Art + Argument

art + argument with MA Communication Design, HKB

2012-01-23T19:18:00.007+01:00

art + argument was part of a multi-faceted event that took place at Progr in Bern on the 19 January to mark the end of the first semester of the MA Communication Design at the Hochschule der Künste Bern. A packed Progr reading room was introduced to the Communication Design course before the module leaders presented the semester work of each of the students in brief.

Next it was the turn of six brave MA students, barely out of their assessments, to debate the motion: Effective design must be radical. Mikael Oettli, Lea Siegwart and Ida Hegstad spoke for the motion, while Stansje Steiger, Patrick Savolainen and Matthias Zumbrunnen opposed it. The students speaking for the motion presented radical design as an essential appreciation of the nature of things, a decisive force that pushes away from the repetitions of tradition. Radical design breaks through this; it is the designer’s responsibility to be radical and contribute to the advancement of design. Their opponents demonstrated that radical design was an activity for outliers who are not interested in speaking to and for a larger community. The obsessive nature of radicalism means it is unwilling to compromise as is necessary for effective communication.

The ensuing discussion covered, amongst many topics, the possibility or impossibility of radicalism, what is entailed in effective design, for whom design is created and the benefits of innovation.

A closing vote for which side put the more convincing arguments was, for the first time in art + argument history, a dead heat. At Progr the debate was followed by an apéro during which the students’ work could be viewed; the event closed with two student performances.

Many thanks to the HKB and the Communication Design course for the invitation to hold a debate during this event, and particularly to the students who were willing to try debating. Please remember that the opinions expressed were purely hypothetical and do not represent the students’ true opinions!

2012-01-16T13:23:00.005+01:00

Effective design must be radical

Thursday 19.1.2012, 5–8 pm

Progr

Speichergasse 4

3011 Bern

Art + Argument has been invited to explore the topic 'radical?' with students of the MA Communication Design at the HKB. The event will open with an introduction to Communication Design at the HKB, followed by an Art + Argument debate with students from the course. After a short break there will be an opportunity to view the students' semester projects.

Art + Argument is an itinerant event bringing together exciting minds from the Swiss art scene and beyond. To know more, write to aoiferosenmeyer (at) gmail.com

Art + Argument at Corner College - The Results

2011-11-30T14:42:00.007+01:00

On 23^rd November we gathered under the boughs of Ortsofort’s tree installed in Corner College for the exhibition ‘Tearing Down, Building Up’ to debate the motion: art slows the progress of the modern metropolis. For the motion, Michael Hiltbrunner started in a manner that surprised many, including his colleague Colin Guillemet, but then found his plan of attack. Rather than seeing art as an irrelevance, he put it that high art slowed progress in a positive fashion, momentarily pausing what he called the constant “communiting” in a metropolis.

Sabine Rusterholz’s rebuttal of the motion was two pronged, seeing art and artists as instrumental in the progress and in the gentriciation of cities. There’s the officially sanctioned, top-down application of percentage for art schemes, and “as a contrast to this, as a more viral multiplication, more bottom-up, building of non-defined spaces where artists have kind of cutting edge role of defining this new area and new places”. She cited the growth of new cities in places like Dubai or China were space is increasingly privatised, and “many times there is a place for art in these areas or these bigger projects but those areas often lack space for the unplanned, so many times the space given to art is built after the whole construction is finished”. She ended with her conclusion “that art in an intelligent urban area plays a role as an avant-garde, a pioneer, and should be provided with less controlled open space, to shape ideas and alternative concepts and perspectives on city planning”.

Colin Guillemet based his defence of the motion on the idea of the modern metropolis as “a sort of promised land for the middle classes, a place where you can celebrate your achievements”. He also cited gentrification, but reduced the role of art to “a sort of trophy for all the people who have made it economically”. The effectiveness of art has been reduced by art’s irrelevance and artists’ wasteful use of space and time. Closing, he cited a character in a Jonathan Franzen novel, a musician who also works as a roofer. His employers know of his double life, and “would actually question his artistic commitment if he didn’t turn up at 2 o’clock in the afternoon to build the roof. And, see, I’m left with the artist as maybe the conclusion of that progress of the modern metropolis would be the artist being some sort of pet for the rich middle class that is inhabiting the city.”

Frank Gehry's Guggenheim Bilbao

Daniel Morgenthaler’s defence of art and artists refuted what Colin said, seeing artists as a force to open up closed spaces. He noted that artists such as Vanessa Billy, Kilian Rüthemann or Sophia Hultén used a concrete aesthetic and in so doing make this acceptable or current, so that building and development become customary elements in a cityscape. He also cited museum buildings such as Gehry’s Guggenheim in Bilbao, which have an air of incompletion. “It’s a way of getting the viewer or the consumer … used to this aesthetic and used to progress, to never-ending progress, that new things are always being built.” He finished by stating that “artists tend to renovate or construct or build ideas and concepts and in this sense they are at the avant-garde, the avant-garde that brings forward progress”.

In the ensuing debate, artists came in for a lot of abuse, being variously described as useless and highly destructive, such as Lawrence Wiener’s desire not to “fuck up somebody’s day on their way to work, you want to fuck up their whole life”, thus threatening progress entirely. In their defence, they are hamstrung when involved in development projects, as all too often brought in late in the day and expected to be a cohesive and positive force despite only a cosmetic involvement. It remained unresolved whether art can unite communities in a semi-religious fashion, or whether art is ever visionary. In a damning closing, Colin suggested that today gentrification can bypass the artists, going straight to opening an American Apparel outlet.

In the final vote Michael and Colin for the motion won the debate. Many thanks to Corner College for hosting the debate and particularly to all the participants for their spirited arguments.

Next Art + Argument, Corner College, 19h, Wednesday 23 November

2011-10-21T16:44:00.006+02:00

Art slows the progress of a modern metropolis

Colin Guillemet, Michael Hiltbrunner, Daniel Morgenthaler and Sabine Rusterholz

debate the place of art in developed cities

Wednesday 23 November, 19h

at Corner College

Kochstrasse 1, CH 8004 Zürich

www.corner-college.com

This debate takes place in the context of Tearing Down, Building Up, an exhibition with Vanessa Billy, Les Frerès Chapuisat, ortsofort & Christine Zufferey, curated by OPEN FIELD (a collaboration between Isabel Münster & Aoife Rosenmeyer) which continues until 26 November.

Four cultural experts in two opposing teams debate and discuss a motion that they have been assigned. Each participant has been given a position opposing or defending the motion, and each has five minutes to argue their case uninterrupted. Thereafter the speakers challenge each other, and the audience may in turn question the speakers. The event ends with a vote for the more persuasive team.

This is a forum for discussing culture where the unspeakable may be said. Each speaker must play his or her assigned role, regardless of whether they agree or not. Speakers benefit from temporary immunity: what they say during the debate is not necessarily their opinion and they cannot be held to their word afterwards.

