Karin Michalski
"Letters to a young artist"
Online block seminar, English/Deutsch, 2 SWS, ECTS
2 weekends, 10h-17 h each day: 29./30.4. & 13./14.5.2023, online
13.5.: Excursion to the exhibition Ulysses Jenkins: Without your interpretation (Julia Stoschek Foundation, Berlin).

Registration via email, starting 11.4.2023 to: k.michalski@udk-berlin.de

How did you get the idea to become an artist? What seems to be a straight path for some is a winding path for others, often related to family background and the resources one has. Social class can also be intertwined with the experience of gender hierarchies, racism, and other factors that influence one's life path. What (artistic and theoretical) methods and aesthetics make it possible to move from social ills and personal experiences to political critique without manifesting and essentializing them, to open up spaces (of thought, action, and artistic expression) and make social hierarchies negotiable? Coming from less-privileged backgrounds can enrich one's own view of society and not infrequently creates art with subversive potential - and also humor.

The artist Pope.L describes: “My grAndmother told me I wAs going to be An Artist befoRe I knew what An Artist was. She toook me to see JAcob LaWWWW-RencE (…) At the WhitnEy MuSEUM of (AmerRicaN) Art and heR own WORK At the Studio Museum of HaRleM. To be cleAR: my grandmother WAS not A pRofessional Artist, shE cleaned houSES … to MAKe A living. In fact that’S how shE got this ideA thAt I could be AN Artist. see Some of heR clients weRe ARtists. To MAke A long stoRy shoRt, shE cooked up this ideA I could meet these Artists if I helped hER cleAn their houses. (…)”

Literature:
Bourdieu, Pierre (2002): A sociological self-experiment.
English, Darby (2019), To Describe a Life: Notes from the Intersection of Art and Race Terror.
hooks, bell (2000), Where We Stand: Class Matters.
Harney, Stefano, Moten, Fred (2004): The University and the Undercommons.
Littler, Jo (2017), Against Meritocracy: Culture, Power and Myths of Mobility.
Lorenz, Renate, Kuster, Brigitta (2007), Sexuell Arbeiten: Eine queere Perspektive auf Arbeit und prekäres Leben.
Nesbett, Peter, Andress, Sarah(2006), Letters to a Young Artist; Pope.L, William (2021), My Kingdom for a Title.

Requirements for the ungraded Studium Generale credits: Keynote presentation on a text or artistic work and participation in the excursion to the current exhibition of Ulysees Jenkins at the Julia Stoschek foundation, Berlin.

Karin Michalski works as film- and video art curator, artist and lecturer. In 2016 she edited the artist edition An Unhappy Archive (together with Sabian Baumann) at Edition Fink, Zurich and in 2015 the collaborative book I is for Impasse. Affektive Queerverbindungen in Theorie_Aktivismus_Kunst which was released at bbooks, Berlin.
contributions to other publications (selection):
Wicked Little Town, Archive Books Berlin, 2021; Re/Imagining Depression: Creative Approaches to “Feeling Bad”, Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2020; Public Spheres of Resonance: Constellations of Affect and Language, Routledge, 2019; Queer as...: Kritische Heteronormativitätsforschung aus interdisziplinärer Perspektive, Studien Interdisziplinäre Geschlechterforschung, Transcript, Hrsg.: Barbara Paul, Bielefeld, 2016.
curatorial projects include Queer Cinema: „counter-narratives“ und filmische Experimente, Rhizom Filmgeschichte, DFF – Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum, 2022; An Unhappy Archive Part II, Kunsthaus Aargau, 2021; STILL IN TOUCH - on queer friendships & poetic forms of resistance, a clipclub event@District Berlin, 2021.
Vertretungsprofessur: Kunsthochschule für Medien Köln, Professur Kunst- und Medien, Gender, 2015-18; Lehrveranstaltungen (Auswahl): Akademie der Bildenden Künste Wien, 2022/23 (WiSe), Universität Potsdam, 2022/23 (WiSe), Universität Wien, 2022/23 (WiSe), Universität Hamburg, 2022/23 (WiSe).