Fareed Armaly’s general discussion pertains to his considerations on contemporary artistic practice; his presentation will centre on “haus.0”, his four-year programme (1999-2002) as artistic director of the artists-founded institution Künstlerhaus Stuttgart. Armaly will provide an overview of the parameters that developed the “haus.0” philosophy, with reference to the notion of institutionalization, from its inception to the last year as its planned transition, as well as in terms of intentionally maintaining the artist’s perspective towards a sense of practice engaging the institutional framework. Excerpts from a range of examples developed at the level of exhibition, workshop and institute will be discussed and shown. The programme website www.haussite.net contains a good archive, while also serving as the programme reader.
This will be preceded by a shorter, general introduction to Armaly’s work, which clearly informs the development, a decade later, of “haus.0”; in conclusion, there will be a brief presentation on his recent work Shar(e)d Domains, a commission for the Musée d’Art et d’Histoire, Geneva.
Fareed Armaly is an artist, curator and author, currently based in Berlin. His work takes the open definition of artistic practice as the medium by which to render the dynamics operating within a politics of representation. Armaly sets this in relation to issues pertaining to culture, identity, nation and narration, by initially establishing key thematic lines of enquiry drawn from his generational perspective that creates a network of correspondences. These all offer expressions of the constant modelling of culture and society, and within that, the attempts towards institutionalisation of certain discourses and conventions focusing audiences and communities-of-interest (for example, the history of TV vs. music recording culture shaping national community vs. audience; representation of the Arab ‘Other’ specific to US relations; the role of the arts appearing in the convergence of experiments in representational strategies with transformatory politics, and linked to that, the dialog between institution and institutionalization.)
In his first few years, Armaly already produces new format journals on music/culture (Terminal Zone, R.O.O.M), exhibitions such as “(re) Orient” (1989) and “Orphee 1990” (1990), while engaging in advisory programming from gallery to institutional level (Gallery Nagel, Project UNITE). This approach can be seen operating at various scales throughout his exhibitions, projects, teaching, collaborations, curatorial roles and positions held.
By 1999, examples of this approach are evidenced by three types: “Program” (1998) configures a relation to a “public” by intersecting three public programs (university, national television and public art) and a TV offering, as a recollection of broadcast media pasts which, in turn, generates passages through a contemporary character of transitional, post-1989 Germany. Secondly, “From/To” (1999 Witte de With/2002 Documenta11), a large-scale, institutional project series, combined exhibition, panels, screenings and commissions from different fields, in order to materialize the speculative charting of paradoxical discourses generated by post-1948 Palestinian refugee movements: a “map unfolding in real time”. Thirdly, “haus.0”, (1999-2003) is the international four-year programming concept developed by Armaly as Artistic Director of Künstlerhaus Stuttgart, an artists’ institution founded in the 1980s and in transition by 1999.
Armaly’s methodology establishes an interplay between cultural fields and strategies, where each project is generated by a specific type of 'scripting of correspondences’. The works’ overall sensibility is aptly summed up in the term “Coercing Constellations”, the title of a recent publication on Armaly’s practice by art historian Helmut Draxler.
His most recent project, “Shar(e)d Domains” (2007), was commissioned by the Geneva Musée d’Art et d’Histoire to feature in their large-scale archaeological exhibition and new museum proposal “Gaza at the crossroad of civilizations.”
More information: www.fareedarmaly.net