Art + Argument is an itinerant event bringing together exciting minds from the Swiss art scene and beyond. To know more, write to aoiferosenmeyer (at) gmail.com

Art + Argument at Kopfbau, Basel

2011-06-27T15:52:00.009+02:00

On 18 June the question of whether art fairs are today’s grand tour was debated in the bookshop of e-flux’s temporary Kopfbau hub in Basel during the period of the Art Basel fair. Debating that art fairs were an apt equivalent were Karen Archey and Kilian Rüthemann, while on the opposing side Adam Kleinman teamed up with Jan Verwoert, who very kindly stepped up at the last minute when Juliane von Herz was unable to make it to Basel that day.

Kilian opened with praise for art fairs, which provide an important opportunity for artists to meet collectors, to know their market and to interact with it. He spoke of the artist’s role working in tandem with their galleries, and indeed proposed an alternative model for emerging galleries: that they should no longer rent expensive permanent spaces, but rather invest in touring the art fairs of the world, going there to unite with significant consumers and producers of art.

Adam on the other hand pooh-pooh’d the real prestige of art fairs. He took the example of Art Basel, mentioning the clock on the fair centre exterior as the sign that it is in truth home to a much bigger watch fair, a market that puts the art market to shame. If those on the Grand Tour were gaining knowledge of art as the predominant cultural form, this has now been overtaken by other soft powers such as Hollywood and Bollywood. He finished his opening gambit: “People went on tour to see adventure and go across the Alps and do all that kind of jazz. And in reality you know we have safari tours that CPAs and lawyers go on and go look at lions and make their tours with guides which is actually much more concurrent to the Grand Tours. In effect the only thing, if such a thing as the Grand Tour exists today, for a young person from an upper-middle-class background going out for adventure to learn about culture, it’s study abroad programmes from college and backpackers.”

Karen looked at the Grand Tour from the perspective of the most recent use of the term in 2007, when the Skulptur Projekte Münster, Documenta, Venice Biennale and Art Basel all coincided. Then a young undergraduate student she undertook the Grand Tour and did her best to see everything she could, or should, have. “I felt like it held a lot of cultural cachet, now I am a lot more jaded about it… In today’s terms I don’t think that the Grand Tour is necessarily even reproducible, based on the fact that the internet exists, so we can’t have these erratic experiences with music and art that’s tied to the fact that you can only see it in these cities. Because the Internet exists basically, you know, this pilgrimage is not necessary. So what the Grand Tour is, for example in 2007 was, the biennials and art fairs colliding, is an enlightenment on the context or social structure or economic structure that brings forth the production of art, but maybe not the art itself.“

First Jan echoed Kilian’s support of the idea of art fairs, being the places where artists sell their work and money can be made. Those who suggest otherwise are misguided. His challenge to the comparison between art fairs and the Grand Tour started with the idea that fairs, like the Grand Tour, can not only educate but also edify. “You don’t just get knowledge, you build a subjectivity, you send some rich kids around the Old World and with the hope that in the end they will become subjects, that was the idea, the idea of the Grand Tour. Of course you could be a little bit philistine and say, what subject are we even still creating here? Are we producing consuming subjects or what is the form of subjectivity that’s being produced on this tour?” But this was not his principal point, where instead he wanted to celebrate the “endless possibilities for misunderstandings” the Tour offered. Henry James described the adventures of Americans in the Old World, such as in The Portrait of a Lady beautifully. These experiences cannot be repeated unless there is the potential for misunderstanding, and “the initial protocol of the Grand Tour was so loose that people didn’t actually know what to expect, so there is also I think one of the birthplaces of aesthetical theory ... So lots of experimentation with feelings that are not actually specified or qualified, and I’m just feeling that today the Grand Tour, the protocol is clear, we all know where to go, what to expect, what to do with these experiences, so the possibilities for absolute emotional chaos and disastrous misunderstandings are seriously inhibited by the fact that these fairs follow such a clear protocol. So if there’s anything I would argue for it’s, I would definitely argue for cash, but I would argue against a protocol of professionalization that these fairs are bringing into the world and would strongly argue for a form of edification that might actually get close to the havoc and uncharted itineraries of the original grand tours.“

The resulting discussion circled ideas of art fairs as an induction into the art world, and whether this world’s power is opaque or can be accessed. Looking to the past, the speakers considered the different awakenings that also made the Grand Tour experience, not just a new sense of culture but identity and sexuality; the incoherence and confusion that were possible back then may no longer be attainable now we are ineluctably networked. There was some swapping of sides and no shortage of nostalgia, and the debate ended in a clear win for the opposition.

Many thanks again to Adam, Karen, Kilian and Jan, and to e-flux for the invitation to join in the Kopfbau project.

Dr James Hay as Bear Leader, Pier Leone Ghezzi, 1704-1729

'Bear leader' was a term for the guides, frequently clerics, who accompanied unwilling participants on the Grand Tour, taking charge of their education. The term was borrowed from the men who would tour with (literal) bears offering popular entertainment.

Art + Argument at the Kunstmuseum Bern: the results

2011-06-15T15:28:00.005+02:00

On the 24^th May Jacqueline Baum and Ursula Jakob joined forces to open the defence of the motion: real life has no place in an art gallery. They started defining the kind of real they wanted to discuss, using Hal Foster’s two ideas of the real – that of the obscene and gross, and that of identity, community and human relations. In the latter art movement, which they would focus on, Nicolas Bourriaud’s book Relational Aesthetics is a key text. “Now” they stated, “the problem is that museums and art galleries are a concept dating more or less from the romantic period when museums were built as an answer to the French revolution and the end of feudalism, to show works of art created by genius artists. (The artist being a lonely individual chiselling away in the studio all day long.)“ While this idea of the artist genius was challenged by Duchamp, his doing away with the need for artist to be producer created new problems. Objects like Duchamps urinal are easily accommodated by the art market, in the process becoming “aestheticised and formal, creating a distance to real life”. Given the takeover of life by neoliberal values, art needed to move into the realm of human relationships. “By staging that (cooking with participants), for example, in the museum a process orientated work is turned into an art product, thereby entering a place where singular authorship and products of art are still the predominant concepts. But: art has moved away from the object oriented-ness towards forms and structures of communication and relation.” Because this new kind of art is time-based, “there is a conflict between the process and the attempt of displaying it in the White Cube, which is designed for art set apart from everyday life to experience, for example, moments of the sublime. The transitivity of time based processes doesn’t need a specific place for it to happen, but is a never ending discourse with no fixed and closed concept. It creates relations outside a traditional art practice, which is normally presented in an art gallery. And in fact it should be the other way round: Art should move into real life and it is desperately needed there as well. The last consequence of this would maybe be the vanishing of art as a specialised field of practice and its merging with life. The white cube in its present form is definitely not apt to stage real life at all.”

