Hito Steyerl (German, b. 1966), Tent / Texture II, Kharkiv, 2015. UV pigment print on Dibond, 39 3/8 x 39 3/8 in. University purchase with funds from Barbara M. and David W. Detjen, 2016.
Gallery Talk: Listening to the Art of German Cultures with Sarah Koellner
What does it mean to listen to a nation? This is the question raised in Sarah Koellner’s Teaching Gallery installation, Listening to the Art of German Cultures, and related gallery talk, in which she introduces listening as a practice not exclusively related to sound, but expanded to include sound associations, visual artistic cues, and the auditive experience of the gallery itself. In doing so, she revisits seventy-five years of German-speaking history through the lens of selected artists and the ways that listening to their works can open new opportunities to engage with questions of national and transnational identity.
About the Speaker:
Sarah Koellner is an assistant professor of German and comparative literature and thought at WashU. Her work focuses on the interplay between aesthetics and politics, particularly within German literary, media, and cultural expressions of the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Central themes in her research include questions of identity, community, and the conditions of artistic creation in the digital age.