Δ TALK

“Corner and Rule: Two or Three Hypotheses on the Granary”
Monika Dommann (Zurich)

Grain storehouses and silos are hot spots of government and economic activity – they provide emergency storage in war and catastrophe; they are evidence of good governance or of the world’s social conscience in face of drought, flood, embargo or conflict; and they form the basis for commodity speculation and market dominance. In this lecture, Monika Dommann explores the history and theory of the granary through its treatment in literature, film, government documents and economic theory.

Monika Dommann is Professor of Modern History at the Universität Zürich. She is part of the History of Knowledge centre and the DFG/SNSF research group Medien und Mimesis. After studying history and economics, she researched and taught at institutions including the University of Basel, the Internationales Kolleg für Kulturtechnikforschung und Medienphilosophie (IKKM) in Weimar, the German Historical Institut (GHI) in Washington, the Max-Planck-Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, McGill University in Montreal, and the International Research Centre for Cultural Studies (IFK) in Vienna.
Her research interests are interdependences between the Old and New world, the history of knowledge and material culture of economics and law (including storage and logistics, imitation and innovation, the market and market taboos, as well as copyright), the media history of visual and auditory recordings and storage including radiography and magnetic tape, the Indochina War in cinematographic replay, the Guantánamo camp as a legal construct, and the visual event from the fin de siècle to the Cold War.
 

New Publications :

Autoren und Apparate. Die Geschichte des Copyrights im Medienwandel, Frankfurt a. M. 2014.

Bühnen des Kapitalismus: Der Getreidehandel als Wissensobjekt zwischen den Weltkriegen, in: Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte 37, 2 (2014).

Zwischen Eisenbahn und Lager. Eine Archäologie der Rampe, in: Espahangizi, Kijan/ Orland, Barbara (Hg.) Stoffe in Bewegung, Beiträge zu einer Wissensgeschichte der materiellen Welt, Zürich 2014, P. 249–258.

Wertspeicher: Epistemologien des Warenlagers, in: Zeitschrift für Medien- und Kulturforschung 12/2012, P. 32–50.

Handling, Flow Charts, Logistik: Zur Wissensgeschichte und Materialkultur von Warenflüssen, in: Sarasin, Philipp; Kilcher, Andreas. Zirkulationen. Zürich 2011, P. 75–103.


In cooperation with the Institute for Scandinavian Studies, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main and the Institute for Cultural History and Theory, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Funded by the Fritz Thyssen Stiftung.

In German.
€5/reduced €2.50
Weltkulturen Labor, Schaumainkai 37

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Δ EXHIBITION OPENING

“BEHIND THE BLADE”

Monday, 14th July, 7pm

Opening words by Dr. Ulrich Schröder (chair of the KfW Stiftung board), Dr. Yvette Mutumba (research curator for Africa, Weltkulturen Museum) and Farzanah Badsha (guest curator).

Curated by Farzanah Badsha (ZA), fellow of the programme "Curators in Residence - Curating Collections" of the foundation KfW Stiftung.

In the exhibition “BEHIND THE BLADE”, the South African guest curator Farzanah Badsha experiments with contemporary art from the Weltkulturen Museum’s South Africa collection. She is the first recipient of a fellowship from the KfW Stiftung “Curators in Residence: Curating Collections” programme.

Drawing on prints from the Weltkulturen Museum’s collection of art made by Black artists in South Africa in the 1970s and 80s, this exhibition offers ways to experience the work from a contemporary perspective. This vantage point takes into account the fraught political context of South Africa in the latter years of Apartheid during which these artists lived and made art. It invites the viewer to read their practice in a continuum between then and now.

The exhibition focuses on the work of three artists from the museum’s collection: John Muafangejo (1943-1987), Azaria Mbatha (*1941) and Dan Rakgoathe (1937-2004). One work of each of these elder artists is shown in full in the exhibition, as well as enlarged extracts of other prints by them. An additional layer can be found in the work of contemporary print maker, Vulindlela Nyoni (1976), and in the carpet woven at Rorke's Drift.  The print by Nyoni shows how the work and lives of these pioneering Black artists still influence contemporary artists and provide them with important art historical anchors and personal inspiration.