Beate Engel, on the other hand was convinced that art is, and has always been, part of real life, and that real life has equally always been part of the art world and all its institutions. “Art is not about things, it’s about interaction.” She showed the examples of Courbet’s Origin of the World and the Scottish artist Ross Sinclair, who has ‘real life’ tattooed on his back. Which of these is more ‘real’ is not clear. Beate showed this constant thread of engagement through the example the impending Kunsthalle Luzern exhibition ‘Think Art, Act Science’ with artists whose work is inspired and influence by contemporary science, akin to the many facets of Leonardo da Vinci’s work across art and science centuries ago. Today’s relational aesthetics were foreshadowed also by Alan Kaprow’s work, and she cited his 1958 text The Legacy of Jackson Pollock in which he said “we must become preoccupied with, and even dazzled by the space and objects of our everyday life, either our bodies, clothes, rooms, or, if need be, the vastness of 42^nd Street…we shall utilize the specific substances of sight, sound, movements, people, odors, touch. Objects of every sort are the materials of the new art”. And this is demonstrated in the work of Ai Weiwei, when, for example at the last Dokumenta his works included not only 1001 historic chairs, but equally a journey for the same number of Chinese people to Kassel. “People like Ai Weiwei, they strongly believe that art can transform life. They include everything which is happening in their activities. They open up new channels on the banal and hidden agendas of world politics.” Beate closed by citing Claes Oldenburg, the quote that is placed above the desk she works at. Oldenburg said “I am for an art that is political-erotical-mystical, that does something other than sit on its ass in a museum. I am for an art that grows up not knowing it is art at all, an art given the chance of having a staring point of zero. I am for an art that imitates the human, that is comic, if necessary, or violent, or whatever is necessary. I am for an art that takes its form from the lines of life itself, that twists and extends and accumulates and spits and drips, and is heavy and coarse and blunt and sweet and stupid as life itself.” Beate finished: “I love to work with this stupidity of everyday life, and I enjoy artists who do this, and this is why I am working as a curator. This is my reality.”

Michael von Graffenried was ready to jump straight into a discussion, but started his defence by demonstrating the dangers of reality – as in when Ai Weiwei was arrested, not in the art context but by the Chinese regime. “I just came back from New York, I was in the show of Alexander McQueen… There was one room with Highland Rape, the whole week we read about [Dominique] Strauss-Kahn who [allegedly] raped his femme de ménage in the hotel room, and this work became real life in the Metropolitan Museum. And I’m sure if the Metropolitan Museum would have known that this would get so strong – because there were torn dresses, you could see the rape in the dresses of Alexander McQueen, which was really realistic, you can’t stand it any more - I think they would not have put that in, if they had known that they opened the exhibition in the week when everybody is talking about rape all over the world. So, there is reality in a museum, but only the reality which is controllable, I think.” He then cited another example of his own work photographing drug addicts, and the unwillingness of some museums to show the work for fear of scandal. In short: “I think real life is always good, but not too real life in the museums”

San Keller, on the other hand, thought the motion impossible. “Maybe my position is that I think it is not possible at all to exclude [it]. It is not about if real life has no place in an art gallery or not. I think it takes place anyway in a gallery.” Visitors bring real life and experience with them. Art institutions have their own kinds of reality, in how they exist and are run and financed. In comparison with other artists San’s own work is more direct in its engagement with this reality, not going the abstract route that does not enunciate this relationship with real life. “And so I propose to start there, the real place, also the real institution, so I need it not making any difference, in a way, so if you are out or in, I don’t see a border there.”

The ongoing discussion covered the difference between being a spectator and experiencing something, and the role of the contemporary art institution to allow interaction. Ai Weiwei came up yet again, whether his work allows or resists engagement. How can an institution protect art and still promote this meeting between art and viewer? The discussion closed wondering if the museum was still required to show art that exists beyond its walls. In the final vote the opposition, Beate and San, were seen to be the more convincing when they argued that real life does indeed have a place in an art gallery.

Many thanks to the Kunstmuseum Bern and to Ingrid Wildi Merino for the generous invitation to debate in the context of the exhibition ‘Dislocacion’, thanks also to the audience for joining us and I am, as ever, indebted to the panellists for their enthusiastic participation.

2011-06-13T19:46:00.004+02:00

Art fairs are today's Grand Tour

Karen Archey, Adam Kleinman, Kilian Rüthemann and Juliane von Herz debate art, travel, education and privilege.

Saturday, 18 June 2011, 4.30pm as part of Kopfbau Basel by e-flux

Directions: At Messeplatz Basel look for a large clock, make a left and walk to the end of the fountain, look for Currency Exchange sign, enter the door to your left.

Art + Argument is an itinerant event bringing together exciting minds from the Swiss art scene and beyond. To know more, write to aoiferosenmeyer (at) gmail.com.

2011-05-17T15:16:00.004+02:00

Real life has no place in an art gallery

7pm, Tuesday 24th May 2011

Kunstmuseum Bern

Hodlerstrasse 8-12

3000 Bern 7, Switzerland

www.kunstmuseumbern.ch

This debate takes place in the context of the exhibition Dislocación

Four cultural experts in two opposing teams debate and discuss what belongs and does not belong in a gallery. Each participant has been assigned a position opposing or defending the motion, and each has five minutes to argue their case uninterrupted. Thereafter the speakers challenge each other, and the audience may in turn question the speakers. The event ends with a vote for the more persuasive team.

Art + Argument is an itinerant event bringing together exciting minds from the Swiss art scene and beyond. To know more, write to aoiferosenmeyer (at) gmail.com

Art + Argument at Galerie Edwynn Houk: the results

2011-05-10T17:11:00.015+02:00

On a busy night for the Zurich art scene, a crowd of keen thinkers assembled at Galerie Edwynn Houk to debate the motion: Art is the world’s lingua franca.

Martin Jaeggi opened the case for the motion, citing the rapid global expansion of the art world in the past two decades, “so obviously art answers needs or is understandable worldwide”. Art is not the one-way street of popular culture, and one of art’s interesting qualities is its ability to absorb the forms and thoughts of other disciplines. Art “becomes a kind of meta-language that manages to synthesise influences from a rather broad range within culture, both western and non-western culture. So… I think this type of being a meta-language qualifies it in my eyes as a kind of lingua franca.” Against charges of elitism in the art world he noted firstly that the energy devoted to education and outreach programmes, not to mention publications of all degrees of complexity, proved this to be false. What is more: “this reproach [that art is elitist] just masks certain ideological prejudices: on the one hand, a very classic populist anti-intellectualism; on the other hand the sort of old Marxist, bourgeois-baiting with the attendant veneration of the working class who are supposed to be the scale that measures everything.” And with those fighting words Martin laid down the gauntlet to Nick Micros.

