TALKS and SYMPOSIA (selection)
23 November 2023
Lecture
Inaugural Lecture by Prof. Dr. Blaise Kirschner
The Royal Academy of Art, Stockholm
In My Death My Life by Pier Paolo Pasolini, Kathy Acker writes: “To substitute space for time. What’s this mean? I’m not talking about death. Death isn’t my province… Myself or any occurrence is a city through which I can wander if I stop judging.”
Acker’s substitution of space for time deborders the self and renders its anatomical arrangement (as body) into an architectural and social one (as city). Narration gives way to navigation, as the speaking self no longer moves through time, but through the spatialisation of its specific individuation. If this formulation seems abstract, then a drawing by Unica Zürn illustrates it concretely. Entitled “Plan of the House of Illnesses” it depicts Zürn’s body and its institutionalisation as one formation: a two-dimensional floor plan of a hospital, with its chambers and halls formed of body parts and organs, that both constitute and house the speaking self (alongside doctors, guards and enemies). Against a biocentric conception of the body as an organic and anatomically bounded entity, the “Plan of the House of Illnesses” thus offers a mapping of its biocultural emergence and antagonisms, incorporating elements that precede, coincide with, and exceed individual lifespans.
Analogously to Acker’s proposed substitution of space for time and Zürn’s body-building, what would it mean to imagine the movement of moving image (primarily considered a time-based medium) not as a movement through time, but rather as a movement through space? What if a film is approached as a form of environment, rather than a form of narration? What can be learned from related, post-cinematic media, such as gaming and VR simulations, in which filmic montage is replaced by navigation through computationally constructed space, as Alexander Galloway and Harun Farocki have so extensively theorised? And what are the technical and conceptual limitations of computer simulations and avatars when confronted with Acker’s and Zürn’s ‘both/and’ figurations of self and environment in text and image?
Working with and through these propositions, Blaise Kirschner’s inaugural lecture develops a post-cinematic poetics of the moving image that attends to the ways in which something like a body and something like an environment are formed, in order to disrupt the codes and violences that perpetuate themselves in and through such formations.
___________________
6 Juli 2023
Lecture
Riemschneider-Curator-Series with Anselm Franke, Guest: Blaise Kirschner
State Academy of Fine Arts Karlsruhe
___________________
28-30 April 2022
Symposium
Abstraction and Economy
Department of Art & Knowledge Transfer at the University of Applied Arts Vienna
With adO/Aptive collective, Clemens Apprich, Gerald Bast, Brenna Bhandar, Leigh Claire La Berge, Christina von Braun, Sabeth Buchmann, Karel Císař, Patricia Grzonka, Gabriele Jutz, Eva Kernbauer, Anja Kirschner, Sven Lütticken, Falke Pisano, Cauleen Smith, Beat Weber, Rebecca H. Quaytman.
Organised by Eva Maria Stadler and Jenni Tischer.
___________________
17-18 March 2021
Symposium
Going to the Limits of Your Longing, Research as Another Name for Care
In memory of Marion von Osten
Art Institute HGK FHNW, Basel
With Maria Thereza Alves, Ursula Biemann, Regina Bittner, Katya García-Antón, Anja Kirschner, Kapwani Kiwanga, Maria Lind, Otobong Nkanga, Lydia Ourahmane, Myriam Amroun, Filipa Ramos, Kerstin Stakemeier, Yvonne Volkart, Peter Spillmann.
Organised by Chus Martínez and Quinn Latimer.
___________________
22-24 November 2018
Symposium
Kathy Acker: GET RID OF MEANING
Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe
With Dodie Bellamy, Hanjo Berressem, Ruth Buchanan, Georgina Colby, Leslie Dick & Audrey Wollen, Claire Finch, Johnny Golding, Anja Kirschner, Douglas A. Martin, Jason McBride, Karolin Meunier & Kerstin Stakemeier, Daniel Schulz, McKenzie Wark.
Organised by Matias Viegener and Anja Casser.
___________________
3 June 2018
Symposium
Vision's Bleeding Edge:
On nonhuman vision, liquid and crystal intelligence and AI
Royal College of Art, London
Talks by Esther Leslie and Joanna Zylinska. Performances and videos by Anna Ådahl, Anja Kirschner, Lawrence Lek, Mayra Martin Ganzinotti, Anna Nazo, Emma Somerset Davis, Adam J B Walker.
Organised by SOAH Researchers Anja Kirschner, Mayra Martin Ganzinotti, Anna Nazo, Emma Somerset Davis and Adam J B Walker with Aura Satz.
