Unfinished Texts
by Verena Niepel
Samstag, 3. Februar 2024
My life is an alternating loop
Donnerstag, 28. September 2023
What is the ‘Gestalt’ in art?
Wassily Kandinksy, Komposition VI, 1913, oil on canvas, 195 x 300 cm @wikicommons |
These forces originate in the object itself, which in the case of a work of an artwork refers to its material qualities. According to Arnheim, these are, for example, the grain of the wood or the thickness of the oil paint. However, since the artist prefers "amorphous material", which can only be perceived visually, the artwork is classified by Arnheim as a "weak Gestalt"[8]. That is, "[...] that art exists only as psychological experience [...]"[9] [own transl.]. External forces, which are synaesthetic effects, penetrate the organism (the "Gestalt") and disturb the balance, according to Arnheim.[10]
[1] „Man erschrickt vor der Armut, der Dürre, der Lebensferne, vor dem völlig Unwesentlichen alles dessen, was dazu gesagt wird.“ Max Wertheimer: Über Gestaltpsychologie. http://gestalttheory.net/gta/Dokumente/gestalttheorie.html
(27.07.2015).
[2] Ibid.
[3] ‚Über Gestaltqualitäten‘
[4] „weder in Bestandteilen anzutreffen sind noch auf diese Teile reduziert werden können.“ Günter Brucher u. Wassily Kandinsky: Kandinsky, S. 129–130.
[5] „das Ganze ist mehr als die Summe seiner Teile“ Aristoteles: Metaphysik 1041 b 10 (VII. Buch (Z))
[6] Ibid., S. 130.
[7] „ein Feld, dessen Kräfte in einem in sich geschlossenen und gleichwertigen Ganzen organisiert sind.“ Günter Brucher u. Wassily Kandinsky: Kandinsky. Wege zur Abstraktion. 1999, S.10.
[8] Rudolf Arnheim: Gestaltpsychologie und künstlerische Form. In: Theorien der Kunst. Hrsg. von Dieter
Henrich u. Wolfgang Iser. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 1992. S. 132–148.
[9] „[…] daß die Kunst nur als psychologische Erfahrung existiert […]“ Ibid.
[10] Günter Brucher u. Wassily Kandinsky: Kandinsky, S. 10.
Mittwoch, 30. Dezember 2020
How arts challenge the relation of labour and leisure
Verena Niepel, oil on canvas, Istanbul, 2019 |
"I feel so bored during the holidays, I want to check my e-mails, but I am not allowed to." (Anonymous friend)
- Since we have all been forced to slow down these days, the meaning of 'holidays' and 'leisure time' seems to have shifted.
To begin with shedding light on the critical relation between leisure time and labour time, let’s take a look back to pre-industrial era, when family life and work, i.e. by keeping a farm, was inseparable. Then, industrial regimes introduced a system of measurement in order to structure labour and leisure time and increase financial outcome which further developed into new forms of exploitation. [1] As a result, workers began to fight for more self-determined leisure time - Karl Marx as the voice of the working class regarded leisure as a space for the “full development of the individual”. [2]
Facing the development of an entertainment industry in the United States during the early twentieth century another anti-capitalist, Theodor Adorno, took a more critical perspective on the creation and commercialization of leisure time since it had been absorbed by the ‘culture industry’. [3]
Advertisements for cigarette brands that link leisure time with buying products which would harm your health exemplify the paradoxical relation of business and private space. One delicate example is the "Fatima" poster from 1914, which promises 'exotic' pleasure while smoking the "Turkish-blend". [4]
The tobacco industry used visual design to convince people of a certain brand and like this, creative work became part of the process in which the economy increasingly focused on individuals as consumers. Companies strategically mapped out the potential of private life as areas of consumption while mis-recognizing its value as a space of independence, freedom and equality.
However, creative work can be a way to criticize the reconfiguration of private life into capitalistic units that can be analyzed and determined by others. Artists find ways to access and reflect experiences through their work which is not produced to satisfy certain needs but to open new perspectives – at least in an ideal world. Certainly, art and capital cannot be thought separately since artists depend on institutions, agents and other collective structures. [5] Still art works can shed light on the relation between work and private life.
Pop art is an example of a critical approach towards working processes and how they change our everyday lives. The art tendency has often been misunderstood as an ingratiation of mass production but the exhibition of art works that were known from daily life, like the popular cans by Andy Warhol were meant to show how an institutional context changes the meaning of things. [6] In the case of Warhol’s cans, products of mass production are no longer connected to work but reconfigured as an object of aesthetical perception. Like that they are can be enjoyed in leisure time, strolling through a gallery while not thinking about the working conditions related to the production of a cheap canned tomato soup.
Let’s take another contemporary example which relates to work and leisure more explicitly and focusses on effects of work on the psychological state of people. The short movie “Palace” by Luke Seomore & Joseph Bull is shot in London and follows a young paramedic after his shift before returning home. The pictures and the sound show how his state of mind is affected significantly by his work - hours after he finished. [7]
Not only since Covid-19, the fine line separating work time and leisure time became blurry and a clear demarcation seems to be missing. Only by reminding ourselves of our values we can keep track of what is important and why we do what we do. Art can help against forgetting how our lives are determined by systems, processes and decisions by others.
