COSMOS OTTINGER – revisited

Lectures: CURATORIAL CARE, OPPOSING THE GAZE / OWNING REPRESENTATION and PERFORMATIVE ACTIVISM

May 7, 2022: Cosmos Ottinger – Public Program, starting at 2 pm

How do we encounter Ulrike Ottinger’s early body of work today?

The program accompanying the exhibition is intended to broaden our view of the COSMOS OTTINGER through three lectures, CURATORIAL CARE, OPPOSING THE GAZE / OWNING REPRESENTATION and PERFORMATIVE ACTIVISM, in which young artists and cultural workers highlight an aspect of the exhibition and negotiate it through current approaches on representation, inclusion and solidarity.

CURATORIAL CARE

Jeanne-Ange Wagne*

How can we exhibit the oeuvre of an artist whose works often portray marginalized communities without reproducing a voyeuristic gaze? How do we encounter exhibitions that present critical, subversive, emotionally charged, or graphic content with mindfulness and solidarity?

Jeanne-Ange Wagner’s academic research and practice as art educator are oriented around necessary questions of social justice, solidarity, as well as self-determination. She critically examines Western historiography and, in this context, engages with post-colonial entanglements that affect cultural and educational institutions.

*Jeanne-Ange Wagne is an art historian and freelance art educator at Kunst-Werke Berlin (KW Institute for Contemporary Art), among others. She works as a research assistant for the transnational research project The Restitution of Knowledge at the Technical University, Berlin.

OPPOSING THE GAZE / OWNING REPRESENTATION

Chima Okerenkwo*

Ulrike Ottinger’s works often focus on individuals excluded from mainstream society. With stagings between the documentary and dreamlike narratives, in her cinematic works, her gaze leads to the margins of society and repeatedly points out its taboos.

Chima Okerenkwo’s latest cinematic works address the alienated lived experience of Afro-German perspectives, giving voice to a seeming minority through the medium of film. He co-founded the BIPoC Film Society, 2020, and is the Ambassador for Diversity at the State Art Collection in Dresden. In 2022, he will debut his screening project Synergy – a transcontinental film screening series focusing on the discourse between video art and narrative film.

*Chima Okerenkwo is a filmmaker and film curator.

GANGS OF PERFORMATIVE ACTIVISM

Sunny Pfalzer*

Criticism of the trivialization of war, artistic monuments to the politically persecuted, and the absurdity of fascism: the engagement with activism and protest culture runs through Ulrike Ottinger’s oeuvre.

Sunny Pfalzer’s lecture is an investigation of performative strategies of activism and the question through which shared experiences collectivity is established. The study provides an overview of methods used by current protest groups such as Pussy Riot or the Guerilla Girls, among others, and highlights exemplary practices of performative activism, such as costume/anonymity/uniform, collective empathy, shared goals, and communal actions such as singing in a choir.

*Sunny Pfalzer is a performance- visual artist.