Wednesday, 18 September 2024,6 pm
Fasanenstraße 25, 10719 Berlin

Please register
by 16.09.2024 at: presse@wagenbach.de

The new art is co-operative and mindful, it motivates - and does not disturb. But shouldn't art instigate change? And what does the triumph of identification reveal about social conditions? Wolfgang Ullrich's answers go straight to the nervous heart of the present.
The autonomous art of modernism focussed on the experience of difference: the work of art as the other, the extraordinary, which confuses, shakes up and at best inspires corrections to the design of the self and society.
In recent years, however, new forms of dealing with art have gained international dominance: Many viewers expect something unifying and community-building. They want encouragement and support, in short: identification and empowerment. Art is increasingly being linked to political, activist and even consumerist concerns. Is art thus becoming a mere energy bar for a light snack between meals - or a pioneer of a fairer society? And who is still defending the autonomy of art?
Wolfgang Ullrich sharpens the post-autonomous profile and takes art, which is perhaps not so new in historical terms, to the trigger points of social discourse: Debates about the Documenta and cultural appropriation, the protest of the Last Generation and social media in the field of tension between the urge to confess and polarisation.