Master’s Symposium: I, We, Us: On Collectivity

While the field of contemporary art is often structured around the singular
author, a persistent counter-current insists on the power and importance of
the collective. This year’s Master’s Symposium, I, We, Us: On Collectivity,
departs from a central question: how do we go back and forth between “I”,
“We” and “Us”? How is the impulse to work together born? What does it
mean to navigate between a singular artistic practice and shared practice,
and how does this in turn, create new forms of community and belonging?

The spectrum of collectivity is vast, and the Master’s Symposium aims to
explore the complex terrain between the individual artist, the artistic duo, the
collective as a mode of production, and the broader “us” that such
collectives address, constitute, or challenge/defy. The path from “I” to ‘we’ to
“us” and vice versa is not predetermined, but complex and multifaceted. That
is why the symposium wants to shed light on questions of authorship, power
dynamics, intention, and impact. How to build an “Us” that resists exclusion?
What is the relationship between the individual, the collective and the
concept of community, particularly for groups operating from the margins?
And where to place and challenge the institution?

To probe these questions, the symposium will bring together artists,
collectives, and thinkers whose practices offer diverse models of collectivity.
We will examine the collective not just as a subject of representation, but as a
lived structure.

About the lecturers:

Marie-France Rafael is an art theoretician. She studied Art History and Film
Studies in Berlin and Paris. Her research focuses on the history of exhibiting and
the artistic strategies of presenting art -the display of art - as a means of
reflection and communication that negotiates everyday culture, politics and
economics in a particular aesthetic way.

Pauline Curnier Jardin (b. 1980, Marseille, France) is an artist working across
installation, performance, film, and drawing. Her cinematic installations create
unorthodox universes and tell stories, thus proposing alternative narratives. She
is the winner of the 2019 Preis der Nationalgalerie, the 2021 Villa Romana Prize,
and recipient of the 2019-2020 Villa Medici fellowship in Rome. Her work was
included or commissioned most recently in: Kiasma, Helsinki (2024), MACRO,
Rome (2024), Centraal Museum, Utrecht (2023), Kunsthaus Pasquart, Bienne and
Kunsthalle, Winterthur (2023), CRAC Occitanie, Sète (2022); FRAC Corsica (2022);
Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW), Berlin (2022).

Judith Welter (*1980) is a curator. She studied art history, Spanish literature and
religious studies at the University of Bern. From 2015 to 2021 she was director of
the Kunsthaus Glarus. From 2004 to 2015 she worked at the Migros Museum für
Gegenwartskunst in Zurich, where she has been curator of the collection since
2012. Since 2015 she is co-editor of the online magazine for art criticism Brand
New-Life. Recent solo exhibitions she has curated include Puppies Puppies (Jade
Kuriki Olivo) (2021), Caroline Bachmann, Jan Vorisek (2020), Marta Riniker-Radich
(2018), Birgit Megerle (2017).

Johanna Terhechte's artistic practice lies at the intersection of two-dimensional
media and sculptural practice. She works with moving and still images in the
context of installations, always posing the question of how two-dimensional
media can be dissected, altered and brought into space. Johanna Terhechte is a
teaching assistant at the MFA ZHdK.

Learning objectives / competences:

Course language: English