Vortragsreihe Freie Kunst – Dr. Gabrielle Schaad

Vortragsreihe Freie Kunst – Dr. Gabrielle Schaad

Caring for the Surface
Japanese Artist Publications Reflecting Urban Space

Vortrag / 15.11.2023

From 1960s Japanese student circle protest photo-publications to contemporary artist books dealing with, e.g., the legacy of the Japanese cosmetics producer Shiseido (Surface and Custom, 2020), there are myriad takes on the development and state of urban space in Japan. This lecture will present a non-comprehensive selection of case studies to ask in which ways specific artist publications from the 1960s to today have dealt with this environment. A particular focus lies in examples that analyze the performance of maintenance and care work, deconstruct gender roles, and demonstrate how spaces are functional in creating in- and exclusions.

Gabrielle Schaad is a postdoctoral researcher at the TU Munich and a research associate and lecturer in the Department Fine Arts at the Zurich University of the Arts ZHdK. Since 2023 she coordinates the minor program "Exhibiting & Making Public" there. She received her PhD from ETH Zurich with a study on the promises and pitfalls of technological optimism and body concepts in Japanese post-war art and architecture, focusing on the artist group Gutai and Metabolist architectural utopias. Her research concerns performative space and embodiment in transcultural art and design practices since the 1960s, as well as the spatialization of power and gender relations in the discourses around care and the collective. In 2018, her monograph shizuko yoshikawa was published by Lars Müller Publishers. She is co-editor of gta papers. Care (2023) and ARCH+. Zeitgenössische feministische Raumpraxis/Contemporary Feminist Spatial Practices (2022/23).

15.11.2023, 18 Uhr
Auditorium, Am Speicher XI 8, 28217 Bremen

Jay Chung and Q Takeki Maeda, Moulting, 2019, (selected double spread from Shiseido publication, 1933).