Equality, Diversity, and Solidarity in the Art World

Equality, Diversity, and Solidarity in the Art World Lectures and dialogues by and with Michael Annoff, Maximiliane Baumgartner, Madeleine Bernstorff, Gürsoy Doğtaş, Pary El-Qalqili, Ewa Majewska, Stephanie Marchal, Chus Martínez, Nadine Oberste-Hetbleck, Bahareh Sharifi and Brigitte Sölch Thursday, 7.10.2021, 6 – 9 pm Venue: Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf Friday, 8.10.2021, 10 am – 5 pm Venue: Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne >> You can download the complete program at the following link. Free admission, no pre-registration required Proof of a negative corona test or proof of vaccination or recovery is required for participation.  A cooperation between the Department for Art History and the Marie Jahoda Center For International Gender Studies (MaJaC), Ruhr-University Bochum and reboot: responsiveness, Kölnischer Kunstverein and Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf Organized by Eva Birkenstock, Nikola Dietrich, Viktor Neumann and Änne Söll It has been 100 years since women were admitted to state art academies, thus marking a milestone within the long struggle for professionalization of female artists in Germany. Femininity continues to function as one of many, often intersecting, hierarchizing and exclusionary categories that have always been established and constructed in transnational art institutions. While a continuous increase in the presence of women at German art academies can be noted from the 1950s onward, their discrimination in the art world persisted. In response, part of the 1970s women’s movement—along with its allies from other freedom movements—dedicated itself both theoretically and artistically to combating institutionalized gender inequality; from the beginning, Black women along with women of color underscored the intersectionality of structural mechanisms of exclusion. While studies show minimal changes in parity within the field of contemporary art since the 1990s, inequalities remain ubiquitous. To what extent the women’s or gender-equality officers intended in all German states can transform the art system remains an open-ended question. The persisting patriarchal, anti-social, and racist structures and resulting power imbalances only reluctantly destabilize the myth of the—white, heterosexual, cisgender, and ‘capable’—male genius in all areas of the field.The symposium will analyze causes of intersecting power structures and mechanisms of exclusion and discuss proposals to overcome them. How can the art world achieve an equality that considers factors such as migration and educational background, sexual orientation, and physical and neural difference from the very beginning? The event will kick off on October 7, 2021, at the Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf. The temporal and thematic framework of the symposium will be introduced by a screening of the suffragette movement at the beginning of the 20th century, compiled and commented by Madeleine Bernstorff, as well as a keynote lecture by the feminist philosopher and author Ewa Majewska. Based on the Guerilla Girls’ actions for equality in art institutions, Majewska will present current strategies of resistance as tested and practiced by art institutions in Poland. She proposes to avoid simplistic conceptions of parity in favor of urgent intersectional and decolonial perspectives. The second part of the symposium will take place on October 8, 2021, at the Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne and will bring together lectures and dialogues between thinkers, artists, and cultural practitioners. The first block will be devoted to historical excursions on the processes, problems, and potentials of equality in the art world: Brigitte Sölch (University of Heidelberg) will shed light on the situation of female art historians around 1900 and present the DFG network “Women Art Historians before 1970.” Nadine Oberste-Hetbleck (University of Cologne) will provide insight into the holdings of the Central Archive of the International Art Trade. The artist Maximiliane Baumgartner will talk about exclusions from the canon and trans-temporal solidarizations. In a second block, Stephanie Marchal (Ruhr-Universität Bochum) uses the example of art criticism, while Chus Martínez (FHNW Basel) examines institutionalized inequalities based on artistic training, to consider art historical revisions and structural transformations. In a concluding block moderated by Gürsoy Doğtaş (University of Applied Arts Vienna), curator Michael Annoff, director Pary El-Qalqili, and Diversity Arts Culture program director Bahareh Sharifi describe how discrimination is interconnected, critically question the art system’s notion of diversity, and discuss the need for an institutional code of conduct and further structural changes. reboot: responsiveness Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne and Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf jointly announce the launch of reboot: – a collaborative, multi-cycle, anti-racist, and queer-feminist dialogue encompassing performance and research based practices. The first cycle, reboot: responsiveness, departs from desires, anxieties and hopes amplified by the current pandemic. Hosted in two different yet aligned sites that mutually interact with one another as much as they support, complement and challenge each other, reboot: responsiveness provides infrastructures for provisional stagings, rehearsals, processual choreographies, and encounters around notions of presence, intimacy, care, and responsibility. reboot: responsiveness develops activities together with a core collective comprised of Alex Baczynski-Jenkins, Gürsoy Doğtaş, Klara Lidén, Ewa Majewska, Rory Pilgrim, Cally Spooner, and Mariana Valencia. Embracing diverse formats, and working together with further invited guests and audiences in Cologne and Düsseldorf, these artists and thinkers will explore ways to dedicate time to one another and to perform in time, to develop alternative vocabularies, archives, gestures, movements, and translations, to share and transmit resources and ideas, and to find modes of resistance and togetherness in response to the current situation we are living in. reboot: Conceived by Eva Birkenstock, Nikola Dietrich, and Viktor Neumann Core Collective: Alex Baczynski-Jenkins, Gürsoy Doğtaş, Klara Lidén, Ewa Majewska, Rory Pilgrim, Cally Spooner, and Mariana Valencia Graphic design by Sean Yendrys http://reboot-responsiveness.com/   reboot: responsiveness is a cooperation of: reboot: responsiveness is supported by: