The first Artegiro Residency for Authors and Curators takes place in May 2017 in Conzano with the project by curator and critic An Paenhuysen and artist Wolfgang Muller. An and Wolfgang will work towards concluding their book,  The Science of Misunderstandings. An Paenhuysen and Wolfgang Müller collaborate since 2010, when they curated together a show at the Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum of Contemporary Art, Berlin, about Valeska Gert, a quite forgotten Berlin proto-performer of the 1920s. Two years later Paenhuysen and Müller curated an exhibition at Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien titled Gesture Sign Art. Deaf Culture / Hearing Culture, presenting art forms operating at the interface of deaf and hearing culture. More projects followed and in 2016 they presented Choir at Eigen + Art Lab Berlin, in which whistling tea kettles were the main performers.

For the Artegiro Residency for Critics and Curators, May 2017, An Paenhuysen and Wolfgang Müller work on an artist book project that will be published by Verbrecher Verlag, an independent publishing house in Berlin. On the occasion of the 60th birthday of the artist, they will create a conversation between curator / art critic and artist based on visual juxtapositions and short texts that highlight artistic concepts that define his art making from the beginning of the 1980s, when he started the post-punk artist band Die Tödliche Doris until now. Wolfgang Müller has been called a “researcher of misunderstandings”. The Science of Misunderstandings explores the occurrence of misunderstandings and investigates the structures underlying their emergence. The tool of this science is research and in the book project the emphasis will be on the method of research in artistic thinking.

The Artegiro Residency will give the opportunity to do the final brainstorming and conceptualization of the book project. Publication will be Fall 2017. Ideally also a larger exhibition will follow. During the residency in Conzano, Piedmont, Paenhuysen and Müller will present an evening on the topic of taste in art accompanied by an exhibition, and would be happy to go into a vivid discussion with the Conzano community. Italy, the country of classical art where so many young artists used to go for their grand tour, seems to be a perfect setting to ask the question of good and bad taste and its societal implications.

The Artegiro Project with its focus on collaborative thinking will have an important role on the realization of the project. The residency allows for it to develop and flourish from a location that invites for a tranquil reflection to take place. The hope is also to keep up an ongoing exchange with Artegiro Project that goes beyond the publication of the book and pushes forward a critical engagement with art in society. An Paenhuysen participated in May 2016 in the exciting research forum Art and (de) colony of the COCOAA Project, and this residency is a significant follow-up to bring the discussion on art history and its contradictions forward.

Biography curator An Paenhuysen (*1978 Diest, Belgium)

An Paenhuysen is a freelance curator, art critic and educator.  She assisted on many shows, and curated shows about Land Art, Valeska Gert, and Paul Pfeiffer at the Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum of Contemporary Art, Berlin. In 2012 she organized an exhibition at Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien on deaf and hearing culture, funded by Hauptstadtkulturfonds and Kunstfonds. Furthermore, she has curated several shows in Berlin art spaces such as HBC. Berlin, insitu Berlin, Entretempo Kitchen Gallery, and Mila Galery.

Dr. An Paenhuysen wrote her Phd on the cultural criticism of the Belgian avant-garde in the 1920s at the University Leuven, Belgium. She was a post-doctoral fellow at Columbia University, New York and University of California, Berkeley. She was a Alexander-von-Humboldt Fellow at the Humboldt-University Berlin. She taught at the art university Burg Giebichenstein in Halle (Saale) and was a coach for artists at bbk Berlin (Bildungswerk Berliner Künstler).

2010 she travelled to Japan with a curatorial fellowship of the Goethe Institute. She was also a visiting scholar at the library of the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. She published in several magazines such as WhiteHotMagazine, Art Slant, Spex. An Panhuysen is a fervent blogger: anpaenhuysen.blogspot.com

An Paenhuysen published books on the Belgian Avant-Garde (Meulenhoff 2010), Gesture Sign Art (Martin Schmitz Verlag 2012) and Valeska Gert (Hybriden-Verlag 2013).

Curatorial projects (selection):  Literary Dining, Entretempo Kitchen Gallery Berlin (2015), Literary Curating, insitu Berlin (2015), Design/ Art (with Onika Simon, KN, 2014), Realitäten. Galerie Mila (2013),Gebärde Zeichen Kunst. Gehörlose Kultur / Hörende Kultur, Nov. 2012 – Jan. 2013,            Kunstraum Kreuzberg / Bethanien, Land Art, Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart – Berlin (2012), Playback Berlin. On Video Art (with Charlotte Friling, 2011) Artzone Gallery der Kyoto University of Art and Design, Pause. Valeska Gert: Bewegte Fragmente, Hamburger Banhof – Museum für Gegenwart – Berlin (with Wolfgang Müller 2010-2011), Paul Pfeiffer: The Saints, Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart – Berlin (with Britta Schmitz, 2010-2011)