Farzanah Badsha (ZA) is an independent curator and arts manager.
From 2012-2013 she was Programme Manager of “Creative Cape Town” at the “Cape Town Partnership”. During her time at “Creative Cape Town” her focus was on the “City Hall and City All Concert” series and policy discussions on public art in the City of Cape Town. Related to this she worked as a member of the curatorial panel and an adviser to the City of Cape Town on the “art54” project, to place temporary public art in Ward 54. From 2008-2010 she was project manager and part of the curatorial team for the “Spier Contemporary 2010” exhibition organised by the Africa Centre. 2006-2008 she worked as the Visual Arts Manager of the Africa Centre. Currently she is a Board member and Secretary of the Africa South Art Initiative (ASAI) and her latest curatorial project before starting her residency was entitled “Shop Front and Centre” where she curated contemporary South African art in empty shop windows along one of the busiest commuter routes in Cape Towns city centre.

“Curators in Residence: Curating Collections"
A programme of the foundation KfW Stiftung
The KfW Stiftung’s “Curators in Residence” programme offers outstanding young curators from Latin America, Africa and Asia the opportunity to spend several months in Germany, with the objective of promoting intellectual exchange in exhibition practice. There are fellowships in Berlin and Frankfurt, each with a specific profile oriented on curators’ differing needs and approaches.

The Frankfurt “Curating Collections” programme enables one curator per year to spend three months working at the Weltkulturen Museum, Frankfurt am Main, in order to create links between contemporary art and the debate around the ethnographic collection. The programme aims to professionalise curatorial training, enhance sensitivity to cultural and historical heritage, and deepen critical awareness of contemporary artistic discourses.

15th July until 31st August 2014
Weltkulturen Labor, Green Room
Schaumainkai 37, 60594 Frankfurt
Tues-Sun 11am-6pm, Wed 11am-8pm
€3 / reduced €1.50

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Δ TALK

“Behind the Blade - A conversation on the exhibition”
Farzanah Badsha (Cape Town)

The guest curator speaks about her work with the museum’s collection of South African prints from the 1970s and 1980s. Those are mostly associated with political resistance during Apartheid. Farzanah Badsha discusses how the content of the works by black artists such as John Muafangejo and Azaria Mbatha mediate content, which goes beyond that context. She introduces a re-interpretation of usual forms of representation through alternative perspectives and works by contemporary South African artists.

Farzanah Badsha is the first fellow of the programme "Curators in Residence - Curating Collections" of the foundation KfW Stiftung at the Weltkulturen Museum.

 

 

In English.
€5 / reduced €2.50
Weltkulturen Labor, Schaumainkai 37

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Δ TALK

“What does relevant mean?”
Elvira Dyangani Ose (London)

Elvira Dyangani Ose is Curator for International Art, supported by Guaranty Trust Bank Plc at the Tate Gallery of Modern Art.

How to tell art history anew? How to make relevant to the ‘universal’ what is fundamental to the ‘local’? Elvira Dyangani Ose explores some of Tate’s most recent projects devoted to art from Africa and its Diaspora. Amongst them, the acclaimed exhibition "Ibrahim El-Salahi: A Visionary Modernist", the first exhibition dedicated to an African Modernist at Tate Modern, and "Across the board", a two-year project sponsored by Guaranty Trust Bank, which provided an organic and experimental platform for emerging artists and explored recent artistic practices in the continent and its Diaspora. These projects together with the acquisition of Meschac Gaba’s seminal work "Museum of Contemporary African Art 1997–2002", constitute a new phase of Tate’s international remit, heightening awareness of the relevance of modern and contemporary African art for the understanding of a global broader art history.

Elvira Dyangani Ose (*1974) holds a Master’s degree in Theory and History of Architecture, from the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, and a BA degree in Art History, from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.
Since 2011 she has worked at the Tate Gallery of Modern Art in London as Curator for International Art, curating the Guaranty Trust Bank annual project for Tate Modern as well as contributing her expertise to the collection of art from Africa and its Diaspora. She is completing her PhD in History of Art and Visual Studies at Cornell University, New York. Previously, Dyangani Ose worked as Curator of African art at the Centro Atlántico de Arte Moderno, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and at the Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo, Seville. She is a founding member of the "Laboratory for Oral Ressources" in Equatorial Guinea. She was the General Curator of the Arte invisible programme at ARCOmadrid, in 2009 and 2010. Elvira Dyangani Ose was recently appointed curator of the eighth edition of Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art (GIBCA) 2015.

In the summer of 2014 Dyangani Ose was invited to explore the work by the Senegalese artist El Sy on the basis of the archive of the late art collector Dr. Friedrich Axt.  In the framework of her residency she will compose a text for the accompanying publication of the forthcoming exhibition "PAINTING, PERFORMANCE, POLITICS: El Sy – Artist, Curator, Activist" (Weltkulturen Museum opening: 4th March 2015).

In English.
€5 / reduced €2.50
Weltkulturen Labor, Schaumainkai 37

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