___________________
14 December 2017
Symposium
ESTER KRUMBACHOVÁ
Hidden Forms of Directing
tranzitdisplay, Prague
With Jana Baierová, Zuzana Blochová, Jan Bernard, Michal Bregant, Mikuláš Brukner, Barbora Dayef, Bracha L. Ettinger, Šárka Gmiterková, Linda Hauerová, Libuše Heczková, Anna Hejmová, Edith Jeřábková, Jesse Jones, Tereza Kanyzová, Anja Kirschner, Jan Kolský, Kateřina Konvalinová, Francis McKee, Ruth Noack, Matěj Pavlík, Tomáš Pospiszyl, Johannes Paul Raether, Michaela Režová, Lucie Rosenfeldová, Sláva Sobotovičová, Kateřina Svatoňová, Tomáš Uhnák, Marina Vishmidt.
Organised by Zuzana Blochová and Edith Jeřábková with Anja Kirschner.
___________________
16 May - 13 June 2017
Lecture Series
Die Zukunft des Vergangenen. Moderne im Spiegel der Gegenwartskunst / The Future of the Past. Modernity in the Mirror of Contemporary Art
Hochschule für Gestaltung Offenbach am Main
With Florian Pumhösl, Asier Mendizabal, Anja Kirschner, Laura Horelli.
Organised by Sebastian Mühl.
_________________
21-23 April 2017
Conference and programme of screenings and performances
Speak, body:
Art, the Reproduction of Capital and the Reproduction of Life
School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies, University of Leeds
___________________
20-22 April 2017
Symposium
Media Revolutions/Mediale Revolutionen
Academy of Fine Art Hamburg
With Klaus Birnstiel, Jodi Dean, Diedrich Diederichsen, Bernhard Dotzler, Arnold Dreyblatt, Yuk Hui, Anja Kirschner, Peter Osborne, Dont Rhine/Ultra Red, Kerstin Stakemeier.
___________________
17-18 March 2017
Talks, screenings and performances
Post-Apocalyptic Realism:
It’s After the End of the World. Don’t You Know That?
Museum Brandhorst, Munich
With Juan Atkins, Jacky Connolly, Helmut Draxler, Georgia Sagri, Hassan Khan, Anja Kirschner, Nina Könnemann, Dana Luciano, Inka Meißner, Robert Müller and Tanja Widmann, Michael Smith, Peter Wächtler, Jutta Zimmermann.
Curated by Tanja Widmann and Tonio Kröner.
___________________
28-30 October 2016
Symposium
WE NEED YOUR CARKEYS! The Horizons of Horror
Künstlerhäuser Worpswede
With Anselm Franke, Bracha L. Ettinger, Melanie Bonajo and Laboria Cuboniks (Diann Bauer, Helen Hester).
Organised by Sam Basu, Anke Hennig and Anja Kirschner.
_________________
9 June – 30 July 2016
Exhibition and research project
5 Uneasy Pieces + An Open Investigation
UM gallery, UMPRUM Academy of Art, Architecture and Design, Prague
With Adam Chodzko, Stephan Dillemuth and UMPRUM students, Constantinos Hadzinikolaou, Anja Kirschner, Nova Melancholia with Dora Economou.
Curated by Anja Kirschner and organised by Are.
___________________
4 March 2015
Interdisciplinary lecture series, screenings and performances
Are You Alive Or Not?
Looking at Art through the Lens of Theatre (Act 1, Scene 6)
Studium Generale, Gerrit Rietveld Academy
With Clare Butcher, Klaas Tindemans, Anja Kirschner.
___________________
17-39 October 2014
Symposium
Psycho Materialism
Künstlerhäuser Worpswede
With Kerstin Brätsch/Debo Eilers, Helmut Draxler, Johnny Golding, Anja Kirschner, Benjamin Noys, Johannes Paul Raether, Juliane Rebentisch and Kerstin Stakemeier.
Organised by Tim Voss and Kerstin Stakemeier.
___________________
12-16 November 2013
Symposium, Screenings and Workshop
I'm Frightened. Bring Popcorn.
Teatro Valle Occupato, Rome
With Dario Argento, Enrico Ghezzi, Marco Greganti, Douglas Mortimer Collective, Giovanni Lombardo Radice, Valerio Di Simone.
Organised by Anja Kirschner.
___________________
19 March 2013
Artist's talk
Movie lights switching on and erasing the image or illuminating darkness
Beirut, Cairo
Organised by Sarah Rifky, Antonia Alampi and Jens Maier-Rothe
___________________
26-27 January 2013
Symposium
Art as a Form of Crisis
Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, Berlin
Organised by Kerstin Stakemeier and Sophie Golz.
___________________
10 January 2013
Interdisciplinary lecture series
Power of Material/Politics of Materiality:
The (Im)materiality of the Economy
cx centre for interdisciplinary studies, Academy of Fine Arts Munich
Organised by Susanne Witzgall and Kerstin Stakemeier.
___________________
7-8 June 2010
Symposium
WHEN HISTORICAL
Jan Van Eyck Academie, Maastricht
Organised by Babak Afrassiabi and Nasrin Tabatabai.