June 18–September 4, 2012
Program launch: Monday, June 18, 6pm
A program of seminar sessions focusing on the relationship between art and philosophy.
Conceived by Christoph Menke with Chus Martínez for dOCUMENTA (13) in Kassel.
What is Thinking? Or a Taste that Hates Itself
Conceived by German philosopher Christoph Menke in collaboration with Chus Martínez, and led by invited speakers, the seminar What is Thinking? Or a Taste that Hates Itself is a series of twelve two-part sessions focusing on the relationship between art and philosophy, between thinking and perceiving. It is an attempt to address the questions and the methods of philosophy for those who are curious but not necessarily close to the field. Each session is divided into a public lecture on Monday evenings in the Ständehaus, followed by a more intimate discussion seminar on Tuesday mornings in the Zwehrenturm of the Fridericianum.
In September 1959, the philosopher Theodor W. Adorno gave a lecture on the occasion of documenta 2. A few days earlier, he had mentioned in a letter to Max Horkheimer his interest in visiting the exhibition, in seeing what culture—art—could do after the greatest collapse that the country and the world had ever experienced. This lecture, “Die Idee der neuen Musik” (The Idea of New Music), is of key significance to dOCUMENTA (13). It is read and commented upon by Albrecht Wellmer at the opening of the exhibition and by Carla Harryman at the close, as the inspiration and source for a reflection on the importance of deeds, like art, and thoughts, like philosophy, that are less driven by aims and results, than guided by values.
The What is Thinking? seminar is a rigorous meditation on language, on meaning, on the limits and possibilities of skepticism, on imagination and politics, and on art and experience. It aims to contribute to an understanding of the importance of an art exhibition with the history and tradition of documenta, as a crucial space for ethical and aesthetic questions.
The seminar sessions can be attended individually or in full. Texts and other materials for the sessions are available online.
Please visit www.documenta.de for further information and booking details.
Full program
Emmanuel Alloa: Aisthesis – Or why there is no thinking without phantasms (English)
Monday, June 18, 6pm
Bode-Saal, Maybe Center for Conviviality at the Ständehaus
Ständeplatz 6-10, Kassel
Open session, free entry
Tuesday, June 19, 11am
Fridericianum Zwehrenturm
Friedrichsplatz 18, Kassel
Access with dOCUMENTA (13) entrance ticket, booking required
Emmanuel Alloa is a philosopher and an assistant professor at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences of the University of St. Gallen. Since 2010 he is the head of the philosophical dialogues in the theater of Gennevilliers (Paris). His research interests include German and French phenomenology, aesthetics, image theory, and the question of embodied memory. He is the author of La résistance du sensible. Merleau-Ponty critique de la transparence (2011).
Frank Ruda: Warum man das undekbare denken muss. Eine materialistische antwort (German)
Monday, June 25, 6pm
Bode-Saal, Maybe Center for Conviviality at the Ständehaus
Ständeplatz 6-10, Kassel
Open session, free entry
Tuesday, June 26, 11am
Fridericianum Zwehrenturm
Friedrichsplatz 18, Kassel
Access with dOCUMENTA (13) entrance ticket, booking required
Frank Ruda is a philosopher and Research Associate at the Collaborative Research Centre on Aesthetic Experience and the Dissolution of Artistic Limits at the Free University of Berlin, Germany. Since 2011 he is guest professor at the Institute of Philosophy, Scientific Research Centre in Ljubljana. Amongst his recent publications is Hegel’s Rabble: An Investigation of the Hegelian Philosophy of Right (2011).
Bruno Bosteels: What is an event? (English)
Monday, July 2, 6pm
Bode-Saal, Maybe Center for Conviviality at the Ständehaus
Ständeplatz 6-10, Kassel
Open session, free entry
Tuesday, July 3, 11am
Fridericianum Zwehrenturm
Friedrichsplatz 18, Kassel
Access with dOCUMENTA (13) entrance ticket, booking required
Bruno Bosteels is a philosopher and Professor of Romance Studies and Comparative Literature at Cornell University. His research interests include Latin American literature and culture, contemporary European philosophy and political theory, and art and aesthetic theory. He is the author of Alain Badiou, une trajectoire polémique (2009), and Marx and Freud in Latin America: Politics, Psychoanalysis, and Religion in Times of Terror (2012). He has recently published a notebook within dOCUMENTA (13)’s 100 Notes – 100 Thoughts series.
