documenta Institute Discourse #5

Tuesday, May 15, 2018, 6.30 pm

Venue: Auditorium of the Kunsthochschule Kassel, Menzelstraße 13-15

Admission free

Address of Welcome: Dr. Birgit Jooss, Director of the documenta archiv

A collaboration with the documenta professor at the Kunsthochschule Kassel.

In the France of the 1968 years, it was common for academics to ask, “D’où parles-tu?” – “From where do you speak?,” by which was meant the theoretical and methodological location of the speaker(s). At the same time, it also served to locate them politically: Who really is this person, here, addressing us? In the time of fake news, this question is more relevant than ever. In her lecture, Bénédicte Savoy will explore the place of archives within the academic biography of an early twenty-first-century art historian, initial sparks, and the sense of political responsibility.

Prof. Dr. Bénédicte Savoy was born in Paris in 1972. In 2000 she completed her doctorate at the École Normale Supérieure with a thesis on art theft carried out by Napoleon in Germany. Since 2003 she served as an assistant professor and, since 2009 she is Professor of Modern Art History at the Institute of Art Studies and Historical Urban Studies at the Technische Universität Berlin. She is a member of several boards and academic advisory committees. In 2016 she was awarded the Leibniz Prize by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. Bénédicte Savoy is a member of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities as well as of the German Academy for Language and Literature. In 2016 she was made professor at the Collège de France in Paris.