Katja Kobolt at Summer School as School 2022
August 17, 2022, 20:00
Venue: Boxing Club
August 17, 2022, 20:00
Venue: Boxing Club
"What is feminist in research and art? part of the Public Program of Summer School as School 2022.
Discussant: Jelena Vesić
When one says “feminism” the emancipatory political dimension seems obvious. However, how does it stand with feminism in the contemporary condition of liberal proliferation of feminism into feminisms? In the last three to two decades the post-socialist decades so-called feminist art but also research production was deterritorialized or rather reterritorialized by the globalized systems which have been (like all spheres of life) deeply immersed in the internalized modes of capitalist production and also in variously exercised identity violence. Thus, the simple question how to research and curate or how live and act in feminist terms has returned with renewed urgency.
Katja Kobolt, a scholar and curator who has been engaged with feminist research and curating in various feminist and postmigrant initiatives in the area historically referred to as "Central Europe" and later fragmented into "Western" and "Southeastern" Europe, proposes to view the urgencies of feminist curating today through the historical lens of art's relational position in the project called modernity. Tied to the fundamental characteristic of modernity as res publica, modernity opened spaces (market and forum) for the new kind of public - the masses - and thus art, like other social spheres of (re)production of representation, was (again) inevitably linked to the question of power and governance. This question has historically been fought out primarily in terms of autonomy, particularly in regard to the pragmatics of art (what should art talk about and what should it do and how?) and in art's relation to other fields of (re)production of representation (politics, academic sector, mass culture and the culture industry, etc.). Repeating the question in a feminist context, the focus shifts to the production agency, the producers, or the question of relations in production and authorship: How the power of representative is perpetuated in production conditions in times of financialized capitalism? How feminist curating but also research can intervene in this production conditions? And what are the limits of such intervention?
Biographies:
Katja Kobolt, is a researcher, curator and art educator. Kobolt has initiated and realized research, publication, art and cultural projects in collaboration with feminist and postmigrant groups (e.g. Red Mined transyugoslav curatorial collective, n*a*i*l*s hacks*facts*fictions) and institutions (e.g. City of Women Ljubljana, 54. October Salon Belgrade, Lothringer 13 Munich) and taught at Berlin University of the Arts and Humboldt University as well as at Ludwig Maximilian University Munich. She currently holds a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions research fellow position at the Institute of Culture and Memory Studies at the ZRC SAZU Ljubljana.
Jelena Vesić is an independent curator, writer, editor and lecturer. She is active in the field of publishing, research and exhibition practice and intertwines political theory and contemporary art. Her most recent exhibitions are Story on Copy (Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart) and We are Family (with Natasa Ilic) presented in Pawilion, Poznan, part of www.d-est.com. Vesić also curated Lecture Performance (MoCA, Belgrade and the Kölnischer Kunstverein, with Anja Dorn and Kathrin Jentjens) as well as the collective exhibition project Political Practices of (post-) Yugoslav Art, which critically examined art historical concepts and narratives of Yugoslav art after the dissolution of Yugoslavia. Her recent book, On Neutrality (with Vladimir Jeric Vlidi and Rachel O'Reilly) is part of the Non-Aligned Modernity edition of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade.
Discussant: Jelena Vesić
When one says “feminism” the emancipatory political dimension seems obvious. However, how does it stand with feminism in the contemporary condition of liberal proliferation of feminism into feminisms? In the last three to two decades the post-socialist decades so-called feminist art but also research production was deterritorialized or rather reterritorialized by the globalized systems which have been (like all spheres of life) deeply immersed in the internalized modes of capitalist production and also in variously exercised identity violence. Thus, the simple question how to research and curate or how live and act in feminist terms has returned with renewed urgency.
Katja Kobolt, a scholar and curator who has been engaged with feminist research and curating in various feminist and postmigrant initiatives in the area historically referred to as "Central Europe" and later fragmented into "Western" and "Southeastern" Europe, proposes to view the urgencies of feminist curating today through the historical lens of art's relational position in the project called modernity. Tied to the fundamental characteristic of modernity as res publica, modernity opened spaces (market and forum) for the new kind of public - the masses - and thus art, like other social spheres of (re)production of representation, was (again) inevitably linked to the question of power and governance. This question has historically been fought out primarily in terms of autonomy, particularly in regard to the pragmatics of art (what should art talk about and what should it do and how?) and in art's relation to other fields of (re)production of representation (politics, academic sector, mass culture and the culture industry, etc.). Repeating the question in a feminist context, the focus shifts to the production agency, the producers, or the question of relations in production and authorship: How the power of representative is perpetuated in production conditions in times of financialized capitalism? How feminist curating but also research can intervene in this production conditions? And what are the limits of such intervention?
Biographies:
Katja Kobolt, is a researcher, curator and art educator. Kobolt has initiated and realized research, publication, art and cultural projects in collaboration with feminist and postmigrant groups (e.g. Red Mined transyugoslav curatorial collective, n*a*i*l*s hacks*facts*fictions) and institutions (e.g. City of Women Ljubljana, 54. October Salon Belgrade, Lothringer 13 Munich) and taught at Berlin University of the Arts and Humboldt University as well as at Ludwig Maximilian University Munich. She currently holds a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions research fellow position at the Institute of Culture and Memory Studies at the ZRC SAZU Ljubljana.
Jelena Vesić is an independent curator, writer, editor and lecturer. She is active in the field of publishing, research and exhibition practice and intertwines political theory and contemporary art. Her most recent exhibitions are Story on Copy (Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart) and We are Family (with Natasa Ilic) presented in Pawilion, Poznan, part of www.d-est.com. Vesić also curated Lecture Performance (MoCA, Belgrade and the Kölnischer Kunstverein, with Anja Dorn and Kathrin Jentjens) as well as the collective exhibition project Political Practices of (post-) Yugoslav Art, which critically examined art historical concepts and narratives of Yugoslav art after the dissolution of Yugoslavia. Her recent book, On Neutrality (with Vladimir Jeric Vlidi and Rachel O'Reilly) is part of the Non-Aligned Modernity edition of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade.