“With With” is a series of lectures by artists and writers, seminars and a book initiated by Lucie Kolb and Romy Rüegger.

 

Series of lectures & seminars

The series funded by the Zurich University of the Arts, the Corner College, the Shedhalle and the Schweizerischen Gesellschaft für Kulturwissenschaft with artists and theorists was held in Zurich in the respective spaces of the Master of Fine Arts, Les Complices*, the Corner College, the Shedhalle and Folk Museum with a variety of settings. The lectures i.e. lecture-performances shaped the structure and the concept of the series as it progressed. The series focused upon the following key points: ranging from the analysis of essayistic practices in the field of art that “do not cohere to form a single narrative approach, but instead introduce the precondition for a specific reality only to suspend it straight away” (Hito Steyerl), via methodologies involving historical material that question or undermine current discourse and the narrative models on (art) history upon which this activity is predicated, all the way to the focus upon the lecture as a “vocal setting” understood as a work which is simultaneously not deployed as a way to disseminate knowledge, but also as the self-situating of the speaker and as an instrument of critique. bolwerK, Koen Brams, Dani Gal, Max Jorge Hinderer, Will Holder, Jörg Huber, Roman Kurzmeyer, Karl Larsson, Susanne Leeb, Achim Lengerer, Eva Meyer, Mara Montoya, Falke Pisano, Eran Schaerf, Kerstin Stakemeier, Hito Steyerl, and Nele Wohlatz have been participating so far.

 

Book

The conceptual and practical collaboration on the book with members of Passenger Books, a publisher operating between Berlin, Istanbul, Montréal and Zurich (within others) was launched in 2010, initially in the form of conversations. Lina Grumm & Annette Lux (HIT) are responsible for the construction’s layout. Contributions by Ellen Blumenstein (Berlin), bolwerK (Antwerp), Vincent Bonin (Montréal), Eva Egermann & Elke Krasny (Vienna), Dani Gal & Achim Lengerer (Berlin), Maaike Gouwenberg (Amsterdam), Max Jorge Hinderer (Berlin) & Irina Dumitrescu (Texas/Berlin), Egija Inzule (Berlin/Paris) & Maja Wismer (Basel), Karl Larsson (Berlin), Falke Pisano (Berlin), Simone Schardt (Berlin/Zurich), Robin Simpson (Montréal/Vancouver), Andrea Thal (Zurich), Danna Vajda (NY), Jacob Wren (Montréal).

 

Team

Lucie Kolb is an artist and writer. She is currently a research assistant at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences, School of Art and Design. Her doctoral thesis at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna is concerned with the form and function of paratexts in contemporary art. She has been involved in a variety of artistic and curatorial collaborations, as the radiomagazine radio arthur, the series of lectures With With: Everything but an Artist Talk and You can find me in the lexicon, in the lexicon.

 

Romy Rüegger rereads texts, talks and images in lectures, performances, audio operas and choreographed spaces. She recently presented the solo-show A Play for recorded Voices at Les Complices* in Zurich. Her conceptual writing negotiates the space between poetry and prose and has been presented in a number of readings and performances. She currently works on a PhD at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna and as an assistant at the University of Fine Arts Zurich.