[ISEA2017] Panel: Sophie-Carolin Wagner — Establishing the Continuously Unfinished: The Institution as an Artistic Medium

Panel Statement

Panel: Institutions in Crisis

Keywords: Artistic Medium, Institution, Art, Discoursive Territory, Performative Act, Artistic Strategy, Processuality, Experimentation, Dispositive

When realising themselves as dispostifs, no matter whether they extend into a physical or nonphysical dimension, artistic works are motivated by urgency.
The engagement of artists with and within institutions increased within the last century, yet they may well not only be applicants or founders of institutional formats, but utilise these formats and the processes establishing them as an artistic strategy, creating a dispostif to meet an urgency framed by a specific historical context. This paper discusses the properties of institutions, which are indeed exemplary for dispositifs and are permitting their appliance as artistic media.

  • Sophie-Carolin Wagner investigates elaborately, works passionately, quotes vigorously, writes peripatetically, communicates epistemologically, but not exclusively insightfully, holds as many degrees as names and never signed up to Facebook. She lives and works as in Vienna, Austria, currently as board member of RIAT Research Institute for Arts and Technology and Co-Editor of the Journal for Research Cultures.

Full text (PDF) p. 654-656