Städel Museum, Schaumainkai 63, 60596 Frankfurt am Main
Opening hours: Tue–Sun, 10am–6pm; Thu, 10am–9pm
Opening: Tuesday, July 15, 2025, 7pm–10pm
Today
Ana Janevski: Looping, Relaying and Echoing. Three Curatorial Strategies
Lecture, 16 July 2025, 19:00
Ongoing
Summer Semester 2025
Information, 22 April – 25 July 2025
Overture – Graduate Exhibition
Exhibition, 15 July – 10 August 2025, 19:00
Tanya Lukin Linklater: _structural_flex_
Lecture, 8 July 2025, 19:00
Florence Jung: Doing nothing?
Lecture, 24 June 2025, 19:00
Rabih Mroué: Shot/Counter Shot. Rethinking the Reverse
Lecture, 17 June 2025, 19:00
Adir Jan & Emrah Gökmen: On the Shores of the Munzur, on the Shores of the Murat
Concert, 12 June 2025, 20:00
Miloš Trakilović: Love Songs & War Machines
Lecture, 10 June 2025, 19:00
Anna Roberta Goetz: 36. Bienal de São Paulo. Not All Travellers Walk Roads / Of Humanity as Practice
Lecture, 3 June 2025, 19:00
Jimmy Robert
Lecture, 27 May 2025, 19:00
Klein: No Degree, No Budget, No Problem
Lecture (20.5.) Concert (21.5.), 20 – 21 May 2025
Julian Irlinger: Reanimation and Reconstruction
Lecture, 13 May 2025, 19:00
İmran Ayata & Bülent Kullukçu: Songs of Gastarbeiter
Music Lecture, 8 May 2025, 19:00
Enzo Camacho & Ami Lien: Langit Lupa (Heaven Earth)
Screening (5.5.) Lecture (6.5.), 5 – 6 May 2025, 19:00
Helen Marten: Animal Hours
Lecture, 29 April 2025, 19:00
Application: Master of Arts Program in CURATORIAL AND CRITICAL STUDIES
Application, 10 April – 31 May 2025
Semester Break Spring 2025
Information, 14 February – 21 April 2025
Water Cooler Talks 2025
Event, 8 – 9 February 2025
Rundgang 2025
Exhibition, 7 – 9 February 2025, 10:00–20:00
Trisha Donnelly
Lecture, 30 January 2025, 19:00
Kerstin Brätsch: Parasite Painting
Lecture, 28 January 2025, 19:00
Emma Enderby: Curating in and out of Place
Lecture, 14 January 2025, 19:00

Art and Subjecthood – a Conference on the Return of the Human Figure in Semiocapitalism
Conference
Initiated by Institutefor Art criticism (Isabelle Graw, Daniel Birnbaum, Nikolaus Hirsch)
Many art works today evoke the human figure: Consider the omnipresence of the mannequin in current installations of artists like John Miller, Thomas Hirschhorn, Heimo Zobernig or David Lieske. Or consider the revival of a minimalist vocabulary, which embraces anthropomorphism as in the works of Isa Genzken and Rachel Harrison. This conference seeks to speculate on the reasons as to why, since the turn of the Millennium, we have encountered so many art works that tend to reconcile Minimalism with suggestions of the human figure. It proposes that this new artistic convention becomes rather questionable when discussed in the light of Franco Berardi´s theory of semiocapitalism – a power technology that aims squarely at our human resources. The participants of this conference are asked to offer possible explanations for this wide acceptance of anthropomorphism – could it be that this is a manifestation of the increasingly desperate desire for art to have agency?
Participants: Hal Foster, Caroline Busta, Michael Sanchez, Ina Blom, Jutta Koether
Respondents: Stefan Deines, Stefanie Heraeus, Magdalena Nieslony, Oliver Brokel
Art and Subjecthood
The Return of the Human Figure in Semiocapitalism
3 pm Welcome (Nikolaus Hirsch)
3.30 pm Introduction Isabelle Graw "When Objecthood turns into Subjecthood"
4 pm Hal Foster "Philosophical Toys & Psychoanalytical Travesties: Dolls, Puppets & Mannequins in the 1920s"
5 pm Caroline Busta “Body Doubles“
6 pm Michael Sanchez “Behavioral: Some Thoughts on Art Under Network Capitalism“
7 pm Ina Blom "Media Animism. Rachel Harrison's Living Images"
8 pm Jutta Koether „Mad Garlands”
The conference is part of the project „Art and Life“ and made possible by Kulturfonds Frankfurt RheinMain