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Grand Theft Auto. Kristian Vistrup Madsen about Frieda Toranzo Jaeger's artworks

Hot, wet women caressing cars with soapy sponges, and sweaty mechanics in dirty tank tops, their wrenches and pliers symbolic substitutes for the phallus—these are the protagonists of our culture’s widely held erotic fixation with cars. At the center of it, of course, is the engine, the heir to the horse’s age-old status as the ultimate emblem of virility. Frieda Toranzo Jaeger’s work can be understood as a vandalization of this semantic field: she keys the paint of the car and takes it for a ride.

Auto-eroticism could be the title of a great many of her works, though, so far, it is the title only of one: a tripartite painting of the underbelly of a car, with its various tubes and parts sensuously fingered by pink hands. In its straightforward sense we could translate auto-eroticism simply as “car sex,” a motif—two people, women, fucking on the back seat—that appears in several of Jaeger’s works, for instance Tapicería Nocturna (2017) and Sappho (2019). To use the term of the scholar José Esteban Muñoz, we could call this a form of disidentification: to mobilize, or even luxuriate in, the power of long-established notions—say, the relationship between the virile and the phallus, or otherness and the exotic—but in doing so, rewiring their logic. The car appears in Jaeger’s works with all the horsepower of cultural hegemony, but to other, more ambivalent ends.

And, as in anything even vaguely related to psychoanalysis—the language of which Jaeger’s work is steeped in—ambivalence is key. Auto derives from the Greek word for self, while Eros has to do with desire, something usually aimed at what the self is not. But also, as Sigmund Freud so famously posited, the erotic is powered by death drive. The roar of an engine, speed, is sexy because it connotes danger, anticipates destruction. Sex cannot be disentangled from self-annihilation, whether of a romantic or sadomasochistic nature. There is a contradiction, then, between the car as a form of self that moves through the world and the presence of the erotic, which simultaneously affirms the self and negates it by making it at once the subject and the object of desire. And so we can understand the interior of the car as a complex psychological sphere, and Jaeger’s painting Autoeroticism as a portrait of the circuitous ways of the subconscious.

Free-standing and divided into several panels, Jaeger’s paintings are often reminiscent of altarpieces. At a time when most painting was done directly on the wall, the altarpiece was autonomous—like a car, it moves. But whereas a gothic painting would traditionally be read like a book, from left to right, birth to death, Christmas to Easter, Jaeger’s are circular. In Autofellatio (2020) the viewer’s gaze begins with the mechanical contraption at its center and moves outwards in a spiral. Hope the Air Conditioning Is On While Facing Global Warming (Part 1) is another car interior and another point of access to the subconscious. Like a Rorschach test, it opens diagonally upward to both sides, producing a dynamic mirror effect that is enhanced by the supple curves of the car. Autoeroticism repeats this composition, but manically, the dense undergrowth of the car, with its twisting tubes, making a flurry of circles. Here is a closed circuit that endlessly feeds back into itself. This is part of what makes it a self and secures its autonomy. It is also what closes it off to the world. Again: ambivalence.

In Freud, auto-eroticism refers to a stage in the development of infant sexuality in which desire does not have an object but is oriented toward the subject’s own genitals. The Swiss psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler used Freud’s theory as the basis for his now so prevalent definition of autism, however, crucially excising the erotic, thus causing great dispute with Freud, who would never concede that the two could be separated. Autofellatio reads as a manifesto of masculine auto-eroticism: an autistic circle-jerk of toxic virility, which, in a bold gesture of disidentification, Jaeger signs with her name in great lightning bolt-yellow script. But at the same time, in this picture, every rod is also a hole, every line loops back to itself. The phallus is always also not.

The autofellationist is someone who can such his own cock, a maneuver that will bend his body into a circle not unlike those that repeat throughout Jaeger’s oeuvre. It is at once autistic, narcissistic, as well a non-reproductive sexual act that breaks with a heteronormative pattern—more than ambivalent, it is multivalent. A 2001 article in the US porn magazine Hustler suggests the practice might actually be illegal:

Eighteen states have sodomy laws on the books, banning oral sex between two consenting adults. Could an overzealous district attorney extend the blowjob ban to a single consenting adult? “You never know; it might fly,” says a criminal defense attorney, who wishes to remain anonymous. “I wouldn’t be surprised in the least if a law prohibiting autofellatio were upheld by the present Supreme Court.”

