COSMOS OTTINGER - REVISITED

CURATORIAL CARE 

Jeanne-Ange Wagne* 

How can we exhibit the work of an artist whose works often stage marginalized groups of people without reproducing a voyeuristic gaze? How do we approach exhibitions that present critical, subversive, emotionally charged or graphic content with attentiveness and solidarity? 

Jeanne-Ange Wagner's academic research and practice as an art educator are oriented towards necessary questions of social justice, solidarity and self-determination. She takes a critical look at Western historiography and, in this context, deals 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 for the transnational research project The Restitution of Knowledge at the Technische Universität, Berlin. 

OPPOSING THE GAZE / OWNING REPRESENTATION

Chima Okerenkwo* 

Ulrike Ottinger's work often focuses on individuals who are excluded from mainstream society. In her filmic works, her gaze leads to the margins of society with productions between documentary and dream narrative and repeatedly points out its taboos. Chima Okerenkwo's most recent cinematic works deal with the alienated attitude to life of Afro-German perspectives and thus give an apparent minority a voice through the medium of film. He was co-founder of the BIPoC Film Society, 2020, and is the Ambassador for Diversity at the State Art Collections in Dresden.

In 2022, he will launch his screening project Synergie - 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 politically persecuted people and the absurdity of fascism: the preoccupation with activism and protest cultures runs through Ulrike Ottinger's oeuvre. Sunny Pfalzer's lecture is an examination of performative strategies of activism and the question of which shared experiences create collectivity. The study provides an overview of strategies of current protest groups such as Pussy Riot or the Guerilla Girls and highlights exemplary methods of performative activism, e.g. costume/anonymity/uniform, collective empathy, common goals and collective actions such as singing in a choir. 

*Sunny Pfalzer is a performance and visual artist