GUEST LECTURE
Martin Beck
“In nature, no organic substance is synthesized unless there is provision for its degradation.”
— Barry Commoner, epigraph in Ernest Callenbach, Ecotopia (1975)
Thursday, 9 December 2021, 18:30 CST
Online Lecture: click here
Artist Martin Beck’s talk will focus on his research and artworks relating to the history of countercultural communes in the United States in the late 1960s and ’70s. The starting point for his engagement was the assembly of a complete collection of published books on the subject during the heyday of the commune movement. An in-depth process of reading, extracting, and filtering the content of these books became the procedural foundation for a series of artworks in different formats and media, addressing themes that reflect paradoxes built into the ambitions and realities of communal life.
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BIOGRAPHY
Martin Beck is an artist whose work often draws from the fields of architecture, design, and popular culture. In the last few years, Beck’s work has been presented in solo exhibitions at the Kunsthalle Bergen, Norway; Frac Lorraine, Metz, France; Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Vienna; The Kitchen, New York; Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst, Leipzig; and the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at Harvard University, Cambridge; as well as at 47 Canal gallery, New York. Beck participated in the 10th Shanghai Biennale, the 29th São Paulo Bienal (with Julie Ault), and the 4th Bucarest Biennale. His publications include About the Relative Size of Things in the Universe, The Aspen Complex, Last Night, An Organized Systems of Instructions, and rumors and murmurs.
Organized by the course Commune /kəˈmjuːn/: Working With
Professor: Prem Krishnamurthy
Posters designed by Antonio Riverón, Dagmar Buchenthal, Jonathan Gnoth, Lorenz Grohmann, and Nadine Goerigk