Though somewhat far-fetched, the example does point to the subversive aspects of the auto-erotic: how it breaks with linearity and dismantles the boundaries of subject and object. We see this when in several of Jaeger’s works the high-tech aesthetic of artifice and mechanics associated with cars blends at its edges with unruly natural elements like fern leaves and thorny branches. Where the auto points inward, the ex- of exotic, like the ex- of existence, refers to the outside. A tension which Jaeger very often sustains in her works is that between the private and public spheres. The decision of the US Supreme Court in Bowers v. Hardwick (1986), which put into effect the sodomy laws mentioned in the Hustler article, and would not be overturned until 2003, Muñoz reminds us, “efficiently dissolved the right to privacy of all gays and lesbians, in essence opening all our bedrooms to the state.” Transgressions of the private sphere are structural and political; they are part of how the system works. The solution that Muñoz proposes, and which we see enacted with such force and humor in Jaeger, is to disidentify, and drive the eros in your auto to the exos on your own terms.

The power of transgressing the private sphere relies on the scandal of revelation: that there would be a shameless secret to uncover, an illusion to break. Jaeger’s works are three-dimensional set pieces, asking the viewer to move around them in order to see their empty backsides, and see that the depth they purport is literal, produced like on a theater stage. In Autofellatio the central component hangs directly on the wall, while the smaller panels which form a circle around it are suspended from the ceiling at a distance. The integrity of the work does not hinge on the illusion of a unified plane being maintained—quite the opposite. Jaeger bares its construction as a vampire bares their fangs, in a mode at once confrontational and flirtatious. Others are like folding screens, alluding to a sense of bashfulness entirely misplaced in the world of these works where the inside of the car is the outside of the painting, and sex is always already both private and public. In Jaeger’s works there is no scandalous return of the repressed. More than merely honest, they are frank, and demonstratively so; they take pleasure in no nonsense. And this is also what guarantees their fierce autonomy.

Still, the very idea of autonomy in painting, as well as the automatism of a car, remains a source of conflict in the works. The fact of the auto as a self, effectuated in the promise of the driverless cars of the near future, is a challenge precisely to the autonomy of those inside it—a threat to the Freudian drives, to desire and virility. Does the car’s agency strip us of our own? Sappho (2019) is the work in which ultimate interiority, the auto-erotic space of the car, most completely collapses into the ex- of the exotic, eclipsing the relation of self to other. Two women have oral sex, sprawled across three car seats in black leather, thick and taught like the torsos of gorillas. They are surrounded by a lush junglescape reminiscent of Henri Rousseau’s fantasies of the wild, and joined, absurdly, by several Pomeranian lapdogs. Here Jaeger offers a rather sober response to panicked questions about castration anxiety and the waning of libido posed by the self-driving car: When no one has to worry about steering the car, surely that just leaves us with more time to get on with the task at hand. Sappho portrays activity and passivity dissolved into a murky in-between: a fucking which is not aimed at ejaculation, a trip without a destination, without end.

Such a picture puts pressure on the distinction Freud so wanted to maintain between wanting the other and wanting to be the other—that is, between desire and identification. In Identification Papers, Diana Fuss marks that distinction as “precarious” at best. She revises Freud’s theory by proposing instead “vampirism” as a mode, which is

both other-incorporating and self-producing; it delimits a more ambiguous space where desire and identification appear less opposed than coterminous, where the desire to be the other (identification) draws its very sustenance from the desire to have the other.

