Join the Wende Museum, the Thomas Mann House, and dublab radio for the eighth program in our monthly virtual program series on art and politics in times of crises. The freedom of art is one of the imperatives of every democracy. But does this freedom make art inconsequential? Does art have a role in addressing social issues, promoting social justice, or in defending democracy when it comes under pressure? In short: does art have a political mandate?
The Student Council consists of a team of highly engaged, talented, and diverse high school, undergraduate, and graduate students who invite prominent guest speakers to discuss topics relating to art, culture, politics, and society. In conversation with visual artists, musicians, dancers, writers, theater and filmmakers, cultural critics, curators and others, the students will explore how the arts can make a difference in times of social and political crisis; on what social issues they can give new impulses; how they can help shape local communities; and how the alleged freedom and autonomy of the arts might impede or help the arts in terms of social and political significance.
The guest speaker for our August program is Amanda Beech, an artist and writer. Her work collides narratives of power, cause and alienation from philosophical theory, literature and real political events, exploring how these accounts of human agency enforce and render our experience of reality. Artworks are “arguments” that prosecute another form of force that surpasses the notion that art simply reflects and reproduces the status quo. Amanda’s work has been exhibited internationally in Biennales and other arts projects. This includes Covenant Transport Move or Die (solo exhibit, Baltic Contemporary, UK, 2018); Map of the Bomb (video work, Havana Biennale, 2022); Asymmetrical Equations (2021); a book project for Manual for a Future Desert (2022); and “Messages from the Inside'', an essay on Jean-François Lyotard’s Les Immateriaux, for the exhibition Beyond Matter (ZKM Karlsruhe, Germany). Her new book The Intolerable Image is forthcoming from MIT.
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