Images of History in Contemporary Art

Transgenerational Corpographies of Memory is a visual art and history workshop that uses two audio-visual artistic works as a departure point to explore the dimensions and trajectories of transgenerational memory within the medium of artistic film. The workshop consists of two parts: the film screenings and the discursive program. The underlying works stage female biographies of the 20th and early 21st century based on two women’s self-narrated memories.

The workshop structure is triadic, meaning that the works will be analyzed from an artistic, art historical and historical perspective in a complementary way. The aim of this transdisciplinary investigation is to explore transgenerational cultural memory work in contemporary art via pictorial “close readings.” The central questions are: How can we grasp the connection between history, transgenerational memories and artistic images of history? How do these works integrate critical, dissonant historical voices?

Participants: Melanie Franke, Ulrike Gerhardt, Francisca de Haan, Gal Kirn, Alexandra Köhring, Lene Markusen, Marta Popivoda and Jelena Vesić. The event is part of the Images of History in Contemporary Art research project funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) in Bern, led by Melanie Franke. The workshop concept has been developed by Ulrike Gerhardt (post-doc, Images of History in Contemporary Art SNSF project). The workshop takes place in cooperation with the Leibniz Centre for Contemporary History Potsdam (ZZF).

Read more about GBGK.