22 Jänner 2025, 18:00 Uhr
Universität für angewandte Kunst Wien
Vordere Zollamtstraße 7
Seminarraum 22
1030 Wien

Sascha Hommer’s In China is a graphic travelogue published by Reprodukt in 2016. A travelogue usually describes the traveler’s reactions when interacting with the foreign country’s people, institutions and city- or land-scape. Explicitly reacting against what he described in an interview as the negative news reports about China in Germany, Hommer decided to go there and live there for 4 months to experience the Chinese culture, after which he drew his own report, i.e., his graphic travelogue.

Chris Reyns-Chikuma, PhD, is a Professor of French and Francophone Cultural Studies at the University of Alberta’s Department of Modern Languages and Cultural Studies, where he also teaches Comparative Literature. Following the completion of his Master’s degree in Japanese Studies, a Ph.D. focusing on Holocaust literature, and the publication of a book on “Néo-japonisme in France,” he has shifted his focus towards studying Bande Dessinée/Comics/Manga. His current research primarily explores issues of diversity within the world of graphic novels. In 2022, he curated the exhibition “comic sans” at the Art Gallery of Alberta.

Eine Kooperationsveranstaltung zwischen aka, der Universität für Angewandte Kunst und der Österreichischen Gesellschaft für Comics.

29. Januar 2025, 18.15h
ifk Internationales Forschungszentrum Kulturwissenschaften | Kunstuniversität Linz in Wien
Reichsratsstraße 17, 1010 Wien

Since the 1960s archival principles have increasingly been used by visual artists to structure their works. Their aesthetic practices consist of archival inquiry or construction, and the works are built out of archival materials. This use of the archive for artworks does not, however, imply an unreflected instrumentalization of the archive as artistic medium. On the contrary, these art works interrogate the principles, claims, potentials and effects of the archive. They usually interrogate the self-evidentiary claims of the archive by reading it against the grain. The interrogation by these artists may take aim at the structural and functional principles underlying the use of the archival document; or it may result in the creation of another archival structure as a means of establishing an archaeological relationship to history, evidence, information, and data that gives rise to its own interpretative categories. The talk will examine archival issues like what is being included and excluded from the archive, and the function of the archive. Because it is not only what is being stored in the archive that matters, but also how that archive is being organized and used.

Ernst van Alphen is a professor emeritus of Literary Studies and Cultural Analysis. His research focuses on modern and post-modern literature—and its relation to visual arts. Recent book publications are: Productive Archiving. Artistic Strategies, Future Memories, and Fluid Identities; Seven Logics of Sculpture. Encountering Objects Through the Senses; and Shame! and Masculinity.

THE LECTURE WILL BE HYBRID. To participate via Zoom, you need to register for the meeting with your name and email address. To sign up, please click >>HERE<<. The Zoom link will then be emailed to you immediately. To participate in person, no registration is currently required.