de en

Never Ready: A Congress on the Visuality of the Internet

The multitude of spaces in the online world have widely been unified in the last few years. Innovation and finding your own unique solutions have been pushed aside, easing us into lazy comfort. Together with designers, writers and artists from all over the world we want to go off grid for a breather and get out of our cozy pillows. Together we want to be nostalgic about a new web that has yet to be conjured by us and share new possibilities and viewpoints for a happier and more diverse time in front of and behind the screen. We envision a digital detox from the online anecdotes and how the internet should look and delve deep into new narrations that break up with our templated reality. To overthrow the golden rules of web design to which we are bound and embrace lost or new ways of how the web works.

Speakers:
DVTK (GB/FR), Kexin Hao (NL), Marco Land (DE), Olia Lialina (DE), Laiqa Mohid (GB), Sebastian Schmieg (DE), Laurel Schwulst (US), Vera van de Seyp (NL), Harald Peter Ström (SE), Yehwan Song (KR), Liebermann, Kiepe, Reddemann (DE)

Team: Moritz Ebeling, Stina Frenz, Wiebke Grieshop, Kim Kleinert, Karla Krey, Tigran Saakyan, Torben Spieker, Stephan Thiel, Leoni Voltz, Yulia Wagner; Klasse Digitale Grafik
Prof. Christoph Knoth, Prof. Konrad Renner

https://never-ready.hfbk.net/

Timetable

  • 2:30 p.m.: Introduction & Performative Opening
  • 3 p.m.: 5 Colours for The Eternal Wave by Laurel Schwulst
    Laurel Schwulst is an American artist, writer, and professor. Selected works include “How to Build a Bird Kite” (interactive for the New York Times, 2021), Flight Simulator (app for iOS and Android published by Soft, 2019), and Perfume Area (book co-written with Sydney Shen, published by Ambient Works, 2015).
  • 4 p.m.: Thoughts from 25 years of web designing (when no one is a web designer ((myself included (((maybe))) by Harald Peter Ström
    Peter Ström (1978) is a graphic / web designer and educator based in Stockholm, Sweden. Peter started out exploring and participating in the early web in the mid 1990s, as part of the first generation growing up online. He launched web publications such as Harald.net, Reload.org and (the infamous) Alfabag.com. He later founded web design agency Speedway (later Abel & Baker), spent a few years in Berlin and eventually studied graphic design at the Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam. After graduating in 2006, he relocated to Stockholm and launched graphic design studio Konst & Teknik with Mattias Jakobsson, with the aim to intersect traditional graphic design and digital design into one practice.
    Since 2016 he is senior lecturer in Visual Communication and part of the faculty at Beckmans College of Design where he teaches and researches design for screens.
    In 1998 he was named Swedens Coolest Webdesigner by industry publication Cap & Design. Exactly 20 years later, in 2018, he was awarded the Berling Price for his work bridging the digital and analogue typography in Sweden.
    Currently (2022) Peter works on a few design commussions with Konst & Teknik, researches the preservation of digital design as well as being an active board member at contemporary art gallery Issues. He is also a slow learner and intrigued sceptic on all thing Web3.
  • 5:15 p.m.: Four You. History of the WWW in four epochs: Under Construction, Update, Upload, U by Olia Lialina
    Olia Lialina (b. Moscow, 1971) is among the best-known participants in the 1990s net.art scene - an early-days, network-based art pioneer. Her early work had a great impact on recognizing the Internet as a medium for artistic expression and storytelling. This century her continuous and close attention to Internet architecture, "net.language" and vernacular web has made her an important voice in contemporary art and new media theory. Lialina is credited with founding one of the earliest web galleries, Art Teleportacia. She is cofounder and keeper of One Terabyte of Kilobyte Age archive and a professor at Merz Akademie in Stuttgart, Germany and a GIF model.
  • 6 p.m.: Panel: Hypertext as Native Language with Laurel Schwulst and Harald Peter Ström
  • 7 p.m.: In & off screen, within & amongst bodies by Kexin Hao
    Kexin Hao is a visual artist and designer born in Beijing and based in The Netherlands. Her practice is a marriage of graphic design and performance art. Having initiated and being involved in various creative projects across China and Europe, Kexin challenges not only geometrical borders but also disciplines of design, film, performance, and music, as well as physical boundaries between art and non-art space. Using a daring visual language, the work is a constant swing between intimate close-up on personal stories and zoom-out to collective narratives; between a past of political heaviness and a flashy modernity rendered in humour and sarcasm. In her recent works, Kexin investigates in the themes of body, rituals, health, archive, and collective memory.
  • 8 p.m.: Students Meeting, BBQ and Drinks

