The symposium accompanying the exhibition 'Moderns' will cover international
contributions and perspectives on the subject Modernism, whereby exchange and reflection will be considered both on artistic
and theoretical levels. In terms of a contemporary inventory, art historical aspects of Indian art will be given the same
attention as positions of collectors, curators, gallery directors as well as experts on the country itself.
The symposium
will be held in English.
List of Speakers
Peter Weibel, Director of ZKM
Karlsruhe, artist, media theorist, Vienna
Peter Weibel (born 1944 in Odessa, USSR) is an artist, curator and
theoretician. Starting from semiotic and linguistic reflections (Austin, Jakobson, Peirce, Wittgenstein, ...) from 1965, Peter
Weibel developed an artistic language, which led him from experimental literature to performance. In his performative actions,
he has explored not only the "media" language and body, but also film, video, audiotape and interactive electronic environments.
Critically he analyzed their function for the construction of reality. Besides taking part in happenings with members of the
Vienna Actionism, he developed from 1967 (together with Valie Export, Ernst Schmidt jr. and Hans Scheugl) an "expanded cinema".
Peter Weibel elaborated these reflections, from 1969, in his video tapes and installations. In the mid-1980s, he explored
the possibilities of computer-aided video processing. Beginning of the 1990s he realized interactive computer-based installations.
As theoretician and curator, he pleaded for a form of art and art history that includes history of technology and history
of science. In his function as a university professor and director of institutions like the Ars Electronica, Linz, the Institute
for New Media in Frankfurt and the ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, he influenced the European Scene of the so-called
Computer art through conferences, exhibitions and publications. In 2006 he initiated the project “Global Art and the Museum”
together with Hans Belting, presenting many important contemporary Indian artist positions at the ZKM.
Parul
Dave Mukherji, art historian, New Delhi
Parul Dave Mukherji is currently the Dean at the School of Arts and
Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. She holds a PhD in Indology from Oxford University. She is the co-convener
of the Forum on Contemporary Theory and co-editor of the Journal of Contemporary Thought. Her publications include Towards
A New Art History: Studies in Indian Art (co-edited), New Delhi, 2003 and guest edited special issue on Visual Culture of
the Journal of Contemporary Thought, 17 (Summer 2003); Rethinking Modernity, (co-edited) New Delhi, 2005; “Putting the World
in a Book: How Global Can Art History Be Today,” in Anderson, J (ed) Crossing Cultures: Conflict, Migration and Convergence,
The Miengunyah Press, Melbourne, 2009. Her current research focuses on comparative aesthetics, contemporary art in India and
the impact of globalization on art theory and the discipline of art history. She is a member of the College Art Association,
USA and until recently, on executive committee of International Association of Aesthetics.
Girish Shahane,
art critic, curator, writer, Mumbai
Girish Shahane is an independent writer based in Mumbai. His articles
on art, film and cultural politics have been published in leading newspapers and journals in India and abroad. Shahane received
a Rhodes scholarship to Oxford University, where he completed his M.Phil in Modern English Literature. He was editor and later
consulting editor of Art India magazine. He has written on visual art, film and cultural politics for leading publications,
and contributed columns to Time Out and Yahoo! India. He has lectured at institutions like the NGMA and NCPA in Bombay, the
Indian School of Business in Hyderabad, the Tate Modern in London, and the Art Institute of Chicago, and is on the faculty
of art history courses run by Jnanapravaha and Bhau Daji Lad Museum. Exhibitions curated by him include The Presence of the
Past (NCPA, Bombay, 1998); Art / Technology (Max Mueller Bhavan Gallery, Bombay, 2000); Legacy: A-vanguard (Gallery Threshold,
Delhi, 2010); and Home Spun (Devi Art Foundation, Gurgaon, 2011). He is Director of the Skoda Prize for Indian Contemporary
Art.
