Art and Time | Media

Seminar: Fareed Armaly

  • Fr 06.06.2008
    10:30-13:30 | 14:30-17:00
  • Seminar
  • Fareed Armaly
  • ART ON THE MOON

Eine Kooperation von den Ordinariaten:
Kunst und digitale Medien und Video und Videoinstallation
Ort: Medienklasse

I will be presenting examples of my work of the past two decades, adding when necessary for background relevance the contexts I was living and producing within, which includes New York in the mid 1980s and onto Europe.

My interests related to methodology are considered first linked to the open definition of art, in relation to other fields or disciplines, and how that develops. In terms of the methodology, among the different aspects I will touch upon are my use of media production, the historical index and research, architecture and “site”. Focusing on examples of my larger, institutional solo exhibitions allow to understand how certain sensibilities embodied within smaller, earlier works, can be recognized operating later within the parameters of larger, and more complex exhibition format. A key example will be the development from the early work “Displaced Passages” to a decade later, the large project “From/To” (1999 Witte de With / 2002 Documenta 11).

In terms of the above, I will also provide a sense of my approach to the notion of artistic practice by way of my consideration of “identity politics”, and the intertwined route I undertook through working within various roles, in collaborative large-scale curatorial projects, as well four years holding the institutional position of Artistic Director for the Künstlerhaus Stuttgart in Germany.

Fareed Armaly

Fareed Armaly (b. 1957 Iowa) is an artist, curator and author whose work joins his interests in issues pertaining to culture, society and representation, set in terms of an identity politics informed by both a specific generational and Arab-American background, and with an engagement in a contemporary arts discourse that operates on both the artistic and institutional level.

Armaly considers the exhibition in terms of an aggregate identity consisting of different “scripts” at work. This operates as a tenuos interface shaped between institution and public. In his projects, an initial research develops a historical index that provides an orientation to a specific contemporary perspective. The correspondences between are rendered through media (film, video, photography, soundwork, printed matter) as well architectural intervention and exhibition design, workshop, symposium, performance or event structures.

This can be seen by his exhibitions for such international institutions as the Maison de la Culture, Saint-Etienne, France; Palais des Beaux Arts, Brussels; Witte de With, Rotterdam; Musée d’Art et d’Histoire, Geneva; Art Pace, Texas, and within the Documenta 11 in Germany.

Parallel with his exhibitions, he has held different roles and positions within the arts-institutional system, including artistic/curatorial advisory collaborations for large-scale institutional projects, from program advisory for the foundation of an international gallery in Germany, onto large-scale independent exhibitions (Project UNITÉ, France); “Raumplan”, the commissioned project planned to open the new Generali Foundation space in Vienna; co-curating museum projects (Lousiana Museum, Denmark) and four years as Artistic Director for the Künstlerhaus Stuttgart (Germany).

His teaching includes the University of Hamburg, of Pforzheim, postgraduate programs in Jan van Eyck Akademie, Maastricht and the Academie des Beaux Arts in Geneva, and invitations for workshops and lectures include the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, Cornell University, Columbia University, Center for Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths College London.

The art historian Helmut Draxler, in his recent publication on Fareed Armaly, offers an analysis on how the artist’s approach establishes an interplay between cultural fields and strategies, whereby each work develops its unique character through what Armaly considers as a ‘scripting of correspondences’. This overall sensibility is summed up by the title of Draxler’s book: “Coercing Constellations”

His most recent museum project, “Shar(e)d Domains” (2007), was commissioned by the Geneva Musée d’Art et d’Histoire to feature in their large-scale archaeological exhibition and new museum proposal “Gaza at the crossroad of civilizations.”

More info:
www.fareedarmaly.net
www.haussite.net