This vampiric style of agency is not endangered by the contradiction between auto and eros. Rather, it understands autonomy as something that does not require authoritarian transgressions such as Bowers v. Hardwick in order to sustain itself, but in fact thrives on mutual contamination. This logic unlocks the vast amount of energy and dynamism we see in Jaeger’s works, with their circular compositions and strong sense of velocity. “Speed is not very often applied in painting,” Jaeger said to me, “I wanted to know: how do you make a painting fast?” It has to do with getting the wheels of desire moving—to hijack the biggest car you can find and push it down a hill.

Text by Kristian Vistrup Madsen. It will be published in the catalogue accompanying the Finkenwerder Art Prize exhibition 2022.

Works Cited

  • José Esteban Muñoz: Disidentifications, University of Minnesota Press, 1999.
  • Dan Kapelovitz: “Because They Can: The Risks and Rewards of Auto-Fellatio,” Hustler, January 2001.
  • Diana Fuss: Identification Papers: Readings on Psychoanalysis, Sexuality, and Culture, Routledge, 1995.

The filled auditorium at the opening of the 2024/25 academic year; photo: Tim Albrecht

Autumn program for everyone

The start of the winter semester at the HFBK Hamburg is accompanied by an extensive program of events including performances, screenings, exhibitions and book presentations.

Graphic design of the exhibition title

"The New Woman - How Female Artists and Designers shaped the Image of Modernism", graphic by Liudmila Savelyeva, Karla Krey, Amira Mostafa (Klasse Digitale Grafik)

The New Woman

The exhibition "The New Woman - How Female Artists and Designers Shaped the Image of Modernism" presents more than 50 works by 14 selected female artists and designers who studied at the Staatliche Kunstgewerbeschule zu Hamburg, the predecessor institution of the HFBK, from 1907 onwards. At a time when women were still denied access to many other art academies.

The cinema in the new film house, Finkenau 42; photo: Tim Albrecht

Opening of the 2024/25 semester centred on the new film house

After six decades of outstanding film education at the HFBK Hamburg, we will celebrate the opening of the new film house on Wednesday, October 16, 2024 with the start of the academic year. We will also introduce the new professors and welcome the new students.

Matthis Frickhœffer in his installation "Framing Electric Dreams" (with Sebastian Kommer) as part of the exhibition "Imaging Health I" 2022 at the ICAT of the HFBK Hamburg; photo: Tim Albrecht

Doing a PhD at the HFBK Hamburg

The HFBK Hamburg is the first art academy in Germany to offer a PhD in Art Practice. At the start of the programme, we are looking for artistic doctoral projects that deal with changing health concepts and the diverse social transformation processes from an artistic perspective. Apply now!

Fade-in of the Hannah Arendt sequence from the conversation with Günter Gaus at the start of the conversation between Juliane Rebentisch and Natan Sznaider in the auditorium of the HFBK Hamburg on 7 June 2024; photo: Maximilian Glas

Summer of theory

The past semester was filled with lectures, discussions, panels and talks. Here we offer a brief look back at the summer of Theory 2024 with the lecture series "Anti-Judaism and Anti-Semitism in Art", the project "Archives of the Body - The Body of Archiving" as well as the talks with Natan Sznaider.

Detail: Installation by Mark Morris; photo: Tim Albrecht

Graduate Show 2024 - Letting Go

From 12 to 14 July 2024 (2 - 8 p.m.), more than 160 graduates from the 2023/24 academic year will be showing their final artistic works in a comprehensive exhibition at the HFBK Hamburg. In addition, all graduation films will be presented in the new cinema hall of the Filmhaus at Finkenau 42 as part of Final Cut.

Julia Scher, Territorium, 2024, installationview at ICAT of HFBK Hamburg; photo: Tim Albrecht

Finkenwerder Art Prize 2024

The US artist Julia Scher will receive the Finkenwerder Art Prize 2024, while Anna Stüdeli, who studied sculpture at the HFBK Hamburg, will be honoured with the Finkenwerder Grant from the HFBK.

Archives of the Body - The Body in Archiving

With a symposium, an exhibition, a film programme and a digital publication, the research project conceived by Prof. Hanne Loreck and Vanessa Gravenor examines the "archive" as a form of order with regard to the human body. Which body archives and discourses have become established? What potentials for political-aesthetic resistance and activism could and can emerge?

