2018/19

INVITATIONS

A collaboration between the Archiv der Avantgarden at Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Freie Universität Berlin and Haus der Kulturen der Welt Berlin, the research project "Invitations" attempts to create an alternative and accessible narrative of the artistic avant-garde along invitation cards to exhibitions and events from the past hundred years. Providing information about attitudes, participating artists and organisers, designs and publications, the invitation is a medium usually given little attention. It offers punctual encounters in artistic projects and reveals hints to the formation of movements, aesthetic concepts, their conditions, social movements and groups.

[Translate to English:] Invitations II

Focusing on invitations to historically relevant art exhibitions and their crossings with design, architecture, music, film, theatre and performance, the project highlights the avant-garde’s networks – its key actors, institutions and visions. Additional material highlights these narrations, such as photographs, manifestos, correspondences, films, editions or objects, which are located in the archive as well. Next to a digital web platform launched in the beginning of 2019, the "Invitations" project will be presented in a publication in 2019 and prospectively in an exhibition, as well as it will include workshops and other participatory events open to the public.

 

Anna-Lena Werner is a researcher, curator and writer. Researching artistic networks from the 20th century through the inventory of invitation cards at the Archiv der Avantgarden, she is part of a collaborative project between the state museums of Dresden, Freie Universität Berlin and Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin. She studied at Chelsea College of Art and Design in London and at Freie Universität Berlin, where she handed in her Ph.D. dissertation on representations of social traumata and political conflicts in contemporary, aesthetic positions in 2018. During her studies she has been research associate for "Black Mountain Research" –– a performative research project between Freie Universität Berlin and Hamburger Bahnhof - Museum für Gegenwart - Berlin. Anna-Lena Werner regularly organises exhibitions and happenings in project spaces and galleries, such as Savvy Contemporary (Berlin) or Blok Art Space (Istanbul), and she publishes texts in magazines, such as Monopol – Magazin für Kunst und Leben, Schirn Magazin or Performance Research. Since 2011 she runs the online and print magazine artfridge, which features interviews with artists and curators.

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