Pool 9: Art & Critique 

History, 90’s and NOW
„Every image of the past that is not recognized by the present as one of its own concerns threatens to disappear irretrievably“ Walter Benjamin, Thesis on the Philosophy of History
Nummer und TypMFA-MFA-Po00.21H.009 / Moduldurchführung
ModulPool: 
VeranstalterDepartement Fine Arts
LeitungChristian Philipp Müller
Anzahl Teilnehmendemaximal 13
ECTS3 Credits
VoraussetzungenCourse language: English
LehrformSeminar
ZielgruppenMA Fine Arts students
Open for exchange students
Lernziele / Kompetenzen• Introduction to the theory and practice of classic Institutional Critique.
• Response of my generation in the early 1990’s to the fathers and god-mothers of IC.
• How to act and react now towards Institutions, as an individual artist, and in coalitions.
InhalteArt historians like Benjamin Buchloh, Douglas Crimp (On the Museum’s Ruins) and Craig Owens (Beyond Recognition, Representation, Power and Culture) introduced my generation in the early 90’s to the fathers of Institutional Critique. We will read key-texts on this subject together and look at the practice of artists like Michael Asher, Marcel Broodthaers, Daniel Buren, and Hans Haacke. Soon female artists reacted with their own methods, and we will look at their strategies and formats. Guerilla Girls, Jenny Holzer and Barbara Kruger, and Louise Lawler will be our main focus.

Art historian James Meyer, 1992 still a student, contacted me to discuss Institutional Critique. He worked at the time as an assistant of MoMA curator Keniston MC Shine. They worked on a show titled „The Museum as Muse“. James was looking for artists of his own generation to look into the possible future of Institutional Critique. We worked together on the show and publication „What happpened to Institutional Critique“, that took place at AFA in the fall of 1993, with Gregg Bordowitz, Tom Burr, Mark Dion, Andrea Fraser, Renée Green, Zoe Leonard, and Christian Philipp Müller.

I will present some of my projects from 1990-2021. We will visit the recent addition by David Chipperfield to the Kunsthaus Zürich. On their website, they claim to be the biggest Swiss museum.
Each student is asked to contribute to define the best and worst features of the Kunsthaus Zürich.
The goal is to make each participant aware of their own practice, and to develop criticality towards possible future venues, to present their work, including a reflection on their current status as students of ZHdK.

About the lecturer:

Christian Philipp Müller, born 1957 in Biel, is a Berlin-based Swiss conceptual artist whose practice explores a range of issues, from social and aesthetic concerns within cultural production to design to design, national narratives and the institutional framing of culture. His projects are and have typically been collaborative, interdisciplinary, site-specific and often performative. He is a leading figure socially engaged and contextual art practice and institutional critique as it became relevant in the 1990s. Before Müller moved to Berlin in 2011, he lived in Düsseldorf (1984-88), Brussels, and from 1992 onwards finally in New York. From 2011-2013, Müller was rector of the Kunsthochschule Kassel and from 2013-2015 Professor for Performative Sculpture. From 2016-2017, he was Professor for Artistic Concepts and Public Space at the Nuremberg Art Academy.

Andrea Fraser, Gerwald Rockenschaub, and CPM represented Austria at the Venice Biennale in 1993.
Bibliographie / LiteraturWill be handed out during the course.
Leistungsnachweis / TestatanforderungMandatory attendance (minimum 80%); active participation
TermineTime: 10:00 - 18:00 o'clock

CW 40: 04 / 05 / 06 / 08 October

Excursion:
CW 40: 07 October
Bewertungsformbestanden / nicht bestanden
Termine (6)