BINATIONAL ARTISTIC PhD-PROGRAM

In 1966 Nanni Balestrini composed his novel Tristano, as a literary piece that is only published as different versions. The German copy that I own is titled: Tristano No 7744 von 109027350432000 möglichen Romanen. I had come across this novel after I began to build sculptures with detachable elements and further to re-use them in various works. The implications of this gesture for the medium of sculpture, its representational qualities, and its relationship to the (human) body are at the core of my research project. To a large extent, the project builds on Donna Haraway’s statement: “To be one is always to become with many” (Haraway, 2016, p. 4). It is the word “become“, which is most important to me and my research, as it denotes a fluid rather than  static state. I am not; I become. More than once or constantly. This way of regarding a “being“ seems holistic, i.e. being whole and inclusive. I would like to link this to queerness in the sense of the non-normative as a state of fluid becoming rather than static being. As Jagose states: “Queer, then, is an identity category that has no interest in consolidating or even stabilising itself. It maintains its critique of identity-focused movements by understanding that even the formation of its own coalitional and negotiated constituencies may well result in exclusionary and reifying effects far in excess of those intended.” (Jagose, 1996, p.131). Can the reciprocal relationship between images (sculptures) and the body be used effectively to create positive identity/body images representational of constellational / queer / utopian identities through modular sculpture? In what way can non-geometric, modular sculptures be constructed from a range of different materials and non-materials? 

Supervised by Prof. Dr. Annette Geiger (HfK Bremen), Dr Cleo Nisse / Prof. Dr. Ann-sophie Lehmann (University of Groningen)