“It took me some years to understand that I am an artist” says Carsten Nicolai. One of a kind, we think! Carsten (born in 1965) is a multi-talented minimalist famous for working at the intersection of art and science but also as a musician under his music alias Alva Noto. He has staged performances with Ryuichi Sakamoto at the Guggenheim NY to the Centre Pompidou in Paris. He studied landscape architecture in Dresden through 1990. Carsten uses electronic sound and visual art as a kind of hybrid-tool to create his own microscopic view of creative processes or rather to research and visualize structures, patterns or systems. Are these immanent to everything existing or is that just the human mind applying it to everything surrounding us? It seems as if his way of approaching the world does not accept anything static; nor in images, sound or shape. Carsten participated at the documenta X. in 1997. Installations of the Berlin based artist have been presented in 2005 by numerous institutions, for example at the Yamaguchi Center for visual Arts and Media in Japan, the SMAK in Gent, the Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt am Main and the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin. We are very much looking forward to our first week with him!
Even though Nina Tabassomi just recently started her new job as curator at - not only because of DOCUMENTA – internationally reknown Fridericianum in Kassel she will to our great pleasure manage to be with us to give an art-tour at this year’s ACSA. Nina studied theater studies, literature, French philology and philosophy in Berlin, Potsdam and Paris. She was an editor and writer for Berlin based cultural online magazine kulturberlin.de for six years (2000-2006) and worked in the theatre sector. She has contributed to several publications. As curatorial assistant she co-organized the large-scale exhibition “based in Berlin” in 2011. Afterwards she was project manager at KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin for two years. She has a wide-spread knowledge of the Berlin art institutions she will be happy to share with us.
Week 1 / Lecture (engl.) – Marcus Steinweg
„As much as art is a practice, it remains a practice that reflects upon itself“ says Marcus Steinweg. We are very pleased to have him with us for a lecture on art and philosophy. Marcus is renowned for his collaborations with artists, including Thomas Hirschhorn and Rosemarie Trockel. He has written extensively on philosophy and literary themes and creates analytical diagrams, which formalize his philosophical ideas and strive for utmost clarity. Marcus is teaching at UdK Berlin. For your daily brain boost you better follow him on Facebook! But now look forward to a great evening with him; lucky us he will be unarmed!