Sharon Poliakine, Untitled, 2023, oil on canvas, detail

New partnership with the School of Arts at the University of Haifa

On the occasion of a new partnership with the School of Arts at the University of Haifa, the HFBK Hamburg is presenting an exhibition by the artists Birgit Brandis, Sharon Poliakine and HFBK students.

photo: Ronja Lotz

Exhibition recommendations

Numerous exhibitions with HFBK participation are currently on display. We present a small selection and invite you to visit the exhibitions during the term break.

Visitors of the annual exhibition 2024; photo: Lukes Engelhardt

Annual Exhibition 2024 at the HFBK Hamburg

From February 9 -11, 2024 (daily 2-8 pm) the students of HFBK Hamburg present their artistic productions from the past year. In addition, the exhibition »Think & Feel! Speak & Act!« curated by Nadine Droste, as well as the presentation of exchange students from Goldsmiths, University of London, can be seen at ICAT.

Examination of the submitted portfolios

How to apply: study at HFBK Hamburg

The application period for studying at the HFBK Hamburg runs from 1 February to 5 March 2024, 4 p.m. All important information can be found here.

photo: Tim Albrecht

(Ex)Changes of / in Art

There's a lot going on at the HFBK Hamburg at the end of the year: exhibitions at ICAT, the ASA students' Open Studios in Karolinenstraße, performances in the Extended Library and lectures in the Aula Wartenau.

Extended Libraries

Knowledge is now accessible from anywhere, at any time. In such a scenario, what role(s) can libraries still play? How can they support not only as knowledge archives but also as facilitators of artistic knowledge production? As an example, we present library projects by students and alumni, as well as our new knowledge space: the Extended Library.

And Still I Rise

For over 20 years, US artist Rajkamal Kahlon has been interested in the connections between aesthetics and power, which are organized across historical and geographical boundaries, primarily through violence. With this solo exhibition, the HFBK Hamburg presents the versatile work of the professor of painting and drawing to the Hamburg art public for the first time.

photo: Lukes Engelhardt

photo: Lukes Engelhardt

No Tracking. No Paywall.

Just Premium Content! The (missing) summer offers the ideal opportunity to catch up on what has been missed. In our media library, faculty, students and alumni share knowledge and discussions with us - both emotional moments and controversial discourses. Through podcasts and videos, they contribute to current debates and address important topics that are currently in focus.

Let's talk about language

There are currently around 350 international students studying at the HFBK Hamburg, who speak 55 different languages - at least these are the official languages of their countries of origin. A quarter of the teaching staff have an international background. And the trend is rising. But how do we deal productively with the multilingualism of university members in everyday life? What ways of communication can be found? The current Lerchenfeld issue looks at creative solutions for dealing with multilingualism and lets numerous former international students have their say.

photo: Miriam Schmidt / HFBK

Graduate Show 2023: Unfinished Business

From July 13 to 16, 2023, 165 Bachelor's and Master's graduates of the class of 2022/23 will present their final projects from all areas of study. Under the title Final Cut, all graduation films will be shown on a big screen in the auditorium of the HFBK Hamburg.

A disguised man with sunglasses holds a star-shaped sign for the camera. It says "Suckle". The picture is taken in black and white.

photo: Honey-Suckle Company

Let`s work together

Collectives are booming in the art world. And they have been for several decades. For the start of the summer semester 2023, the new issue of the Lerchenfeld Magazine is dedicated to the topic of collective practice in art, presents selected collectives, and also explores the dangers and problems of collective working.

Jahresausstellung 2023, Arbeit von Toni Mosebach / Nora Strömer; photo: Lukes Engelhardt

Annual Exhibition 2023 at HFBK Hamburg

From February 10-12, students from all departments will present their artistic works at Lerchenfeld 2, Wartenau 15 and AtelierHaus, Lerchenfeld 2a. At ICAT, Tobias Peper, Artistic Director of the Kunstverein Harburger Bahnhof, curates an exhibition with HFBK master students. Also 10 exchange students from Goldsmiths, University of London will show their work there.

