Veit Stratmann, born 1960, is a German contemporary artist, based in Paris. He teaches at the Ecole Nationale des Beaux Arts de Lyon, France. His work – often conceived for public spaces – revolves around questions such as: Can an artistic gesture be based on the notions of choice and decision? Can decision-making and the infinite suspension of time involved in doing so become a constructive material? If political action originates in the act of decision-making, can an encounter with art generate a permanent oscillation between political and artistic gestures? Recent solo show: MODULE/ESSEN, Museum Folkwang, Essen, Germany in 2019.
An Introduction to L'Aquila, Empty City
Essay
2014
(…) To walk the streets of L’Aquila is to be constantly faced with the impossibility of synchronizing the temporality of a human being with the surrounding non-temporality. Instead of offering a complementary experience between the person and his or her town, the encounter between a human being and this city creates rupture, incoherence and absence of meaning. The city is no longer a part of things. The inhabitants have become outhabitants. (…) (Veit Stratmann)
An introduction to L'Aquila, empty city
Riba Cantu - Addis Abeba, 2015 - 2019
Essay
2019
“If I accept the analysis of the concept of autonomous visual art in Ethiopia as a tool of the cultural colonisation of a country by its government, and that it is directly linked to the concept of pure power, all gestures, events or discourses which use the concept of autonomous visual art as a reference are conditioned by it. This also meant that the master’s programme to which I was invited was inscribed in this conditioning, especially in the realm of my specialty: intervention in public and social artistic spaces. So, my invitation to Addis Ababa, the workshop I was meant to lead, the questions I wished to ask and the projects I wished to undertake were all subject to this conditioning.” V.S.
