Serena De Dominicis is an art historian and independent art critic. In 2016 she received a PhD in art history jointly from Toulouse Jean Jaurès University and the University of Rome Tor Vergata. Her thesis examines the relationship between contemporary art and Degrowth theories. In seminars and conferences, she presented her research on women’s issues during the interwar period, specifically during the 1930s, and on growth and Degrowth concepts in the art of the 21st century. She was an editor of the magazine Arte e Critica (2002–2010). Currently she is collaborating with Centro Studi Mafai Raphaël in Rome. She has published several articles on Antonietta Raphaël Mafai, contributed to her catalogues, and is the author of a monograph on her art.

Elisa Linseisen is a research assistant at the Institute for Media Studies at the University of Paderborn. 12/2019: Doctorate (Dr. phil.) with a dissertation on high definition digital imagery at the Ruhr-University Bochum. 2014–2019: Research assistant at the Institute for Media Studies at the Ruhr-University Bochum. 2016–2019: Research Assistant at the DFG Research Group Media and Mimesis. 2008–2013: Master’s Degree in Modern German Literature, Political Science and German Linguistics at the LMU Munich. Research interests, among others: Digital imagery, media philosophy, video essayism, format theory.

Daniel Berndt studied art history, philosophy, and social anthropology at Free University of Berlin. He was a PhD Fellow of the Photographic Dispositif graduate program at Braunschweig University of Art and a research associate at the German Literature Archive Marbach in the context of the research project “Politics of the Image: The portrait of the Author as Iconic Authorization”. Since 2019 he is a postdoctoral research assistant at the Institute of Art History, University of Zurich. From 2009 to 2012, he worked for the Arab Image Foundation in Beirut as its Research Center Coordinator. His writing has appeared in Springerin, Aperture and Frieze amongst other publications. His book Wiederholung als Widerstand? (Repetition as Resistance?) on the artistic (re-)contextualization of historical photographs in relation to the history of Palestine was published in 2018 by Transcript Verlag.

Julia Skelly teaches in the Department of Art History and Communication Studies at McGill University. Her publications include Wasted Looks: Addiction and British Visual Culture, 1751–1919 (2014), Radical Decadence: Excess in Contemporary Feminist Textiles and Craft (2017), and the edited collection The Uses of Excess in Visual and Material Culture, 1600–2010 (2014). Skelly’s next book, Skin Crafts: Affect, Violence and Materiality in Global Contemporary Art, is forthcoming from Bloomsbury Academic.

André Rottmann is a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer in modern and contemporary art at Freie Universität Berlin. Prior to joining the university’s Department of Art History in the spring of 2018, he was a researcher at its Center of Advanced Studies “BildEvidenz. History and Aesthetics” (2012–2016), a recipient of a PhD scholarships by the Gerda Henkel Foundation Düsseldorf (2011–2012/2016–2017) and the editor-in-chief of the journal Texte zur Kunst (2005–2010). Currently he is working on two book manuscripts devoted to the works of John Knight and Isa Genzken, respectively. His writings have appeared in journals such as October, Grey Room, Artforum, Cahiers d’Art and Texte zur Kunst as well as in anthologies and exhibition catalogues. Recent publications include essays on Gerhard Richter’s abstractions (for the catalogue accompanying the artist’s retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art New York) and Maria Eichhorn’s real estate pieces (for a book documenting the artist’s project for documenta 14 to be released by the Migros Museum Zurich).

Rahma Khazam is a researcher, critic and art historian affiliated to Institut ACTE, Sorbonne Paris 1. Her interests span the fields of contemporaneity, modernism, image theory, speculative realism and new materialism. She publishes her research in edited volumes and academic journals, contributes to exhibition catalogues, and has edited a book on the work of the artist Franck Leibovici. A member of AICA (International Association of Art Critics), NECS (European Network for Cinema and Media Studies) and EAM (European Network for Avant-Garde and Modernism Studies), she received the AICA France Award for Art Criticism in 2017. 

Dominik Brabant is an art historian who has specialized and published on modern sculpture (especially Rodin), on the history of art criticism and art history (19th and 20th century) as well as on the history of genre painting. Between 2002 and 2008, he studied art history, psychology and English literature at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich and later in a Master program called “Aisthesis. Historische Kunst- und Literaturdiskurse“ (Universities of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt, Munich and Augsburg). In 2007/2008, he was an exchange student at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris (Rue d'Ulm). In 2008/2009, he was an annual fellow at the Deutsches Forum für Kunstgeschichte/Centre Allemand d'Histoire de l'Art. In 2011, he joined the Chair of Art History at the university of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt, where he teaches today as a lecturer (Akademischer Rat a.Z.).

