Talks
Oliver Marchart, Havîn Al-Sindy and Nora Sternfeld
Complex Simplicity against Simplistic Complexity. Artistic Strategies to Unlearn Worldviews
9 May 2025, 6pm
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What is conflictual aesthetics in times of the extension of the conflict zone? Extreme simplifications have found their way into current art practices. Some artistic and curatorial strategies have turned into politically empty gestures. So that the question arises as to whether critical art can do justice to the true complexity of our present circumstances.
In a conversation we would like to work on new vocabularies and discuss questions like the following: How do visible and invisible structures produce powerlessness? To what extent is artistic practice entangled in this? Which mechanisms of representation and exclusion determine these processes? To what extent do social media and digital communities pretend to shape the conditions for unlearning violent worldviews – while they actually at the same time reinforce their persistence? In short: How to regain a sense of aesthetic and political complexity in times of excessive simplification?
Havîn Al-Sîndy works in Berlin, Düsseldorf and Kurdistan. Al-Sîndy studied at the State Academy of Fine Arts in Stuttgart and at the Düsseldorf Art Academy. She completed her master’s degree in 2018. At the same time, she studied biology and chemistry at the University of Duisburg-Essen. She currently teaches at the Braunschweig University of Fine Arts. Havîn Al-Sîndy’s works are in the field of sculpture, painting and moving images. She deals with artistic and scientific processes of making things visible, finds languages for things that are difficult to express, as well as the ambivalences in creating visibility itself. Her working method is process- based and mostly collaborative. She is currently a professor of art and ecology at the Institute for Performative Practice, Art and Education at the HBK Braunschweig.
Oliver Marchart, Mag.Dr.phil. (University of Vienna, philosophy), PhD (University of Essex, Government), ‘habilitation’ in philosophy and sociology (University of Lucerne). 2001-2006 scientific assistant at the Department of Media Studies, University of Basel. 2006-2012 SNF-research professor at the Sociological Seminar of the University of Lucerne. 2012-2016 professor of sociology at the Art Acedemy Düsseldorf. Since March 2016 professor for political theory at the University of Vienna. Fellowships: 1995 Research Fellow at the Centre for Theoretical Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences der University of Essex. 1997/98 Junior Fellow at the International Research Center Cultural Studies (IFK), Vienna. 2005 Fellow at the Columbia University Institute for Scholars at Reid Hall and the Maison des Sciences de l’Homme (École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales) Paris. 2013 Senior Fellow at the Internationalen International Research Center Cultural Studies (IFK) Vienna. 2016 Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies, University of Konstanz.
Nora Sternfeld is an art educator and curator. She is professor for art education at the HFBK Hamburg. From 2018 to 2020 she was documenta professor at the Kunsthochschule Kassel. From 2012 to 2018 she was Professor of Curating and Mediating Art at Aalto University in Helsinki. In addition, she is co-director of the /ecm – Master Program for Exhibition Theory and Practice at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, in the core team of schnittpunkt. austellungstheorie & praxis, co-founder and part of trafo.K, Office for Art, Education, and Critical Knowledge Production (Vienna) and since 2011 part of freethought, Platform for Research, Education and Production (London). In this context she was also one of the artistic directors of the Bergen Assembly 2016 and is since 2020 BAK Fellow, basis voor actuele kunst (Utrecht). She publishes on contemporary art, educational theory, exhibitions, politics of history and anti-racism.
This event was part of Let’s Talk About… Anti-Democratic, Anti-Queer, Misogynist, Antisemitic, Right Wing Spaces and Their Counter Movements project.