Symposium: Controversy over documenta fifteen

With this symposium on documenta fifteen on the 1st and 2nd of February, the HFBK Hamburg aims to analyze the background and context, foster dialogue between different viewpoints, and enable a debate that explicitly addresses anti-Semitism in the field of art. The symposium offers space for divergent positions and aims to open up perspectives for the present and future of exhibition making.

ASA Open Studios winter semester 2021/22; photo: Marie-Theres Böhmker

ASA Open Studios winter semester 2021/22; photo: Marie-Theres Böhmker

The best is saved until last

At the end of the year, once again there will be numerous exhibitions and events with an HFBK context. We have compiled some of them here. You will also find a short preview of two lectures of the professionalization program in January.

Non-Knowledge, Laughter and the Moving Image, Grafik: Leon Lothschütz

Non-Knowledge, Laughter and the Moving Image, Grafik: Leon Lothschütz

Festival and Symposium: Non-Knowledge, Laughter and the Moving Image

As the final part of the artistic research project, the festival and symposium invite you to screenings, performances, talks, and discussions that explore the potential of the moving images and the (human and non-human) body to overturn our habitual course and change the dominant order of things.

Solo exhibition by Konstantin Grcic

From September 29 to October 23, 2022, Konstantin Grcic (Professor of Industrial Design) will be showing a room-sized installation at ICAT - Institute for Contemporary Art & Transfer at the HFBK Hamburg consisting of objects designed by him and existing, newly assembled objects. At the same time, the space he designed for workshops, seminars and office workstations in the AtelierHaus will be put into operation.

Amna Elhassan, Tea Lady, oil on canvas, 100 x 100 cm

Amna Elhassan, Tea Lady, oil on canvas, 100 x 100 cm

Art and war

"Every artist is a human being". This statement by Martin Kippenberger, which is as true as it is existentialist (in an ironic rephrasing of the well-known Beuys quote), gets to the heart of the matter in many ways. On the one hand, it reminds us not to look away, to be (artistically) active and to raise our voices. At the same time, it is an exhortation to help those who are in need. And that is a lot of people at the moment, among them many artists. That is why it is important for art institutions to discuss not only art, but also politics.

Merlin Reichert, Die Alltäglichkeit des Untergangs, Installation in der Galerie der HFBK; photo: Tim Albrecht

Graduate Show 2022: We’ve Only Just Begun

From July 8 to 10, 2022, more than 160 Bachelor’s and Master’s graduates of the class of 2021/22 will present their final projects from all majors. Under the title Final Cut, all graduation films will be shown on a big screen in the auditorium of the HFBK Hamburg. At the same time, the exhibition of the Sudanese guest lecturer Amna Elhassan can be seen in the HFBK gallery in the Atelierhaus.

Grafik: Nele Willert, Dennise Salinas

Grafik: Nele Willert, Dennise Salinas

June is full of art and theory

It has been a long time since there has been so much on offer: a three-day congress on the visuality of the Internet brings together international web designers; the research collective freethought discusses the role of infrastructures; and the symposium marking the farewell of professor Michaela Ott takes up central questions of her research work.

Renée Green. ED/HF, 2017. Film still. Courtesy of the artist, Free Agent Media, Bortolami Gallery, New York, and Galerie Nagel Draxler, Berlin/Cologne/Munich.

Renée Green. ED/HF, 2017. Film still. Courtesy of the artist, Free Agent Media, Bortolami Gallery, New York, and Galerie Nagel Draxler, Berlin/Cologne/Munich.

Finkenwerder Art Prize 2022

The Finkenwerder Art Prize, initiated in 1999 by the Kulturkreis Finkenwerder e.V., has undergone a realignment: As a new partner, the HFBK Hamburg is expanding the prize to include the aspect of promoting young artists and, starting in 2022, will host the exhibition of the award winners in the HFBK Gallery. This year's Finkenwerder Art Prize will be awarded to the US artist Renée Green. HFBK graduate Frieda Toranzo Jaeger receives the Finkenwerder Art Prize for recent graduates.

