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Institutional Critique and the Invention of the Neo-Avant-Garde

Thursday, Nov 29, 2018, 8 pm

Panel discussion
Event on site
Free admission, In English

Panel discussion with Isi Fiszman (founding member A 37 90 89), Kasper König (project co-ordinator A 37 90 89), Barbara Vanderlinden (curator and author, Brussels), moderated by Eva-Maria Gillich (project manager n.b.k.)

Founded in Antwerp in 1969 by a progressive group of collectors, gallery owners as well as art mediators and supervised by Kasper König, the project space A 37 90 89 developed a diverse curatorial practice that tested alternative models of art production and art mediation beyond the institutions. The artists and mediators involved in Antwerp are today among the outstanding representatives of the neo-avant-garde. They formulated the radical changes of the way contemporary art is presented and received, which resulted from the political and artistic upheaval of the 1960s and 1970s, and expressed these at the project space A 37 90 89 in an emblematic way.


On occasion of the exhibition project A 37 90 89 – The Invention of the Neo-Avant-Garde at Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, Isi Fiszman, Kasper König, and Barbara Vanderlinden talk about art practices critical of institutions since the 1960s.


Prof. Kasper König ranks among Germany’s most important curators. In 1977, together with Klaus Bußmann, he initiated Skulptur Projekte Münster. From 2000 until 2012, he was director of Museum Ludwig in Cologne; in 2014, he curated the Manifesta 10 in St. Petersburg. As an exhibition maker, König organized numerous major exhibitions, for example Westkunst (Kölner Messehallen, 1981), von hier aus (Messe Düsseldorf, 1984) and Der zerbrochene Spiegel (Kunsthalle Wien, Deichtorhallen Hamburg, 1993).


Isi Fiszman worked in Brussels as a merchant, printer and art collector. Active in the student movement and close to the left, he repeatedly supported politically engaged artistic projects and initiatives. In 1968 he founded the Vrije Aktie Groep Antwerp together with Marcel Broodthaers, Panamarenko a. o., which realized performances and protests on social and ecological issues. In 1969 he was one of the founding members of A 37 90 89 and substantially helped to finance the project.


Barbara Vanderlinden is a curator, art critic and art historian. As a professor, she founded the Exhibition Laboratory (2015) at the University of Arts Helsinki; previously, she was a visiting professor and initiator of the International Curatorial Program at the Gwangju Biennial (2001), and teached at CCS Bard, New York, and the San Francisco Art Institute (2005–2007). She was the founder and artistic director of the Brussels Biennial (2008) and curator of the Taipei Biennial (2004) as well as Manifesta 2, Luxembourg (1998). In 2018 the exhibition A 37 90 89: Beyond the Museum, curated by Vanderlinden, opened at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Antwerp.

Der Neue Berliner Kunstverein wird gefördert durch die LOTTO-Stiftung Berlin