Pending Constellations: Expanded Concept of Material in Contemporary Art

With: Kathrin Bentele, Sabeth Buchmann, Rachel Haidu, Olga Holzschuh, Charlotte Matter, Sung Tieu, Vivien Trommer, and Yolande Zola Zoli van der Heide. Artist workshop with: Nora Schultz.

The Pending Constellations symposium is dedicated to reflections and re-evaluations of the concept of material in contemporary art. Our focus is on artistic approaches that, through the targeted use of space and structure, make physical and social difference graspable—by testing alternative ways of perceiving, viewing and organizing space. These artistic practices are part of a tradition of emancipatory spatial and body politics that have resisted hegemonies of a universalized subject position since the 1960s. 

Concepts of the material and of materiality refer to a variety of perspectives in art theory, cultural studies and philosophy: In the shadow of the “material turn”—neo-Marxist revisions in the tradition of historical materialism—it has most recently been speculative realism and other efforts to decentralize the subject that point to a new interest in material cultures.

Beyond attempts at definition like these, the symposium will concentrate on the specific knowledge and formal and affective power of material in space. This conceptualization of the material enables us to a new understanding of situatedness, experiences of difference and embodiment from an intersectional perspective and against the background of an ongoing reconfiguration of materiality in post-digital everyday life. Temporality, fragility, performance and context dependency can thus be negotiated as material qualities of artistic work. Above all, they allow to problematize hegemonic structures, be they architectural, historical, institutional or social.

Organized by Mirjam Thomann (University of Cologne) and Christopher Weickenmeier (Kunstraum of Leuphana University Luneburg).

Friday, January 10
11–11:30am: Introduction by Mirjam Thomann
11:30am–12:30pm: Yolande Zola Zoli van der Heide: That Time When We Were Not There. Lecture followed by a response by Kathrin Bentele
12:30–1:30pm: Lunch break
1:30–2:30pm: Infrastrukturen von/in künstlerischem Material. Talk between Sabeth Buchmann and Sung Tieu
2:30–3:30pm Charlotte Matter: Bodily Encounters with Plastic Matter. Lecture followed by a response by Olga Holzschuh
3:30–4:30pm: Coffee break
4:30–6pm: Rachel Haidu: Transition Art. Keynote lecture followed by a response by Vivien Trommer

Saturday, January 11
10:30am–12:30pm: The Golden Key. Artist Workshop by Nora Schultz
12:30–1:30pm: Lunch break
1:30–3:30pm: Workshop continues
3:30–4:30pm Recap of symposium and workshop

Please find further information on our website.