Post-Studio Tales

Post-Studio Tales (P-ST) is a curatorial research and publication project examining the conditions of artistic practices today in view of their locatedness and materialization. Including text, commentary and conversation between artists, theorists, curators and architects, this publication intends to contribute to the notion of ‘post-studio’ practices in the arts. To accommodate for transversal digressions, P-ST was conducted as a research project which included eighteen artists living and working in an architectural setup designed by Something Fantastic at District Berlin. In rendering the whole space of District one grand studio, the setup blurred any delimitation of art/nonart,  production/nonproduction etc., making artistic form and form-of-life converge and delivering an ongoing postheroic comment on the issue of art and everydayness.

P-ST performed a triple operation upon the discourse of ‘post-studio’-practices. First, it historizes them as being a part of art history already. P-ST alludes to the context of their emergence by referencing other 1960ies phenomenons already in its setup, namely the social experiment (Garfinkel, Milgrim) and the social experiment as concrete utopia (communes, shared living etc.). This historization implies that P-ST’s perspective is post-post-studio. Second, the project fictionalizes the tale of the abandonment of the studio (which was never ‘true’ in a descriptive sense) and develops its own heterogeneous narration from the patchwork of its participants’ threads of working practices, discourses and stories. Third, as an act of curatorial experimentation, P-ST highlights the often-neglected curatorial consequences of the post-studio condition. Permanently present ‘on site’ during the project, P-ST’s curators positioned themselves as scissionfigures: through constant feedback somewhat conducting, and constantly reflecting, the course of events, they at the same time were subject to their own curatorial decisions, which were, like any other participant’s activities, permanently on exhibition at P-ST. Aware of the staging of these hypersocial complications, and of their ultimate unrepresentability in particular, the publication makes a contribution to current debates surrounding the topic of “post-studio” in art-theoretical discourse.

Authors: Stan Back, John Beeson, 
Kathrin Busch, Daniel Eguren, Karen Eliot, Daniel Falb, Something Fantastic, Ulrike Gerhardt, Lizaveta German, Friedemann Heckel, Susanne Husse, Isabelle Lumpkin, Jenny Nachtigall, Stefan Römer, Jörn Schafaff and Alexandra Stähli

Participating artists: Bradley Alexander, Anatoly Belov, Mitya Churikov, Sarah Elliott, David Goodman, Thomas Jeppe, Tina Kämpe, Wilhelm Klotzek, Martin Kohout, Burk Koller, Wojciech Kosma, Florine Leoni, Raphael Linsi, Laura McLardy, Anna Möller, Konrad Mühe, Flavia Spichtig and Pedro Wirz

Editors: Daniel Falb, Ulrike Gerhardt, Friedemann Heckel with John Beeson

Layout: Jan Steinbach, Sarah Brockmann, Studio Taube

Publisher: District Berlin/ Textem Verlag, Hamburg 2015

Post-Studio Tales is a project by District, supported by the Hauptstadtkulturfonds Berlin.

Language English

Price: 20 €
Shipping: 4 €

The publication can be ordered below or via press at district-berlin.com.

CONTENT

p. 5 Daniel Falb and Ulrike Gerhardt Narratologies: An Introduction

TEXTS
p. 19 Jörn Schafaff Staging the Studio: Post-Studio Tales Discursivity
p. 29 Kathrin Busch Exposition as Form-of-Life

TALES
p. 41 Raphael Linsi, Alexandra Stähli Remembering the Visit to a Studio
p. 45 Stefan Römer In the Libertarian Studio
p. 47 Burk Koller and Karen Eliot Studio in the Clouds
p. 52 Project Timeline
p. 55 Stan Back The Ballad of Stan Back
p. 59 Konrad Mühe und Wilhelm Klotzek Concretization by Means of Poetization
p. 67 Wojciech Kosma und Isabel Lumpkin The Lover
p. 73 Something Fantastic Signatures of the Studio Window

CONVERSATIONS
p. 83 Roundtble I: Has the Social Replaced the Studio
John Beeson, Daniel Eguren, Ulrike Gerhardt, Burk Koller, Laura McLardy, Jörn Schafaff / Friedemann Heckel

p. 95 Artistic Practice and Feminism Today
Sarah Elliott, Anna Möller, Jenny Nachtigall

p. 103 How do You Cope with Mental Strain?
Thomas Jeppe, Pedro Wirz / Suza Husse

p. 111 Roundtable II: On Hypersociality and Documentation
Bradley Alexander, Ulrike Gerhardt, David Goodman, Friedemann Heckel, Wojciech Kosma, Florine Leoni / John Beeson

p. 121 An Audio Sculpture on Art and Education
Anatoly Belov, Mitya Churikov / Lizaveta German

IMAGES
p. 133 Goats and Virgins

APPENDIX
p. 175 Participants’ Shortbios
p. 183 Imprint

Team – Concept and Editors: Daniel Falb, Ulrike Gerhardt and Friedemann Heckel with John Beeson; Coordination and Editing: Daniel Falb; Publication Assistant: Laura Lang; Translation: Daniel Falb; Photo Credits: Bradley Alexander; Mitya Churikov, Friedemann Heckel, Burk Koller, Heiko Schäfer; Graphic Design: Jan Steinbach, Sarah Brockmann (Studio Taube); Handwritings: Friedemann Heckel; Publisher: Textem Verlag, Hamburg

© District Berlin/ Textem Verlag, Hamburg 2015