Søren Grammel
Hi, I just wanted to let you know that I am no longer actively uploading files to Academia.
However, I am leaving those that were uploaded in the past here.
(2022)
--
I am a curator for international contemporary art. Currently, my main occupation is director of the Heidelberger Kunstverein. For more than 15 years, I have been directing and programming art institutions, for example the Museum für Gegenwartskunst in Basel, the Kölnischer Kunstverein, or the Grazer Kunstverein.
A recurring interest in my curatorial practice is the linking of artistic discourses with social issues, for example in Circular Flow: On the Global Economy of Inequality (2019/2020), Martha Rosler & Hito Steyerl: War Games (2018), System und Symptom (2014), Public Folklore (2011), The Symbolic Commissioner (2010), Idealismusstudio (2008), Die Blaue Blume (2007), A Person Alone in A Room with Coca-Cola-Colored Walls (2006), We Invite all @sozialstaat (2005), Get Out! An Exhibition on the Subject of Going Away (2002), Eine Munition unter anderen (2000) or, It Is Hard to Touch the Real (2001–2006).
Furthermore, I value engaging with solo exhibitions of either emerging artists or sometimes devoting my energy to hitherto less illuminated, underestimated aspects of the work of well-known artists. For example, the very first 10 years of the work of artist Isa Genzken [Works from 1973 to 1983], 2020–2021, or the complete video and film oeuvre of artist Richard Serra [Films & Videotapes], 2017.
Exhibitions are imaginary places, temporary gatherings of different actors and ideas. They are forms that emphasize the synthetic nature of all concepts. As such, they operate with the awareness that “truth” is something artificial and temporary; non-total and mediated. Conceived in this sense, they may contribute to counteracting today's new tendencies toward totalitarianism.
However, I am leaving those that were uploaded in the past here.
(2022)
--
I am a curator for international contemporary art. Currently, my main occupation is director of the Heidelberger Kunstverein. For more than 15 years, I have been directing and programming art institutions, for example the Museum für Gegenwartskunst in Basel, the Kölnischer Kunstverein, or the Grazer Kunstverein.
A recurring interest in my curatorial practice is the linking of artistic discourses with social issues, for example in Circular Flow: On the Global Economy of Inequality (2019/2020), Martha Rosler & Hito Steyerl: War Games (2018), System und Symptom (2014), Public Folklore (2011), The Symbolic Commissioner (2010), Idealismusstudio (2008), Die Blaue Blume (2007), A Person Alone in A Room with Coca-Cola-Colored Walls (2006), We Invite all @sozialstaat (2005), Get Out! An Exhibition on the Subject of Going Away (2002), Eine Munition unter anderen (2000) or, It Is Hard to Touch the Real (2001–2006).
Furthermore, I value engaging with solo exhibitions of either emerging artists or sometimes devoting my energy to hitherto less illuminated, underestimated aspects of the work of well-known artists. For example, the very first 10 years of the work of artist Isa Genzken [Works from 1973 to 1983], 2020–2021, or the complete video and film oeuvre of artist Richard Serra [Films & Videotapes], 2017.
Exhibitions are imaginary places, temporary gatherings of different actors and ideas. They are forms that emphasize the synthetic nature of all concepts. As such, they operate with the awareness that “truth” is something artificial and temporary; non-total and mediated. Conceived in this sense, they may contribute to counteracting today's new tendencies toward totalitarianism.
less
Related Authors
InterestsView All (80)
Uploads
Videos by Søren Grammel
Often, a research-based project in the field of curating is conducted like academic research. And when it is accomplished, so-to-say afterwards, a presentation format is designed for it. This means, content is not generated through form, as – for example – in a visual or rather aesthetic practice.
Further, quite often this is not even made by those who undertook the research – but by external architects or designers who are brought in later. The resulting design then meets my understanding of formalism: it packages an idea, yet it did not co-constitute it.
So, instead of designing some kind of display format for any cumulated content, my interest lies in implementing form as a tool of research from beginning, a tool which is able to actually generate content.
Die Talkshow war ein Teil der Ausstellung "Telling Histories", Kunstverein München 2003. KünstlerInnen der Ausstellung: Liam Gillick und Mabe Bethonico.
Talkshowgäste: Bazon Brock, Gabi Czöppan, Helmut Draxler, Ingrid Rein.
