Thursday, 2 August 2018, 07 pm

Lecture by Nicolas Brulhart
(in English)

followed by a screening
Audiovisuelle Dokumentation, documenta 5 by Karl Oskar Blase

During the 8 1/2 year-tenure of Harald Szeemann as director of the Kunsthalle Bern, the medium of film and the idea of cinema came to occupy a central role in the development of his curatorial imagination. Szeemann insisted on organizing screenings to complete his exhibitions. He espoused experimental cinema as an artform, using its apparatus as a motor for expanding exhibition formats. From his first large group exhibition to his presentation of kinetic art, science fiction, environments and the notion of dematerialisation, film came to act as the ideal concrete and abstract machine: a vehicle for integrating new artforms and modernizing the art institution. Examining film as a main drive in Szeemann’s curatorial ambition might allow us to crack open his relation with the visual field of modernity.

The lecture will be followed by the presentation of some rarely seen video interviews of the Documenta 5 protagonists. The Audiovisuelle Dokumentation shot by Karl Oskar Blase includes an exclusive interview with Harald Szeemann.

Image: Jesús Rafael Soto and Harald Szeemann (second and third from left) during the exhibition Jesús Rafael Soto at the Kunsthalle Bern, 1968.