[1] Eva Swidler (2016, June 13). Radical Leisure. Retrieved December 30, 2020, from http://monthlyreview.org/2016/06/01/radical-leisure/
[2] Karl Marx on Free Time – Time for the Full Development of the Individual. (2017, October 04). Retrieved December 30, 2020, from https://economicsociology.org/2016/10/13/karl-marx-on-free-time-time-for-the-full-development-of-the-individual/
[3] Admin. (2015, August 06). Theodor Adorno -. Retrieved December 30, 2020, from https://www.theschooloflife.com/thebookoflife/the-great-philosophers-theodor-adorno/
[4] Werbung: Lungenkrebs?! Ach was! - Bilder & Fotos - WELT. (2014, January 10). Retrieved December 30, 2020, from https://www.welt.de/gesundheit/gallery123732701/Lungenkrebs-Ach-was.html
[5] Jen Webb, Tony Schirato, Geoff Danaher (2002). Art and Artists. In: Webb, J. Schirato, T. & Danaher, G. (eds.) Understanding Bourdieu. New York (NY): Allen and Unwin.
[6] Von Breven, J., 2020. Besser, man kauft ein T-Shirt. ZEIT, p.49.
[7] Bull, L.S.& J., 2020. PALACE. Vimeo. Available at: https://vimeo.com/460049568 [Accessed December 30, 2020].
Freitag, 23. Oktober 2020
Doing a job outside of academia during pandemics
Doing a job outside of academia during pandemics makes me realize that it is not just me doing lonely desk work.
After working on my academic project about the formation of an art scene in Berlin I decided it was time to go to the city and experience its cultural sector from a more practical perspective.
On the first day of my job at a renowned cultural organization in Germany’s capital, me and an intern were the only two people in the office. Everyone else was working from home to be able to do one video call after the other without disturbing colleagues.
Although I am now located in “Mitte”, a district in the middle of Berlin and am communicating with external clients every day, everything felt distanced and abstract. I was hoping that a job outside of academia would be more satisfying in this pandemic situation. I was wishing for more intimacy and to see the effects of my work immediately.
Indeed, the distance to other people became much clearer compared to the feeling I had when I was working in my academic ‘ivory tower’. As long as I knew I had to do online or distanced fieldwork because it was an official measure and an ethical standard in my academic realm I did not even question that this distance is created artificially. I assumed it was just me and other scholars being very aware that the researcher and the subject of research cannot be the same.
This pandemic situation, which is getting more severe again, makes borders between us more visible. I was wrong when I thought those borders were created through studying reality and the process of abstraction in a scholarly context. Those borders are existing already before I investigate them, I just make them more visible.
Donnerstag, 6. August 2020
Immersive Art: Rethinking exhibition making
One could assume that exhibitions in the 'West' often aim at representing “reality”. Henrietta Lidchi argues that arranging objects a certain way creates a myth by neutralizing the motivation of the curators. Therefore, the producers of exhibitions hold symbolical power (Lidchi, 2013, p.183).
What happens if we don’t assume that an exhibition wants to display “reality”? What if it promises the
visitor the contrary of an objective truth but offers an individual, unique experience of objects? Where once there was an artefact which would refer to a distant culture in an authentic way or a representation of reality, there is now the re-presentation which is not claiming to refer to something “real” or authentic explicitly. It rather suggests leaving space for imagination and interpretation. This is what Wolfgang Kemp would call “the blank”, referring to literature theory, he means that “[…] works of art are unfinished in themselves in order to be finished by the beholder […]”. (Kemp, 1998: 188) In theory the idea about relocating the focus on the audience away from the author or the creator has already been established with ideas of Friedrich Hegel after 18th century aesthetics, moving away from considering art as self-explanatory (ibid.: 184).Immersive exhibitions put the audience into focus by creating immersive experiences, hence atmospheres which trigger sensory reactions. The artwork and the beholder no longer meet on equal terms, but the relation turns into an asymmetrical equation, circling around the viewer and his or her emotions. This requires curators and exhibition-makers to rethink art spaces in terms meaning-making. Speaking to the visitor in a different way through the use of new technologies means to take on new responsibilities. Although immersive experiences in the art world are still rare, curators and cultural workers will need to make space for technological tools.
Kemp, W. (1998). The Work of Art and Its Beholder: The Methodology of the Aesthetic of Reception. The subjects of art history : historical objects in contemporary perspectives. M. A. Cheetham. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press: 180-196.
Lidchi, H. (1997). The Poetics and the Politics of Exhibiting other Cultures. Representation : cultural representations and signifying practices. S. Hall. London, Sage Publications Ltd.: 151-223.
Sonntag, 21. Juni 2020
Is it justified to warn people from traveling to Turkey?
there are so many who wait to safely travel to Istanbul or Turkish coasts, it seems reasonable to prolong a travel warning. Additionally, the number of infected people rose significantly in Turkey in the last weeks since measurements regarding COVID have been seized and people can go to restaurants again for example. Turkey, just as any other 'third country', is still under Germany's travel ban.
Sonntag, 17. Mai 2020
No 'guestworkers' anymore - struggles for people form Turkey in Germany
What are the struggles expats or immigrants from Turkey have to face nowadays? How do they feel when they are confronted with anti-muslim racism - a great paradox, because many young Turks who come to Germany in the last years are not muslim, but raised in a secular environment.
Nowadays the Turk is no longer the 'guestworker' but the 'muslim'. Especially since Thilo Sarrazin wrote his controversial book about muslim immigrants the discourse about islam as a culture and muslims spread in society and politics. Things were possible to articulate in political speech that were considered as racist before.
If someone from Turkey comes to Germany today, this person will be confronted with a newly developed form of racism against migrants in general and Turkish people in particular, because they form the largest group of people who are phenotypically different. I will explore this issue further in my work, because it is important to have a differentiated analysis of this situation and the society we live in to avoid racist and right-wing discourses in the futture.