Christian HartardWorksResearch, Texts, CVstudio@hartard.com de
                  

I have extensively worked on the history and theory of sculptural space, on ideologies of post-war urbanism and on contemporary sociologies of art and their notion of artistic autonomy. Currently, my focus is on an investigative approach to art (artistic research). In particular, my scholarly and artistic interest is centered on the aesthetics of post-image art and the paradigm shift from representation to presence, from image to space, body, material and process. 



Performative Objects / Less Work for Mother / World Machine /
Autonomies of Art / Urban Utopia

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Performative Objects


Within my project, I develop sculptural elements that offer an open frame for participation. Performative objects are plastic modules which do not possess a defined function nor form an invariant order, but can be worn, used, moved, rearranged, reshaped, expanded or replaced when worn out. This calculated loss of artistic control aims at an empowerment of the viewers who become receptive and, at the same time, productive parts within the artistic operations.

My project establishes performative objects both as a theoretical concept of aesthetic reflection and as a practical programme for my own artistic production and aims at radicalising my work by refining it in contact with its own scholarly re-description. The objective is to create a series of performative objects as laboratories that might involve other artists, professional performers, members of specific social groups or random visitors. The empirical knowledge gained from these experimental arrangements will be used to develop an epistemological model that helps describing and analysing performative objects in general but can, as a theoretical impetus, also be refeeded into my artistic practice.

www.icaros.org
Research programme (en)

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Less Work for Mother

Research and artistic practice, solo exhibition at Villa Stuck Museum Munich, curated by Verena Hein, 19 June
21 October 2018 / catalogue published by Distanz Berlin,   
ed. by Michael Buhrs and Verena Hein.

Based on the biography of a great-aunt who became a victim of Nazi ‘euthanasia’ in 1940 in Hartheim Castle near Linz, the exhibition approaches elementary experiences such as fear, helplessness, loss. Through the use of heat, cold, smell, vibration, electricity and precarious states of aggregation, energy and memory reservoirs are created that give a place to what is no longer there.

Catalogue (en / de)
Exhibition documentation

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Weltmaschine
Geschichte und Theorie des plastischen Raums
Abstract (de)

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Kunstautonomien. Luhmann und Bourdieu

Silke Schreiber / Edition Metzel, Munich 2010
ISBN 13 978-3-88960-109-4

Niklas Luhmann and Pierre Bourdieu, usually perceived as antipodes of sociology, at least agree that art is not to be located beyond the social—as the very other, an utopia or its pre-appearance. On the contrary, it is precisely through its autonomy that art becomes social, because even in the most abstract formal play of the artwork, an imprint of social reality is always preserved. These thoughts directly touch on the foundations of my own artistic practice: What impact do production conditions have on the form of my art? How can I remain independent as an artist and be socially effective at the same time? How do I deal with the fact that my works are intended as communicative offers but often remain monologues in which only I speak? And with whom, about whom, for whom am I actually speaking? The place between the analytical acuity of systems theory and the empathic social critique of field theory offers a good perspective for dealing with these questions.

Text (de)

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Utopie des Urbanen: Neuperlach
Leitbilder und Stadtbilder eines Experimentes der 1960er-Jahre
Master thesis 2003, LMU Open Access: DOI: 10.5282/ubm/epub.2034

The study analyses the planning premises of Munich’s satellite town Neuperlach, their embedding in urbanist models and the built reality. In doing so, it precisely elaborates a problematic constellation that shaped urban planning in the 1960s as a whole: the contradiction between a renaissance of ›urbanity‹ and the unnoticed after-effects of older models that were still rooted in anti-urban ideologies of the 1930s and 40s.

Abstract and text (de)

Komm, wir bauen eine Stadt.
Einige Stadtrandbemerkungen aus München-Neuperlach,
in: Andreas Müsseler, Andreas Hild
(eds.), Neuperlach ist schönMunich 2018, previously published in Mitteilungen der Geographischen Gesellschaft München (special issue), 2006, pp. 60—73

Text (de)