Collecting

“The most profound enchantment for the collector is the locking of individual items within a magic circle in which they are frozen as the final thrill, the thrill of acquisition, passes over them. Everything remembered and thought, everything conscious, becomes the pedestal, the frame, the base, the lock of his property.“ Walter Benjamin, 1931

“It was Benjamin’s conviction that reality itself invited—and vindicated—the once heedless, inevitably destructive ministrations of the collector. In a world that is well on its way to becoming one vast quarry, the collector becomes someone engaged in a pious work of salvage. The course of modern history having already sapped the traditions and shattered the living wholes in which precious objects once found their place, the collector may now in good conscience go about excavating the choicer, more emblematic fragments.“ Susan Sontag, 1973

“Collecting is not just based on an inability to leave things where they are; it is also a form of self-expression. (...) Even finished objects can absorb psychological energy and satisfy aesthetic or biographical interests—often better than objects you have created yourself.“ Walter Grasskamp, 1979

„What you really collect is always yourself. This makes it easier to understand the structure of the system of possession: any collection comprises a succession of items, but the last in the set is the person of the collector.“ Jean Baudrillard, 1968

In this seminar, we examine the history, aesthetics, methology and psychology of collecting. New collections will be created and existing ones presented. The focus is on different practices of collecting, selecting, and reorganizing, on the question of how a collection emerges from a hodgepodge – and how it becomes a work of art. This involves both collecting itself as an artistic practise and working with collections as an starting point and material.

Artists: Guy Ben-Ner, Frank Beauvais, Alisa Berger, Céline Berger, Manuel Boden, Bin Chuen Choi, Joseph Cornell, Song Dong, Hans-Peter Feldmann, Morgan Fisher, Alberto Grifi & Gianfranco Baruchello, Camille Henrot, David Horvitz, Sohrab Hura, Roman Khimei & Yarema Malashchuk, Peter Piller, Anne Charlotte Robertson, Jörg Sasse, Maya Schweizer, Timm Ulrichs, Agnes Varda, Lucy Walker / Vik Muniz, Andy Warhol u.a.

Gäste: Christoph Girardet, Susann Maria Hempel, Daniel Kothenschulte, Martin Paret