Pool 7: Art & Research (gLV)

How can an artwork speak with more than one voice? Who speaks? Is there such a thing as a polyphonic art practice? Usually, polyphony refers to a musical texture consisting of two or more simultaneous lines of different melody. In relation to art, it implies an assembly of multiple points of views promoting the emergence of harmony or unison as well as cacophony or conflict.

In this research-based pool seminar we will undertake playful experiments to multiply the position of the author within the art work. Examining various facets of polyphonic art practices, we will begin the week with a close reading of key texts and a discussion of art works by Vincent Meessen, Zheng Mahler, Barbara Marcel, Video nas Aldeias, amongst others. In a practice-related part in the second half of the week we’ll experiment in relation to the students’ own artistic practices. Key questions will be: How to listen to the voices of others? What of kind of ‘others’? How is it (im-)possible to represent others? What allows for polyphonic encounters? And how are polyphonies to be translated into the exhibition space?


About the lecturer:

Barbara Preisig is an art historian and art critic whose research focuses on contemporary artistic practices and their social and political contexts. In exploring translocal, transdisciplinary, and nonacademic ways of writing and thinking, she addresses a range of subjects, including artistic research, feminism, institutional studies, and the politics of authorship. She works as a postdoc researcher and lecturer at Zurich University of the Arts, and is the Deputy Director of the Institute for Contemporary Art Research (IFCAR). Besides she is co-editor of the magazine Brand-New-Life.