JULIA WIEGER: WORKING TOGETHER: IN ARCHIVES, WITH GHOSTS -- AS VAMPIRES -- IN THE CONTEXT OF MY PHD IN ARTISTIC PRACTICE

THURSDAY 23 JULY, 13:00 - 13:25 

Lecture Room 1

Together with my friend and colleague Nina Hoechtl, I work as the art duo Secretariat for Ghosts Archival Politics and Gaps (SKGAL). Since 2012, we have worked with several (mostly independent) archives, often in long-term collaborations, on artistic research projects that have resulted in exhibitions, workshops, texts, videos, or a film.

Through our shared practice, we have developed ways and ideas of doing artistic research in archives. For example, we have long explored notions of ghosts in archives. For my PhD in Artistic Practice, I want to work with vampires as another archival actor. Nina and I came across this idea while working together in the archive of the feminist artist VALIE EXPORT, who recently passed away.

Building relationships in and with archives – its workers, materials, spaces – has played a central role in our artistic approach to archives. We propose to read this relationship through the figure of the vampire: one that feeds on, inhabits, and troubles the boundaries between past and present, establishing an intimate exchange between what has been preserved and what can still come to life. As part of my PhD research, I want to reflect on what role vampirism plays in our collaboration as SKGAL. At the assembly, I want to ask: How does vampirism function as a model of collaboration – especially in the context of my PhD? Can it be understood as a sustained attachment maintained through reciprocal acts of care, return, and exchange?