Nick created a moment of clarity in what was a dense debate by defining lingua franca, a second language for communication between communities, today English being used for international business, technology, aviation and culture, the term originating in the eastern Mediterranean region in the Renaissance era. The first lingua franca was primarily Italian, as Italian speakers dominated seaborne commerce in the Ottoman Empire. “So here we have a sense of lingua franca as a kind of lingual imperialism, something belonging to a dominant culture or society, imposed on other, weaker ones.” His statement was clear: “art by its very nature and because of all the things we desire from it, as well as the current state of affairs, never was and can never be a lingua franca, or a common language that bridges borders between nations and cultures.” In our times, “art can be defined as the intellectual and aesthetic investigation by individuals of the nature of existence. Its creators and supporters are mostly confined to a highly educated, informed elite with free time and money on their hands.” Nothing new here, as art has long been the property of the wealthy and the powerful, who have used it to their own ends. And that to the detriment of art itself. “Even today, culture is used improperly as an arm of the state. These may be unpopular views but still need to be stated.” But art itself is the key reason why it cannot be a lingua franca: “high profile art today has fallen into an overly conceptual, academic and conventional rut instead, cut off from all real feeling and mutually understandable aesthetics and thought. This reactionary isolationist movement has created a tremendous gap of understanding and resentment between the art establishment and the general viewing public.” Art has huge potential, but in its complexity, its fragility and its challenges to the norm, it “requires a different, more private, and frankly elitist kind of approach to presenting and viewing to preserve these necessary mysteries.”

The Border Crossed Us, a temporary public art installation by the Institute for Infinitely Small Things, Spring 2011, image John Solem

Emily, speaking despite a cold that nearly took away her voice entirely, opened by acknowledging the ability of some art to be hermetic and exclusive. “However, a dynamic set of new artistic practises, among the most exciting in recent years, in my mind, flips this scenario inside out, by placing dialogue itself centre stage. Tonight such work is my key evidence in arguing for art’s communicative and boundary-crossing powers.” She cited four examples: an alternative school set up in a non-profit gallery space in Los Angeles, whose success bred further schools elsewhere; Mark Dion’s archaeological investigation of the River Thames commissioned by Tate Modern; the replica of the USA/Mexico border constructed by the Institute for Infinitely Small Things on the UMass Amherst campus (and associated activities); an artist’s mapping of urban green spaces and poster campaign to facilitated access to them; and a familiar-sounding series of debates in Switzerland about the value systems underpinning the art world.

Whether these projects qualified as art was of little import to their initiators, but Emily suggested they were demonstrative of artists’ communication skills and the unique position from which they operate. Their profession affords them mobility and manoeuvrability, “a liberty to enter into new terrain or subject matter and to emerge with speculative observations or representations”. They are accustomed to reinventing their working methods continually, and finally, their conclusions tend to draw attention to things, “rather than forwarding concrete and didactic truths”. She closed by positing “that in the strongest cases artists are not only expert communicators but produce necessary forms of communication which aren’t merely straightforward solutions-oriented, results-based or profit-driven, but rather have the potential to uniquely bridge communities, open dialogues and stir debates.”

Debating under the eyes of a lady of Morocco by Lalla Essaydi

Nika Spalinger approached the same subjects from the angle of linguistics. “The language of visual art and its structures are extremely complex,“ she opened “and on top of that visual expressions are always – due to their nonlinear way of reading – ambiguous. That makes visual art in no way adequate as a lingua franca.” Design, in comparison, reduces complex, seeking “recognition and sedation of the spectator”. Design as a lingua franca is a poisonous element that by its immediacy enters the human unconscious and emotional sphere, and there “kills the faculties of differentiation which are the base of every culture”. She concluded “it is my conviction, that the future of mankind – sorry womankind – lies in the capability of translation, of the capability of being able to use and decipher the largest amount of different languages and to develop the utmost flexibility and sensibility needed for the translationary act. Therefore I also plead for a ‘translational turn’.”

The intense debate that followed touched on whether art itself communicates, or whether it requires mediation; whether if politically a hot potato art is nonetheless destined to be misunderstood; of art becoming popular culture; of art as an active or a passive entity; whether icons are universal or specific; and many other points. A growing consensus opinion of the ideal communicative role of art catalysed the vote, which the opposition, Nika and Nick won, though several members of the audience abstained.

Many thanks to all the debaters and to the audience for listening intently, and particularly to Galerie Edwynn Houk for generously hosting the event.

Art + Argument at Galerie Edwynn Houk, 5th May 2011

2011-04-29T19:05:00.002+02:00

Art is the world’s lingua franca

Martin Jaeggi, Nick Micros, Emily Scott and Nika Spalinger debate art as a means of communication

19h, Thursday 5th May 2011

Galerie Edwynn Houk
Stockerstrasse 33

CH-8002 Zürich

Tel 41 44 202 69 25

This debate takes place in the context of Lalla Essaydi’s exhibition Les Femmes du Maroc.

The participants have been assigned sides opposing or defending the motion, and each team member has five minutes to argue their allotted case uninterrupted. After that speakers challenge each other and the audience may in turn question the speakers. The event will end with a vote for the more persuasive team.

Art + Argument at K3 - the results

2011-04-29T12:31:00.008+02:00

On the 20th February 2011, K3 was host to an enthusiastic (and tightly packed) audience to debate the motion: Without a market, no one would make art. Garrett Nelson and Claudia Groeflin were supporting the motion, while Hubert Bächler and Nadia Schneider opposed it.

Garrett opened the debate arguing for the market as the tool that generates “consensus opinion about art. And without opinion we would have no art, hence no art production.“ He cited Edme-François Gersaint, as portrayed by Jean-Antoine Watteau in L'Enseigne de Gersaint, 1720-1, arguing that this recorded the beginnings of art dealing. “He was the first to use auction catalogues, a showroom, a reputation of connoisseurship and the expertise of attribution to generate an opinion about art and indeed to sell art. And then, you know, suddenly in Paris, 18th Century, comes the Rococo style, and decoration becomes equal to art. Maybe for the first moment in time in art history. And so what does Gersaint do as an art dealer, self-created? He begins selling seashells - seashells in every array of presentation of form and type. And he sells it like he sold art. He applied the same aesthetic evaluation creating consensus opinion about their aesthetic value – he turns seashells into art. So here we see that the market machine has turned the dealer into the artist. He imbues the objects – whether naturally occurring or created by humans – with value, by generating and reinforcing opinion, public opinion. If the dealer can then be the artist by creating consensus of opinion about aesthetic value, then without the market, we would not have art, we would not have opinion about art. Moreover without opinion we would have no art, no artists and hence no art production.” And Garrett suggested that without the market there would indeed be no canon of art. “I as an artist could not imagine making art if it had no value!”

