Vortrag // Sarah Hegenbart: Utopia (Un)limited: Dystopian Elements in Painted Portraits of the Californian Dream
A swimming pool in front of modernist architecture has become an iconic symbol for the Californian dream: David Hockney’s "The Bigger Splash". While the painting seems to convey a fascination for the Californian way of life, uncanny elements surface on second view, e.g. the image is devoid of people. This poses questions about belonging and participation: who precisely are those representatives of the Californian dream, and how closely is the dream tied to success in a capital-driven world structured by white supremacy? This lecture will critically interrogate whether the Californian dream is really unlimited to everyone. Scrutinising the visual culture of the Black diaspora and the digital images of the #BlackLivesMatter movement, I will argue that the socio-economic and ecological environment California provides has still not succeeded in implementing the Californian dream.
Sarah Hegenbart currently works as lecturer in art history at Technical University in Munich. In her postdoctoral research project "Diagnosing post-truth politics: Dialogical art and black aesthetics", she analyses a variety of artistic positions from the Black diaspora against the backdrop of their potential to force a mode of resistance against essentialist thinking in an era that has been labeled as "post-democracy”. She is also coediting with Mara Kölmel the anthology "Dada Data. Contemporary Art Practice in the Era of Post-Truth Politics". Prior to this, she completed an M.St. in Ancient Philosophy at the University of Oxford, a Magister in Philosophy and History of Art at the Humboldt University of Berlin, and a PhD titled, "From Bayreuth to Burkina Faso: Christoph Schlingensief's Opera Village Africa as postcolonial Gesamtkunstwerk?”, at the Courtauld.
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Der Vortrag ist Teil der Veranstaltungsreihe “California Dreaming: Utopia, Dystopia” des Lehrstuhls Theorie und Geschichte für Architektur, Kunst und Design der Technischen Universität München und des Zentralinstituts für Kunstgeschichte.
Bis auf Weiteres findet die Vortragsreihe "California Dreaming. Utopia, Dystopia" via Zoom statt unter der Meeting ID 918 9364 6015. Eine einmalige Registrierung ist notwendig, damit Ihnen das Passwort für alle Vorträge mitgeteilt werden kann. Bitte senden Sie eine E-Mail mit Ihrem Namen und dem Betreff "Registrierung" an california@zikg.eu. Ihre E-Mail-Adresse wird zu keinem anderen Zweck als dem genannten verwendet und nach Ende der Vortragsreihe gelöscht.
Der Zugriff auf die Vorträge in den Zoom-Meetings ist auf 300 Teilnehmende begrenzt.
Abbildungsnachweis:Ramiro Gomez, No Splash. Image Source: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2020/feb/16/deeper-splash-artist-painting-pool-cleaners-david-hockney-forgot: courtesy of the artist/Charlie James Gallery, Los Angeles