Astrid S. Klein (b. 1964)
Astrid S. Klein is a visual artist and curatorial producer.
She studied sculpture at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Stuttgart and stage design and dramaturgy at ENSAD in Paris. She then earned a postgraduate degree in sculpture: video/installation art and performance as Meisterschülerin under Joan Jonas, also in Stuttgart.
In the context of her format Quartier Flottant* she initiates and produces collaborative projects, researches, and symposia, e.g., the ongoing transnational publication and online platform crossing-boundaries-of-doubt.net (since 2013).
Moving into other spaces and transforming: Astrid S. Klein has been initiating artistic dialogues for over ten years. She explores, through informative and poetic research, the relations between the West and the non-Western world—the violent history linking them together and their social realities.
Describing the process of her own “creolization”—an identity in flux—she questions the meaning of her West German, European heritage in the face of flowing, circulating identities and approaches of Decoloniality. Essential and unique to her artistic practice are formats of dialogue, through which she engages in polyphonic, multilingual productions of knowledge with her counterparts from Europe, Sub-Saharan Africa, and their diaspora. The works deal with their complex mutual history and a present able to embrace possible collaborative forms of agency.
Astrid S. Klein seeks out cultural producers from real and imaginary transnational places, inviting them to engage with her in a performative process of negotiation. Learning situations, the experience of displacement and encounter, the related surprises and misunderstandings all help the artist become oriented within the current age of global transformation, while navigating this realm via shared reflection.
Her studio in Stuttgart, Germany, serves as a base for moving between real and utopian places in the North and South. As a visual artist, Klein takes a transdisciplinary approach to working with installation, photography, film, text, sound, performative interventions, research, and public formats.
*Quartier Flottant designates a neighborhood that, since not predetermined, is floating in space. As event format, Astrid S. Klein invites guests to participate in projects and entretiens or conversations. Here, the physical encounters are linked to digital space, such as on the online platform crossing-boundaries-of-doubt.net.
Her contribution to crossing-boundaries-of-doubt.net:
TAKEN APART TO NO THING
BLUE CAMER
QUESTION – ANSWER
WISHUALS AND THINKS
SADRAK DANCING – with Sadrak
WHERE ARE YOU FROM? with Emkal Eyongakpa, Sadrak and Franklin Aleba Mokala
WILLIAM DOUALLA NGONGUI – A PHOTOGRAPH with Vincent Ndumbé D
https://www.artpress.com/2018/08/21/hello-world-revision-einer-sammlung/
http://www.e-flux.com/announcements/29263/astrid-s-klein/
http://www.on-curating.org/files/oc/dateiverwaltung/DeColonize/Astrid_S_Klein.pdf/
http://www.lacritique.org/article-astrid-s-klein-never-ending-resistance
http://www.ifa.de/en/visual-arts/ifa-galleries/exhibitions/pret-a-partager/workshop-douala.html
http://www.arsenal-berlin.de/en/arsenal-cinema/past-programs/single/article/3106/2804//archive/2011/december.html
http://www.oberwelt.de/projects/2011/punch.htm