Amanda F. Koch-Nielsen, Motherslugger; photo: Lukas Engelhardt

Amanda F. Koch-Nielsen, Motherslugger; photo: Lukas Engelhardt

Nachhaltigkeit im Kontext von Kunst und Kunsthochschule

Im Bewusstsein einer ausstehenden fundamentalen gesellschaftlichen Transformation und der nicht unwesentlichen Schrittmacherfunktion, die einem Ort der künstlerischen Forschung und Produktion hierbei womöglich zukommt, hat sich die HFBK Hamburg auf den Weg gemacht, das Thema strategisch wie konkret pragmatisch für die Hochschule zu entwickeln. Denn wer, wenn nicht die Künstler*innen sind in ihrer täglichen Arbeit damit befasst, das Gegebene zu hinterfragen, genau hinzuschauen, neue Möglichkeiten, wie die Welt sein könnte, zu erkennen und durchzuspielen, einem anderen Wissen Gestalt zu geben

New studio in the row of houses at Lerchenfeld

New studio in the row of houses at Lerchenfeld, in the background the building of Fritz Schumacher; photo: Tim Albrecht

Raum für die Kunst

After more than 40 years of intensive effort, a long-cherished dream is becoming reality for the HFBK Hamburg. With the newly opened studio building, the main areas of study Painting/Drawing, Sculpture and Time-Related Media will finally have the urgently needed studio space for Master's students. It simply needs space for their own ideas, for thinking, for art production, exhibitions and as a depot.

Martha Szymkowiak / Emilia Bongilaj, Installation “Mmh”; photo: Tim Albrecht

Martha Szymkowiak / Emilia Bongilaj, Installation “Mmh”; photo: Tim Albrecht

Annual Exhibition 2022 at the HFBK

After last year's digital edition, the 2022 annual exhibition at the HFBK Hamburg will once again take place with an audience. From 11-13 February, students from all departments will present their artistic work in the building at Lerchenfeld, Wartenau 15 and the newly opened Atelierhaus.

Annette Wehrmann, photography from the series Blumensprengungen, 1991-95; photo: Ort des Gegen e.V., VG-Bild Kunst Bonn

Annette Wehrmann, photography from the series Blumensprengungen, 1991-95; photo: Ort des Gegen e.V., VG-Bild Kunst Bonn

Conference: Counter-Monuments and Para-Monuments.

The international conference at HFBK Hamburg on December 2-4, 2021 – jointly conceived by Nora Sternfeld and Michaela Melián –, is dedicated to the history of artistic counter-monuments and forms of protest, discusses aesthetics of memory and historical manifestations in public space, and asks about para-monuments for the present.

23 Fragen des Institutional Questionaire, grafisch umgesetzt von Ran Altamirano auf den Türgläsern der HFBK Hamburg zur Jahresausstellung 2021; photo: Charlotte Spiegelfeld

23 Fragen des Institutional Questionaire, grafisch umgesetzt von Ran Altamirano auf den Türgläsern der HFBK Hamburg zur Jahresausstellung 2021; photo: Charlotte Spiegelfeld

Diversity

Who speaks? Who paints which motif? Who is shown, who is not? Questions of identity politics play an important role in art and thus also at the HFBK Hamburg. In the current issue, the university's own Lerchenfeld magazine highlights university structures as well as student initiatives that deal with diversity and identity.

photo: Klaus Frahm

photo: Klaus Frahm

Summer Break

The HFBK Hamburg is in the lecture-free period, many students and teachers are on summer vacation, art institutions have summer break. This is a good opportunity to read and see a variety of things:

ASA Open Studio 2019, Karolinenstraße 2a, Haus 5; photo: Matthew Muir

ASA Open Studio 2019, Karolinenstraße 2a, Haus 5; photo: Matthew Muir

Live und in Farbe: die ASA Open Studios im Juni 2021

Since 2010, the HFBK has organised the international exchange programme Art School Alliance. It enables HFBK students to spend a semester abroad at renowned partner universities and, vice versa, invites international art students to the HFBK. At the end of their stay in Hamburg, the students exhibit their work in the Open Studios in Karolinenstraße, which are now open again to the art-interested public.

