Metabolisms | Asad Raza in conversation with Alexandra Toland

The mindset of Western modernity is one of separation: from the way societies are organised, based on principles of division (e.g. of labor and production), to the separation of knowledge into academic disciplines. For instance, what used to be an integrated idea of “healing” is now separated into medical specialties corresponding to distinct parts of the bodies or organs. The arts have been separated: ritual forms have been divided into artistic disciplines to which individual sensory organs are allocated (visual arts for the eyes, music for the ears, dance for the body). Today, however, confronted with the economic, social and ecological consequences of this imperative of separation, the question that concerns us increasingly is how to bring everything that has been separated – nature from culture, individuals from their social ties, disciplines of knowledge from holistic forms of wisdom – back together. How can new forms and practices of association and connectedness can be constructed? Raza will discuss these questions in relation to the series of works he calls "metabolisms" with Alexandra Toland.

Asad Raza (born in Buffalo, USA) creates dialogues and rejects disciplinary boundaries in his work, which conceives of art as a metabolic, active experience. Using actions and processes such as soil-making, tennis, and horticulture, his projects create encounters within and beyond the exhibition setting. They have been realized by institutions including the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Kaldor Public Art Projects, Sydney; Gropius Bau, Berlin; the Serpentine Galleries, London; Kunsthalle Portikus; Metro Pictures, New York; Urbane Kunst Ruhr, Essen; the Lahore Biennale; and his one-bedroom apartment.

Eine Zusammenarbeit des MFA-Studiengangs "Public Art and New Artistic Strategies", dem PhD-Programm "Arts and Design" der Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, Fakultät Kunst und Gestaltung, mit der ACC Galerie Weimar. Organisiert von Alex Toland, Lea Maria Wittich, Bé Körner und Harriet von Froreich. Vorträge in englischer Sprache.

Montag, 14.November 2022