Neolithic Childhood. Art in a False Present, c. 1930

From the false present of the Weimar Republic and vitalist thinking in times of crisis, from Carl Einstein’s “invention” of African art to the concept of yinyang and its queer potential: The conference accompanying the exhibition Neolithic Childhood. Art in a False Present, c. 1930 examines interwar conceptions of (pre-)history and temporality and the relationship between the global crises of around 1930, and those of the present day. International art historians and academics illuminate the cultural significance of the recourse to deep time and origin narratives.

The stock market crash and mass unemployment, political polarization, the industrialization of perception, the violence of colonialism: Deep Time and Crisis, c. 1930, the contradictory and crisis-ridden nature of modernity became blatantly apparent. The research and exhibition project Neolithic Childhood. Art in a False Present, c. 1930, informed by the writings of Carl Einstein and other interwar writers and artists, proposes an assessment of the artistic and intellectual production of the period. Against the background of the expanding knowledge of the Paleolithic and the Neolithic, the growth of ethnological and anthropological research and its understanding of “other,” indigenous and “archaic” notions of time, this conference takes the conceptualizations of temporality, the critique of the predominant historiography and the role of art in this context as a starting point. Deep Time and Crisis, c. 1930 sets out to reconsider the discussions of past decades on narratives of origin and pre- and outer-historical otherness, and reviews their correlation with the actual sense of a shifting and abyssal contemporaneity after the end of history.

With Irene Albers, James Clifford, Silvy Chakkalakal, Joyce S. Cheng, Anselm Franke, Tom Holert, Charles W. Haxthausen, Susanne Leeb, Sven Lütticken, Jenny Nachtigall, Sylvester Okwunodu Ogbechie, Kerstin Stakemeier, Maria Stavrinaki, and Zairong Xiang.  

Exhibition and conference curated by Anselm Franke and Tom Holert; advisory board: Irene Albers, Susanne Leeb, Jenny Nachtigall, Kerstin Stakemeier.

Program
Saturday, May 26

1pm   
Introduction
With Anselm Franke and Tom Holert

1:30pm         
Lecture
Susanne Leeb: “Tragic Fatigue”—On problematic dimensions of 1920s Cultural Criticism

2:15pm         
Lecture
Silvy Chakkalakal: “A Moment There! Don’t Move!”—Boasian Aesthetics and the Phenomenon of Historicity

3pm   
Discussion
With Susanne Leeb and Silvy Chakkalakal, moderated by Anselm Franke and Tom Holert

4pm   
Lecture
Sven Lütticken: The Presence of the Prehistoric

4:45pm         
Lecture
Maria Stavrinaki: Through the Neolithic: Permanence, Recurrences, and End

5:30pm         
Discussion
With Sven Lütticken and Maria Stavrinaki, moderated by Jenny Nachtigall

6:30pm         
Lecture
Joyce S. Cheng: The Persistence of Masks: Surrealism and the Vicissitude of the Subject

7:15pm         
Lecture
Sylvester Okwunodu Ogbechie: Carl Einstein’s Negerplastik and the Invention of “African Art”

8pm   
Discussion
With Joyce S. Cheng and Sylvester Okwunodu Ogbechie, moderated by Irene Albers

Sunday, May 27

1pm   
Lecture
Tom Holert: Labyrinth and Evasion: Chronopolitics of Metamorphosis

1:45pm         
Lecture
Zairong Xiang: Transdualism: The A/history of Yinyang

2:30pm         
Discussion
With Tom Holert and Zairong Xiang, moderated by Anselm Franke

3:30pm         
Lecture
Jenny Nachtigall: Life Out of Sync

4:15pm         
Lecture
Charles W. Haxthausen: “… not a book about Braque”: Notes on Carl Einstein’s “Monograph”

5pm   
Discussion
With Jenny Nachtigall and Charles W. Haxthausen, moderated by Kerstin Stakemeier

6pm   
Lecture
Kerstin Stakemeier: Intellectual Dangers

6:45pm         
Lecture
James Clifford: Primitivism and the Indigenous Longue Durée

7:30pm         
Discussion
With Kerstin Stakemeier and James Clifford, moderated by Susanne Leeb

With simultaneous translation into German and English


Within the framework of Kanon-Fragen, supported by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media due to a ruling of the German Bundestag. Supported by Akademie der Künste, Berlin. The digitization of the Carl-Einstein-Archive realized with the support of Haus der Kulturen der Welt within the framework of Kanon-Fragen (adk.de/einstein). Haus der Kulturen der Welt is supported by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media and the Federal Foreign Office.

Press Contact:
Anne Maier
Haus der Kulturen der Welt
T +49 (0)30 39787 153/196 / anne.maier [​at​] hkw.de