Saturday, 29 September 2018, 10–01 pm

The Archive Stories program pursues the potential stories that lie dormant in the copious archive of the 100-year-old Kunsthalle Bern. The series invites us to explore. What kind of documents can be found in the archive and what can they tell us? The focus is on a practical approach to archive documents.

For the second edition of the Archive Stories, the artist and lecturer Lucie Kolb has chosen the exhibition Experiment F+F. Shown at the Kunsthalle Bern in the summer of 1970, this exhibition aimed at documenting the experimental approach of the F+F (Farbe+Form, color+form) course which the then Zürich School of Applied Arts offered from 1965 until its cancellation in 1970 and which, in 1971, gave rise to the private F+F School for Art and Media Design.

Including former students and teachers, the exhibition sought to bring the subject of art education into the exhibition space. In doing so, it contributed to a public debate about the nature of art schools. This debate is still relevant today, as learning and teaching contents as well as questions about the organization or the institutional framework continue to be at issue in this regard. Experiment F+F is also interesting for the current debate, as it tested a relationship between the art academy and the exhibition industry that was not based on the principle of competition.

During the workshop we will examine pertinent archival documents together. How can the event be reconstructed based on the available sources and, beyond that, what do the various documents tell us about the framework of said debate at the time of the exhibition?
The afternoon findings will result in a small publication authored by Lucie Kolb, in which the material collected will be contextualized. This publication will be made accessible to all in the Online Archive Kunsthalle Bern.

The program is led by Lucie Kolb und Julia Jost (Kunsthalle Bern art education). It takes place at the archive of the Kunsthalle Bern. Space is therefore limited, so please register at info_at_kunsthalle-bern.ch.
Fee, incl. admission to the current exhibition, Harald Szeemann: Museum of Obsessions, and a lunch-time snack: 15 CHF.

Image: Detail of a newspaper article of the Tagesanzeiger 7 July 1970, press archive Kunsthalle Bern.