Guest of Honor: Ursula Ströbele
“Already in the 1960s Herbert W. Franke reflected on the consequences of the digital for the traditional practices of art production: “Could the computer lead us also in new areas of sculptures? […] Because the virtual reality will become increasing meaningful in the art of tomorrow, the question of construction with material will become negligible.”
By using the computer as a tool for art, Franke showed the possibilities to enlarge the repertoire of forms and create mobile, non-static, partly interactive virtual, digital sculptures. These were no longer tactile in the classical sense, but remained corporal and visible from all sides. His works paved the way for material simulations and new modes of perception more and more relevant today.”
Biography
Ursula Ströbele is professor for art history with a focus on contemporary art at HBK, Braunschweig.
Prior to this post, she was a research associate at Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte, Munich (head of the Study Centre for Modern and Contemporary Art), in 2019 director of Kunstverein Arnsberg, 2012-2018 research associate at UdK Berlin, co-founder of the network Theory of Sculpture.
She holds a PhD at HHU Düsseldorf (the sculptural reception pieces of the French Royal Academy (1700-1730)) and was habilitated in 2020 about the sculptural aesthetics of the living.
Recent publications: Hans Haacke und Pierre Huyghe. Non-Human Living Sculptures seit den 1960er-Jahren (2024) and The Sculptural in the (Post-)Digital Art, with Johanna-Mara Kölmel (2023). Current research focus: digital phenomena of the sculptural, queer ecologies, the transformation of the sculpture canon in the 20th century, infrastructural studies.