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
Florence Jung: Doing nothing?
Lecture, 24 June 2025, 19:00
Ongoing
Summer Semester 2025
Information, 22 April – 25 July 2025
Upcoming
Tanya Lukin Linklater: _structural_flex_
Lecture, 8 July 2025, 19:00
Overture – Graduate Exhibition
Exhibition, 15 July – 10 August 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
Eyal Weizman: Cloud Studies

Across the world, toxic tear gas is deployed to disperse bodies gathering in democratic protest, white phosphorus and chlorine gas to spread terror in cities, aerial herbicides to destroy arable land and ruin livelihoods, and large-scale arson to eradicate forests for industrial plantations. Mobilized by state and corporate powers, toxic clouds colonize the air we breathe across different scales and durations, from urban squares to continents, unique incidents to epochal latencies.
In the recent history of human rights, incidents of violence have been understood as momentary and kinetic: a gunshot or explosion, where ‘every contact leaves a trace’. But contemporary cloud studies require a different approach. In analysing airborne violence, causality is hard to demonstrate; the ‘contact’ and the ‘trace’ drift apart, carried away by winds or ocean currents. Clouds are transformative entities—their dynamics elusive and nonlinear. Around these toxic fogs, contemporary political conditions breed doubt and lethal scepticism; physical clouds become epistemological. When figures in power deny the realities of climate change or chemical strikes, those forced to inhabit the clouds must find new forms of resistance.
Eyal Weizman is the founding director of Forensic Architecture and Professor of Spatial and Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London. The author of over 15 books, he has held positions in many universities worldwide including Princeton, ETH Zurich and the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. He is a member of the Technology Advisory Board of the International Criminal Court and the Centre for Investigative Journalism. In 2019 he was elected life fellow of the British Academy and appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2020 New Year Honours for services to architecture. In 2020 he was elected the Richard von Weizsäcker fellow at the Bosch Academy. Eyal studied architecture at the Architectural Association, graduating in 1998. He received his PhD in 2006 from the London Consortium at Birkbeck, University of London.
The lecture will be held in English language.