Wouter Davidts lives and works in Antwerp. He teaches at the Department of Architecture & Urban Planning and the Department of Art History, Musicology and Theatre Studies of Ghent University (UGent). In 2015 he was awarded the Eduardo Chillida Professorship at the Art History Institute of the Goethe University in Frankfurt. He has published widely on the museum, contemporary art and architecture and is author of two volumes on museum architecture, Bouwen voor de kunst?  (A&S/books, 2006) and Triple Bond (Valiz, 2017). He is editor of such volumes as The Fall of the Studio (2009) and Luc Deleu – T.O.P. office: Orban Space (2012; with Stefaan Vervoort and Guy Châtel). He was the curator of The Corner Show (2015, Extra City Antwerp; with Mihnea Mircan and Philip Metten).
www.wouterdavidts.com 

Virtual conference, June 17 and 18, 2020
Hosts: Ursula Ströbele (Study Center for Modern and Contemporary Art at Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte, Munich) / Susanne Witzgall (cx centre for interdisciplinary studies, Academy of Fine Arts Munich)

To participate, please register via e-mail by June 15th at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.(subject: “Without Measure”) and we will send you an access link and further information.

The word ‘excess’ comes from the Latin verb ‘excedere,’ meaning ‘to step outside, to go beyond something.’ Whether something is perceived as excess depends on cultural-social and historical normative frameworks. Yet excess implies not only the transgression of orders of values, but also of ecological, social, and human capacities, and suggests immoderateness, insatiability, lack of restraint, debauchery, or deviation. Today our reality seems to be saturated by various excesses: exaggerated increases in efficiency, the unrestrained consumption and squandering of resources in the modern economy, the verbal excesses of politics, the research-based excesses of the production and modularization of artificial life, and the algorithmic excesses of an increasingly wired and digitalized world are just a few 21st century examples of this phenomenon, which often has a negative connotation. At the same time, play with and the transgression of limits as anthropological constants entices us with its promise of transcendent experience, the liberation from social constraints, and creative flights of fancy. The term ‘excessive’ can be used to describe a dimension of experience or perception, a stylistic criterion, or a practice that crosses borders. Excesses have traditionally always been at home in visual art, given that they often operate beyond social etiquette and norms, evoking states of euphoria and intoxication, but also critically reflecting on economic and sociopolitical conditions.

The symposium “Ohne Maß? Exzess(e) in der zeitgenössischen Kunst” (Without Measure? Excess[es] in Contemporary Art) aims to explore how the art of the 21st century has confronted the theme of “excess.” How do current art practices approach this ambivalent phenomenon at a time when new excessive modes of behavior and processes are emerging, or at any rate seem to be increasingly coming to the fore? This symposium is dedicated to excess as a multilayered object of artistic investigation, but also as an artistic strategy for the creative transgression of boundaries and resistant practice. In connection with the 2019/20 theme of “excess” at the cx center for interdisciplinary studies, the symposium is a cooperation between the cx center for interdisciplinary studies at the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich, and the Study Center for Modern and Contemporary Art at the Central Institute for Art History, Munich. Lectures and Discussions will be in English.

Wednesday, June 17, 2020

1:30 pm
Welcome and Introduction
Ursula Ströbele and Susanne Witzgall

2:00–4:00 pm
Panel 1: Excessive Art?

Wouter Davidts (Gent)
Out of Scale. Excessive Size in Contemporary Sculpture

Dominik Brabant (Eichstätt-Ingolstadt)
Excesses of the real? Christoph Büchel’s Barca Nostra and art criticism

4:00–4:30 pm
Coffee Break

4:30–6:30 pm
Panel 2: Excessive Esthetic and (Queer) Identities

Julia Skelly (Montreal)
Interrogating Art History’s Excesses: Mickalene Thomas and Queer Black Decadence

Daniel Berndt (Berlin/Zürich)
More than Extra – Drag and Queer Identities in Ryan Trecartin’s and Lizzy Fitch’s Video Works

