May 14th, 6pm
Domestic Optimism
Video screening and artist talk with Emma Wolf-Haugh
Moderation: Fiona McGovern
Domestic Optimism is a multi faceted project about mangled and mistold modernist legacies. The project begins with furniture, inanimate objects that come loaded with social connections and invisible histories. Through the displacement of cultural detritus Emma Wolf-Haugh retells modernist architectural history in the collective key of queer, feminist and de-colonial practices, continually unearthing filth in times of hygiene, and complicating things that were never simple to begin with.
Colonial aesthetics, obscenity trials, hysterical masculinity, crime scene photography, sexology, the production of the lesbian throughout modernity and the current collapse of social housing projects, all intersect in a critical, queer, working class reading of architectural and design modernism. The project underscores the importance of solidarity, friendship and collectivity, for our communion and survival in the world today.
Emma Wolf-Haugh’s video Domestic Optimism, Act One, Modernism – A Lesbian Love Story (2020) will be screened in English with German subtitles. It is followed by a conversation between the artist and Fiona McGovern in English, questions can also be posed in German.
https://emmahaugh.com/THRXSOME-3
This is an online event.
Please register by May 13th :
kuratorischepraxis@kunstverein-hildesheim.de
Please also use this email address for general inquiries and questions regarding access.
Domestic Optimism, Act One, Modernism – A Lesbian Love Story will be on display at the Kunstverein Hildesheim (Am Kehrwieder 2, 31134 Hildesheim) from May 15th to June 13th. More Information.
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May 15th, 12am-2pm
The Lazerbeam Theirstory Projects – Conjuring the post-pandemic collapse of capitalism and the propositional reclamation of queer, working class, architectural history
Workshop with Emma Wolf-Haugh
This two hour workshop will open up the interconnected research and propositional work involved in the making of the project Domestic Optimism. The central question we will deal with together asks how can we approach the spatialising and embodying of speculative imaginaries in exhibition contexts?
With a focus on the disruptive force of the queer working class body in institutional and ideological space (the museum, historical narrative, architectural discourse), Domestic Optimism unfolds long term research about modernist architectural and design histories in a de-colonial key.
Workshop participants will be invited to discuss and propose possible approaches towards translating speculative text into exhibition. Emma Wolf-Haugh will guide the group through materials with a focus on questions of opacity and the nuanced negotiation between the viewer, the performing queer body and historical narrative.
Wolf-Haugh will make a selection of image and text materials from their research available before and during the workshop to support a space for active thought and exchange in considering these questions.
Due to its interactive character this event is limited to 16 participants. It will happen as an online conference and held in English.
Please register by May 13th:
kuratorischepraxis@kunstverein-hildesheim.de
Please also use this email address for general inquiries and questions regarding access.
Die Veranstaltung findet im Rahmen von Körperpolitiken im Ausstellungskontext statt und ist Teil der fortlaufenden Veranstaltungsreihe #kuratorischepraxis.