Alexei Penzin: Sleep, subjectivity, and artwork (English)
Monday, July 9, 6pm
Bode-Saal, Maybe Center for Conviviality at the Ständehaus
Ständeplatz 6-10, Kassel
Open session, free entry
Tuesday, July 10, 11am
Fridericianum Zwehrenturm
Friedrichsplatz 18, Kassel
Access with dOCUMENTA (13) entrance ticket, booking required
Alexei Penzin is a philosopher and researcher on analytical anthropology at the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow. His interests include theories of subjectivity in modern philosophy and political thought, the post-Soviet/postcolonial dimension, questions of “crude thought” in Brecht and Benjamin, and non-dogmatic Soviet Marxist philosophy. Penzin is a member of the interdisciplinary group Chto Delat? (What Is to be Done?).
Alexander Düttmann: Kein denker versteht sich selbst (German)
Monday, July 16, 6pm
Bode-Saal, Maybe Center for Conviviality at the Ständehaus
Ständeplatz 6-10, Kassel
Open session, free entry
Tuesday, July 17, 11am
Fridericianum Zwehrenturm
Friedrichsplatz 18, Kassel
Access with dOCUMENTA (13) entrance ticket, booking required
Alexander Düttmann is a philosopher and Professor of Philosophy and Visual Culture at Goldsmiths, University of London. His research has focused on the philosophical problem of deconstruction, the work of Italian filmmaker Luchino Visconti, the concept of exaggeration in philosophy, and Adorno’s moral philosophy. He has published a number of authored books, including Derrida and I. The Problem of Deconstruction (2008).
Felix Ensslin: Faith, paranoia, knowledge, thought: a conversation with Luther and Lacan (German)
Monday, July 23, 6pm
Bode-Saal, Maybe Center for Conviviality at the Ständehaus
Ständeplatz 6-10, Kassel
Open session, free entry
Tuesday, July 24, 11am
Fridericianum Zwehrenturm
Friedrichsplatz 18, Kassel
Access with dOCUMENTA (13) entrance ticket, booking required
Felix Ensslin is a philosopher, director, and curator based in Berlin. He has a background in philosophy and theatre direction and received a PhD from the Philosophy department of Universität Potsdam in 2009. Since 2010, Ensslin has been Professor of Art Theory and Aesthetics in Kunstakademie Stuttgart where he focuses on issues of art education, aesthetics and psychoanalytic cultural theory.
Rado Riha: Über die ununterscheidbarkeit von denken und handeln (German)
Monday, July 30, 6pm
Bode-Saal, Maybe Center for Conviviality at the Ständehaus
Ständeplatz 6-10, Kassel
Open session, free entry
Tuesday, July 31, 11am
Fridericianum Zwehrenturm
Friedrichsplatz 18, Kassel
Access with dOCUMENTA (13) entrance ticket, booking required
Rado Riha is a senior research fellow and currently head of the Institute of Philosophy, Centre for Scientific Research at the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts. He also coordinates the philosophy module at the postgraduate study programme of the University of Nova Gorica. Riha’s research topics include ethics, epistemology, contemporary French philosophy, the psychoanalysis of Jacques Lacan, and the philosophy of Immanuel Kant.
Maria Muhle: Re-thinking past thought. Reenactment between history and art (German)
Monday, August 6, 6pm
Bode-Saal, Maybe Center for Conviviality at the Ständehaus
Ständeplatz 6-10, Kassel
Open session, free entry
Tuesday, August 7, 11am
Fridericianum Zwehrenturm
Friedrichsplatz 18, Kassel
Access with dOCUMENTA (13) entrance ticket, booking required
Maria Muhle is a media theorist and Professor of Aesthetic Theory at the Merz Akademie, Stuttgart. Her research focuses on political aesthetics and aesthetic realism, bio politics and life, and history and media. She is co-founder of the August Verlag Berlin, a forum for theory at the intersection of philosophy, art, and politics, and the author of Biopolitische Konstellationen (2011).