Thursday, June 18, 2020

10.30 am–12.30 pm
Panel 3: Art and the Excess of Objects

Rahma Khazam (London/Paris)
On Objects and their Excesses

André Rottmann (Berlin)
Another Vision of Excess: The Case of Cameron Rowland

12.30 pm–1:30 pm
Break

1:30 pm–3:30 pm
Panel 4: Accumulation and Excesses of Information in the Arts

Elisa Linseisen (Paderborn)
Digital | Monumental. Excessive Data Processing in the Work of Ryoji Ikeda

Serena De Dominicis (Rome)
Excess. Art Faced to the Productivist Economic Model

3:30 pm–4:00 pm
Final Discussion

Resisting) Extractivism

Artist and Theorists on Mining the Planet

Online-lecture series of the cx/Academy of Fine Arts Munich in cooperation with the Zeppelin Museum, Friedrichshafen, Museum of work Hamburg, Grassi Museum für Völkerkunde, Leipzig and the Deutsches Bergbau-Museum Bochum, Leibniz Research Museum for Geo-resourcen

Dates: 31.10., 21.11., 28.11. und 12.12.2023

ZOOM Link: https://eu02web.zoom-x.de/j/68143966856?pwd=SVl1TXVBVFZYbHdpR2Q4aEszQUhUQT09

Contact: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

In a literal sense extraction means „the forced removal of raw materials and life forms from the earth’s surface, depth, and biospheres“ (Mezzarda/Neilson). It refers in particular to the mining of non-renewable fossil fuels, building materials and raw earth minerals. Extractivism raises this form of extraction as well as the plundering of agricultural land, and oceans, the exploitation of genetic resources, digital data or labour power to the status of a principle (Willow). In this respect, the term designates not only a certain economic model focusing on the export of raw materials but also a central logic of (neo)liberal capitalism serving material and immaterial accumulation. Extractivism shows an upward trend despite it’s devastating ecological and social record.

The lecture series „(Resisting) Extractivism“ brings together contributions by artists and

theorists who, in light of this troubling trend, critically analyze the extractivist logic of globalized capitalism and conceive resistant models. The different artistic and scientific

approaches explore how the exploitative mechanism of Extractivism operates, with which strategies of ap- and expropriation it is connected and in what way such strategies are rooted in the history and persistent presence of colonialism and racism. They visualize the devastating effects of excessive extractivism and imagine or realize postextractivist life forms as well as oppositional aesthetic and activist practices. The Online-lecture series is part of the nationwide, interdisciplinary project “Mining. Extracting the Future”.

Tuesday, 31st of October 2023, 6 p.m.

Extractive Capitalism

Armin Linke, artist, photographer and filmmaker, Berlin

Elizabeth Povinelli, Franz Boas Professor of Anthropology and Gender Studies at Columbia University

Tuesday, 21st of November 2023, 6 p.m.

Mining Waste

Design Earth (Rania Ghosn, El Hadi Jazairy), speculative architects, Cambridge, MA/Ann Arbor, Michigan

Myra J. Hird, Professor in the School of Environmental Studies, Queen’s University, Canada

Tuesday, 28th of November 2023, 6 p.m.

Unfortunately, this event will not take place! 

White Geology

Otobong Nkanga, artist, Antwerp

Kathryn Yusoff, Professor for Inhuman Geography, Queen Mary Universität, London

Thuesday, 12th of December 2023, 6 p.m.

Decolonial Visions

Imani Jacqueline Brown, artist, activist and researcher, London

Macarena Gómez-Barris, Professor of Social Science and Cultural Studies, Pratt Institute, New York

________________________________________________________________________________

Strange Ecologies
public lecture series (online)

organized and moderated by Prof. Nils Norman und Dr. Susanne Witzgall

Time Tuesday or Thursday 7.00–9.15 pm., dates: 08.11., 22.11., 12.01, 24.01. and 26.01. (recap only for students of the academy)
registration: nThis email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Many conventional environmental and sustainability movements are prone to reproduce
gender binaries, white supremacy as well as patriarchal and capitalist power relations due to their normative perspectives on ‘nature’. Furthermore, poor people, people with
disabilities and people of colour suffer the most from the consequences of natural resources extraction, environmental destruction and climate change. They take up “the body burdens of exposure to toxicities and to buffer the violence of the earth” (Kathryn Yusoff). Queer, feminist and decolonial approaches in theory, the visual arts and activism are therefore fostering a new conception of ecology and a different care for the environment; radically subverting the constructs of race, class, nationality and gender as well as their naturalisation (Nicole Seymour), and offering alternative futures for everyone.

