Team

HANNA B. HÖLLING

Hanna is a Research Professor at the Bern University of the Arts, where she leads and coordinates research in the area of her expertise. She is also an Honorary Fellow at the University College London. Prior to this, Hanna was an Associate Professor in the Department of History of Art, University College London and Andrew W. Mellon Professor, Cultures of Conservation, at the Bard Graduate Center, New York. Her research, teaching, and advising address subjects in art history and theory, media and material (culture) studies, museology, conservation, and American and European art created since the 1960s. Her publications include six books. Two are sole-authored monographs. Her writings appeared in peer-reviewed journals, edited volumes and exhibition catalogs. She serves as an advisor on international research projects and academic programs. For more information, follow this link.

As the principal investigator on this project, and next to her leading the project in collaboration with other team members, Hanna’s role involves research on the varying forms of interpretation, adaptation, migration, emulation, and translation of Fluxus forms. Drawing things together and evaluating the results of archival and ethnographic research, she will argue for a critical rethinking of what conservation is and what it does today—as an epistemic practice and knowledge-generating activity.

AGA WIELOCHA

Aga is a researcher and collection care professional specializing in contemporary art. She earned her MA degree in Conservation and Restoration of Works of Art from the Academy of Fine Arts, Warsaw, Poland, and a PhD from the Amsterdam School for Heritage and Memory Studies at the University of Amsterdam. Conducted in the framework of “New Approaches in the Conservation of Contemporary Art” (NACCA), a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Innovative Training Network funded by the European Commission, her doctoral research investigated the lives and futures of contemporary art in institutional collections. Between 2019 and 2022 she worked as a conservator at Hong Kong M+ Museum, where she was charged with designing documentation strategies to support efficient care of growing collections of visual art, design, architecture and moving image. Prior to her doctoral studies, Aga served as a conservator at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw. Her general research interests lie in mechanisms and processes of institutional collecting and preserving with the focus on processual, contemporary art formats, such as art projects, participatory art and performance and she regularly lectures, presents and writes on this topic.

As a postdoctoral fellow on the project, Aga shall focus her attention on aspects of adaptation and reinterpretation as activation strategies and situate them within the conservation discourse. Her work also involves investigations into the reconstructions of Fluxus historical works. Archival, ethnographic and object-based research will be crucial to developing her project.

JOSEPHINE ELLIS

Josephine is the doctoral candidate in the Activating Fluxus research project, hosted by SINTA Studies in the Arts graduate program at Bern University and Bern University of the Arts. She recently obtained her MA degree in History of Art from University College London, England, where she specialized in the materiality of artworks and artefacts created in the 1960s and 70s and the visual culture of Southeast Asia during the Second British Empire.  

Josephine will work towards the completion of a doctoral dissertation, jointly supervised by Prof. Dr. Peter Schneemann and Prof. Dr. Hanna Hölling. Her research for this project will focus on the documentation, conservation, and stabilization of Fluxus material objects, as well as past and present practices of collecting, storing, and displaying Fluxus. She will also pay particular attention to the traces of use accumulated by Fluxus forms in their afterlives and the value of patina, with their textured implications for future activations of Fluxus works.  

MARCUS GOSSOLT

Marcus Gossolt is artist-researcher in the SNSF research project Activating Fluxus in the Department of Materiality in Art and Culture, Bern University of the Arts. Gossolt studied architecture and design at the HfG Basel (later FHNW) and media science at the KHM Cologne. He has been active as artist, designer, curator, researcher and creative director of the communication agency Alltag (2005). Among others, he is the founder of the creative industry Pool Lattich (2016), the film company Drehtag (2016) and the artist duo Com&Com (1997). Com&Com’s recent projects include Bloch (since 2011), Nexplorer (since 2010), Point de Suisse (2014–15) and Mocmoc (2003–08). Gossolt’s work has been presented at several art biennials including the Venice Biennale, and in exhibitions in Switzerland and worldwide. Gossolt curated multiple exhibitions, such as La réalité dépasse la fiction (with Hedinger, CentrePasquArt Biel 2009/10), Point de Suisse (with Hedinger, Museum für Geschichte Basel 2015), Potentiale (Design Messe Feldkirch 2016) and the two AR-Exhibitions Art Brut (Museum im Lagerhaus, 2013) and Was zählt der Mensch? (Dunant Museum Heiden, 2013), which became two of the first augmented reality exhibitions in Switzerland.  

Collaborating with his artistic partner Johannes M. Hedinger, Gossolt’s contribution to the project Activating Fluxus will comprise engaging with new technologies such as augmented and virtual reality to activate Fluxus’ historical works. In addition to setting up a program of Fluxus reinterpretations (including their own), they will invite other contemporary artists to respond to the idea of the Fluxkit and to create a first-hand experience of Fluxus.