(L'Enseigne de Gersaint, or "Gersaint's Shopsign", by Jean-Antoine Watteau)

Hubert was the first to oppose the motion, reminding the audience that “there has been art before there was anything that we would call a market today, an economical exchange of goods and stuff like that. So I’m actually quite sure that there is also going to be art at the point in time when we have reached another means of exchange, so that we have transcended the market. I think the market is rather unimportant in terms of art apart from a few, very few, chosen ones who actually live from the art they are producing.” He continued by highlighting the lack of importance of the market in other art forms such as film or music, in which financial success is scarcely imaginable. Moreover, the market is not important to artists because it is not at all representative: “in the economical market I think so many artists don’t even exist there, because they don’t have the buyers, nobody wants to buy their things, for whatever reason, maybe they’re just bad, maybe they are just at the wrong place at the wrong time, there are all kinds of reasons, and my main argument in a way is why the proposition today is not really making much sense is that this very [only a] little slice of artistic function which is being included in today’s ‘art market’ ”. Finally Hubert compounded this point by highlighting how real monetary value is achieved on the secondary market, further still from the artists’ originating practice.

Claudia’s tack was “to look at the situation from an artist’s point of view” and the growing professionalism of artists. “I think in these days the art market has become that crazy that when you graduate from high school you can really choose: do I want to become a lawyer; do I want to become a banker; or do I want to become an artist.” The artist “has to create art, that’s the definition of why to become an artist, secondly you also have to sell yourself, you have to be a cool person, you have to be fun, you have to hang out in the right places, you have to know the right people, so you’re like a little company where you promote yourself and you also have these goods called art.” Without the market you cannot get the leverage to produce significant works. In closing, Claudia was adamant: “the notion of the artist sitting in his studio and just producing work because his soul is out there and that’s what he wants to do – has no chance in today’s market. It’s over.”

Nadia started her opposition with a personal remark: “if it’s true that without a market no-one would make art, I wouldn’t want to be a curator any more. Behind that lies actually a very high idealistic conviction! First, that an art work is more than just an object which means that an art work is a result of mental research and intellectual, spiritual process, and secondly, that an art work is not produced to be an object to sell.” Nadia seconded Hubert’s statement that the market is of little importance to working artists. While there are certain artists whose work is not accepted by the market, for whatever reason, for some it is a deliberate decision to avoid its machinations. “In both cases the market still exists, but it has no significant importance for the artist any more in terms of motivation, of prestige or of income. If the statement is true, people would simply stop making art, which is usually not the case. Artists do art if the market wants their work or not.” While not being involved in the market can offer artists greater freedom, “what nobody can deny is that artists are part of this system called the art market, this is a fact. And this art market is a part of the art world system, but it’s not equal to the art world system, and it’s also part of the broader system called creative industry.” But, citing official figures from the City of Zurich, the Swiss tax authorities and Visarte, she showed how the economic view is a very limited one – with a few very successful artists earning millions but many of that minority of artists whose declared income is art having a rather meaner existence. Closing, she said “it’s so much easier to make a lot of money in so many other jobs, why become an artist if you want to get rich?”

The ensuing debate was enthusiastic, circling round the notion of the market as tastemaker, or indeed as the means of generating the canon. We also touched on the market as a creator of hysteria that is little concerned with the art it deals in. The opposition argued that the market’s canon is not necessarily the right one for art, and the audience present queried how culture can exist outside of the market. An optimistic suggestion was that the market can be a purifying force, lifting art out of obscurity, but finally when it came to the vote, the opposition won by a slim majority. Without the market, artists would still make art!

Many thanks to the determined debaters, whose passions ran high. Thanks too to the audience, and particularly to K3 and to Sam Porritt and the other artists in the exhibition Oneself as Other which provided our backdrop.

Art + Argument at K3, 20 February, 2011

2011-02-22T21:31:00.002+01:00

.....report to follow shortly.

Debaters confirmed for Art + Argument at K3, 20 February 2011

2011-02-07T12:59:00.006+01:00

Without a market, no-one would make art

Hubert Bächler, Claudia Groeflin, Garrett Nelson and Nadia Schneider debate artists' motivation and the ideal art market

17h, 20 February 2011
(followed by finissage of 'Oneself as Another’ with Joel Croxson, Luzia Hürzeler and Sam Porritt
18 - 21h)

K3 Project Space
Maag Areal
Hardstrasse 219
CH 8005 Zürich
www.k3zh.ch

Art + Argument at K3, Zürich

2011-01-28T19:43:00.002+01:00

SAVE THE DATE!

Without a market, no-one would make art

17h, 20 February 2011

K3 Project Space

Maag Areal

Hardstrasse 219

CH 8005 Zürich

Four cultural experts in two opposing teams debate artists’ motivation and what the market means. Teams must oppose or defend the motion, and each team member has five minutes to argue their case uninterrupted. After that speakers challenge each other and the audience may in turn question the speakers. The event will end with a vote for the more persuasive team.  

Art + Argument is an itinerant event bringing together exciting minds from the Swiss art scene and beyond. To know more, write to aoiferosenmeyer(at)gmail.com or visit

Art + Argument is an itinerant event bringing together exciting minds from the Swiss art scene and beyond. To know more, write to aoiferosenmeyer(at)gmail.com or visit www.k3zh.ch

Art + Argument on World Radio Switzerland

2010-12-23T18:25:00.004+01:00

On the 15^th December 2010, Art + Argument at Claudia Groeflin Gallery was featured on Jennifer Davies’ Swiss By Design programme on World Radio Switzerland. You can listen to the programme online here:

http://worldradio.ch/wrs/programmes/culture/swiss-by-design-art-and-argument-karl-moser-and-bi.shtml?22255

Thank you Jennifer!

Art + Argument at Claudia Groeflin Galerie

2010-12-16T12:13:00.012+01:00

On December 9^th 2010, Morgan Falconer and Dimitrina Sevova mounted a spirited defence of the motion: (When it comes to art) we are still painting on the walls of caves. Giovanni Carmine and Fabian Chiquet were to contest their position and speak for change in art.

Please bear in mind the premise of Art + Argument! What was said during the event should not be understood to represent the opinion of the speakers.

Morgan opened, admitting that the complexity of the works by significant artists such as Andy Warhol or Marcel Duchamp would suggest that a comparison between their work and that of cave painters is ridiculous. But is that merely arrogance? Given the ability of man to create failure, a clear example being recent economic crisis, “art has spent enough time trying to convince us that we are more sophisticated than we really are”. In fact, cave painting and recent art can be seen to share the same representational basis: I draw the world and therefore understand it better. But ultimately, the need to make art can be seen as an urge, one shared by modern and prehistoric man. ”The urge to art” said Morgan “is an urge not necessarily to represent and to know, but also perhaps an urge to play, to transgress and perhaps destroy. As many failed artists will tell you, art is something you keep doing because you just can’t stop doing it.”

