The artist-in-residence program is a highlight of the yearly events sponsored by the . Launched in 2003 under the directorship of Peter Uwe Hohendahl, the program brings to Cornell artists from the German-speaking countries. During their stay the visitors present their work, conduct compact seminars on related subjects, and interact with students and other members of the Cornell community in a variety of other ways. Visitors to date include Oswald Egger, Stefan Beuse, Monika Treut, Holger Teschke, Christine Rinderknecht, Yoko Tawada, Heiner Goebbels, Hans Christoph Buch, Barbara Köhler, Ulrich Peltzer, Kathrin Röggla, and Clemens J. Setz.
Since 2008, the IGCS has also invited resident artists to give a lecture that addresses questions of contemporary aesthetics from their unique perspective as practitioners and performers. Christine Rinderknecht inaugurated this lecture series in 2008 with creative commentary on literary fiction and natural catastrophe, and Yoko Tawada continued it in 2009 with multilingual reflections on letters, ideograms, alphabets, and other writing systems in modern literature. In 2010 Heiner Goebbels addressed an interdisciplinary audience on the aesthetics of absence in performing arts. In 2011 Hans Christoph Buch presented oral remarks on the multifaceted significance of Haiti for German literary culture and world literature; the author’s written reflections on his aesthetics of “non-identity” appear here for the first time. In 2013 Barbara Köhler presented her conceptual poetics of relationality in motion as performative tour de force and written lecture too; both versions are available on the IGCS Website. In 2015 Ulrich Peltzer analyzed the sophisticated interplay of reading and writing in contemporary aesthetics, and in 2016 Kathrin Röggla inspired us to contemplate the entangled futurities of literature and capital in the age of globalization. In 2017 Clemens J. Setz drew on his experience reading a Samuel Delany novel to offer a profound meditation on computer games as an art form that captures the human experience of time.
Lectures in the IGCS series on contemporary aesthetics are published in the IGCS newsletter (German Culture News) and can be electronically accessed through both the IGCS Website and Cornell University’s e-repository. The IGCS is pleased to make video recordings of our most recent aesthetics lectures available online as well. Individual artists retain the copyright to their work in all forms.
Artist in Residence, April 16-27, 2018
- Clemens J. Setz
- Cornell Lecture on Contemporary Aesthetics (25 April 2018): "Frühe und späte Spiele. Von Samuel Delany zu Jason Rohrer"
Artist in Residence, Aug. 26-Sept. 8, 2016
- Kathrin Röggla
- Cornell Lecture on Contemporary Aesthetics (6 September 2016): “Literatur und Zukunft, Literatur als Stoff des Zukünftigen”
Artist in Residence, April 1-19, 2015
- Ulrich Peltzer
- Cornell Lecture on Contemporary Aesthetics (16 April 2015): “Lesend Schreiben”
Artist in Residence, April 1-19, 2013
- Barbara Köhler
- Cornell Lecture on Contemporary Aesthetics (16 April 2013): “Some possibilities for sailing in a friendship and weitere Möglichkeiten”
Artist in Residence, September 5-22, 2011
- Hans Christoph Buch
- Cornell Lecture on Contemporary Aesthetics (October 2011): “Wer bin ich, woher komme ich, wohin gehe ich? Bausteine zu einer Poetik der Nicht-Identität”
Artist in Residence, March 7-17, 2010
- Heiner Goebbels
- Cornell Lecture on Contemporary Aesthetics (9 March 2010): “Aesthetics of Absence: Questioning Basic Assumptions in Performing Arts”
Writer in Residence, March 23-April 11, 2009
- Yoko Tawada
- Cornell Lecture on Contemporary Aesthetics (3 April 2009): “The Letter as Literature’s Political and Poetic Body”
Writer in Residence, April 6-April 27, 2008
- Christine Rinderknecht
- Cornell Lecture on Contemporary Aesthetics (24 April 2008): “Der sechsundzwanzigste Dezember zweitausendundvier: Naturkatastrophen in der Literatur”