Bazon Brock – författare

Peter Weibel, the long-standing CEO of the ZKM | Zentrum für Kunst und Medien (Center for Art and Media) in Karlsruhe, and the recipient of the Lovis-Corinth-Preis in 2020, has influenced the international scene of media art as an artist as well as a theorist and curator. His artistic oeuvre comprises conceptual art, performance, experimental film, video, and computer art as well as his exploration of music.This publication offers insight into Weibel’s diverse work. One main area consists of works in which the artist takes up core questions about Europe. For example, his computer-video installation Die Vertreibung der Vernunft (The Expulsion of Reason) of 1993 thematizes the forced emigration of artists and intellectuals from Austria between 1933 and 1945. In other works critical of the system, which always question the usual concept of art as well, Weibel addresses migration, expulsion, war, and terrorism as well as economic and ecological catastrophes.Languages: English and German

Tearing, cutting, shredding in order to reassemble the elements and create something new: strip by strip the Austrian artist Monika Fioreschy applies lengths of torn paper to her canvases, thereby creating large-format abstract works filled with a harmonious formal language and offering an unexpected wealth of detail when observed more closely. Paper is the main medium used in the new cycles of works by Monika Fioreschy, whereby the strength of her works lies in the reduction of materials and forms. Line by line our eyes follow the course of the collages; the observer is seduced into reading her art. The strict regularity of the works is interrupted by changes in colour, the arrangement of the folds, gaps and overpasting, whereby the real wealth of detail only becomes evident through intensive study. In his essay accompanying the full-page reproductions of the works, art theorist Bazon Brock explains how Fioreschy’s training in classic weaving skills can be rediscovered in these works and the role they play in the artist’s oeuvre as a whole.

Warum Entdeutschung?1914 führte das große Pathos des Deutschtums in Staat und Gesellschaft, in Wirtschaft und Wissenschaft zum ersten Weltdesaster: Am deutschen Wesen war die Welt nicht genesen. Dennoch beanspruchte ab 1933 das «rassereine» Deutschtum sogar Weltführerschaft und scheiterte erneut. Doch man feierte auch noch die totale Zerstörung Deutschlands mit Bayreuther Wagnerberauschung als eine Bestätigung des deutschen Heroismus. Der zeigt sich bis heute in unserer Selbstgewissheit, Deutschland sei ein «unermesslich reiches Land», das zur Rettung der gescheiterten Staaten und ihrer Menschen vor Armut, Krankheit und Verfolgung verpflichtet sei. In Wahrheit aber gehört Deutschland nicht einmal mehr zu den 25 zukunftsfähigsten Staaten und Gesellschaften dieser Erde! Maßlose Selbstüberschätzung führt wie jeder Hochmut zum Fall. Um das zu verhindern, sollten wir Nietzsches Forderung folgen, uns zu entdeutschen – das sei erst der wahre Patriotismus.