Fabian was first to counter the proposition. Art found in caves, he stated, arrested the moment; it documented and preserved. Today, art is much more than that, (and other people are much better than artists at documentary). Art is part of a broader entertainment industry, an industry intimately connected to technical progress; without engaging with technological advances, art would lose its audiences. Longevity no longer matters to art: “it’s about being part of something, making something happen”. Despite the paintings on the walls around him, Fabian was willing to state that “we’re not painting any more; we’re doing things that are much more interesting”.

Dimitrina had brought a trophy to prove her points, a poster for the 1950 film Prehistoric Women. We are living in a speculative world, she said, and the meaning or purpose of disciplines such as science, philosophy or literature is ever less clearly defined. So what can we say about art? Beuys said art is not here to explain anything; Socrates said we are blind, and have not seen the world, just the so-called material world. And what do we know about cave painting? Not much! We cannot interpret cave paintings because we know nothing of the social context in which they were made, though we can research the methods and techniques used to make them. These people had the same DNA as ours, and looked like us. Prehistoric people did not live in caves, but rather were nomads. And yet something drove them to enter deep into dangerous caves and paint on inaccessible walls. Cave painting was based not only on a well-organized visual language, but also on a well-developed studio work process in which the entire community supported the master painter. There are countless overlapping myths and allegories about what cave painting may have meant for its practitioners. The Platonic myth of the cave is very powerful on a cultural level, and we cannot separate our encounter with cave paintings from our cultural, philosophical and ethical interpretations of the gaze, of the viewer and of relations between light and shadows. Dimitrina also quoted Susan Sontag, who wrote that we are no longer painting the cave, as the cave is everywhere and we are the cave. It is great that we are living amid these speculations, Dimitrina summed up, which are kinds of storytelling, and reiterating Morgan’s statements, she said: “we need walls and we need holes in these walls, we need blank sheets of paper, canvases, screens. It’s part of our drives as human beings.”

Giovanni Carmine began his rejection of the motion by questioning whether cave painting really was the beginning of what we know as art today. “We look at it as if it were art – but I think it was an attempt [by the painters] to go over traumatic experiences they were having with bison and dinosaurs.” (He continued, rather contrarily for his line of argument, that artists today continue to work through traumas, making the curator feel like a psychiatrist or psychologist.) The Chilean miners who recently were trapped for weeks underground could be seen as a parallel – they did not have to paint on the walls of their mines, as they were being supplied with psychiatric medication. So while art survives, the need to paint one’s issues diminishes. Giovanni stated in closing: “art is not about representation!”

The ensuing debate ranged over recent and pre-historic history. Our ancestors’ complexity was understood and contested, recognised and rejected. The threat posed by Mickey Mouse was compared with that of raging bison, and the effort required to make paintings in the dark with the technical feats of art the contemporary world. The art canon was help up for examination, and recent history that tried to change the nature of art ridiculed. When it came to a final vote, Dimitrina and Morgan, proposing the motion, were judged by the majority to be the more convincing, though many in the audience abstained, and instead put some further ideas to the test after votes were cast.

Many thanks to all the participants, to the audience and to Claudia Groeflin for the invitation to debate in her gallery.

For more information on Art + Argument please contact aoiferosenmeyer (at) gmail.com

Art + Argument at Claudia Groeflin Galerie

2010-11-18T11:39:00.003+01:00

SAVE THE DATE!

(When it comes to art,)

we are still painting on the walls of caves

9th December 2010, 19h30

Claudia Groeflin Galerie

Dienerstrasse 12

8004 Zurich

Four cultural experts in two opposing teams debate art and painting today. Teams must oppose or defend the motion, and each team member has five minutes to argue their case uninterrupted. After the speakers challenge each other, the audience may in turn question the speakers. The event ends with a vote for the more persuasive team.

Art + Argument is an itinerant event bringing together exciting minds from the Swiss art scene and beyond. To know more, write to aoiferosenmeyer(at)gmail.com.

Art + Argument at Anne Mosseri-Marlio Galerie

2010-10-11T16:45:00.013+02:00

Please note, the opinions quoted in this blog are not necessarily those of the speakers!

On 5^th November a keen crowd was present for Art + Argument at Anne Mosseri-Marlio Galerie. Kathleen Bühler opened the defense of the motion ‘This house believes art is dangerous’ by citing two works by the performance artist Marina Abramovic. In Art Must Be Beautiful, Artist Must Be Beautiful, 1975, Abramovic brushes her hair ever more violently while saying the title of the work repeatedly. The work points to two aspects of beauty – the social and the aesthetic tradition; in a “delicious contradiction” the artist is attacking the tool she is using. 35 years later, Abramovic stages the work The Artist Is Present, 2010, in MoMA New York, in which she looks directly into the eyes of members of the audience sitting opposite her. In the intervening period, however, she has enhanced her appearance, appearing almost as youthful as in 1975. She is within her rights to do so of course, but as an artist who uses her body as her medium, it cannot go unnoticed, nor that she collaborates with fashion house Givenchy. “Beauty, noted Bühler, “is dangerous because its lure is so strong that even critical thinkers such as Abramovic forget their initial resistance.”
Samuel Leuenberger started the opposition on a pragmatic note, citing the mechanisms of the art world. Museums, collectors, galleries and the public operate within an economy that understands beauty as that which people agree is such. Thus beauty is defined in retrospect “by a set of people rather than by the item itself – if the right curator, the right critic, right collector, right artist come together and decide that something is good, it becomes good and potentially beautiful”. (Leuenberger would later cite Richard Prince as an artist whose work was thus recognised.) This consensus makes for a solidity of collections and a stable market – but not dangerous beauty.

Barnaby Drabble spoke of being made a pariah when, as a student at Goldsmiths, he dared to call a work beautiful. In an attempt to find out why it proved so outré, Drabble sought a definition for beauty, looking to two sources outside of art writing, firstly the 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury. In the Swiss Alps he encountered 'beauty inconsistent with reason … beauty mingled with horror, fear and despair'. This beauty hinted at the inadequacy of reason, while the beauty Henry David Thoreau observed in Walden was borne of observing nature, re-connecting with it and re-experiencing time. Beauty, as Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe has noted, is intransitive and beyond discourse, and, Drabble noted, “proposes the inadequacy of a modernist idea of progress“. “Clearly in its countering of reason, of history and of progress it [beauty] is subversive, or at least has subversive potential.”

