Aber etwas fehlt. But something?s missing.
Freitag, 04. Dezember 2015 - 15:15 Uhr
mumok
?Aber etwas fehlt!?, insistiert Paul Ackermann, eine der Zentralfiguren von Bert Brechts Oper Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny (1930), gegenüber seinen das Leben feiernden FreundInnen. Inmitten dieser Hochburg des Vergnügens, der ?Netzestadt? Mahagonny, die die Arbeit abgeschafft hat und in der für Geld jeder Spaß zu kaufen ist, verspürt Paul Ackermann einen Phantomschmerz. Heute scheint die Situation, die Brechts Mahagonny ausmalt, durchaus realistisch: die Existenz einer Welt, in der Arbeit nicht mehr den Kern der gesellschaftlichen Synthese bildet und in der es dennoch keinen Grund zum Feiern gibt.
Über weite Strecken des 20. Jahrhunderts waren VertreterInnen der marxistischen Kunstgeschichte wie Lu Märten, Arnold Hauser, Meyer Schapiro, T. J. Clark, Carol Duncan oder Linda Nochlin entscheidende ImpulsgeberInnen für die Verknüpfung gesellschaftlicher und politischer Entwicklungen mit der Frage nach der Relevanz der Kunst. Es war die marxistische Kritik, die das Produktionsumfeld der Werke und ihrer ErzeugerInnen in die Kunst hineinzog und damit die Kunst aus der gesellschaftlichen Isolation der repräsentativen Exzellenz herausführte.
Die globale Krise, die seit 2008 anhält, hat die Ausgangslage verändert: Sie ist keine Krise der Arbeit, sondern eine ihrer Finanzialisierung; menschliche Arbeitskraft scheint darin nur mehr ein sekundärer Faktor zu sein. Wie lässt sich unter diesen Vorzeichen eine materialistische Kunstgeschichte praktizieren, deren Methodologien doch immer zentral auf die synthetische Kraft der Arbeit aufbauten? Gilt es, die Arbeit wieder ins Zentrum der gesellschaftlichen Wahrnehmung zurückzubringen? Oder lässt sich ein Materialismus denken, der Kunst jenseits der Arbeit diskutiert?
Aber etwas fehlt. But something?s missing. will die Produktivität einer aktualisierten materialistischen Kunstgeschichte für die Gegenwartskunst behaupten und sich deshalb im Rahmen von Vorträgen und Diskussionen explizit jenen Kunstgeschichten widmen, die seit den 1960er-Jahren materialistische Ansätze zum Ausgangspunkt ihres Kunstverständnisses gemacht haben. Die Befragung der Geschichte(n) der marxistischen Kunstgeschichte – ihrer politischen und ästhetischen Parameter – soll mögliche Wege in die Gegenwart aufzeigen. Dabei wird das aktuelle Verhältnis zwischen ?marxistisch? und ?politisch? ebenso zur Diskussion stehen wie die Frage, wie sich eine Institution wie das mumok innerhalb einer solchen Auseinandersetzung verorten kann.
Mit Sabeth Buchmann, Helmut Draxler, Peter Gorsen, Isabelle Graw, Andrew Hemingway, Élisabeth Lebovici, Sven Lütticken, Jaleh Mansoor, Jenny Nachtigall, Ana Teixeira Pinto, Giovanna Zapperi
Program
Friday, December 4, 2015, mumok Lounge
15:15
Welcome
15:30
Introduction by Manuela Ammer and Kerstin Stakemeier
Keynotes: The Histories of Marxist Art History
The three introductory keynotes lay out the pre-histories of what is our present tense. Three distinguished art historians, whose work has been exemplary in shaping debates around Marxist art history in very different contexts (and who continue to understand their work in Marxist and/or historical materialist terms) give an account of their own Marxist art history. Andrew Hemingway considers the controversial role of aesthetics and ideology for art historians of the New Left after 1968; Élisabeth Lebovici analyzes the problematic relationship of Marxist art history and poststructuralism; and Peter Gorsen follows the historically changing significance of yet another ambivalent subject of Marxist art history: the (im)possibility of art?s popularization. These different approaches pose the question as to which debates have the potential for actualization and can be made productive for an understanding of the here and now.
16:00
?Baby with the Bathwater?? Art History between Marxist Science and Marxist Aesthetics
Andrew Hemingway (Prof. emeritus, University College London)
The main form of Marxism encountered by students and academics of the New Left in Britain post-1968 was Althusserianism. Louis Althusser?s theoretical innovations in the theory of ideology exerted enormous influence on film studies, literary criticism, and, to a lesser extent, art history. In the first part of his lecture, Hemingway looks at attempts by Nicos Hadjinicolaou and T.J. Clark to rethink the operations of ideology in the visual arts in the light of more recent theorizing of the category. One concomitant of Althusser?s attempt to give rigid philosophical parameters to Marxist science was a dismissal of aesthetics as a residue of pre-scientific bourgeois thought. By contrast, for Theodor W. Adorno, to subsume art under ideology was to throw out the ?baby with the bathwater.? In the second part of his lecture, Hemingway considers where art history stands in relation to the yawning gulf between Althusserian science and Adorno?s critique of instrumental reason.
17:45
Break
18:00
One is not Born a Marxist, one is not Born a Woman.
Élisabeth Lebovici (art critic/historian, curator, lecturer, Paris)
Despite the ?return to Marx? by French philosophers, such as Louis Althusser, in the mid-1960s, the possibilities of expanding into a new Marxist art history did not catch on within poststructuralist circles at the time, perhaps because such circles were adamantly opposed to the cultural politics practiced by the communist party in France. The group ?Histoire et Critique des Arts? (1977?1980), for example, of which Nicos Hadjinicolaou was a founding member, is only mentioned in passing in recent pertinent anthologies, such as Renew Marxist Art History. Nevertheless, the group?s international scope contributed to the construction of the nineteenth century as the ?ideal object? of Marxist art history and sustained a reflection on the institutions and ideologies of art history in France?a kind of reflection that is unfortunately lost today. Less condemned to obsolescence were the developments that took place in the sphere of ideology and culture through materialist feminist positions. Focused on language and representation, the radical turn of Monique Wittig in the 1970s rethought sex, gender, and compulsory heterosexuality, which had been little figured in the lengthy history of Marxist practices. This shift, however?reflected in a form of writing as a dissonant subject evading straight grammatical norms?can provide the missing link between Marxist art history and poststructuralism.
19:45
Break
20:00
Social Realizations and Constellations of Marxist Intended Aesthetics and Communication
Peter Gorsen (Prof. emeritus, University of Applied Arts Vienna)
The Soviet Proletkult is perhaps the most consequential historical example of a fundamental popularization of art toward a general artistic practice?a radical socialization of art. In this sense, it can serve as the paragon for any Marxist art history that aims not only at demonstrating past historical struggles but also at provoking contemporary ones. In his lecture, Peter Gorsen looks back at the artistic politics of the Proletkult and at subsequent attempts to transfer the questions it posed into the Marxist art history that followed it, attempts he himself was a key protagonist of within the German-speaking context in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Gorsen looks at the drastic reconfigurations that the relationship of art, culture, and economy has undergone since the 1960s and asks about the relevance of the Proletkult today. Doing so, he also confronts us with the question of what an actualized understanding of Marxist art history that thrives to be politically consequential might be.