Suspending Discarding

Bettina KNAUP (Fellow) in conversation with Andrei SICLODI (Director)

Waste at Künstlerhaus Büchsenhausen. First week. Photo: Andrei Siclodi

The event will focus on acts of suspension and interruption, more concretely the act of bringing the endless stream of waste-matter to a temporary halt – at least in an experimental, speculative artistic manner. The program will consist of two parts, a presentation that will also be accessible online, followed by a more interactive discussion format for participants on-site only.

Waste is hard to grasp and to know, to fully measure and control. It is manifold, mingling qualities, states, temporalities, effects and affects, oscillating between immense dimensions and invisibility, between excessive accumulation and nothingness.
Drawing on her PhD study performing (as) waste, Bettina KNAUP will explore in the first part of the event the practices and methods of artists such as Nana Petzet, Joshua Sofaer, Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Sarah Vanhee, Cecilia Vicuña a.o. Rather than focusing on acts of recycling or material transformation these artists have all developed propositions and enactments of suspension, of keeping waste – at home, in the studio, on stage or in the museum – and have experimented with methods of an “excessive, more than human handling” and with alternative forms of knowing in relation to the “sticky no-thingness” of waste.

During the first two months of her Fellowship at Künstlerhaus Büchsenhausen, Bettina Knaup, together with the team as well as the other Fellows and the local artists in the house, has similarly disrupted the wastestream of the institution. In the second part of the event, which will take place on-site only, Andrei Siclodi (Director of Künstlerhaus Büchsenhausen) and Bettina Knaup will explore the accumulated materials, discarded ideas and possibilities in an open conversation format. What happens, when artistic production and curating direct the focus and energies towards the discarded, the useless, the thrown away or the unrealized?

THE FIRST PART OF THIS EVENT IS HYBRID. You can either participate in the presentation and workshop on-site in Künstlerhaus Büchsenhausen or follow the presentation online, via Zoom and Facebook. You will receive the Zoom link after registering via Eventbrite.

Bettina Knaup, freelance curator and writer (Berlin), has (co-)curated numerous international festivals, exhibitions and projects, including the International Festival of Contemporary Arts City of Women (Ljubljana, 2001–2004), performing proximities (Beursschouwburg, Brussels, 2008), performance platform. body affects (Sophiensaele, Berlin, 2012) and the archive and performance project re.act.feminism, which toured Europe from 2008 to 2013 (i.a. Akademie der Künste Berlin, Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona, Wyspa Institute of Art, Gdańsk, Tallinn Art Hall) and has been re-launched in 2022 in the frame of Manifesta 14 in Pristina. She regularly publishes, teaches and collaborates with other artists* and curators*.
https://www.reactfeminism.org/

Location

Künstlerhaus Büchsenhausen | Streaming via Zoom and Facebook

Registration for Zoom via Eventbrite