Résumé 2021

31 August 2021

Press information

On Friday, 27 August 2021, the classes directed by Rossella Biscotti, Shezad Dawood (Instagram), Christina Dimitriadis, Nadira Hussain/Flora Klein, Shubigi Rao (Instagram) and ruangrupa with Gruppe 19 gave insights into their classes during the Open Studios in Hohensalzburg Fortress (Arbeitshaus, Mönchsberg 34, 5020 Salzburg). 
Concurrently, the exhibition Die Sonne um Mitternacht schauen. 33 years of graphic editions of the Summer Academy was open for the last time, looking back over the teaching history of the Summer Academy. 

Salzburg International Summer Academy of Fine Arts
Résumé 2021

International course programme
19 July–28 August 2021

This year, 306 students enrolled in the courses. 240 students from 60 different nations took part in 16 courses of between one and four weeks in Hohensalzburg Fortress, in the Fürstenbrunn quarry and online. Their average age was 35; the average number of participants was 15. 

First-time courses were offered in Poetry/Performance and VR/AR/Programming. The curatorial classes focused on questions of collective action and “imagined communities”. The central themes of (Queer) Feminism and Spatial Practices enabled collaboration and exchange of ideas between individual classes. 

Art Education Programme 
17 July–30 September 2021

In local co-operations with Galerie Kunst im Traklhaus, Stadtgalerie Zwergelgarten, Salzburg Kunstverein, Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Fotohof and more than 20 hybrid (local and online) events, the Summer Academy invited the public to engage with contemporary art and the relevant discourse. 2,800 visitors attended the exhibitions and events on site, and parallel to these, 400 users accessed online. The YouTube documentation videos have so far been viewed 1,800 times.

The programme Möglichkeitshorizonte. Perspektiven, Moleküle, Strategien und Formen dezentrieren. Akt 1 (De-centring horizons of possibility, perspectives, molecules, strategies and forms. Act 1) invited participants to think about a transformative time, in exhibitions, film, performances, lectures and conversations. Akt 1 is a collaboration between Sophie Goltz (Director of the Summer Academy) and Marina Fokidis (curator, editor of South as a State of Mind, Athens).

A highlight of the programme was Documenta as a Common, which offered an insight into Documenta 15, together with the current Artistic Directors ruangrupa and Adam Szymczyk, former Artistic Director of Documenta 14. In association with such a focus were further events concerning Public Commons in Architecture and Politics, with Dubravka Sekulić and Ewa Majewska. 

The Summer Academy held three exhibitions on contemporary art. Berlin artist Leon Kahane showed recent works in the exhibition Les Drancéens (17 July to 28 August) in the Galerie Kunst im Traklhaus. His photographs, videos and installations illustrate places and institutions with a latent repressed, critical history of anti-Semitism or racism, revealing its continued existence. 
In the Stadtgalerie Zwergelgarten, Italian artist Rossella Biscotti shows her works on European colonial history in the Indonesian archipelago in the exhibition Clara and other Specimens (until 30 September). She investigates unspeakable incidents of despotism and associates these with global economy. Biscotti weaves forgotten stories and traditional materials into new historical narratives. 

In the Arbeitshaus in Hohensalzburg Fortress (30 July to 27 August), the Summer Academy showed Die Sonne um Mitternacht schauen. 33 years of graphic editions of the Summer Academy. Marking the 20th anniversary of the Society of Friends, the exhibition brings together the graphic editions and illustrates a period of the international teaching history at the Summer Academy. 

In the four Open Studios in Hohensalzburg Fortress and in the Fürstenbrunn quarry, teachers and students invited the public to tours and conversations in their art laboratories.

Documentation

Photographers Anna Aicher and Mira Turba have documented this year’s Summer Academy. Our facebook channel will soon offer an overview: https://www.facebook.com/summeracademy.at/

The art education programme Möglichkeitshorizonte (horizons of possibility) was documented live or recorded online, with all artist talks, curator talks, lectures, presentations and performances, by Killer Media Production, and is now available on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/SummerAcadOfFineArts

Further information and photo material
Simone Rudolph
presse@summeracademy.at, +43 (0) 662 842113-14

Press photos are available on request.