Studiengruppe Prof. Dr. Anja Steidinger, Was animiert uns?, 2021, Mediathek der HFBK Hamburg, Filmstill

Studiengruppe Prof. Dr. Anja Steidinger, Was animiert uns?, 2021, Mediathek der HFBK Hamburg, Filmstill

Unlearning: Wartenau Assemblies

The art education professors Nora Sternfeld and Anja Steidinger initiated the format "Wartenau Assemblies". It oscillates between art, education, research and activism. Complementing this open space for action, there is now a dedicated website that accompanies the discourses, conversations and events.

Ausstellungsansicht "Schule der Folgenlosigkeit. Übungen für ein anderes Leben" im Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg; photo: Maximilian Schwarzmann

Ausstellungsansicht "Schule der Folgenlosigkeit. Übungen für ein anderes Leben" im Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg; photo: Maximilian Schwarzmann

School of No Consequences

Everyone is talking about consequences: The consequences of climate change, the Corona pandemic or digitalization. Friedrich von Borries (professor of design theory), on the other hand, is dedicated to consequence-free design. In “School of No Consequences. Exercises for a New Life” at the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg, he links collection objects with a "self-learning room" set up especially for the exhibition in such a way that a new perspective on "sustainability" emerges and supposedly universally valid ideas of a "proper life" are questioned.

Annual Exhibition 2021 at the HFBK

Annual exhibition a bit different: From February 12- 14, 2021 students at the Hamburg University of Fine Arts, together with their professors, had developed a variety of presentations on different communication channels. The formats ranged from streamed live performances to video programs, radio broadcasts, a telephone hotline, online conferences, and a web store for editions. In addition, isolated interventions could be discovered in the outdoor space of the HFBK and in the city.

Katja Pilipenko

Katja Pilipenko

Semestereröffnung und Hiscox-Preisverleihung 2020

On the evening of November 4, the HFBK celebrated the opening of the academic year 2020/21 as well as the awarding of the Hiscox Art Prize in a livestream - offline with enough distance and yet together online.

Exhibition Transparencies with works by Elena Crijnen, Annika Faescke, Svenja Frank, Francis Kussatz, Anne Meerpohl, Elisa Nessler, Julia Nordholz, Florentine Pahl, Cristina Rüesch, Janka Schubert, Wiebke Schwarzhans, Rosa Thiemer, Lea van Hall. Organized by Prof. Verena Issel and Fabian Hesse; photo: Screenshot

Exhibition Transparencies with works by Elena Crijnen, Annika Faescke, Svenja Frank, Francis Kussatz, Anne Meerpohl, Elisa Nessler, Julia Nordholz, Florentine Pahl, Cristina Rüesch, Janka Schubert, Wiebke Schwarzhans, Rosa Thiemer, Lea van Hall. Organized by Prof. Verena Issel and Fabian Hesse; photo: Screenshot

Teaching Art Online at the HFBK

How the university brings together its artistic interdisciplinary study structure with digital formats and their possibilities.

Alltagsrealität oder Klischee?; photo: Tim Albrecht

Alltagsrealität oder Klischee?; photo: Tim Albrecht

HFBK Graduate Survey

Studying art - and what comes next? The clichéd images stand their ground: Those who have studied art either become taxi drivers, work in a bar or marry rich. But only very few people could really live from art – especially in times of global crises. The HFBK Hamburg wanted to know more about this and commissioned the Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences at the University of Hamburg to conduct a broad-based survey of its graduates from the last 15 years.

Ausstellung Social Design, Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg, Teilansicht; photo: MKG Hamburg

Ausstellung Social Design, Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg, Teilansicht; photo: MKG Hamburg

How political is Social Design?

Social Design, as its own claim is often formulated, wants to address social grievances and ideally change them. Therefore, it sees itself as critical of society – and at the same time optimizes the existing. So what is the political dimension of Social Design – is it a motor for change or does it contribute to stabilizing and normalizing existing injustices?