropius Bau in Berlin (20 Mai - 20 August 2014

'The reconstruction of the past is the task of historians and not agents' : operative reenactment in state security archives

State security archives in Eastern Europe are shedding new light on the operative practices of the secret services and their interaction with performance art. Surveillance, tracking, undermining, disruption, writing of reports, and measure plans were different operative methods to be carried out in continuous repetitive processes. This paper argues that, through these repetitive working processes, state security agencies were permanently engaged in different forms of reenactments: of orders, legends, report writing, and inventing measure plans. With this operative reenactment, state security agencies not only tried to track down facts but also created 'fake facts' serving their agenda. These 'fake-facts' were then again repeated and reenacted by informants endlessly to be 'effective' in the surveillance and elimination of performance art