Monday Lecture on The Human Aspect of Objects

Föreläsning

Esther Shalev-Gerz and Jason E. Bowman will discuss Shalev-Gerz's work, MenschenDinge (The Human Aspect of Objects), 2004-2006. The seminar will focus on a series of significant and complex questions that the processes and realisation of MenschenDinge raise regarding: memory, the possibilities and discontents of objecthood and the archive as experience.

In 2006 Esther Shalev-Gerz inaugurated her work, MenschenDinge commissioned by and originally sited at the Buchenwald Memorial. The installation has subsequently been reiterated and exhibited, beyond its originating site, during Shalev-Gerz's career survey at the Jeu de Paume, Paris, 2010, and now at her retrospective at Le Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts de Lausanne.

The seminar will focus on a series of significant and complex questions that the processes and realisation of MenschenDinge raise regarding: memory, the possibilities and discontents of objecthood and the archive as experience.

MenschenDinge problematises relations to objects as relics, evidence, or as sacralised, and contributes to the significance of discussion regarding image-making after the Holocaust.

The Speakers:
Jason E. Bowman and Esther Shalev-Gerz have worked together on a regular basis for almost 15 years. They both teach on the MFA in Fine Art at the Valand Academy and are currently two of four co-investigators on a Swedish Research Council funded project: Trust and Unfolding Dialogue in Contemporary Art.

They will individually present on MenschenDinge and then discuss the processes and iterations of MenschenDinge, its relevance to other works within Shalev-Gerz's practice, and their relations to her concomitant interrogations of democracy, collective memory and art making.