Saturday 25 February 2006, 14.00–18.00

Held on the late Martin Kippenberger's birthday, this afternoon symposium responds to the artist's satirical final work, The Happy End of Franz Kafka's ‘Amerika’ 1994. Kippenberger’s vast installation references Kafka’s unfinished novel, in which the protagonist, Karl Rossmann, having travelled across America, navigates an immense employment recruiting centre, ‘the biggest theatre in the world’. Arranged on a reconstructed football field, the installation is comprised of work by other artists including Jason Rhoades, Tony Oursler and Donald Judd; classic twentieth-century furniture by designers such as Arne Jacobsen, Charles and Ray Eames, and Marcel Breuer; remnants from Kippenberger's previous exhibitions; and flea market acquisitions. The work is an absurd and touching testament to the vulnerability of the individual within the power dynamics of the social order. Reflecting Kippenberger's belief in the fundamental importance of relationships and dialogues, his final work also provides a witty critique of the position of the artist at the end of the twentieth century.

The participants in the symposium include Daniel Baumann, Michael Krebber, Martin Prinzhorn and Dorothea von Hantelmann.

Tate Modern  Starr Auditorium
£10 (£8 concessions), booking recommended

    

Schedule

14.00
Introduction

14.10
Daniel Baumann

14.50
Dorothea von Hantelmann

15.30
Break

15.50
Martin Prinzhorn

16.30
Michael Krebber

17.10
Plenary discussion, moderated by Jessica Morgan

18.00
End

22.00
A free performance by Berlin-based artist Jonathan Meese takes place in Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall.

 

Biographies

Daniel Baumann is an art historian, freelance curator, and art critic for Kunst-Bulletin, Parkett, TATE ETC., Camera Austria, Spike Art Quaterly and other publications. He is the curator of the Adolf Wölfli-Foundation, Museum of Fine Arts Bern and the curator of Nordtangente-Kunsttangente, a project for art in public space in Basel, Switzerland. As a freelance curator, he has organised exhibitions such as Love is a Battlefield at 27 Canal Street in New York in 2003 (organised in collaboration with Mai-Thu Perret, Carissa Rodriguez and Fabrice Stroun). In 1997, he realised the first retrospective of Martin Kippenberger's work (Martin Kippenberger. Respektive 1997–1976 at Mamco, Geneva) and, in 1998, together with Peter Pakesch, the first survey of Kippenberger‘s self-portraits (Martin Kippenberger. Die Selbstporträts at Kunsthalle Basel).

Michael Krebber is an influential Cologne-based artist whose conceptual approach to painting questions the fundamental roots of the medium. He has exhibited widely throughout Europe and the United States. He has a solo exhibition at Greene Naftali Gallery, New York in 2006. Recent solo exhibitions include Secession, Vienna (2005), Richard Telles Fine Art, Los Angeles (2004), Galerie Christian Nagel, Berlin (2003) and Maureen Paley/Interim, London (2001). His work has been the subject of a feature in the October 2005 issue of Artforum.

Jessica Morgan is Curator, Contemporary Art at Tate. She has curated Tate Modern's Martin Kippenberger retrospective.

Martin Prinzhorn is a linguist at the University of Vienna and writes regularly on art. Recently he has written about Sarah Lucas, Angela Bulloch, Lecia Dole-Recio and Will Fowler.

Dorothea von Hantelmann is an art historian, freelance writer and curator, based in Berlin. She is part of the collaborative research project Performative Cultures at the Free University Berlin and has curated various art exhibitions as well as art/theatre-projects. Among her publications are monographical essays on Daniel Buren, Jeff Koons and Pierre Huyghe, as well as writings on the subject of performativity and politics in contemporary art.

This event is related to the Martin Kippenberger exhibition