Events | Art Production in La La Land. From the Beginnings at CalArts to the Present Digital Visual Worlds in Los Angeles.
Berlin | September 15, 2019 | 12:00 PM
Talk with the artist Louisa Clement and curator Julika Bosch of Kestner Gesellschaft, hosted by Heike Catherina Mertens.
Founded by Walt Disney and opened in 1970, the California Institute of the Arts -- CalArts -- near Los Angeles developed a radical, groundbreaking school model in its early years. Its interdisciplinarity was based on European and American school models such as the Bauhaus and Black Mountain College. At CalArts, key figures such as Allan Kaprow, Judy Chicago, and John Baldessari, who as one of the formative teachers pursued the view that art is not teachable, but that it is a matter of creating situations "where art might happen". With the institutional establishment of conceptual and feminist concepts, CalArts took on a pioneering role. Julika Bosch points out how social issues, such as the questioning of authorship, the flexibilisation of artistic working methods or the criticism of patriarchal power structures were already at the centre of artistic debate at the time.
Louisa Clement, born in 1987 in Bonn, lives and works in Bonn.
At the beginning of this year, Louisa Clement was a guest at Villa Aurora, the former US exile residence of Lion and Marta Feuchtwanger. Her work ties in with one of the most pressing themes of our time: the confrontation with being human in digital times. Her photographs, videos and VR projects show bodies without eyes, mouth and nose, faceless and genderless; aesthetic avatars and digital pictorial spaces in which the audience can communicate with bots. Louisa Clement talks about her experiences in Los Angeles and the influence of media technologies on her art production.
Julika Bosch arbeitet als Kuratorin in der Kestner Gesellschaft, Hannover. Sie realisierte dort u.a. Ausstellungen zum Werk von Roman Siegner, Nevin Aladag u. Walter Dahn. 2019 hat sie an einer umfassenden Ausstellung zu den frühen Jahren des California Institute of the Arts mitgearbeitet. "Wo Kunst geschehen kann – Die frühen Jahre des CalArts" widmet sich den ersten zehn Jahren der Kunsthochschule und führt erstmalig die dort vertretenen Lehrkonzepte mit den daraus entwickelten künstlerischen Praktiken in einer Gruppenschau zusammen. Die Ausstellung ist noch bis bis 10. November in der Kestner Gesellshaft, Hannover zu sehen und 2020 im Kunsthaus Graz.
