Constanze Ruhm & Christine Lang, Kalte Probe (Cold Rehearsal), 2012. Photo: Andrea Salzmann
Thursday April 30, 7:00 to 9:00 pm
Location: VOX
2, Sainte-Catherine St East, Room 401
The Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery, SBC galerie d’art contemporain and VOX, centre de l’image contemporaine invite you to a public presentation by Sabeth Buchmann and Constanze Ruhm. Respectively an art theorist and an artist, they will be discussing the various issues guiding their research toward a shared project of theirs to be presented in Montreal in 2016.
Sabeth Buchmann and Constanze Ruhm will be examining a set of positions and strategies in contemporary art that consider rehearsal as both subject and practice. Despite the popularity of the format of rehearsal at the intersection of film, theatre, music and fine arts, it has been scarcely considered in contemporary art discourse. Sabeth Buchmann and Constanze Ruhm investigate the role and function of the notion of “rehearsal” understood as a medium for reflection on the intertwinement of production and reception processes, as well as an instrument for critiquing institutional power relations.
“Rehearsal” also refers to theatrical practice as well as to the avant-garde tradition of the so-called anti-theatre. It allows for literally “testing” all the elements pertaining to an extended notion of production. In this respect, institutional settings often refer to the methodology of rehearsal, thereby frequently implying an interlacing of White Cube, stage and/or studio. Installation settings pertaining to such aforementioned notions aim at drafting new kinds of social orders, which are symbolically “rehearsed” in the framework of the respective institution/exhibition display.
This gathering will be an opportunity for exchanges between the two curators and Montreal’s art community on the various issues informing their research leading up to the creation of an exhibition, a series of film screenings, and public events under the title Putting Rehearsals to the Test, to be presented eventually at the Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery, SBC galerie d’art contemporain and VOX, centre de l’image contemporaine.
The conference will be in English.
THE SPEAKERS
Sabeth Buchmann is an art historian and critic who divides her time betwen Berlin and Vienna. She is Professor of Modern and Postmodern Art at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. Together wih Helmut Draxler, Clemens Krümmel, and Susanne Leeb, she co-edits polypen, a series on art criticism and political theory, published by b_books, Berlin.
Recent publications include Hélio Oiticica, Neville D’Almeida and others: Block-Experiments in Cosmococa, London, 2013 (with Max Jorge Hinderer Cruz); Film, Avantgarde und Biopolitik, Vienna, 2009 (co-edited with Helmut Draxler and Stephan Geene); Denken gegen das Denken. Produktion – Technologie – Subjektivität bei Sol LeWitt, Yvonne Rainer und Hélio Oiticica, Berlin, 2007; as well as Art After Conceptual Art, MIT Press / Generali Foundation Collection Series, 2006 (co-edited with Alexander Alberro).
Constanze Ruhm is an artist, filmmaker and author based in Vienna and Berlin. From 1996 to 1997 she was Guest Professor of Visual Communication at the Hochschule für Gestaltung Offenbach/Main; between 2004 and 2006 was Professor of Film and Video at Merz Academy Stuttgart, and since 2006 has been Professor of Art and Media at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. From 2008 to 2011, she was Adjunct Professor at the Art Institute Boston of Lesley University.
Curatorial projects have included Fate of Alien Modes at Secession 2003, as well as projects and contributions within the haus.0 program at Künstlerhaus Stuttgart (with Fareed Armaly) between 2000 and 2003; and, more recently, the series Putting Rehearsals to the Test (with Sabeth Buchmann) at MUMOK Cinema Vienna (curated by Matthias Michalka). She has also been involved in numerous international exhibitions, projects in public spaces, publications, film festivals (recently, Berlinale / Forum Expanded; Essay Film Festival, London) and symposia (Utopia of Sound, with Diedrich Diederichsen, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, 2008; Putting Rehearsals to the Test, with Sabeth Buchmann, Academy of Fine Arts, 2013).
Her artistic practice focusses on relations between cinema, new media and theatrical forms, and investigates issues of female identity and representation. Her productions emerge at the intersection of installation, film, video, web-based projects and publications.
INFORMATION
514.390.0382 I info@centrevox.ca