Bøger af Rainer Ganahl

For more than 10 years, Rainer Ganahl has been engaged in a subtle exploration of the points of overlap of art and learning, using a variety of media including photographs, videos, books, wall texts, and tapestries. Much of Ganahl's work falls into the following categories: Libraries, collections of scholarly books, intended to be perused by gallery visitors; Seminars and Lectures, where he attends and photographs seminars and lectures by leading scholars; Readings, where he photographs and/or videotapes invited participants as they analyze theoretical texts with him; Studies, portraits of himself as a learning machine, documenting his efforts to study new languages; and Dialogs, either interviews or collaborations outside educational institutions. Ganahl has had numerous solo exhibitions in Europe and New York and was selected as one of three Austrian representatives to the Venice Biennale in 1999. William Kaizen, a Columbia University doctoral candidate in art history, is the curator of The Wallach Art Gallery (3230) exhibition and primary author of the exhibition catalogue, which provides a comprehensive overview and a scholarly exploration of the artist's work. In her introduction to the catalogue, Professor Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak discusses her personal connection to Ganahl. She sees in his work an answer to Marx's question, "Who will educate the educators?" Kaizen's essay takes up the politics of Rainer Ganahl's claim that education is art's "abhorred other" and discusses the means through which the artist creates possibilities for both art and knowledge production. A color plate section with commentary by the artist includes more than 400 images that document Ganahl's varied artistic practices during the past decade. Two additional contributions by the artist--"Marx and again Marx: Antonio Negri interviewed by Rainer Ganahl" and "A Portable Library for Columbia University"--expand the understanding of his practice.

Alfred Jarry first presented his absurdist, expletive-filled play King Ubu in Paris in 1896, and instantly ignited a literary scandal. King Ubu not only influenced artistic movements such as Dada, Surrealism, and the Absurd Theater of Jean Genet and Samuel Beckett, but it anticipated, with frightening perspicacity, the catastrophic political madness of the 21st century. Written in a rudimentary and comically nonsensical way-it even incorporates some of Jarry's high-school stunts-the play lends itself to updating with contemporary slang and subjects. About 10 years ago, Rainer Ganahl rewrote Jarry's text as Ubu Lenin, with Vladimir Lenin and his wife Nadezhda Krupskaya as the protagonists. Now, the advent of Donald Trump has presented an even more appropriately divisive, madcap, narcissistic stand-in for King Ubu. Ganahl's Ubu Trump will take place in Harlem, a neighborhood filled with many of the very people Trump supporters would like to see deported, banned, or put behind "big, beautiful walls." Just like Jarry's King Ubu, Trump and his cronies run their administration like a mafia family business, with barely fig-leafed personal enrichment schemes layered upon corrupt policies and, in all likelihood, treason. In Ubu Trump, the father, King Ubu, has been replaced with Ubu Trump, while Mama Ubu is reincarnated as Ubu Ivanka. Originally set in Poland and Russia, the new play blends Warsaw with Washington, and Poland with the USA, alluding to Trump's special dealings with Putin and the new right-wing government in Poland. The actors perform behind three simple graphic panels based on Jarry's own sketches of King Ubu, and overlapped with renderings of the ruling Trump family: Donald, Ivanka, Jared, and their Russian guest, Putin. This theatrical performance will be staged at a morgue in Harlem, the neighborhood where Ganahl has been living for more than 20 years.