An international group of researchers prepares a series of case studies on works by the Canadian artist Vera Frenkel, from 1974 to the present. Vera Frenkel and her transdisciplinary works such as installations, videos, essays and websites have been a major presence on the international stage since the 1970s. They raise questions of central importance in a time impacted by migration, displacement and violence. The focus is on the effectiveness of art as a vehicle of cultural analysis.
Some people find art disturbing; they want it to be contained and I like art that infiltrates and subverts. (Vera Frenkel)
I’m walking through the gateway between art and life and, for me, that blurring is a necessity because I feel that so much of life is invented and so much of art is inevitable. (Vera Frenkel)
The Canadian artist Vera Frenkel, born in Slovakia, has been a major presence on the international stage from the 1970s to the present. Her installations, videos, essays and websites address questions of central importance in a time impacted as never before by migration, displacement and violence. These include archiving policies, the transmission of cultural memory and forgetting in the media, and the interactions of institutional and individual narratives during fundamental historical transitions. This makes her a central reference for current artistic practices that are increasingly taking up these issues.
The following case studies have been prepared on individual works of the Canadian artist Vera Frenkel from 1974 to the present: Dot Tuer: Beyond the new Media Frame. The Poetics of Absence in Vera Frenkel’s String Games; Anne Bénichou: Le dédective, le fil et les traces. L’art des indices dans No Solution: A Suspense Thriller (1977-78); Griselda Pollock: Secrets, lifes and other remarkable stories. Vera Frenkel’s Cornelia Lumsden Project; Sigrid Schade: This is your Messiah speaking (working title); Sigrid Schade: … from the Transit Bar (working title); Ryszard W. Kluszczynski: Body Missing (working title); John Bentley Mays: Vera Frenkel’s Body Missing and Elegy; Elizabeth Legge: Creativity re-purposed: The Institute: or what we do for love; Sylvie Lacerte: ONCE NEAR WATER (working title); Frank Wagner: Vera Frenkel’s The Blue Train. Das Gedächtnis der Bilder und die mediale Synthetisierung von Geschichte(n) (The memory of images and media synthetization of (hi)stories).
A bibliography, list of exhibitions and biography is prepared (by Amy Furness).
Sigrid Schade writes the introduction: Art in Transformation / Travelling works: “Vera Frenkel’s transdisciplinary art practice (1970-today)” (working title)
Vera Frenkel works on the insert: The Blue Train, a work designed for an exhibition entitled "Archival Dialogues. Reading the Black Star Collection" in the Ryerson Image Centre, Ryerson University Toronto.
Publication:
Vera Frenkel, edited by Sigrid Schade, Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern, 2013. German and English edition