Idee und Moderation Søren Grammel
Bühnendesign und Musik Liam Gillick
Video D. Vitec pro München
Aufnahmeregie Antonio Guidi
Exhibition-related publications by Søren Grammel
conflicts around the world, the return of nationalism and religious fanaticism: faced with all these problems, which divide societies and force millions to become migrants, more and more people, even in the mainstream of society, are now asking questions about the social, ecological, and political consequences of the complex process generally referred to as “globalization.” Circular Flow brings together contributions that reflect on economic principles in the light of the fields of conflict listed above. The project calls into question neither the idea nor the reality of an increasingly networked world, arguing instead for a strengthening of those within society who call for a socially just and ecological shaping of the process. Although this discussion centers on critiques of the capitalist system that has turned the world into a commodity, globalization means far more than just international flows of goods and capital, extending to the mobility of people, ideas, and culture.
Content:
5–13
On the Global
Economy of
Inequality
Søren Grammel
—
15–24
Inside Versus
Outside
Stephan Lessenich
—
27–59
The Economy
Colin Crouch
—
67–90
Duty-Free Art
Hito Steyerl
—
93–115
Working Proposal:
6 Issues about
United Food
Company
Inconstancy of
Memories, Rainy
Seasons and
Post-Development
Andreas Siekmann
—
121–131
Petrocosmos
Bureau d’Études
—
139–157
Amazon Worker
Cage
Simon Denny
—
159–171
The Anarchist
Banker
Jan Peter Hammer
—
175–183
Money and Zero:
Quantification
and Visualization
of the Invisible
in Early Modern
Cultural
Techniques
Sybille Krämer
—
185–195
Europium
Lisa Rave
—
197–211
The Question
of the Economy
Felwine Sarr
—
60–65, 116–119,
132–137, 172–173
Poems by
Alice Creischer
societies and drive millions into involuntary
migration: A growing gulf between rich and
poor; inequality in the distribution of wealth
reaching into the midst of most European societies;
precarity in employment; intense pressure
of competition as pay and pensions decline;
privatization and economization of public services;
looming global warming and environmental
destruction; a proliferation of regional
wars and distribution-driven armed conflicts;
the return of nationalism and religious fanaticism.
Faced with these challenges, even the
mainstream of society is increasingly questioning
the social, ecological and political repercussions
of the complex process that today goes
under the moniker of “globalization.”
Circular Flow brings together exhibits reflecting
on economic manifestations connected with
the aforementioned spheres of conflict. Rather
than rejecting the idea and reality of a networked
world, the project seeks to strengthen
those arguing for the process to be socially
equitable and ecological.
Ursula Biemann
Wang Bing
Bureau d’Études
Alice Creischer
Simon Denny
Melanie Gilligan
Ulrike Grossarth
Jan Peter Hammer
Fred Lonidier
Richard Mosse
Marion von Osten
Lisa Rave
Claus Richter
Cameron Rowland
Andreas Siekmann
Kunstmuseum Basel, 2018.
Kunstmuseum Basel, 2014.
for a long time now, and today more than ever, reality has been mediated by means of mass media images. Texts referring to the works of John Baldessari, Marcel Broodthaers, Harun Farocki, Andrea Fraser, Nina Könnemann, Louise Lawler, Sherrie Levine, Hilary Lloyd, Michaela Meise, Richard Prince, Cindy Sherman.
Kunstmuseum Basel, 2015.
Grazer Kunstverein, 2012.
Kunstmuseum Basel, 2017.
Kunstmuseum Basel, 2016.
cultural, and political implications of systems logic from the point of view of contemporary art. The project reflects projects that tackle systems and systematics in a wide variety of ways. Systems are, on the one hand,
invisible; on the other, they are ubiquitous. Systems order things and regulate everyday life. They define processes and relations. Complexity is organized into functional structures in systems. Systems are patterns. Only through continual repetition are their principles recognizable. Otherwise the
pattern disintegrates. Texts referring to artists such as Vito Acconci, Josef Albers, Christian Boltanski, Hanne Darboven, Thomas Demand, Andrea Fraser, Katharina Fritsch, On Kawara, Sol LeWitt, Bruce Nauman, Henrik Olesen, Falke Pisano, Martha Rosler, Jan J. Schoonhoven, Andreas Slominski, Simon Starling, Octavian Trauttmansdorff, Heimo Zobernig.
Kunstmuseum Basel, 2014.
Books by Søren Grammel
Grazer Kunstverein, 2010.