The four-part lecture series “Strange Ecologies” is dedicated to contemporary artistic,
academic and activist approaches of queering and decolonising of ecology. It will
investigate strategies that question normative views and familiar presuppositions regarding ‘nature’ and our human and more-than-human co-existence. The lecture series is not only confined to critique, but also addresses productive practices that relate differently to the environment. These practices encompass among other things: alternative collective agriculture; eco-erotics and other ways of living with damaged landscapes.

Tuesday, 8th of November 2022, 7:00 pm
Queering environmental futures
Lee Pivnik, artist, Institute of Queer Ecology, Miami
Nicole Seymour, Associate Professor of English, California State University, Fullerton

Tuesday, 22nd of November 2022, 7:00 pm
Decolonizing the farm
Fritz Haeg, artist, Salmon Creek Farm, California
Carole Wright, creative urban activist, community gardener, beekeeper and founding
member of Blak Outside, London

Thursday, 12th of January 2023, 7:00 pm
Indigenising Belongings
KimTallBear, Professor, Faculty of Native Studies, University of Alberta

Tuesday, 24th of January 2023, 7:00 pm
Living with disabled Ecologies
Amanda Cachia, art historian, author and curator, San Diego
Tejal Shah, artist and educator, PIr (Himachai Pradesh)

____________________________________________________________________________

Caring Co-Existence

Panel with online-lectures by Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg (London) and Paulo Tavares (Brasilia)
Friday, 22^nd of October 2021, from 5:30 to 8:00 p.m. 
Online-event, please register here: https://wiki.tum.de/x/fgf-Nw

Public inaugural event of our project „Cross Challenge I: Caring Co-Existence“ with online-lectures by the London based artist and designer Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg and the Brazilian architect and urbanist Paulo Tavares. The evening will focus on the question how to imagine and foster multi-species cohabitation in the face of “capitalist ruins” (A. Tsing) and a “damaged planet” (D. Haraway). Subsequent to the lectures there will be a short panel discussion. To join the event please register here https://wiki.tum.de/x/fgf-Nw. We will then provide you with the link in time.

Cross Challenge is a joint trans-disciplinary project format between the Young Academy of the Technische Universität München (TUMJA), the Academy of Fine Arts Munich (AdbK/cx), the University of Television and Film Munich (HFF) as well as the University of Music and Performing Arts Munich (HMTM). Students from these four institutions are invited to develop a joint project in small groups. They will receive a small production budget, input from international experts within the framework of workshops and lectures and will be accompanied and supported by lecturers of the partner institutions. Cross-Challenge wants to promote trans-disciplinary research early on and especially the collaboration between scientists and artists, as we believe in its pioneering innovation and transformative potential.

Biographies of the speakers

Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg is an artist examining our fraught relationships with nature and technology. She has spent over ten years experimentally engaging with the field of synthetic biology, developing new roles for artists and designers. In 2017 Ginsberg completed her PhD by practice, at London’s Royal College of Art (RCA), interrogating how powerful dreams of “better” futures shape the things that get designed. She read architecture at the University of Cambridge, was a visiting scholar at Harvard University, and received her MA in Design Interactions from the RCA. Daisy won the World Technology Award for design in 2011, the London Design Medal for Emerging Talent in 2012, and the Dezeen Changemaker Award 2019. She exhibits internationally, including at MoMA New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, the National Museum of China, the Centre Pompidou, and the Royal Academy. Her work is held in private and museum permanent collections, including the Art Institute of Chicago, the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, and ZKM Karlsruhe. 

Paulo Tavares is an architect, writer, and educator. His work has been featured in various exhibitions and publications worldwide, including Harvard Design Magazine, the Oslo Architecture Triennial, the Istanbul Design Biennale, and the São Paulo Biennial. He is a long-term collaborator of Forensic Architecture and the author of the books Forest Law (2014), Des-Habitat (2019), and Memória da terra (2020). 2019 he was cocurator of the Chicago Architecture Biennial. Tavares’ design and teaching practice spans different territories, social geographies and media. He taught design and visual cultures at the Faculty of Architecture, Design and Art at the Pontifical Catholic University of Ecuador in Quito and prior to that led the MA programme at the Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmith (London). He currently teaches spatial and visual cultures at the University of Brasília in Brazil and leads the architectural agency autonoma, a platform dedicated to urban research and intervention.