Geteilte Zeit: Fragen und Antworten
Shared and/or Divided Times: Questions and
Answers
Brigitte Hammer
Shared Times II / Pictures and Sculptures: Opening Speech at the Exhibition and Conference, Europaische Akademie, Berlin.
Dear women artists, dear colleagues, dear art lovers, ladies and gentlemen,
In her opening remarks to this symposium, Gisela Weimann thanked many people and institutions who have made this event possible through artistic, organizational and financial means. I join with her in thanking them. I would, however, like to include someone else whom we have to thank for the entire project: Gisela Weimann herself. It was she who developed the idea for the book, who worked tirelessly on it, who secured the funding, collected the material, wrote countless letters and emails and carried out the "Shared Times" project with such verve and spirit, arranging and preparing the material for printing, liaising with the publishers and designer in order to bring her vision of the book in line with the requirements of reality.
Once all this had been set in motion, the Shared Times were still not finished: then there was the book to be publicized, the symposium to be organized, more financing for this, a suitable space to be found and schedules to be sorted out, travel and dates to coordinate and arrange-ments to be made with the participating artists, and, and…only someone who has worked on such a mammoth project themselves can probably imagine what it means in terms of work to see something like this through to completion. It requires the whole woman and her UNDIVIDED time! - over many months and years.
I checked my own contribution again. In my case, I sent my question to the artists to Gisela in July 2006, by this time several conversations about the goals and plans for the project had already taken place. Initially, with such a project, one gives birth to an idea, discusses it and outlines it with others, gives it a base with feedback from many other countries then of course other everyday events get mixed up in the work, but the more material arrives and the more results land on one's desk, the more energy and reserves the project consumes.
When I now open the olive green covers of this book, I am fascinated by the compacted intensity of the creation as it weaves in and out of time. This work can be read straight through from cover to cover or each chapter can be focused on individually, or it can be leafed through like a picture book just for the photos, letting the individual traces of text and image weave themselves into a complex compendium of contemporary female art history.
It simultaneously becomes a book of memories during this process, one which I am not unmoved by when reading, because I can compare the statements and opinions of the women with my own and discover myself among these female contemporaries. I, too, have shared this time. Some of the women who express themselves through this book have been known to me for many years, some I am friends with, others I have worked with or approached their artistic and scientific work without any personal connection to them.
Whenever I read it, though, I feel like a contemporary and this pleases me because I thereby feel increasingly familiar with the contemporary historical context and know (and can know about) exactly what is being discussed.
Knowing some of the women artists and art historians personally is something I find immensely enriching in terms of the experience and increase in available evaluation criteria: I can only appreciate a woman artist and her work in their contemporary context. I studied under art historians who confronted the then current art scene and the burgeoning boom of young art ("junge Kunst") with total incomprehension and over a beer after excursions to see monuments in art history would come out with remarks such as "the only good artist is a dead one". They took the view that to meet the living creator of a work of art could contaminate not only reverence of it but also the purity of academic judgment. When, as a young art historian, I enthusiastically discovered contemporary art and my joy in the simultaneous study of both creator and creation as an exciting opportunity for research, I risked serious conflict with my teachers, something which was to profoundly influence by future professional career.
That's why reading this book gives me such a unique thrill, because my own recollections of living through that time are awakened, and yet in looking back fill me with a singular sense of sobriety which astonishes me. The sometimes unconventional and often poisonous arguments about (cultural) politics and the then new aspects of art history teaching methods, the fierce conflicts and painful (life) decisions, the hurtful struggles and the victories, sometimes triumphant, sometimes pitiful, appear in this retrospective, orally condensed form as realities of one's own and others' lives, which the writers here in their statements treat with mildness and leniency.
Over the next few days, the new questions generated by the book will be given new slants and multifaceted answers by the guest speakers, but central to the Shared Times project will be the seven women artists who, through their joint experience studying at the HfbK in Berlin (now the Berlin University of the Arts) have now known one another for over forty years and whose biographies and life's work are reflected in the context of art history as contemporary history. These painters and sculptors work in very different ways and in the work section the book documents very convincingly with examples how the individual themes and work periods have developed over the course of the years, how they have remained faithful in the face of change, or suddenly taken new directions.
Of course it's not possible to display all this in the space we have (in the Europaische Akademie), however desirable that would be. But where artists and art lovers meet to exchange ideas, real art should also be present. And so the Academy is showing examples from the artists' life work: in the foyer you are welcomed by Self portrait with 62 eyes and current, small format collages by Gisela Weimann and sculpture of a woman by Christa Biederbick, in the conference room on the left two paintings by Sarah Haffner, in the large conference room two photographic works by Heide Pawelzik and a series of silkscreen prints by Gisela Genthner, in the fireplace room again Biederbick and Weimann, in the dining room selected early etchings by Karin Fleischer, in the hall several new, pastel drawings by Fleischer and small format reliefs by Biederbick and in the garden several Kings pillars and Watchman pillars by Regina Roskoden.
All the works seem very much at home on display in the various locations and give the European Academy a well-arranged and lively atmosphere. To mention a few examples, Still life after Cézanne by Christa Biederbick occupies its place in the fireplace room as if it had never been anywhere else, the dynamic woman driver in Sarah Haffner's picture Unterwegs / Travelling seems to infuse the conference room with its energy and the lifelike tabletop in Karin Fleischer's etching make one wonder during one's meal about what is hidden under the white cloths. So the artists' work is with us during the symposium and draws our gaze while we meet in the fireplace room for the coffee break or eat in the dining room or spend time in the other areas of the building.
This speech was presented at the Symposium Geteilte Zeit: Kunstgeschichte als Internationaler Dialog / Shared Times: Art History as International Dialogue, at the European Academy in Berlin, 25 - 28 March 2008. The book Gisela Weimann (ed) Geteilte Zeit: Fragen und Antworten (Edition Eselsweg, 2008) is available in German.
Copyright © : Brigitte Hammer
N.Paradoxa : Issue No. 20, 2008