My approach in the book is based on an investigation of various terms that Szeemann selected or invented himself for his work and adaptations of cultural studies theorems and figures (such as that of the “Wild Thinker”, for example), to analyze the new self understanding of the exhibition-maker in the field of curatorial practice. The reason why this inductive way of working seemed necessary (and still does) to me in the context of the discourse of the curatorial, is that, aside from polemic debates about whether the shifts and openings taking place within the working and competence fields of the curatorial scope of action are right or wrong, there is very little material that focuses first of all on the special features of the curatorial coups and projects. The investigated metap
hors of curatorial programming can principally always also be queried in terms of how they play with what the aesthetic, artistic or cultural production is, for which curatorial practice has been developed. This is based on the assumption that the ongoing
“boom” of curatorial practice does not derive its relevance solely from the art field, but rather that as a cultural phenomenon it holds paradigmatic references to current forms of thinking and producing. I see my contribution located in this context as an intermittent fragment.
Grazer Kunstverein, 2008.
Papers by Søren Grammel
I hope that at the margins of these crumbling constellations new forms of critical production and the positioning of reality and culture can emerge. The figure of the curator, and its transformation, certainly holds an important position in these processes. It can be (negatively) only the replica of a global player, a ‘portfolio-manager’ and smart agent between artistic practice and mythologizing cultural spectacle – or it can be someone or several someones who make use of the diversity of their aesthetic and societal means and competences to confront this society with cultural counter-proposals. I think that what is specific about the figure of the curator is that this figure is always moving in an ambivalence between these possibilities.
October, 2010.
Often, a research-based project in the field of curating is conducted like academic research. And when it is accomplished, so-to-say afterwards, a presentation format is designed for it. This means, content is not generated through form, as – for example – in a visual or rather aesthetic practice.
Further, quite often this is not even made by those who undertook the research – but by external architects or designers who are brought in later. The resulting design then meets my understanding of formalism: it packages an idea, yet it did not co-constitute it.
So, instead of designing some kind of display format for any cumulated content, my interest lies in implementing form as a tool of research from beginning, a tool which is able to actually generate content.
Die Talkshow war ein Teil der Ausstellung "Telling Histories", Kunstverein München 2003. KünstlerInnen der Ausstellung: Liam Gillick und Mabe Bethonico.
Talkshowgäste: Bazon Brock, Gabi Czöppan, Helmut Draxler, Ingrid Rein.
Idee und Moderation Søren Grammel
Bühnendesign und Musik Liam Gillick
Video D. Vitec pro München
Aufnahmeregie Antonio Guidi
conflicts around the world, the return of nationalism and religious fanaticism: faced with all these problems, which divide societies and force millions to become migrants, more and more people, even in the mainstream of society, are now asking questions about the social, ecological, and political consequences of the complex process generally referred to as “globalization.” Circular Flow brings together contributions that reflect on economic principles in the light of the fields of conflict listed above. The project calls into question neither the idea nor the reality of an increasingly networked world, arguing instead for a strengthening of those within society who call for a socially just and ecological shaping of the process. Although this discussion centers on critiques of the capitalist system that has turned the world into a commodity, globalization means far more than just international flows of goods and capital, extending to the mobility of people, ideas, and culture.
Content:
5–13
On the Global
Economy of
Inequality
Søren Grammel
—
15–24
Inside Versus
Outside
Stephan Lessenich
—
27–59
The Economy
Colin Crouch
—
67–90
Duty-Free Art
Hito Steyerl
—
93–115
Working Proposal:
6 Issues about
United Food
Company
Inconstancy of
Memories, Rainy
Seasons and
Post-Development
Andreas Siekmann
—
121–131
Petrocosmos
Bureau d’Études
—
139–157
Amazon Worker
Cage
Simon Denny
—
159–171
The Anarchist
Banker
Jan Peter Hammer
—
175–183
Money and Zero:
Quantification
and Visualization
of the Invisible
in Early Modern
Cultural
Techniques
Sybille Krämer
—
185–195
Europium
Lisa Rave
—
197–211
The Question
of the Economy
Felwine Sarr
—
60–65, 116–119,
132–137, 172–173
Poems by
Alice Creischer
societies and drive millions into involuntary
migration: A growing gulf between rich and
poor; inequality in the distribution of wealth
reaching into the midst of most European societies;
precarity in employment; intense pressure
of competition as pay and pensions decline;
privatization and economization of public services;
looming global warming and environmental
destruction; a proliferation of regional
wars and distribution-driven armed conflicts;
the return of nationalism and religious fanaticism.