Sabine B. Vogel, art writer, critic, curator, Vienna
Sabine B. Vogel was born in Essen,
Germany and lives in Austria since 1995. She studied art history at the Ruhr-University Bochum and at the University of Applied
Arts Vienna. She has worked as a freelance art writer, critic and curator since 1986. In the 1980s she was editor of Wolkenkratzer
Art Journal in Frankfurt and has regularly contributed to newspapers and art magazines like Kunstbulletin (Zurich), Artforum
(New York), Neuen Zürcher Zeitung and Die Presse (Austria). Sabine B. Vogel has written in publications such as The Power
of the Ornament, exhibition catalogue, Belvedere Museum Vienna, 2009, Editors- Agnes Husslein-Arco and Sabine B. Vogel; Biennals
- Art on a Global Scale, Springer publishers, Vienna-New York, 2010; Global Art: A New World Order, in east by south west,
Nürnberg, 2011. Museums and More, in Contemporary Vienna, publisher Christoph Thun-Hohenstein, Schlebrügge.Editor Vienna,
2010. Global Art, Ed. 220 Kunstforum International, March 2013. Sabine B. Vogel wrote her PHD on Biennials at the University
of Applied Arts Vienna, where she is lecturer since 2009.
Eleonore Chowdhury Haberl, art collector, journalist,
Vienna
Eleonore Chowdhury Haberl is a witness of the early years of the Indian modernist period in India. Together
with her husband, the Indian industrialist and well-known art collector Bill Chowdhury, she actively participated in a vibrant
scene in the making in Mumbai, where she lived for 23 years from the late fifties until the late seventies. She saw the emergence
of the group of artists who are now called the Moderns, and which form the core of the Chowdhury collection. The Chowdhury
family collection is now to be found in Vienna and in Mumbai. Today a number of works from the collection are part of the
Jehangir Nicholson Foundation in the Prince of Wales Museum in Mumbai and of other collections in India, the UK and the USA.
Several articles on Indian topics have been published by her in the Wiener Zeitung, such as on her husband’s collecting
activities in Art India. In June 2008 she held a lecture titled “International influences in postcolonial India by European
expatriates, Evidence of Time” at the Weltmuseum, Vienna. In 2010 she was invited by Sotheby's New York and London, to lecture
in the United States. In March 2013 works from her Moderns collection were shown at the Weltmuseum, Vienna, accompanied by
a lecture on “Dr. Rudolf von Leyden, émigré in India, art critic, patron, collector: his role and his influence on the early
Indian art movement.” Eleonore Chowdhury-Haberl will contribute to the catalogue on a retrospective exhibition of the eminent
Indian painter V.S. GAITONDE, to be held at the Guggenheim Museum in New York in 2014.
Moderation: Angelika
Fitz, author, curator, Vienna
Angelika Fitz, curator and author in the fields of architecture, art and urbanism
has realised several projects with Indian artists and curators like “Boxwallahs” in New Delhi and the exhibition “Capital
& Karma” at the Kunsthalle in Vienna (1998 - 2005). She was Austrian commissioner for the Architecture Biennial in Sao
Paolo in 2003 and 2005. Her recent curated projects include „Realstadt. Wishes Knocking on Reality's Doors“ in Berlin und
„Arbeitende Orte“. Upcoming projects are „We-Traders. Swapping Crisis for City“ to be held in Lisbon, Madrid, Toulouse and
Turin, or the Plattform „Weltstadt. Who creates the city?“ to be realised in Banglore, Belgrad, Curitiba, Dakar, Johannesburg,
New York, Porto Alegre, Riga, Salvador de Bahia, Sao Paulo, Seoul and South-West Europe. Selected publications: "Arbeitende
Orte“ (2012), „Realstadt. Wishes Knocking on Rerality's Doors“ (2010), „Wann begann temporär?“ (2009), „Import Export: Cultural
Transfer. India, Germany, Austria“ (2005), „Reserve der Form“ (2003), „Performative Materialism“ (2003), „Capital & Karma.
Recent Positions in Indian Art“ (2002), „Trespassing. Shaping Spatial Practices“ (2002).
Universität für angewandte
Kunst Wien
Öffentlichkeitsarbeit und Veranstaltungsmanagement
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T: +43 (0)
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E: pr@uni-ak.ac.at
