WIELS welcomes you to the seventh iteration of Open School, where the current artists in residence of WIELS let you in on their work, processes and reflections. These presentations are accompanied by a series of lectures exploring possible perspectives on a recurring theme: Sovereignty.
Free
Discover the detailed programme below
Open School is the opportunity to meet the current residents in WIELS, see their work through talks, presentations and performances, and discuss their processes in their studio. The WIELS residency programme hosts every semester up to 9 artists from various origins, locations and positions.
On this day, WIELS also invites several researchers, authors, artists and academics from diverse fields to tackle the notion of "sovereignty" and its derivatives in the form of lectures, conversations and performances. With the origins being an ideal of the Enlightenment, this monumental topic has since been uprooted, claimed and dissected by people facing injustice, oppression or misrecognition, framing it as either an unapologetically progressive and leftist, or a neo-conservative and nationalistic concept.
Whether it be artistic, aesthetic, corporeal, ideal or empirical, Open School aims to illuminate varied and idiosyncratic approaches to sovereignty and build a platform for sustainable discourse.
PROGRAMME
13:00 and ongoing
One-Tenth, of, a Second I Wim De Pauw | A series of five impressions conceived as short encounters in and throughout the building WIELS
two shows for a night I Billie Meskens | Window display | Studio 4 (+2)
13:15-13:45 | Auditorium (-1)
Classic Origami Reflections (2023) I Emile Rubino | Slideshow with music
13:30 and ongoing | Seminar (+4)
Eva Diallo | Video installation
13:45-14:45 | Auditorium (-1)
Sovereignty: Feeling into the Future I Julia Meier | Lecture
15:00-15:30 | Seminar (+4)
Teeth Surrounding a Flower in the Meanings | Reinier Vrancken | Poetry Reading
15:30-16:15 | Studio 2 (+1)
Non-Functional Necklace | Hedi Jaansoo I Artist talk and workshop
(No skills required/limited to 10 people, please sign up here)
16:30-17:00 | Studio 7 (+3)
Tomorrow I can be you if you want to be me again | Juliana Lindenhofer | Artist talk
17:30-18:30 | Auditorium (-1)
The Idea of the Image I Helmut Draxler | Lecture
18:45-19:45 | Auditorium (-1)
With a backward glance I can recognise what I do now | Ibon Landa Amutxategi | Artist talk
Sergio Pacheco | Screening with introduction
19:45-21:00 | Mezzanine, Bookshop
Wim De Pauw and Antoinette Jattiot | Readings
Drinks & WIELS CAFE open
13:45-14:45 | Lecture
Julia Meier – Sovereignty: Feeling into the Future
Following philosophical thoughts such as those of the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze in relation to the artistic creative process under the aspects of a logic of sensation (cf. Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation), Julia Meier examines the concept of sovereignty using examples from the fields of art, film, music or literature.
In her analysis of various artistic productions, among them horror films, pop music videos, fashion designs, or visual artworks of different epochs, aspects of sovereignty such as autonomy, (artistic) freedom, self-determination, self-confidence, or self-assurance will be examined more closely. How and by what means can sovereignty of the self and self-expression arise or be prevented? And why?
Julia Meier, Ph.D. (born 1969 in Stadthagen, Germany) is a curator of education and public programs at the Kestner Gesellschaft, Hanover, Germany, as well as a lecturer for Design Theory at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts, Hanover, Germany. She studied English, American and Romance Studies at the Leibniz University of Hanover and wrote her doctoral thesis on the films of David Lynch, which she understands in reference to the philosophical theories of Gilles Deleuze as a 'sculptural design' (Die Tiefe der Oberfläche - David Lynch, Gilles Deleuze, Francis Bacon, Berlin: Kadmos, 2013). Julia Meier taught at Stony Brook University, New York, Leibniz Universität Hanover, as well as at Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg.
17:30-18:30 | Lecture
Helmut Draxler - The Idea of the Image: Painting and its Symbolic Conditions
For quite some time now, art and art history have been the focus of a critique in the name of visual culture, which inspires critical practices of many kinds. This critique assumes that if the idealism of the concept of art is put aside, a new or 'true' materialism of the image, image production and distribution could manifest itself. This argument is a reversed Platonism, which ascribes a higher value to the image than to the idea. But a true materialism of the image can neither be easily realized nor the idealism of art abandoned. Rather—in modernity—image and idea, materialism and idealism, art and culture stand in a mutually constitutive, symbolic connection. This talk will revolve around a hypothesis that reconstructing these connections on a dialectical and historical level will allow for an understanding of painting’s emergence as art’s leading genre, and as such will be the prerequisite for locating and evaluating current artistic, theoretical, and political stakes attributed to it.
Helmut Draxler is an Art Historian, Cultural Theorist, and a Curator. He is a Professor emeritus for Art Theory at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. Latest publication: Die Wahrheit der Niederländischen Malerei. Eine Archäologie der Gegenwartskunst, Brill/Fink (Paderborn) 2021. In preparation: A Sense for Prodjects. The Problem of the Public and Contemporary Art, 2024.
Studio discussions
Outside this programme, you can meet some of the residents in their studios. Check their exact availabilities during the event.