art information
Artist and Art Publications by Dietmar Kirves
WESERBURG | Museum of Modern Art
Teerhof 20 | 28199 Bremen | ►www.weserburg.de
29.01. — 2.05.2010
Invitationard
“Information from artists and artists’ groups in whose working fields a consciousness-building concept is discernible.” — It was with this short sentence that publisher/artist Dietmar Kirves — also known to many as a German member of the “NO!art” movement — characterized his two publication series “art information” and “media news”. In the exhibition “Dietmar Kirves — art information”, the Research Centre for Artists’ Publications will now be presenting a survey of the editions put out by “mediacontact”, the publishing company founded by Kirves in Düsseldorf in 1970. With the art information and media news series, his aim was to create a platform for making information on contemporary art accessible to a broad public inexpensively, and thus to encourage a creative dialog with the public. In the period from 1970 to 1973, Kirves asked artists belonging to various art movements — generally of an anti-art-establishment nature — to submit momentary takes on their working processes as well as examples of their work. In the “art information” series, editions by Joseph Beuys, Michael Buthe, Terry Fox, Jochen Gerz, Joel Glassman, Anatol Herzfeld, Jean Le Gac and Sarkis Zabunyan appeared between 1971 and 1973. Hansjürgen Bulkowski, Christine Franz, Florian Schneider-Esleben, Timm Schröder, Landfried Schröpfer and Fritz Schwegler contributed to the series “media news” (1970—1971). Whereas “art information” concentrated primarily on the presentation of artists’ and artist groups’ work results and projects, “media news” brought a wide range of socially relevant topics relating to such areas as communication, motivation and psychology up for discussion. In editions of up to two hundred copies, the publications were circulated by mediacontact in Germany, France and America.
In addition to the publications, photos as well as film and audio material will be shown, shedding light on events which took place at the “mediacontact agency” during the years in question.
An exhibition of the Research Centre for Artists’ Publications in cooperation with students of the University Bremen.
