KUNO teachers seminar 2011
Medium, Ambience and the Production of Space in Contemporary Art
Introduction by Mikkel Bogh, Chair of KUNO:
If the term Medium has to do with a state of being in the midst or of being centered in whatever substance, Ambience relates to an experience of surroundedness, of immersion, of existing in a milieu without any sense of border or well-defined place. Whereas medium presupposes some kind of middle around which orientation can take place and perhaps even assumes the singularity of a work, ambience connotes a fluid and undifferentiated state of affairs. We are thus dealing with two ways of framing an experience, two contexts for generating subjectivity, two spatial dynamics, two kinds of events. In this seminar both notions, medium and ambience, will be suggested as productive working tools in an analysis of contemporary approaches to space and will be brought to bear in a discussion of the production of space for the visual arts, now and in the future.
By putting a special emphasis on ambience and ambient space as well as on medium in relation to contemporary art practice a whole set of questions are raised pertaining to the context or the milieu of artistic work. Does the work still sustain a substantial dialogue with the history of (contemporary) art or have the surrounding visual culture, everyday spaces and social relations become its primary points of reference? Is signification generated in the composition and specific structure of the work or is meaning produced in a practice that is always a practice in real space, taking place and unfolding over time? Is the answer to such questions necessarily an either/or? How does artistic practice today, and ambient work in particular, relate to time, change, movement, architecture and urban space? Is it necessary for contemporary art – challenged by the visually productive surroundings of media culture – to establish a space of its own, a different space, an autonomous and heterogeneous space? Can we imagine – and do we desire – a future space for the arts, and a future production of space, different the ones we know already? A medium other than that of massmedia?
Keynote speakers:
Henrik B. Andersen (Copenhagen/Vilnius): Ambience, seriality, difference
Ulrik Schmidt (Copenhagen): Ambient Space and Sensation
Haegue Yang (Seoul/Berlin/Malmö): Identity of Absence
John Cussans (London): Protest Pedagogy and the Spaces of Contemporary Art: On the recent convergence of the UK anti-cuts protests, alternative pedagogy and contemporary art/theory