The heading “contemporary art section” already contains the section’s agenda, that is, to represent and discuss the goings-on in art and ambitious design, from advanced modernism to today.

The section’s approach is oriented by cultural studies. This signifies that our publications are meant to offer a space for heterogenous disciplinary approaches to the current multitude of art productions (and does not imply a wish to inscribe in the continuous and quite criticisable upward trend of approaches accumulated under the blanket-term, which cultural studies has become). We are committed to offering a space for debate on contemporary art, which is not limited to one or two core disciplines. In order to allow for a multifaceted and interdisciplinary discussion, authors are asked to reflect on and disclose their respective theoretical premises. More thorough reflection on terms and descriptions used, assumptions made and habits acquired is left a desideratum in current art critique (which should not be dissimulated by curatorial jargon). Therefore, kunsttexte.de welcomes all theoretical and methodological efforts furthering debate on contemporary art, especially efforts, which focus on specific works of art or art exhibitions.

The enormous variety of contemporary art productions and art exhibitions in and outside Europe and North America, with regard to media, material and iconography resp. iconology, the dynamics seen in the conceptualization of artist identity and role concepts, in social, spatial, or ecological structures as well as in the overarching popular (visual) culture, seem to offer a sheer endless amount of starting points for discourse.

 

contact: gegenwart@kunsttexte.de

Editors

Marie Egger
Marie Egger (M.A., M.A.) is a PhD-candidate in Art History at Freie Universität Berlin. Her research interests revolve around the interplay between visual art and culture, politics and the public sphere since the Cold War, as well as institutional and artistic archiving practices. Currently, her focus is on mail art and photography in the GDR.
Marie Egger earned a combined B.A. in Cultural History and Theory, and Art and Visual History from Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin with a thesis on the motives of modern flânerie in contemporary street fashion photography. Subsequently, she completed an M.A. in Arts and Media Administration at Freie Universität Berlin with a spatial-theoretical analysis of the rise of contemporary art biennials since the 1990s. Additionally, she completed an M.A. in Art History in a Global Context at Freie Universität Berlin with a work monograph on a photographic mail art object from the GDR.
Between 2019 to 2022, she worked as a student assistant at the Cluster of Excellence “Matters of Activity” and at the Research Centre “The Technical Image” at Humboldt-University Berlin. Since 2023, Marie Egger has held the position of Research Associate at the research project “Images of History in Contemporary Art” at University of Potsdam. Her academic pursuits have been supported by grants from the Gerda Henkel Foundation, Erhard Höpfner Foundation, Humboldt University in Berlin, and the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles.
Furthermore Marie Egger has held various curatorial positions, for example on the teams of Marrakech Biennale in Morocco (2012), Biennial of the Americas in Denver, Colorado (2013), Moscow Biennial in Russia (2015); and of Kunsthalle Wien in Vienna (2014–2015). In 2016, she received a Curatorial Fellowship at Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art (now Kunstinstituut Melly) where she realized a curatorial research project on the institution's archive. In 2023, she was the Artistic Director of Galerie Bernau.

Lutz Hengst
Lutz Hengst studied art history, cultural anthropology and historical geography/environmental history at the Rheinische Friedrich Wilhelms-Universität Bonn. He wrote his doctoral thesis, which was funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG/Initiative for Excellence), on “Kunst der Spurensicherung” (the securing of traces in art), a branch of conceptual art which emerged in the 1970ies and which generated greater attention at documenta 6 and … From 2010 to 2019, he taught art and cultural history, first at the Bergische Universität Wuppertal and then at the University of Arts, Berlin/Universität der Künste Berlin, temporarily supplemented by a further teaching engagement at Lüneburg University. Since 2019, he works as a PostDoctoral Research Associate in the CAS ”Imaginaria of Force/Imaginarien der Kraft”. His current project is concerned with landscapes and ‘landscapeism’ in the age of floating images and energy transition.

Christiane G. Kant
Christiane G. Kant studies art history, cultural studies and psychology in Berlin.