Скачать или смотреть Stories on Storytelling in Visual Art

For this talk given during the opening weekend of the 13th Kaunas Biennial in 2021, Klaus Speidel chose "The Trampled Devil" as the point of departure of remarks on the role of stories in visual art. The specificity of the sculpture is not so much that it shows a devil being trampled - this is a common motive - but that the being, most likely Archangel Michael, has been cut off, so that only the feet are visible as they stand on the devil. I connect this artwork to a host of themes in storytelling, namely telling stories as worldmaking, fragments and gaps, trace reading, narrative as a replacement or preparation for action, analysing how different ways of depicting one event -- for instance a Biblical story -- influences the message conveyed, focusing first on the What and then the How of depiction. I talk about the Laocoon Group in the Vatican, quote artworks by Artemisia Gentileschi, Marcel Duchamp, Joseph Beuys, Banksy, Albrecht Dürer, and even Star Wars, connecting each to one aspect prominent in the enigmatic fragment "The Trampled Devil".
The talk is a follow-up to my catalogue essay written for the Biennial's catalogue, taking up a work prominently featured at the Biennial in a work by Canadian artist Shary Boyle and the origin piece of a collection of devils in Kaunas' Devil Museum.

The Kaunas Biennial is the largest, longest lasting, most significant and most visited contemporary art festival in Lithuania and the Baltic states.

Klaus Speidel is an art and image theorist, academic philosopher, art critic and curator. He studied philosophy and art history in Munich (LMU) and Paris (Ecole normale supérieure, Paris X Nanterre, Sorbonne). Beyond numerous academic publications on topics related to art, narrative, depiction, style, drawing and digital, Klaus Speidel writes about art and images for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Der Standard, Spike Art Quarterly, artpress, The Art Newspaper, Parnass, The Brooklyn Rail and in catalogues, for instance for the Centre Pompidou, Schirn Kunsthalle, mumok, Belvedere, FRAC Franche-Comté, mudam Luxemburg and Kunsthalle Tübingen and Wien. In 2015, he received the AICA France Prize for Art Criticism. He curated exhibitions in Germany, Austria and France, was a guest on the Arte TV show « Philosophie » with the topic « Image » and a keynote speaker at different international events. He has had teaching assignments at the Sorbonne, Université Paris Diderot, as well as the Universities of Konstanz and Vienna and at numerous fine arts and design academies. Some of his recent curations were Narrating narrativity (Krinzinger Projekte, Vienna) and Fragile Narratives (Kunstraum Memphis, Linz) for which he (co-) developed three autonomous and entirely different curatorial narratives, Fragile Creation and Show me your wound (co-curated with Johanna Schwanberg, Dom Museum Vienna), Drawing after Digital (XPO Gallery, Paris) and De l’écriture de l’écriture (Galerie Vinzenz Sala, Paris). As the co-founder of Verein K, he co-organizes the programmes « Visiting Curators Vienna » and « Visiting Critics Vienna » and organizes and facilitates « Crit Cross. He currently teaches at Paris College of Art and University for Applied Arts Vienna.