Lost & Found Agency
Ekaterina Degot in Conversation with Nicolaus Schafhausen
Saturday, September 17 at 12:30 pm NL / 5 pm CET
Via Zoom
FIA’s digital program Lost & Found Agency presented a conversation between FIA’s Strategic Director Nicolaus Schafhausen and Ekaterina Degot, Art Historian & Director of the steirischer herbst on Saturday, September 17 at 12:30 pm NL / 5 pm CET. The conversation explored the ongoing war in Ukraine, the visual aesthetic of war and the role that art plays within the complex and unique matrix of war. This month, the steirischer herbst is opening A War in the Distance – an exhibition that combines historical works from the gallery’s collection with projects by contemporary artists as a means to explore the relationship to war, its causes, and lasting effects. The conversation included a detailed analysis of the exhibition’s theme, presenting insights on the effect of repressed conflicts, and the impact a vital rereading can produce.
Ekaterina Degot is an art historian, researcher, and curator born in Moscow and based in Graz, leading steirischer herbst as artistic director and chief curator since 2018. Prior to that, Ekaterina Degot was artistic director of the Academy of the Arts of the World in Cologne from 2014 to 2017. She received the Igor Zabel Award for Culture and Theory in November 2014. The focus of her work is on aesthetic and sociopolitical issues in Russia and Eastern Europe from the 19th century to the post-Soviet era. Before leaving Russia in 2014, she was one of the curators at the State Tretyakov Gallery, art columnist for the newspaper Kommersant, and from 2008 until 2012 she was senior editor of www.openspace.ru/art, an independent online magazine of art news, art criticism and cultural analysis. She also has contributed to Artforum, Frieze, and e-flux magazine. Among others, she curated the Russian pavilion at the Venice Biennial in 2001, cocurated the First Ural Industrial Biennial in Yekaterinburg together with Cosmin Costinas and David Riff in 2010 and co-directed the first Bergen Assembly in 2013 with David Riff.