Programme of events 2020

26 July 2020
Press release
Programme of events 10–21 August 2020

Salzburg International Summer Academy of Fine Arts

2020 is a “different” year, also for the Summer Academy. The courses are shorter, held over two weeks instead of the usual six; some are taking place completely on site, others online only and others again in hybrid form.

The programme of events is organised along similar lines. For the 2020 Summer Academy, in a new version due to the pandemic, we have tried to retain as much as possible in a period of travel restrictions, hygiene regulations and the constant threat of infection, while in keeping with the original motto, “New Horizons”, venturing to open up to online and mixed formats. The aim now is to find adequate structures, technical implementation and appropriate content for each “place” and to experiment with these.

The programme of events begins online. This year’s opening, exclusively online, has the advantage that people the world over can participate, rather than only invited guests in Salzburg. Four Town Walks explore the variety of digital and analogue formats and a combination of these. Four Artist Talks with teachers will be available online; the talk by Nadira Husain will also be live in Salzburg. The two discussions in the exhibitions by our teachers in the Stadtgalerie Lehen (Cäcilia Brown, Anna Hofbauer, Mikkel Holm Torp) and in the Stadtgalerie Zwerglgartenpavillon (Noële Ody, Toni Schmale) will be held exclusively on site. The book presentation of Navigating the Planetary (Verlag für moderne Kunst, Vienna), featuring several discussions between editors Hildegund Amanshauser and Kimberly Bradley and some of the contributing authors, will be hybrid, as will the Open Day on 21 August in the Fürstenbrunn quarry, in Hohensalzburg Fortress and in digital space.

Much will be missing this year, particularly the personal encounters between people from all over the world, who meet in the Fortress or in discussions and exchange ideas, develop joint projects of simply relax and get to know one another. There will also be new features – new online encounters, new formats, many experiments… “despite everything”, new horizons will open up.

Programme of events: details

Navigating the Planetary
For some years now, the Summer Academy has pursued the project Global (now Planetary) Academy, devoted to questions of learning and teaching art in the global context.

The 2016 conference Global Academy? dealt with alternative academies, focusing on the Global South. Last year’s conference, Global Academy II, examples of transcultural exchange presented numerous models of cultural exchange and considered new concepts and ways of thinking beyond the colonialist/post-colonialist, North/South, etc. in terms of new art (hi)stories.

With the presentation of Navigating the Planetary, the project Global/Planetary Academy, in Hildegund Amanshauser’s last summer as director, once more comes under comprehensive consideration in contributions by Rahel Aima, Hildegund Amanshauser, Kader Attia, Stephanie Bailey, Sammy Baloji, Kimberly Bradley, Sabine Breitwieser, Tania Bruguera, Roger M. Buergel, Clémentine Deliss, Rosalyn D’Mello, Charles Esche, Olamiju Fajemisin, Marina Fokidis, Alexander Koch, Christian Kravagna, Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, Peter Osborne, Fernando Resende, Mohammad Salemy, Shuddhabrata Sengupta with the Raqs Media Collective, Nina Siegal, Chloe Stead, Sanjukta Sunderason, Kate Sutton and Simone Wille.

Navigating the Planetary is a guide to the past, present and future of the global art world (Verlag für moderne Kunst, 2020); it will be presented to the public on 20 August from 5 pm in  the Architekturhaus Salzburg. Editors Hildegund Amanshauser and Kimberly Bradley will speak with various contributors about their essays and particularly about the future of art in our world.

Noële Ody/Tony Schmale, petting zoo
The exhibition petting zoo by Noële Ody/Tony Schmale opens in the Stadtgalerie Zwerglgarten on 24 July at 7 pm and will be on view until 21 August 2020.

