Haus der Kunst Symposium

Symposium 09.06 – 10.06.12

As part of the programs marking the 75th anniversary of Haus der Kunst, two major exhibitions will open on June 9: “Image Counter Image” and “Histories in Conflict: Haus der Kunst and the Ideological Uses of Art, 1937-1955”. 
Occupying the vectors where global media industries, artistic reflexivity, and ideological power intersect, the two exhibitions undertake to explore the complex zones of mediatized image regimes and artistic propaganda in organizing public opinion. The exhibition “Image Counter Image” focuses on the critical analysis of media images of conflict situations and wars. The exhibition “Histories in Conflict” illuminates the history of Haus der Kunst in an international context.
Accompanying the exhibitions will be a two-day symposium which will bring together some of the sharpest critical thinkers on the historical and theoretical issues surrounding the exhibitions.

Symposium / Day 1
The First Gulf War in 1990-91 marked a shift in the visual vocabulary with which conflicts and war were represented, and serves as a historical reference point. This war's media coverage, especially in the western media, created the image of a "clean war" or "war between machines" whose "crosshairs aesthetic" promised distance and security. This changed dramatically, however, with the images of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, which were broadcast live across media outlets around the globe and showed us our own - global - vulnerability. The media landscape has continued to change since then. Through the Internet and “social media” platforms, communication channels have enabled immediate global peer-to-peer exchange; these channels are also used as an alternative source of reporting on events. With these shifts in production, circulation, and transmission the question arises of who is effectively in control of the production, dissemination and interpretation of global images of conflict. What are the political agendas related to image production? Which topics and incidents are presented as images, and which are not? How can we take on a critical stance? 
Symposium in English

Symposium / Day 2 
The second day takes a look at the international dimension of Haus der Kunst's history in the years between 1933-37 and 1955. At the 1937 Paris World's Fair, for example, the Soviet pavilion's monumental architecture stood across from Albert Speer's equally imposing German pavilion (in which a model of the "House of German Art" was exhibited), while Pablo Picasso's painting "Guernica" pleaded in vain for peace in the Spanish pavilion. Eighteen years later, in the fall of 1955, this icon of anti-fascist and modern art was exhibited in Germany for the first time at Haus der Kunst under the auspices of a Picasso retrospective. 
The symposium's central topics are architecture in the context of power and ideology as well as postwar exhibition politics, with a look at the political and societal democratization of the Federal German Republic.
Symposium in English

Tickets:
1 day 30/10€
2 days 50/20€
Includes admission to the exhibitions and entrance to the openings on June 9.
Purchase tickets online

Information & Registration
events (at) hausderkunst.de 

Further information