Abstraction & Alienation

In conjunction with the group exhibition Art & Alienation and the SNSF-funded research project Real Abstractions: Reconsidering Realism’s Role for the Present (University of Fribourg and Lucerne School of Design, Film and Art), the lecture and roundtable will examine contemporary artistic strategies for resisting the real abstractions of capitalism and the recent emergence of neofascist aesthetics in the digital sphere. In her book What We Do is Secret (Sternberg Press, 2023), writer and art historian Larne Abse Gogarty suggests that we can understand conspiracy as one such strategy. The roundtable discussion will explore the links between capitalism, conspiracy, and the art of (dis)alienation today.

DETAILED PROGRAM

16:00

Introduction by Clara Chavan and Tobias Ertl

16:15

Guided tour of Art & Alienation with Nicolas Brulhart

17:00

Lecture by Larne Abse Gogarty, “Anti-luxurious expressionism”: Salvage, scavenging, sabotage and sculpture

18:00

Roundtable: Larne Abse Gogarty in conversation with Wolfgang Brückle, Nicolas Brulhart, Tobias Ertl and Julia Gelshorn

19:00

Apéro