Book Launch and Talk:
Claire Bishop
Disordered Attention: How We Look at Art and Performance Today
14 August 24, 7.30 pm
In English
Venue: KW Courtyard
FULLY BOOKED
An audio recording of the event and information on accessibility can be found below.
Claire Bishop: Disordered Attention: How We Look at Art and Performance Today
In collaboration with Texte zur Kunst, KW Institute for Contemporary Art is pleased to host the launch of Claire Bishop’s new book Disordered Attention: How We Look at Art and Performance Today, published by Verso Books. Claire Bishop will start with a short lecture about her reflections on the changing ways we encounter contemporary art and performance, which will be followed by a conversation between Bishop, Caroline Lillian Schopp (Assistant Professor, Department of the History of Art, Johns Hopkins University) and Léon Kruijswijk (Curator, KW).
About Disordered Attention
Installations brim with archival documents. Dances stretch for weeks. Performances last a minute. Exhibitions are spread out over thirty venues. There are endless artworks about mid-century architecture and design. How are we expected to engage with today’s diverse practice? Is the old model of close-looking still the ideal, or has it given way to browsing, skimming, and sampling?
Across four essays, art historian and critic Claire Bishop identifies trends in contemporary practice – research-based installations, performance exhibitions, interventions, and invocations of modernist architecture – and their challenges to traditional modes of attention. Charting a critical path through the last three decades, Bishop pinpoints how spectatorship and visual literacy are evolving under the pressures of digital technology.
Claire Bishop is Presidential Professor in the PhD Program in Art History at the Graduate Center, City University of New York. Her books include Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship (Verso, 2012), Radical Museology, or, What’s Contemporary in Museums of Contemporary Art? (Walther König, 2013), and a book of conversations with the Cuban artist Tania Bruguera (Cisneros, 2020).
Caroline Lillian Schopp is Assistant Professor of modern and contemporary art at Johns Hopkins University. Her work focuses on performance and body art, art and the critique of violence, and feminist historiographies. Her forthcoming book, In-action: Viennese Actionism and the Passivities of Performance Art (University of Chicago Press), advocates for an approach to performance art history beyond the action paradigm.
Talk with Claire Bishop, Caroline Lillian Schopp and Léon Kruijswijk:
Information on accessibility
Venue:
The event will take place in the courtyard of KW. The entrance to KW’s courtyard is wide and has no steps. The courtyard is paved with cobblestones.
Digital:
The event will be recorded in audio form.
Times:
Admission starts at 7.30 pm.
The event may start with a delay.
Late admission after the start of the event is possible.
The duration of the event is approx. 60 minutes.
The event will be held without breaks.
Seating:
Chairs with backrests and benches without backrests will be provided.
Sensory stimuli:
The event has a normal volume.
The event space is bright.
The venue is warm.
Language:
The event will mainly be held in English.
The event will not be translated.
Aids / accompanying persons:
Assistance dogs can be brought to the event.
Assistance persons can attend the event free of charge.
Contact persons:
If you have any further questions about accessibility, please email reservation@kw-berlin.de.
If you have any questions or require assistance on site, please contact the admission staff.