Adam Szymczyk began his opposition in an unexpected fashion. He too looked outside aesthetics, choosing three poet’s quotations. First Arthur Rimbaud’s rejection of beauty in the preface to A Season in Hell: ‘One evening, I sat beauty on my knees. And I found her bitter. And I reviled her.’ Isidore Lucien Ducasse, writing as the Comte de Lautréamont described beauty found ‘in the chance meeting on a dissecting-table of a sewing-machine and an umbrella’. These sources manifest the transformation from an idealistic notion of beauty to beauty as contemporary sublime. In the early 20^th century it was defined in relation to the horrors of World War I, as Rainer Maria Rilke’s elegy prophesied: ‘For beauty is nothing, but the beginning of terror, which we still are just able to endure, and we are so awed because it serenely disdains to annihilate us.’ Szymczyk reasoned, that as “three great writers of modernity involve the element of terror and despair in beauty – that would be to say that beauty is dangerous – so I cannot strictly keep to my argument, but the way I would like to defend the argument I was given, is that I completely disagree with the line of argument proposed by my predecessors”.

From this point both teams were swift to counter their opponents’ statements, and Szymczyk proved that any initial sense of security on the part of Bühler and Drabble would be proved false. In fact, he said, “I would totally leave [beauty] out from discussion and preserve it as something strictly private; it is not something that can be subject to a discussion that can be verified. Historically you can follow this discussion, but it still doesn’t teach us anything about the nature of the notion that seems to be completely overblown, so it blocks the possibility of discussing other categories and leads to simple laziness. But still I don’t think that this is dangerous, this is just slightly useless. I don’t feel threatened.”

The ensuing discussion circled around arbiters of quality, the use of beauty, its definitions and the danger of danger. Members of the audience probed the panel on beauty defined by capital rather than the social, the subjectivity of art and on the supplanting of the aesthetic with the critical, and how the aesthetic can ultimately re-absorb this supposedly critical.

In the close closing vote the proposition (Bühler and Drabble) won by 16 votes to 13, (with several abstentions) though Drabble and Bühler both admitted they agreed with their opponents’ arguments!
Many thanks to all the participants, to the audience and to Anne Mosseri-Marlio for the generous invitation to host the event in her gallery.
For more information on Art + Argument please contact aoiferosenmeyer (at) gmail.com

Participants confirmed for Art + Argument, 5 October 2010

2010-09-27T15:59:00.003+02:00

Kathleen Bühler, Barnaby Drabble, Samuel Leuenberger and Adam Szymczyk debate risk and aesthetics

October 5, 2010

7:00 PM

Anne Mosseri-Marlio Galerie

Bleicherweg 33

CH-8002 Zurich

Art + Argument at Anne Mosseri-Marlio Galerie

2010-09-08T18:04:00.005+02:00

SAVE THE DATE!

This house believes beauty is dangerous

October 5, 2010

7:00 PM

Anne Mosseri-Marlio Galerie

Bleicherweg 33

CH-8002 Zurich

 Four cultural experts in two opposing teams debate beauty and art. Teams must oppose or defend the motion, and each team member has five minutes to argue their case uninterrupted. After the speakers challenge each other, the audience may in turn question the speakers. The event ends with a vote for the more persuasive team.  

Art + Argument is an itinerant event bringing together exciting minds from the Swiss art scene and beyond. To know more, write to aoiferosenmeyer(at)gmail.com

Art + Argument at the Swiss Art Awards

2010-06-18T12:10:00.011+02:00

On 16th June, JJ Charlesworth and Rebecca Geldard led the defence of the motion 'Art is not a leisure activity', while Burkhard Meltzer and Quinn Latimer countered their arguments.

“To drop art” opened Rebecca Geldard decisively “within the bargain bin of leisure, is to suggest that there is a shared economy of ideas between the two and that art production is reliant on the world of entertainment - that it’s simply another lifestyle strand, like well-being or the organic revolution, of a larger brand culture built with short-term amusement in mind”.

Burkhard Meltzer countered with a mis-en-scene of the contemporary art environment where artists: “are interested in creating the atmosphere of the theme park, a leisure mood”. Though the activity of producing art is certainly not leisure, the debate’s setting suggested its consumption is; “art as an experience I am invited to takes part in, is a leisure activity, proved by our sitting here in a trailer park!”

JJ Charlesworth set up his argument by quoting Matisse – who dreamt of art being effortless, though it was not. The effort of production not being in doubt, JJ’s question related to the effort required to fully appreciate art. “There are people, ordinary people, you and me, who consume and enjoy cultural forms… without any interest in whether it is important – just what I like, what I desire – but the question becomes whether art is something more than that, and whether it requires some kind of effort or some kind of ambition or desire for something more difficult than merely pleasure, than merely indulgence or seduction.”

Quinn Latimer cited the vague approach artists use in order to side-step formalist critique. This leads to installations that are akin to collectors’ homes, best described in Elmgreen and Dragset’s bachelor pad at the Venice Biennale of 2009. Whether arch or straightforward, “today so much art is sublimated into interior design, pressing this idea forward that art is leisure, that you can’t read too much into objects, they don’t mean that much.”

These opening statements set the scene for a lively debate that ranged from art as lifestyle (Marfa as inspiration for interior design), as art in the experience economy (the equivalent of a mini-break), to what is at stake when art is thus reduced and the edifying role of dealers. A rewarding line of enquiry was the fuzzy experience of art that plays with familiar leisure environments, and whether this familiarity is useful or sedating. Is the realm of leisure indeed an escape route for artists who do not want their work to be taken hostage by identity politics?

Though concord largely reigned between the teams as the debate came to a close, in the final vote JJ and Rebecca were decided the more convincing.

The Collectors, Elmgreen & Dragset at the Danish and the Nordic Pavilions, Venice, 2009

Many thanks to all the participants, to Clare Goodwin and the Cahiers d'Artistes camp for hosting us, to Jen Thatcher for some of the event images, and to the audience.

For more information about Art + Argument, contact AoifeRosenmeyer (at) gmail.com

Art + Argument at the Swiss Art Awards

2010-06-09T10:59:00.002+02:00

This house believes art is not a leisure activity

JJ Charlesworth, Rebecca Geldard, Quinn Latimer and Burkhard Meltzer debate art and amateurship

18h, 16 June 2010

Clare Goodwin’s caravan

Pro Helvetia’s latest series of artist monographs - Cahiers d’Artistes - presented as a campsite within the Swiss Arts Awards, in parallel with Art 41 Basel

Messeplatz, Halle 3.2 (opposite main fair), Basel

Four cultural experts in two opposing teams debate an issue relating to art. Teams must oppose or defend the motion, and each team member has five minutes to argue their case uninterrupted. After that speakers challenge each other and the audience may in turn question the speakers. The event ends with a vote for the more persuasive team.  

This debate is taking place within the framework of the presentation of the Cahiers d’Artistes Collection 2010 at the Swiss Art Awards: http://cahiersdartistes.blogspot.com

Art + Argument is an itinerant event bringing together exciting minds from the Swiss art scene and beyond. To know more, write to aoiferosenmeyer(at)gmail.com.

