Absenz

Winter 2017: Matthias Wermke is teaching a seminar (Zweckfreie Räume - Intervention und Performance) with four students at ETH Zurich (Department of Architecture and Art, Prof. Karin Sander) on the topic of "appropriation and theft in art". Later, this very technical title is changed to "Absenz – das Abwesendsein von einem Ort" (absence - being absent from a place ).
The seminar will discuss the question of what role theft can play in an artistic production. Can theft also be a productive artistic strategy? As this is a legal grey area, it will be planned, observed, executed and recorded in protocols.
Thus, in the course of this seminar, some important and quite exposed works will change their places, in the ETH Zurich, but also in the exhibition Theft is Vision in the LUMA Westbau on the Löwenbräu Areal.
The proceedings of that seminar are now documented and can be followed chronologically in the artist's book "Absenz".