Strategies of (Re-)Staging Process-Based Art by Otto Piene
PhD Project Babette Werner
In her thesis, the art and visual historian Babette Werner researches the analog and digital (re-)stagings of process-based and inter-media art from the late 1950s until today and their potential for sustainable archival and curatorial practices. Werner explores the notion of an ecological aesthetic with her practice-based and theoretical research. At the intersection of art and visual history, conservation and media studies, the focus is put on artist Otto Piene, who experimented with natural phenomena, and light and slide installations. Two of Piene’s early performative and kinetic slide installations from the 1960s are selected as the main examples. In the hybrid performance and installation, The Proliferation of the Sun (1964/2014), hand-painted glass slides are the main component of the immersive work. For the installation Lichtballet “Hommage à New York” (1966/2016), colored glass slides are used selectively alongside diapositives. Both works within Piene’s typology of the light ballet are entangled through the use of similar materials such as hand-painted glass slides, carousel projectors, sound, textiles and kinetic light elements. Furthermore, due to conservation regulations, the slides can no longer be activated. For their (re-)stagings in 2014 and 2016, the fragile slides were elaborately reproduced in analog and digital form. Combined with other factors, the media transfers led to two different outcomes of display.
Werner’s thesis aims to close research gaps in Piene’s work and make an urgently needed contribution to the media-reflexive digitization of process-based art (Piene 1965, Dobbe 2003, 6–9, 28, Ströbele 2015, Huss, Winkler 2017). The framework for this is the notion that (re-)staging—understood as an extended sculptural genre—can be made usable at the interplay between memory and imagination, both as an archival strategy and as a method of exhibition practice (Deleuze 1968, 17, 106, Fischer-Lichte 2004, 40–41, Arns 2007, 62, Bishop 2013, Meyer 2014, 153, Caianiello 2021, 1–9).
Supervision: Prof. Dr. Claudia Blümle (Institute of Art and Visual History, HU Berlin), Prof. Dr. Stefan Neuner (University of the Arts Berlin).
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
Matters of Activity. Cluster of Excellence / Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
Prof. Dr. Claudia Blümle, Institute of Art and Visual History, HU Berlin
Prof. Dr. Stefan Neuner, UdK Berlin.
babette.marie.werner [at] hu-berlin.de
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M. Dobbe, »The Medium is the Medium. Von den Rasterbildern zum Lichtballett«, Die Sonne kommt näher. Otto Piene Frühwerk, ed. by B. Engelbach, 2003: 6–13, 9.
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C. Bishop, »Reconstruction Era: The Anachronic Time(s) of Installation Art«, When Attitudes Become Form. Bern 1969/Venice 2013, ed. by G. Celant, 2013: 429–436, 431.
P. M. Meyer, »Die Bewegung machen. Wiederholung und Ko-Affektion in Philosophie und künstlerischer Praxis mit Bezug auf Archiv, Gedächtnis und Performance«, Re*: Ästhetiken der Wiederholung, ed. by H. Loreck, M. Ott, Querdurch – Schriftenreihe der Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg 5, 2014: 148–161, 153.
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