The Political of the Material: Decolonial and queer feminist approaches to the works of Diedrick Brackens and Klára Hosnedlová
Lecture by Prof. Dr. Gabriele Werner
The Political of the Material: Decolonial and queer feminist approaches to the works of Diedrick Brackens and Klára Hosnedlová.
In her exhibition installation, Klára Hosnedlová uses photographs to stage bodies in a way that they defy an unambiguous two-gender classification. In his tapestries, Diedrick Brackens shows black bodies that tell of experiences of violence - as individual bodies and even more so when viewed together in an exhibition - but which offer no room for stereotyping as "angry black men".
For positions that do not share the same experiences and thus the same perspectives, very specific questions and challenges arise. Since bodies only acquire meaning in the view of them and only through a text written about them, the question must be asked as to which bodies of experience, which physical, material presence of a body of experience conditions the text that gives meaning. The "politics of the material" begins here, with white Western systems of knowledge and power. This includes not only the white Western invention of bisexuality; it also includes the invention of "race", the scientific justification of racism. As a result, art, its motifs and use of materials are seen and signified with this armoury - and the challenge is and will be to unlearn these unconscious prejudices.
To be able to take up this challenge, a lecture seems inappropriate to me. Therefore, I would like to propose an open discussion for the evening, for which I will offer thoughts and theses, put them up for discussion and open the space for questions and own thoughts of all participants.
Gabriele Werner studied art history, theatre studies, philosophy and political science at the University of Hamburg. She has been a professor of the social history of art and cultural studies, with a focus on the theory and history of visual cultures, gender studies and postcolonial studies at weißensee kunsthochschule berlin since 2011.