Faced with these challenges, even the
mainstream of society is increasingly questioning
the social, ecological and political repercussions
of the complex process that today goes
under the moniker of “globalization.”
Circular Flow brings together exhibits reflecting
on economic manifestations connected with
the aforementioned spheres of conflict. Rather
than rejecting the idea and reality of a networked
world, the project seeks to strengthen
those arguing for the process to be socially
equitable and ecological.
Ursula Biemann
Wang Bing
Bureau d’Études
Alice Creischer
Simon Denny
Melanie Gilligan
Ulrike Grossarth
Jan Peter Hammer
Fred Lonidier
Richard Mosse
Marion von Osten
Lisa Rave
Claus Richter
Cameron Rowland
Andreas Siekmann
Kunstmuseum Basel, 2018.
Kunstmuseum Basel, 2014.
for a long time now, and today more than ever, reality has been mediated by means of mass media images. Texts referring to the works of John Baldessari, Marcel Broodthaers, Harun Farocki, Andrea Fraser, Nina Könnemann, Louise Lawler, Sherrie Levine, Hilary Lloyd, Michaela Meise, Richard Prince, Cindy Sherman.
Kunstmuseum Basel, 2015.
Grazer Kunstverein, 2012.
Kunstmuseum Basel, 2017.
Kunstmuseum Basel, 2016.
cultural, and political implications of systems logic from the point of view of contemporary art. The project reflects projects that tackle systems and systematics in a wide variety of ways. Systems are, on the one hand,
invisible; on the other, they are ubiquitous. Systems order things and regulate everyday life. They define processes and relations. Complexity is organized into functional structures in systems. Systems are patterns. Only through continual repetition are their principles recognizable. Otherwise the
pattern disintegrates. Texts referring to artists such as Vito Acconci, Josef Albers, Christian Boltanski, Hanne Darboven, Thomas Demand, Andrea Fraser, Katharina Fritsch, On Kawara, Sol LeWitt, Bruce Nauman, Henrik Olesen, Falke Pisano, Martha Rosler, Jan J. Schoonhoven, Andreas Slominski, Simon Starling, Octavian Trauttmansdorff, Heimo Zobernig.
Kunstmuseum Basel, 2014.
Grazer Kunstverein, 2010.
My approach in the book is based on an investigation of various terms that Szeemann selected or invented himself for his work and adaptations of cultural studies theorems and figures (such as that of the “Wild Thinker”, for example), to analyze the new self understanding of the exhibition-maker in the field of curatorial practice. The reason why this inductive way of working seemed necessary (and still does) to me in the context of the discourse of the curatorial, is that, aside from polemic debates about whether the shifts and openings taking place within the working and competence fields of the curatorial scope of action are right or wrong, there is very little material that focuses first of all on the special features of the curatorial coups and projects. The investigated metap
hors of curatorial programming can principally always also be queried in terms of how they play with what the aesthetic, artistic or cultural production is, for which curatorial practice has been developed. This is based on the assumption that the ongoing
“boom” of curatorial practice does not derive its relevance solely from the art field, but rather that as a cultural phenomenon it holds paradigmatic references to current forms of thinking and producing. I see my contribution located in this context as an intermittent fragment.
Grazer Kunstverein, 2008.
I hope that at the margins of these crumbling constellations new forms of critical production and the positioning of reality and culture can emerge. The figure of the curator, and its transformation, certainly holds an important position in these processes. It can be (negatively) only the replica of a global player, a ‘portfolio-manager’ and smart agent between artistic practice and mythologizing cultural spectacle – or it can be someone or several someones who make use of the diversity of their aesthetic and societal means and competences to confront this society with cultural counter-proposals. I think that what is specific about the figure of the curator is that this figure is always moving in an ambivalence between these possibilities.
October, 2010.
The four projects (Videonale 9, Telling Histories, Die blaue Blume, Idealismusstudio) presented in this paper look very different on the first view. But what they all share is that they include a level of exploration adjusted both to my own function and possibilities as a curator – as well as to the contexts and institutions that surrounded them. To stimulate the growth of opportunity for both artists and curators, I think that curatorial work should always include examining, questioning, transcending and outmaneuvering some of the co-ordinates in which projects take place. And I very much believe, that the form of the spaces that we produce – and the acts that we generate
through them ourselves – are the first things to question and to work with in order to challenge the economies of projects and institutions.
Kunstverein München, 2003.