Invited Talk: Monika Wagner
Constant change and global exchange: Waste, dust and other materials
Martes 25 junio 2024, 18:00Pasado
- Lecture of Monika Wagner, presented by Peter Geimer
‘Return to sender’ was the motto of the actionist ‘Nest Collective’ from Nairobi at documenta 15. The call that accompanied the installation made of electronic scrap and bales of worn textiles aimed to visualise the uncontrolled material flows of waste from the global North to the global South. While the first World's Fair in London (1851) was about the transformation of the proudly staged material flows from the colonies into machine-produced goods, i.e. about making, which prompted Gottfried Semper to develop his theory of material as an anthropological cultural factor, today the focus is on de-composing and de-materialising that which has been produced. Artists from the global South encounter the material remnants of commodity production and charity racism with different forms of work. Through the art system, the unwanted remnants can be ‘restituted’ to the countries of origin, at least symbolically. This does not apply to dust, the highest form of material decomposition. The uncontrollable drifts of volatile dust that span the globe are constantly changing and mixing, rendering their origin difficult to identify. In the tradition of ‘cloud studies’, which has been a familiar artistic topic in Europe since the 18th century, alarming cloud modifications are visualised by artists as well as by the transdisciplinary research group Forensic Architecture. But only their chemical and physical de-composition reveals their material composition, which often becomes an index of catastrophic events and toxic production.
De-composition, re-cycling, re-development of materials have become subjects and instruments of artistic production that require a corresponding historical and theoretical embedding.
invited talk, talk y keynote
Invited Talk: Conférence de Monika Wagner
Constant change and global exchange: Waste, dust and other materials
Martes 25 junio 2024, 18:00Pasado
- Conférence de Monika Wagner, présenté par Peter Geimer
‘Return to sender’ was the motto of the actionist ‘Nest Collective’ from Nairobi at documenta 15. The call that accompanied the installation made of electronic scrap and bales of worn textiles aimed to visualise the uncontrolled material flows of waste from the global North to the global South. While the first World's Fair in London (1851) was about the transformation of the proudly staged material flows from the colonies into machine-produced goods, i.e. about making, which prompted Gottfried Semper to develop his theory of material as an anthropological cultural factor, today the focus is on de-composing and de-materialising that which has been produced. Artists from the global South encounter the material remnants of commodity production and charity racism with different forms of work. Through the art system, the unwanted remnants can be ‘restituted’ to the countries of origin, at least symbolically. This does not apply to dust, the highest form of material decomposition. The uncontrollable drifts of volatile dust that span the globe are constantly changing and mixing, rendering their origin difficult to identify. In the tradition of ‘cloud studies’, which has been a familiar artistic topic in Europe since the 18th century, alarming cloud modifications are visualised by artists as well as by the transdisciplinary research group Forensic Architecture. But only their chemical and physical de-composition reveals their material composition, which often becomes an index of catastrophic events and toxic production.
De-composition, re-cycling, re-development of materials have become subjects and instruments of artistic production that require a corresponding historical and theoretical embedding.
conférence y keynote