Art + Argument at dienstgebäude

2010-05-25T12:25:00.010+02:00

On 21st May 2010 Roos Gortzak, Paul Harper, Sam Porritt and Jacqueline Uhlmann debated the motion: Art and television must be kept apart.

Paul and Sam defended the motion, referring to the apathy felt my many artists in relation to the media and to works by Bruce Nauman, amongst other artists, that are better viewed in a gallery context. For the opposition, Jacqueline and Roos argued for television's educational and communicative abilities and also cited artists who successfully use the mannerisms and structures of television, such as Cezary Bodzianowski and Matthieu Laurette. We discussed mass television audiences, art as décor and low-key activism before a vote was taken; ultimately the audience's sympathies were with the opposition.

Many thanks to all the participants, to dienstgebäude and to a very engaged audience!

For more information email: AoifeRosenmeyer@gmail.com

Art + Argument at dienstgebäude

2010-04-29T14:31:00.007+02:00

Art and television must be kept apart

Paul Harper, Sam Porritt, Jacqueline Uhlmann and Roos Gortzak debate high and low culture

21 May 2010 

19h

dienstgebäude, Weichengasse 4,

bei Neufrankengasse / Langstrassenunterführung, Zürich 8004, Switzerland

Four cultural experts in two opposing teams debate an issue relating to art. Teams must oppose or defend the motion, and each team member has five minutes to argue their case uninterrupted. After that speakers may challenge each other and the audience may in turn question the speakers. The event ends with a vote for the more persuasive team.  

This debate is taking place during an exhibition of works by Ueli Alder, David Raymond Conroy, Lilly McElroy and Cecile Weibel at deinstgebäude from 12 – 29 May 2010. See www.dienstgebaeude.ch

Art & Argument is an itinerant event bringing together exciting minds from the Swiss art scene and beyond. To know more, write to aoiferosenmeyer@gmail.com 

Art + Argument at freymond-guth & co fine arts

2010-01-05T18:16:00.006+01:00

On 25 November 2009  Vanessa Billy, Raphael Gygax, Sabine Schaschl and Christoph Schreiber debated the role of the viewer against the backdrop of Stefan Burger’s exhibition at freymond guth & co fine arts, Zürich. Sabine and Vanessa vigorously defended the motion “This house believes art doesn’t need an audience”, with Christoph and Raphael countering their arguments. Thanks to spirited debating by the women, the vote was a tie…

Many thanks to all the participants, the audience and particularly to freymond-guth & co for hosting the event.

For more information please contact artandargument@gmail.com

Art + Argument at Freymond-Guth & co fine arts

2009-11-19T17:57:00.006+01:00

This house believes that art doesn’t need an audience

Vanessa Billy, Raphael Gygax, Sabine Schaschl and Christoph Schreiber debate the role of the viewer

25 November 2009 

19h30

freymond-guth & co fine arts

Brauerstrasse 51, 8004 Zurich, Switzerland

 Four cultural experts in two opposing teams debate a central art world issue. Teams must oppose or defend the motion, and each team member has five minutes to argue their case uninterrupted. After that speakers may challenge each other and the audience may in turn question the speakers. The event ends with a vote for the more persuasive team.  

Art & Argument is an itinerant event bringing together exciting minds from the Swiss art scene and beyond, created by Aoife Rosenmeyer. To know more, write to artandargument@gmail.com

Art & Argument for Bloomsday

2009-06-19T16:21:00.006+02:00

Art & Argument for Bloomsday

On Saturday 13 June Vincent Landon, Etienne Lullin, Felicity Lunn and Fritz Senn debated the role of the emigrant author. The motion was: this house believes the artist is a prophet in his own land (finding inspiration and recognition only in exile)

Fritz and Vincent (the latter saving the day by stepping in at the last minute) proposed the motion; Felicity and Etienne opposed it with conviction, despite an audience comprising largely of expatriates whose sympathy lay with the opposite side! Many thanks to the fantastic speakers, the engaged audience, the James Joyce Foundation for their assistance and most of all the Irish Embassy in Bern who initiated the event.

For more information please contact artandargument@gmail.com

2009-06-02T17:44:00.000+02:00

2009-06-02T17:38:00.003+02:00

This house believes the artist is a prophet in his own land
(finding inspiration and recognition only in exile)

Rody Gorman, Etienne Lullin, Felicity Lunn and Fritz Senn debate the role of the emigrant author

13 June 2009, 6.30 pm
Liceo Artistico, Parkring 30
8027 Zürich (near Bahnhof Enge)

The debate is part of an evening's celebration of Bloomsday organised by the Irish Embassy, Berne, including readings by Hanspeter Müller-Drossaart followed by a light apéro

Four cultural experts in two opposing teams debate an issue prescient to Bloomsday celebrations in Zürich. Teams must oppose or defend the motion, and each team member has five minutes to argue their case uninterrupted. After that speakers may challenge each other and the audience – that has equally been given a position to defend - may in turn question the speakers. The event ends with a vote for the more persuasive team.  

This is a forum for discussing culture where the unspeakable may be said. Each speaker must play his or her assigned role, regardless of whether they agree or not. Speakers benefit from temporary immunity: what they say during the debate is not necessarily their opinion and they cannot be held to their word afterwards.    

Art & Argument is an itinerant event bringing together exciting minds from the Swiss art scene and beyond. To know more, write to aoiferosenmeyer@gmail.com or visit http://artandargument.blogspot.com.

Art + Argument hosted by BolteLang, 10 March 2009

2009-03-18T11:37:00.002+01:00

This house believes public art is a contradiction in terms

Mirjam Varadinis and Kerim Seiler proposed the motion
Anna Helwing and Oliver Kielmayer opposed

Many thanks to all participants and the audience for a lively debate!

2009-02-25T10:10:00.000+01:00

2009-02-25T10:07:00.001+01:00

This house believes public art is a contradiction in terms

Anna Helwing, Oliver Kielmeyer, Kerim Seiler and Mirjam Varadinis debate art

7pm, 10 March 2009 
Hosted by BolteLang  
Limmatstrasse 214, 8005 Zürich
 
Four art experts in two opposing teams debate a current art world issue. Teams are given a motion to defend or oppose, and each team member has five minutes to argue the case uninterrupted. After that speakers may challenge each other and the audience may in turn question the speakers. The event ends with a vote for the more persuasive team.  

This is a forum for discussing culture where the unspeakable may be said. Each speaker must play his or her assigned role, regardless of whether that speaker agrees or not. Speakers benefit from an evening’s immunity: what they say during the debate is not necessarily their opinion and they cannot be held to their word afterwards.    

The debate is a means to distance debaters from their usual roles, undermine common sense and bring about unexpected, off the wall and, hopefully, inspired discussions, free from traditional constraints.    

Art & Argument will be an itinerant event bringing together exciting minds from the Swiss art scene and beyond. To know more, write to art@argument@gmail.com