LECTURE BY LIAM GILLICK AT HAMBURGER BAHNHOF IN BERLIN

On February 12th 2009, artist Liam Gillick will be giving a lecture at the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin. This lecture has been organised within the framework of his upcoming exhibition at the German Pavilion of the Venice Biennial 2009. Gillick was chosen to conceptualise the German Pavilion of the 53rd Venice Biennial by Nicolaus Schafhausen, curator of the German contribution for Venice and director of Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art in Rotterdam. The lecture develops the themes first elaborated by Gillick in the Hermes Lecture, Den Bosch (Netherlands) in November 2008. Visitors will be welcomed by Udo Kittelmann, director of the National Gallery, and Elke aus dem Moore, director Visual Arts Department of the Institute of Foreign Cultural Relations (ifa) with introductions by Nicolaus Schafhausen. Schafhausen will moderate the follow-up discussion between Liam Gillick and cultural critic Diedrich Diederichsen, who will be commenting on the lecture. Discussion and lecture will be held in English and will be translated into German simultaneously. In his lecture Liam Gillick (UK 1964) will speak about a discursive model of art practice that he has developed over the past two decades. It is a model characterised by an open yet critical orientation towards the social context of art. Interdisciplinarity, collaboration and a focus on production processes are some of its other notable qualities. Gillick will examine this model against the background of the post-war welfare state with its soft organisational frameworks and collaborative structures. He will also relate it to developments in Scandinavian car manufacturing in the seventies, when teamwork and self-organisation were introduced and monotonous forms of assembly line work were abolished. His lecture may be regarded as a search for the cultural DNA that these artistic and socio-economic phenomena possibly share. It takes a look at an interesting perspective surrounding his previous work, which can be expected for Venice. "In the Volvo factory you can see trees while you are making cars. But you are still making cars, never taking a walk in the woods. Where are the models for contemporary art production in the recent past?" Liam Gillick lives and works in New York and London. The British artist, who has produced much of his work in Germany, was early to address emergent post-socialist systems and new social models in Europe. His practice represents the ideal projection surface for contemporary art in the twenty-first century. His work operates on several levels of a multi-layered artworld. The theme of his work is the varied phenomena of social utopias that he stages via hypothetical social models, both visual and literary. Liam Gillick and Nicolaus Schafhausen have been involved in a continuous dialogue since the end of the 1980s. The exhibition at the German Pavilion is commissioned by the German Foreign Ministry and will be realised together with the Institute of Foreign Cultural Relations (ifa).

Lecture by Liam Gillick 12th February 2009 Beginning: 7.30 p.m. Doors open: 7.00 p.m. Admission is free Nationalgalerie im Hamburger Bahnhof Museum für Gegenwart Invalidenstrasse 50-51 10557 Berlin Germany http://www.deutscher-pavillon.org http://www.hamburgerbahnhof.de

Contact Eva Huttenlauch
Project Manager German Pavilion
info@deutscher-pavillon.org
Kathrin Luz Neumann Luz Communication Press Contact German Pavilion
presse@deutscher-pavillon.org