10 a.m.: Body as Interface, Guided Meditation with Kim Boutin
Kim Boutin is a designer, educator, and researcher. She is the co-founder of DVTK, a digital direction studio based between London and Paris. The studio advises and creates virtual worlds for the digital space. Its approach to interactive design is rooted in forward-thinking strategy, in order to create experiences for a diverse range of clients, from fashion (Kenzo, Coperni, Nike) to arts (Serpentine Galleries, Barbican, ZKM) and tech (Apple, Google, Farfetch).

11 a.m.: <Dynamic Equilibrium> by Yehwan Song
Yehwan Song is a Korean-born artist and designer.
She designs and develops experimental websites and interactive graphics. Through her projects, she tries to flip the general understanding of web design and subvert common user-experience behaviors, which oversimplify users' behavior. She pursues diversity above consistency and efficiency.

12 noon: Original Copy by Marco Land
Marco Land is a designer, programmer and co-founder of ungroup, a digital design studio based in Berlin. The studio works collaboratively across various media for a diverse range of clients from individuals to institutions, focusing on interactive work.

2 p.m.: Serendipitous Borders: Interface as a place by Laiqa Mohid
Laiqa Mohid's work deals with interaction and world building as a method to connect people, places and memory. Using data and information as a material, Laiqa Mohid fondly paintd with code in the free time and tries to teach my computer what it means to be human.

3 p.m.: Hybrid Playground by Vera van de Seyp
Vera van de Seyp is a designer and creative coder. She has great interest in artificial intelligence, languages and finding systems in chaos. Currently based in Amsterdam, she runs her own practice, teaches at various art institutes and gives workshops and lectures across the world to inspire makers to code and make their own tools.

4 p.m.: Virtual Architectures by DVTK: Kim Boutin

5:15 p.m.: Panel: Anecdotes about the Interface with Kim Boutin, Marco Land and Yehwan Song

7 p.m.: Scroll Bar by Liebermann Kiepe Reddemann

8 p.m./9 p.m.: BBQ and Drinks, Never Ready Club

10 a.m.: Breakfast

11 a.m.: Web3n3rgy by Sebastian Schmieg
Sebastian Schmieg investigates the algorithmic circulation of images, texts, and bodies. He creates playful interventions that penetrate the shiny surfaces of our networked society and explore the realities that lie behind them. In particular Schmieg focuses on labor, algorithmic management, and artificial intelligence. He works in a wide range of media including video, website, installation, artist book, custom software, lecture performance, and delivery service. Schmieg’s work has been exhibited internationally at The Photographers’ Gallery London, MdbK Leipzig, HeK Basel, and Chronus Art Center Shanghai. He is a professor of Interface Design at HTW Dresden and lives and works in Berlin and Dresden.

12 noon: Class Rooms without Firewalls with Sebastian Schmieg, Vera van de Seyp and Laiqa Mohid

1 p.m.: Open End

photo: Ronja Lotz

photo: Ronja Lotz

Everything for Everyone

In May and June, the HFBK Hamburg offers a varied program with exhibitions, lectures, artist talks and performances. Lots of good reasons to shake off spring tiredness and jump into the programme...

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.

Two visitors in front of a screen, video work by Max Pilger is running.

Graduate show 2018, master work by Max Pilger; photo: Lukes Engelhardt

Binge Watching

It's semester break at the HFBK Hamburg - the perfect time to go through our numerous recordings. We have compiled a small selection here.

Examination of the submitted portfolios

Examination of the submitted portfolios

How to apply: study at HFBK Hamburg

From February 1 to March 6, 2023, 4 p.m., you can apply to study at HFBK Hamburg. Please find all important info here.

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

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.

View of the packed auditorium at the start of the semester; photo: Lukas Engelhardt

View of the packed auditorium at the start of the semester; photo: Lukas Engelhardt

Wishing you a happy welcome

We are pleased to welcome many new faces to the HFBK Hamburg for the winter semester 2022/23. We have compiled some background information on our new professors and visiting professors here.

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

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?