Lecture series Institute of Art Criticism: 
Do it yourself. Deskilling and Reskilling in the Digital Techno Age

Josephine Pryde: We Do The Rest
Wednesday, 28. June 2017, 19.00, Aula

This lecture-series (conceptualized by Isabelle Graw) revolves around the question of artistic skills in a digital world. What do they actually consist of? While it always mattered how an artist performs herself since the Modern Age, it seems that the „Auftritt des Künstlers“ (Beatrice von Bismarck), namely, her public staging of herself, has become increasingly important in a Media Society. Has the modeling of her „personality“ turned into a skill that is required from her? Or should one rather argue that artistic practices still represent other competences, attitudes and ways of life that question the ideal of an entrepreneurial self? What have traditional skills been replaced by? 

It seems that the deskilling of the arts that is usually associated with the „Duchamp-effect“ and post war practices allowed for a reskilling that is currently quite popular in the artworld. Is it a historical necessity that deskilling entails reskilling? Historically speaking, „deskilling“ was a male privilege in the 1950´s and 1960´s. Many male artists opted for anti-subjective aleatory procedures that rejected skills, whereas women artists practiced another form of deskilling in the 1970´s by reintroducing formerly devaluated, „female skills“ into their work. Could one argue, at least in retrospect, that it is precisely these lower or soft skills associated with the sphere of reproduction that are have risen to the status of a valuable resource in our New Economy? A short talk on a time-based medium - Josephine Pryde will discuss her artwork in connection to skills she may have acquired, or otherwise, while using a camera.

Pryde was born in the United Kingdom, studied in London and was appointed Professor for  'Zeitgenössische Kunst und Fotografie' at the University of the Arts, Berlin, in 2008. Her most recent exhibition was 'Traces of Accessibility' in collaboration with Marilyn Thompson, in April 2017 at Goton, Paris. Since 2014, Pryde has exhibited two different miniature rideable trains, alongside photographs featuring hands, in various configurations, initially in the show 'These Are Just Things I Say, They Are Not My Opinions' at Arnolfini, Bristol in 2014, and then in 'lapses in Thinking By the person i Am' at CCA Wattis, San Francisco and ICA Philadelphia in 2015. Her catalogue 'The Enjoyment of Photography' also appeared in 2015.