Ethel Matala de Mazza: Gitter und ornament (German)
Monday, August 13, 6pm
Bode-Saal, Maybe Center for Conviviality at the Ständehaus
Ständeplatz 6-10, Kassel
Open session, free entry
Tuesday, August 14, 11am
Fridericianum Zwehrenturm
Friedrichsplatz 18, Kassel
Access with dOCUMENTA (13) entrance ticket, booking required
Ethel Matala de Mazza is the Professor for New German Literature at Humboldt-Universität Berlin. Her research interests are literary history of the last three centuries and literary theory and history of the political imaginary, interactions between law and literature, and cultural theory and anthropology. Currently she is working on a book titled Poetik des Kleinen. Verhandlungen der Moderne zwischen Operette und Feuilleton.
Patricia Falguières: On techné (English)
Monday, August 20, 6pm
Bode-Saal, Maybe Center for Conviviality at the Ständehaus
Ständeplatz 6-10, Kassel
Open session, free entry
Tuesday, August 21, 11am
Fridericianum Zwehrenturm
Friedrichsplatz 18, Kassel
Access with dOCUMENTA (13) entrance ticket, booking required
Patricia Falguières is an art historian and professor of Renaissance cultural history and contemporary art history and theory at L’École des hautes études en sciences sociales EHESS in Paris. Since 2006, she has collaborated with Nataša Petrešin-Bachelez, Elisabeth Lebovici, and Hans Ulrich Obrist on the seminar series Something You Should Know: artists and producers today.
Christiane Voss: Aesthetics of illusion (German)
Monday, August 27, 6pm
Bode-Saal, Maybe Center for Conviviality at the Ständehaus
Ständeplatz 6-10, Kassel
Open session, free entry
Tuesday, August 28, 11am
Fridericianum Zwehrenturm
Friedrichsplatz 18, Kassel
Access with dOCUMENTA (13) entrance ticket, booking required
Christiane Voss is a philosopher and Professor of Media Philosophy at the Bauhaus University Weimar since 2009. Her research focuses on philosophical aesthetics and epistemology, film theory, and media anthropology of emotions. She is also a filmmaker.
Christoph Menke and Chus Martínez: Closing notes (German)
Monday, September 3, 6pm
Bode-Saal, Maybe Center for Conviviality at the Ständehaus
Ständeplatz 6-10, Kassel
Open session, free entry
Tuesday, September 4, 11am
Fridericianum Zwehrenturm
Friedrichsplatz 18, Kassel
Access with dOCUMENTA (13) entrance ticket, booking required
Christoph Menke is a philosopher and Professor of Practical Philosophy at Goethe University in Frankfurt/Main. He is interested in the relationship between rule and freedom, law and violence, irony in theater, and the philosophy of human rights. His recent publications include Tragic Play: Irony and Theater from Sophocles to Beckett (2009), Kraft (2008), and Reflections of Equality (2006).
Chus Martínez is Head of Department of dOCUMENTA (13) and a member of its Core Agent Group. A philosophy scholar, her current research focuses on artistic research: how thinking can happen through matter and how sense can be reversed by experience. She was the director of the Frankfurter Kunstverein (2005–08), and chief curator of the Museu d’Art contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) (2008–11).
Please visit www.documenta.de for further information and booking details.
The documenta and Museum Fridericianum Veranstaltungs-GmbH is a nonprofit company supported and financed jointly by the City of Kassel and the State of Hessen as partners, with support from the Federal Cultural Foundation.
The Maybe Center for Conviviality of the Maybe Education and Public Programs has been made possible thanks to the support of Absolut Art Bureau, Corporate Benefactor.
