Cologne is internationally renowned for its top-class photography collections. The history of photography is reflected in the city's museums and collections. The city's institutes offer a unique overview of the diversity and spread of the medium of photography in art, history and industry. At the invitation of Photoszene Köln, the Kölnisches Stadtmuseum, the MAKK - Museum für Angewandte Kunst Köln, the Museum Ludwig, the Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum, the Rheinisches Bildarchiv Köln and Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur opened up their collections and archives for a joint project: international artists dedicated themselves to the collections during the Photoszene Festival in fall 2018 and enabled new perspectives on parts of the collections through their specific gaze and their own artistic practice. The results of this exploration were shown as an exhibition or intervention during the next Photoszene Festival in May 2019 in the respective museums.
The invited artists were:
Erik Kessels (NL), Ola Kolehmainen (FIN), Ronit Porat (ISR), Fiona Tan (NL/IDN), Roselyne Titaud (F) and Antje van Wichelen (BE)
During the Photoszene Festival 2018, archive and collection visits were offered together with the artists and curators.
Symposium
PHOTOGRAPHIC MATERIALS: ARCHIVES AND TOOLS
A symposium was held by the KHM, the Internationale Photoszene Köln and the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Photographie (DGPh).
Over two days, the symposium dealt with questions about the materiality of photography. Methods of (post)photographic engagement with the medium, such as virtual reality, 3D photography or augmented reality, were presented. Structural and institutional conditions for the transfer of photographic archives into a digital future were discussed, and curatorial and artistic strategies for their activation were examined.
Friday 3.5. New photographic tools?
1 p.m.: Welcome and introduction by Alex Grein, KHM and Beate Gütschow, KHM
1.20 p.m.: Joël Vacheron, ECAL, Lausanne Satellite Imagery and Planetary Imagination (engl.)
2.20 p.m.: Marco De Mutiis, Fotomuseum Winterthur / Hochschule Luzern The Photographer as Player as Worker (engl.)
3.20 – 4 p.m. Break and Walk through the exhibition‚A New Room of One`s Own’ by Karina Nimmerfall in Glasmoog – Raum für Kunst & Diskurs – KHM
4 p.m.: Joanna Zylinska, Goldsmiths University of London Undigital Photography (engl.)
5 p.m.: Lilian Haberer, KHM, Köln Merged Displays. On practices and material agencies of photography (engl.)
Saturday 4.5. The Future of Archives / Archives of the Future
10 a.m.: Welcome and introduction by Susanne Holschbach, DGPh and Inga Schneider, Internationale Photoszene Köln
10.20 a.m. Lucia Halder, Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum – Kulturen der Welt, Köln Global Images? – Ethnographische Bildarchive im Aufbruch (german)
11.20 a.m. Sabine Folie, VALIE EXPORT CENTER LINZ „Superimposition“: Überlagerungen in Praktiken des Kuratierens und Archivierens (german)
12.20 a.m. – 1 p.m. Lunch Break
1 p.m.: Estelle Blaschke und Armin Linke, ECAL, Lausanne / Künstler, Berlin Image Capital (Lecture-Performance) (engl.)
2 p.m.: Madhusree Dutta,Akademie der Künste der Welt, Köln The Crisis of Evidence: Memory Practices and Archiving (engl)
Subsequently, several exhibition openings will take place as part of the Photoszene Festival from 4 p.m. onwards.
