Fine Arts Lecture Series – Tom Holert
Art as a Weapon. A Brief History of a Difficult Trope
To characterise individual works of art or ‘art’ as such as a ‘weapon’ – whilst not uncommon in modernity, this is nevertheless rare enough to shake convictions regarding the purpose and nature of art just as reliably as the scandal of the reciprocity between violence and aesthetics has always done. As is well known, the avant-garde (or rather its theory) sought, even in its very name, an affinity with the military. But how exactly was – and is – it to be understood when art is addressed ‘as a weapon’? Integrating signals of political militancy into the discourse of art is one thing; but a change – which must also be taken into account – in the conceptual and ontological foundations of art at moments of its ‘weaponisation’ is surely something else entirely. Against the backdrop of current debates on the relationship between art and politics, this lecture will explore art’s historical battles and its potential, contingent and structural ‘violence’ (Max Weber).
Bio
Tom Holert works as an author and curator, focusing on politics and the spatialisation of knowledge in art and culture. He has edited journals, taught and conducted research at various universities (e.g. at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna) and organised exhibitions (e.g. Neolithic Childhood. Art in a False Present, c. 1930 (with Anselm Franke) and Education Shock: Learning, Politics and Architecture in the 1960s and 1970s, both at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin). In 2015, he co-founded the Harun Farocki Institute in Berlin (harun-farocki-institut.org).
Recent book publications: Navigation Beyond Vision (ed., with Doreen Mende, 2023), c. 1972. Violence – Environment – Identity – Method (2024), Pierre Bourdieu: Questions on Art for & with Students of an Art College that is Being Questioned (ed., 2024), Visual Forms of Law. Legal Contexts of Technical Images (ed., with Claudia Blümle and Katja Müller-Helle) and Art and Politics – An Introduction (both 2026).