JOHANNES M. HEDINGER

Johannes M. Hedinger is an artist, curator, educator, author, and researcher. He studied art history and cultural studies at the University of Zurich and Humboldt University in Berlin and fine arts at Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK) and at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA). He has also completed postgraduate studies at the University of the Arts (UdK) Berlin.

Hedinger is the artistic director of the Institute for Land and Environmental Art (ILEA), the outdoor Biennale Art Safiental, and the summer school Alps Art Academy. Since 2006, he has lectured at the ZHdK Zürich and since 2010 at the Institut für Kunst und Kunsttheorie at the University of Cologne, where he was a professor for intermedia 2013-14. Hedinger’s curatorial work includes four iterations of the alpine biennial Art Safiental (since 2016), ILEA Gallery (since 2020),  TEKTONIK (2018), Methods of Art (Ural Biennale, Connecting Space Hong Kong, both 2015), Point de Suisse (Museum of History Basel 2015) and Kunstsalon (Bard Hall New York 2014, Berlin 2008). As an author, co-author, editor and co-editor of many books on contemporary art, he published, among others, Landscape (2024, 2020), Learning from the Earth (2023), Point de Suisse (2015), What’s Next? Kunst nach der Krise (2013), Lexikon zur zeitgenössischen Kunst (2010), and Kunst, öffentlicher Raum, Identität (2004).

In 1997 he founded the art collective Com&Com with Marcus Gossolt. Their best known projects are BLOCH (since 2011) and Mocmoc (2003–08). Their work has been presented at several art biennials, including the Venice Biennale in 2001, and in over 150 exhibitions worldwide. With Gossolt (Com&Com), Hedinger is working on artistic activations of Fluxus through a series of interpretations and adaptations and with the use of new technologies.

SALLY KAWAMURA

Sally Kawamura is an art historian whose interests lie in 1960s Japanese experimental communities. Her doctoral thesis Object into Action: Group Ongaku and Fluxus (2009, University of Glasgow) investigated the reasons for the mutual similarities and connections between avant-garde practice in Japan, Europe and America. Following a career break, she now focuses her attention on Japanese contemporary art, especially interactions between experimental groups in 1960s Japan and globally. Sally has published an article on Mieko Shiomi and loves to perform Shiomi’s pieces while out in nature.

ÉMILIE PARENDEAU

Émilie Parendeau is a researcher, artist and educator. In her artistic practice, she focuses on interpreting other artists’ works and actualising them. In taking over the process that accompanies their materialisation, she brings in variations that aim to activate those works of art in the present. She carried out most of these activations as part of the A LOUER project and in various exhibition venues, including Le Réfectoire (Lyon, 2009), Bétonsalon (Paris, 2010), Le Quartier (Quimper, 2011), Contemporary Art Center (Brétigny, 2011), Peep-Hole (Milan, 2012), Art 3 (Valence, 2014), Villa Arson (Nice, 2015), MacKenzie Art Gallery (Regina, 2018), Art-Genève Fair (Geneva, 2020). For her 2016 show at MAMCO she reinterpreted a series of artworks from the collection, including those by John M. Armleder and Robert Filliou. Currently, she is working on her doctoral dissertation at the University of Valenciennes (supervised by Erik Verhagen) that looks at processes behind the production of Fluxus multiples published by George Maciunas in the 1960s and 1970s.

ELKE GRUHN

Elke Gruhn is an art historian, curator and since 2002 the director of Nassauischer Kunstverein Wiesbaden. In her curatorial practice she is interested in, among others, contemporary possibilities of activating and continuing Fluxus. She has organised numerous exhibitions, including Born in the State of FLUX/us (2012), the only retrospective of Benjamin Patterson to be held in Europe, and more recently FLUXUX SEX TIES / Hier spielt die Musik! (2022) focussing on the women in Fluxus. She is a founding member of the Fluxus Freunde Wiesbaden and the brains behind the yearly Follow Fluxus – Fluxus und die Folgen scholarship program in Wiesbaden.

STEFANIE MANTHEY

Stefanie Manthey is a writer, researcher, and lecturer. She is a regular contributor to artlog.net (kunstbulletin), HKB-Zeitung and a part of the art education teams of Kunstmuseum Basel and Schaulager / Laurenz Foundation. Her research interests in “Activating Fluxus” are rooted in questions about the agency of things and their manifold materialities. With a background in art history and a strong interest in materials and technique, she has been worked for publishers, at Kunstmuseum Basel and other museums on exhibitions, publications and the care of collections, before joining a global architectural practice, where, among other tasks, she is responsible for the digitization and activation of archive holdings for online collections and digital publishing.