Publications (selection): contributions to catalogues Blue Moon, 2015, ed. Catherine Nichols, Das Ende des 20. Jh. The Best is yet to come, 2013, eds. Eugen Blume und Catherine Nichols (Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart Berlin); Valeska Gert. Geteilte Fragmente (Hybriden-Verlag 2013); Gebärde Zeichen Kunst. Gehörlose Kultur / Hörende Kultur, eds. with Wolfgang Müller (Martin Schmitz Verlag 2012); De Nieuw Wereld. De Wonderjaren van de Belgische avant-garde (Meulenhoff 2010); „Berlin in Pictures: Weimar City and the Loss of Landscape“, in: New German Critique, 109, Winter 2010, 1-25; „Deutschland, Deutschland über Alles“, in: Freya Mülhaupt (Hg.), John Heartfield, Ausstellungskatalog, Berlinische Galerie, Berlin 2009; Paul Pfeiffer. The Saints, Kehrer Verlag 2009; “Tucholsky, Heartfield, and Germany, Germany Above All”, in: History of Photography, 33 (2009) 1, S. 39-54.

Stipends: Alexander-von-Humboldt-Stiftung Stipendiatin, Getty Research Fellow, Kuratorische Recherchereise Goethe Institut, Belgian-American Foundation Stipend, Flemish Scientific Foundation Fellow

Biography artist Wolfgang Müller (*1957 Wolfsburg, Germany) 

Wolfgang Müller studied from 1980 till 1987 Visual Communication and Experimental Film at the University of Art, Berlin. In 1980 he founded together with Nicolas Utermöhlen the post-punk artist group Die Tödliche Doris. They performed at the documenta 8, at the MoMA, New York (1987), and at Quatrro, Tokio (1988). Since 1989 he travels and lives partly in Reykjaik, Iceland and he has participated in arts projects in both Germany and Iceland, addressing the Icelandic culture of elves, natural and supernatural phenomena. In 1998 he transferred the music of his first record with two sign language interpreters into signs and gestures and published it as a DVD, “Gehörlose Musik/Deaf Music” in 2006. In 2009, Müller published Séance Vocibus Avium, an audioplay with reconstructed sounds of extinct birds for which Müller was awarded the Karl Sczuka-Preis.  .

Solo exhibitions (selection): Galerie Zentrum K’, Bremen (2017), Galerie Katharina Maria Raab, Berlin (2015), Holger Priess Galerie, Hamburg (2012), Kunsthaus Dresden (2011), Kunsthaus Erfurt, Kunstverein Aachen (2009), Filmpräsentation in LACMA, Los Angeles (2009), und MOMAK, San Francisco (2007), Kunstverein Schloß Wolfsburg (2007)

Group exhibitions (selection): Staatliche Kunsthalle, Baden-Baden (2016), Ambush Gallery, Sydney (2016), Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg (2016), Haus der Kunst, München (2015), Stadtmuseum Berlin (2015),  Bröhan Museum Berlin (2014), Galerie Mila, Berlin (2013 und 2014), Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien (2011 und 2012), Werkleitz-Festival (2011), Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart (2010), ZKM Karlsruhe (2010)

Book publications (selection): Subkultur Westberlin 1979-1989. Freizeit (Philo Fine Arts, 2013), Kosmas (Verbrecher Verlag 2011), Valeska Gert. Ästhetik der Präsenzen (Martin Schmitz Verlag 2010), Neues von der Elfenfront (Suhrkamp 2007) und Blue Tit. Das deutsch-isländische Blaumeisenbuch (Martin Schmitz Verlag 1997).

Lectures: Gastprofessur für Experimentelle Plastik an der HfBK Hamburg (2001-2002), Lehraufträge u.a. an der FHNW Hochschule für Gestaltung und Kunst, Basel (2003), FH Joanneum, Graz (2003), Iceland Academy of the Arts (2004), FU Berlin (2010).

Stipends / Awards: Karl-Sczuka Preis (2009), Ausstellungs- und Buchfinanzierung Die Tödliche Doris ‚Kunst‘ vom Kunstfonds e.V., (1999), Arbeitsstipendium Stiftung Kunstfonds Bereich Literatur (1996), Arbeitsstipendium des Berliner Senats Bereich Kunst (1993)

Curatorial projects (selection): Gebärde Zeichen Kunst, Gehörlose Kultur / Hörende Kultur, Kunstraum Kreuzberg / Bethanein, 2012-2013 / Pause. Valeska Gert: Bewegte Fragmente, in Zusammenarbeit mit An Paenhuysen, Hamburger Banhof – Museum für Gegenwart – Berlin, 2010-2011 / Schweizer durch Schnitt, Studierende der FHBB Basel und „Kluppur frá Reykjavík im Frisöre Beige, Berlin, 2004 / Der Goldene Schnitt, Studierende der Klasse Prof. Wolfgang Müller aus der Hochschule der Künste Hamburg, im Frisör Beige, Berlin, 2002 / Die Hormone Des Mannes, Schwules Museum Berlin, 1994