How to Relate: Appropriation, Mediation, Figuration
5–7 July, 2018
Medienhaus (Aula & Galerie), Universität der Künste Berlin
Grunewaldstr. 2–5, 10823 Berlin

Conference languages are German and English
No registration required

How to relate? To each other, to something? Questions about relations are relevant for a knowledge in the arts. For just which knowledge can be produced depends on the success or failure of relations: Knowledge is implicated in power relations in institutional, social, and technological infrastructure; it is formed in colliding demands of hegemony and emancipation; it is created in the momentum of things and materials.

With appropriation, mediation, and figuration, the conference will discuss three epistemic ways of relating and the promises and ambivalences that are bound up with each of them. The appropriation of knowledge and skills is a foundational form for carrying out all learning and research, and yet the concept implies a possible appropriation of cognitive, aesthetic, or cultural capital. Mediation enables participation in knowledge, and yet its form—whether in an exhibition space, on the stage, or in transmission by media—has an effect on the mediated meaning. And the concept of figuration brings an understanding of knowledge in the arts as a relational process, as an embodiment in space-time that arises through the coming together of heterogeneous actors, materials, and sources. How do such encounters generate entryways to another kind of knowledge?

Through lectures, discussion, and performances, practitioners of art, science, and activism will consider their own interrelatedness in these ways of relating. Do these ways of relating offer new spaces and imperatives for action?

Participants include: Sarnath Banerjee, Beatriz Colomina, Ann Cvetkovich, Tom Holert, Brandon LaBelle, Amy Lien & Enzo Camacho, Maurício Liesen, Marcell Mars, Sibylle Peters, Mirjam Schaub, Melanie Sehgal, Femke Snelting & Jara Rocha, Nora Sternfeld, Kathrin Thiele, Brigitte Weingart, Marina Vishmidt, The Society for Nontrivial Pursuits

To the DFG Research Training Group "Knowledge in the Arts".

15:00  Begrüßung und Einführung / Welcome and Introductions
Barbara Gronau, Kathrin Peters + Konzeptteam / Concept team

15:30  Brigitte Weingart 
»Fame is the Name of the Game«: Appropriation and Celebrity Culture
Medienwissenschaftlerin; Köln
In German
Moderation: Hanna Magauer

16:30   Pause / Break

17:00  Marcell Mars 
Public Library / Memory of the World
Free software advocate, cultural explorer and social instigator; Zagreb, Lüneburg
In English
Moderation: Robert Patz

18:00  Jara Rocha + Femke Snelting 
Possible Bodies
Mediators and researchers; Brussels, Barcelona
In English
Moderation: Julian Bauer

19:00  Pause / Break 

19:30  Beatriz Colomina 
Broadcasting Yourself: Social Media Urbanism
Architectural historian and theorist; Princeton
In English
Moderation: Dennis Pohl

10:00 Maurício Liesen 
Mit-Teilung: Sharing and the (Im)Possibility of Appropriation, Mediation and Figuration
Communication and media theorist; Curitiba
In English
Moderation: Annika Haas

11:00   Marina Vishmidt 
Vampire in the Infrastructure: On Knowledge Mediation and Speculative Negativity
Critic and art theorist; London
In English
Moderation: Sebastian Köthe

12:00   Pause / Break

12:15   Mirjam Schaub 
Knowledge and Decisiveness or: The Radicality of Art
Philosophin; Halle (Saale)
In German
Moderation: Georg Dickmann

13:15   Mittagspause / Lunch break

15:00  Nora Sternfeld 
Different Relations: How Can We Learn Something from Each Other that Doesn't Yet Exist?
Kunstwissenschaftlerin/-vermittlerin und Kuratorin; Kassel
In German
Moderation: Grit Köppen

16:00   Sibylle Peters 
Scenes of Participatory Research: On the Work of the Artistic/ Academic Research Training Groups »Performing Citizenship« & »Assemblies and Participation«
Kulturwissenschaftlerin und Performancekünstlerin; Hamburg

17:00   Pause / Break

17:30  Tom Holert 
Contemporary Art, Epistemology, Politics of Knowledge
Kunsthistoriker; Berlin
In German
Moderation: Renate Wöhrer

18:30   Brandon LaBelle 
The Interrupted 
Artist, writer and theorist; Berlin
In English

Im Anschluss / Followed by 
BBQ & Party + The Society for Nontrivial Pursuits 
bis / until 23:00

10:30   Melanie Sehgal
Techniques as Mode of Relating: Thinking with a Transdisciplinary Experiment
Philosopher; Frankfurt/Oder
In English
Moderation: Maximilian Haas

11:30  Kathrin Thiele
Figuration and/as Critical Practice: Regarding the Non-Innocence of Relational Matters
Feminist critical theorist; Utrecht
In English
Moderation: Irina Raskin

12:30   Mittagspause / Lunch break

13:45  Artist talk with Sarnath Banerjee
Writer and artist; Berlin, Delhi
In English
Moderation: Juana Awad, Wilma Lukatsch

14:45  Artist talk with Enzo Camacho (+ Amy Lien)
Artists, writers, researchers; Berlin, Manila, New York 
In English
Moderation: Elsa Guily

15:45   Pause / Break

16:00   Ann Cvetkovich
After Depression: Feeling Bad Now
Scholar of women’s and gender studies; Austin
In English
Moderation: Annika Haas

17:00   Abschluss / End of conference

Concept: Annika Haas, Maximilian Haas, Hanna Magauer, Kathrin Peters, Dennis Pohl
Moderation: Juana Awad, Julian Bauer, Georg Dickmann, Lisa Großmann, Elsa Guily, Annika Haas, Maximilian Haas, Grit Köppen, Sebastian Köthe, Wilma Lukatsch, Hanna Magauer, Robert Patz, Dennis Pohl, Irina Raskin, Renate Wöhrer
Organisation: Juana Awad, Christina Deloglu-Kahlert
Support: Sarah Luise Hampel, Johanna Heyne, Alicja Schindler
Design: Jenny Baese, support: Anna Bierler

With the support of Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft and Präsidium der Universität der Künste Berlin.

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