The Städelschule Architecture Class invites to a two-day symposium on May 25-26 addressing art, architecture and virtual reality. Breaking Glass—Virtual Reality and Becoming a Subject through Arts and Architecture raises questions pertaining to these creative disciplines, human perception and the formation of the contemporary self in relation to the emerging importance of virtual reality.
Virtual reality is currently causing a stir in art and architecture. The technology suggests a radical break with known conventions for creative work as much as individual experience. Virtual reality demands the design of whole new worlds with potentially new spatial qualities in relation to which the human subject must locate itself.
The symposium at the Städelschule seeks to locate the mondial impact of the technology in the arts and architecture as a productive momentum centring on the subject. Given the immersive and ultimately architectural space of virtual reality, what are the parameters for the creative and experiencing subject engaging with this technology? What does the history of art and architecture tell us with respect to the new creative opportunities in this medium? How do we position the subject within our image-driven culture in relation to virtual reality’s simulation of reality and alternative narrational structure? How can bodily performance and experience be comprehended with respect to the regime of images in virtual reality? And, finally, how can this multi-sensorial realm be comprehended in a coordinated and strategically productive manner?
The title of the event summons glass as the chief material means for the production and conveyance of our image culture and reverberates with how Marcel Duchamp delivered his main work, Le Grand Verre (“The Large Glass,” 1915-23), to posterity. The Large Glass - with its cracked glass panels, his autobiographical allusions and radical take on the floating picture plane within its given setting, could be seen to foreshadow virtual and augmented realities as they exist today. Moreover, the contemporary creative as well as experiencing subject was heralded in the bi-gendered subjectivity of Duchamp a.k.a. Rrose Sélavy in 1921. Under his female alter ego, Duchamp created numerous works and Rrose Sélavy is in and of itself a work of art.
With virtual reality becoming a cause célèbre in art and architecture, essential questions arise regarding processes of subjectification - echoing those that emerged amidst the technological and social revolutions throughout the 20th century. Based on Michel Foucault’s notion of the dispositif, the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben suggests that subjects as much as institutions are produced by an increasing number of apparatuses that ‘appear at the intersection of power relations and relations of knowledge.’ These philosophical observations are echoed in more recent attempts at unravelling the hidden infrastructure of the digital to address how the contemporary subject and its collective are politically engendered and socially staged - such as in the writings of Benjamin Bratton and Keller Easterling.
Breaking Glass - Virtual Reality and Becoming a Subject through Art and Architecture presents an interdisciplinary approach to speculate on these and related questions.
The symposium commences Friday, 25. May at 17:30 with a keynote talk by the world-renown neurophysiologist Wolf Singer. After the presentation, architectural theorist Sanford Kwinter, Allese Thomson, head of Fine Art Experiential division at Here Be Dragons, and former dean of Städelschule and current professor in the school and director of the Museum of Modern Art in Stockholm Daniel Birnbaum engage in conversation with Singer.
The programme continues with presentations and discussions on Saturday, 26. May at 10:00. Presenters include: the internationally recognised artists Rachel Rossin, Timur Si-Qin and Shezad Dawood; architect Damjan Jovanovic, virtual reality producer Dado Valentic, and art historian Lars Bang Larsen.
For more details on the programme, see: http://sac.staedelschule.de/en.
Das Symposium findet auf englischer Sprache statt.
Today
Ongoing
Nathalie Du Pasquier & Luca Lo Pinto: ON THE SHELF
Talk, 19 October 2024, 18:00
Ghislaine Leung: Questions
Talk, 22 October 2024, 19:00
Biomorphic Window 01: Pharmakon / Kollaps / Lana del Rabies
Concert, 2 October 2024, 19:00–23:00
„The Frankfurt Prototype“
Opening, 1 October 2024, 18:00
Kasper König (1943–2024)
Obituary, 9 August 2024
Vera Palme: The And
Lecture, 9 July 2024, 19:00
Zasha Colah
Lecture, 2 July 2024, 19:00
The Call
Exhibition, 28 June – 21 July 2024
Dylan Solomon KRAUS: The Seventh Point on the Six Sided Die
Lecture, 11 June 2024, 19:00
Listening Session
Event, 3 June 2024, 17:00–20:00
Tarik Kiswanson
Lecture, 28 May 2024, 19:00
Guerilla Architects: WE ARE SORRY!
Lecture, 21 May 2024, 19:00
Pio Abad: To Those Sitting in Darkness
Lecture, 14 May 2024, 19:00
Sir Peter Cook: CONSIDERING THE PICTURESQUE
Lecture, 13 May 2024, 19:00
Débora Delmar: Property
Lecture, 7 May 2024, 19:00
JUNGE KUNST MIT ZUKUNFT
Event, 4 May 2024, 18:00
Elisa R. Linn: The Berlin Wall as a Condom
Lecture, 2 May 2024, 19:00
R.H. Quaytman: Book
Lecture, 30 April 2024, 19:00
Camille Norment: Cultural Psychoacoustics
Lecture, 23 April 2024, 19:00
Phillip Zaiser (1969–2024)
Obituary, 6 April 2024
Application: Master of Arts Program in CURATORIAL AND CRITICAL STUDIES
Information, 25 March – 31 May 2024
Water Cooler Talks 2024
Event, 10 February 2024, 10:00–18:00
Rundgang 2024
Exhibition, 9 – 11 February 2024, 10:00–20:00
Nora Turato: Lecture
Lecture, 6 February 2024, 19:00
Oladélé Ajiboyé Bamgboyé: Unmasking Series–Towards Public Co-creation
Lecture, 30 January 2024, 19:00
Unextractable? Sammy Baloji and Bénédicte Savoy in Conversation
Lecture, 25 January 2024, 19:00
Manon de Boer: Three Films
Lecture & Screening, 22 – 23 January 2024, 19:00
Ann Demeester: The Museum as Transhistorical ‘Garden of Consciousness’?
Lecture, 16 January 2024, 19:00
Moritz Fehr: Evocation, Installation, Simulation
Lecture, 9 January 2024, 19:00
SAC Symposium: Breaking Glass. Virtual Reality and Subjectivisation in Art and Architecture
Event 25 – 26 May 2018