For artists Noële Ody and Toni Schmale, who accompany their Summer Academy course with a joint exhibition in the Zwerglgarten [Zwerg = dwarf] pavilion, their collaboration is a welcome opportunity to examine and explore the field of tension between space and time that is inherent in sculpture. The pavilion, a 1950s wooden building with skylights, and the grotesque baroque stone dwarfs in the Mirabell Garden form the architectural and artistic background for new and already existing works by the two artists.
In their exhibition talk on 12 August at 7 pm, Ody and Schmale will walk through the whole exhibition. Subjects and objects meet and will talk with and about one another. The conversation will also deal with why these particular sculptures meet and what they do separately and together.

Cäcilia Brown/Anna Hofbauer/Mikkel Holm Torp, IN CASE OF AN AVALANCHE
The exhibition by the Stone Sculptors opens in the Stadtgalerie Lehen on 6 August at 7 pm and will be on view until 24 September 2020.
In analogy to their intention for the course in the Untersberg quarry, the approach taken by Cäcilia Brown, Anna Hofbauer and Mikkel Holm Torp for their exhibition in the Stadtgalerie Lehen is “Surf and Turf“ – that is, collaboration and combination, like land and sea.

In the Artist Talk at the exhibition, on 18 August at 7 pm, Cäcilia Brown, Anna Hofbauer and Mikkel Holm Torp will discuss collaborative working and common features in their artistic praxis.

Nadira Husain
On 19 August at 7 pm, Nadira Husain, teacher of the only hybrid painting class in this year’s Summer Academy, will explain why the adjective “hybrid” already applied to her work. She will present her concept Bâtarde (female form of “bastard”), an artistic practice which aims to emancipate itself from normative structures and ideas, and which is strongly influenced by Husain’s multicultural upbringing in a polyphonic world.

Exploring Salzburg /Town Walks, Open Days
The four Town Walks follow the motto The horizon is not the limit. We would like to walk in a different way round Salzburg with those interested, to look with fresh eyes and see what walking does with us. Starting from the four compass points, we assume that a walk is not only a means of human mobility, but can be an artistic, spiritual and scientific practice.

Of course, the Summer Academy concludes as always with an Open Day, to afford insights into the results of the courses – an excellent opportunity to chat with teachers and students from all over the world and to experience at first hand the unique atmosphere in the Fortress and the Untersberg quarry. the online classes will show their work on the Summer Academy website.

Blogger in Residence

Tex Rubinowitz, What colour is today? 2020 Summer Academy blog

In the 2020 blog What colour is today?, Tex Rubinowitz gives a daily account of two Academy weeks from the viewpoint of an “unreliable narrator”, a shape-shifter observing the hybrid teaching situation of the courses, between analogue and digital.

Tex Rubinowitz (b 1961) has lived in Vienna since 1984. He studied art with Oswald Oberhuber, but for only a week, and since then has regularly drawn cartoons for various newspapers. He writes novels and essays for Rowohlt publishers and catalogue texts for Daniel Spoerri, Per Dybvig, Martin Kippenberger and the artist collective Gelatin. He was awarded the Bachmann Prize in 2014, held the exhibition The Nul Pointers in the Museum Leopold in 2015, and curated the series Im Zeichenraum for the Galerie Christine König. He has twice directed a course at the Salzburg Summer Academy.

Podcast
At the meeting point between art and everyday life Dorit Ehlers and Arthur Zgubic, as ohnetitel, are working on a series of podcasts designed to convey the ambience in this global summer, with its blurred horizons, conceived as an expedition over the seas. In co-operation with Radiofabrik, Verein Freier Rundfunk Salzburg, the stages in this journey will be transmitted at 2 pm on the following dates:

Episode 1: Wednesday 12 August

Episode 2: Saturday 15 August

Episode 3: Tuesday 18 August

Episode 4: Friday 21 August

Available at 107.5 and 97.3 MHz and online at radiofabrik.at

General information
All events are admission-free. Due to our COVID-19 measures, Due to our COVID-19 measures, we would ask you to apply in advance for on-site events.
For the Open Day, please book a slot by telephone: +43 662 842113

Further details and photo material
Karin Buchauer
Communications & assistant to the director
presse@summeracademy.at, +43 (0) 662 842113 14