Sabeth Buchmann

The first guest of Talk Series this year was Dr. Sabeth Buchmann, a Professor of Modern and Postmodern Art and the Head of the Institute for Art Theory and Cultural Studies at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna.

In the wake of the so-called “ethnographic turn” respectively of site and context specific research in the visual and performative arts of the 1990s, much artistic practice presented and still presents itself as learning exercise, theatrical rehearsal, scientific experiment, and/ or laboratory test. Therefore, the lecture will examine the expanding field of artists, curators, activists, and writers, who share an interest in experimental methods of collective knowledge production – methods, that expand the focus on specific places through an examination of the ways in which cultural institutions interact and communicate with social groups. Accordingly, questions will be asked about the way in which im/material infrastructures of communication and information, of travel and transportation become part of aesthetic practice.

Sabeth Buchmann (Berlin/ Vienna); since 2004 Professor of the History of Modern and Postmodern Art at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna; currently head of the Institute for Art and Cultural Studies; 2018-23 second managing director of the Austrian Ludwig Foundation for Art and Science; co-editor of PoLyPen - a series on art criticism and political theory (b_books, Berlin), board member of the art magazine Texte zur Kunst and of the European Kunsthalle. Recent publications: author of Kunst als Infrastruktur (2023), co-editor of Broken Relations: Infrastructure, Aesthetic, and Critique (2022), co-editor von Die Stimme als Voice & Vote. Festschrift für Diedrich Diederichsen (2018); co-editor of Putting Rehearsals to the Test. Practices of Rehearsal in Fine Arts, Film. Theater, Theory, and Politics (2016)

Previous publications and activities: co-editor of art works. Ästhetik des Postfordismus (2015), co-oditor of Textile Theorien der Moderne. Alois Riegl in der Kunstkritik (2015); co-author of Hélio Oiticica & Neville D’Almeida: Experiments in Cosmococa (2013), co-ed. of Film, Avantgarde und Biopolitik (2009); author of Denken gegen das Denken – Produktion, Technologie, Subjektivität bei Sol LeWitt, Yvonne Rainer und Hélio Oiticica (2007); co-editor of Art After Conceptual Art (2006); founding member of the artist group Minimal Club (1984-1999) and of the art and theory magazine A.N.Y.P (1989-1999).