Jeannot Simmen

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Jeannot Simmen (* 1946) lives in Berlin as an author, exhibition and book maker, with a focus on culture, new media and the visual arts. He is the founder and chairman of Club Bel Etage Berlin, which was founded in 2004 .

Life

Simmen was born in Switzerland and studied art history , philosophy and religious studies in Zurich and at the Free University of Berlin . He received his doctorate with a thesis on Hegel's aesthetics (art ideal or visual appearance) under Klaus Heinrich and Jacob Taubes . He then worked as a research assistant in training at the State Museums , Prussian Cultural Heritage (exhibitions: Ruins-Fascination, Joseph Beuys , Otto Eckmann ). At Bazon Brock at the University of Wuppertal , he completed his habilitation with Vertigo , an investigation into the emergence of modern art from the confused equilibrium as the sixth sense of perception. From 1980 to 2002 he taught as visiting and substitute professor, lecturing art history and design theory at universities in Berlin, Kassel, Wuppertal and Essen.

theory

Since the fascination of ruins (1980) Simmen has occupied the vertical as the cultural dimension of western civilization. His book (co-author Uwe Drepper) examines the technical vertical in the book The Elevator , which mutated into the standard work for elevators in cultural history. In 1990, with the volume Vertigo , Isaac Newton's revolutionary theory of gravity developed the "prehistory of modernity", which shook the feudal worldview. With a series of cosmology images, Simmen shows the visual changes up to Ledoux's planetary leaf. What in the religious context flights to heaven, resurrection or the fall of hell has changed since the baroque to pre-modern floating visions from Francisco Goya to the avant-garde . Three exemplary artist worldviews with falling figures are being developed: by Gustave Courbet , Oskar Kokoschka and Max Beckmann .

Publications or exhibitions expand the research: Kasimir Malewitsch (The Black Square) . The exhibition Weightless shows the dream of flying and the dematerialization of forms from Yves Klein to Ellsworth Kelly , from Max Ernst to James Lee Byars , from Mannerism to Robert Irwin and James Turrell .

Several projects are carried out with the students, always with presentation and publication:

  • 1996 ADA - Ars Digitais Awardl the first great price for new media (prize sum 50,000) with image-sound-sequences for large-scale projection on buildings ( UdK Berlin ).
  • 1999 Up & Down communication and elevator, with the students of the University of Essen and the UdK Berlin, partner: Thyssen-Aufzüge.
  • 2001 Telematics - Netz-ModerneNavigatoren , the automated remote action, University of Essen and UdK Berlin, partner: IVU Berlin.

Exhibition and book projects

Everything. What the case. Cultural history of the falling: from mannerism to today, September 11, 2001. Modernism as falling into step, progress - falling ambivalence, terror and fate.

Luxmania - LichtKunst Licht Aussen: Light events in public spaces, light projects in the garden and park space. Natural light and artificial light, LED platform.

PackBandKunst, Tape Art - The Aesthetics of the Banal The first exhibition on the subject of an everyday object. From a means to an end to beauty beyond the packaging.

Exhibitions / realizations, curator

  • 1980 - Otto Eckmann, an Art Nouveau artist, Berlin Art Library.
  • 1980 - Fascination with ruins , Kupferkabinett, Berlin.
  • 1982 - Joseph Beuys, drawings , National Gallery Berlin, Boysmans van Beuningen, Amsterdam, Bonn a. a. m.
  • 1990 - WEIGHTLESS - The dream of flying , Great Orangery in Charlottenburg Palace, Berlin.
  • 1996 - project manager Ars Digitalis , media project UdK-Berlin, for the 300th anniversary; "Ars Digitalis Award" competition, the first major media prize with 50,000.
  • 1998 - The power of old age with Bazon Brock, Berlin, Stuttgart.

Books, author and editor

  • Art ideal or appearance. An attempt at Hegel's aesthetics , dissertation, FU Berlin 1980, Verlag Medusa, Wölk + Schmid, Berlin 1980.
  • with U. Drepper: The elevator. The story of vertical conquest . Prestel-Verlag, Munich 1984, ISBN 3-7913-0692-8 .
  • CENT MILLE FOIS . Competition: 100 Years of the Eiffel Tower, Walther König Bookstore, Cologne 1987, ISBN 3-88375-062-X .
  • Vertigo. Modern art fraud . Habilitation thesis, University of Wuppertal, Klinkhardt & Biermann Verlag, Munich 1990, ISBN 3-7814-0289-4 .
  • Weightless. The dream of flying in modern art . Verlag Edition Cantz, Stuttgart 1991, ISBN 3-89322-361-4 .
  • Vertical. Elevator-elevator-paternoster . Verlag Ernst & Sohn, Berlin 1994, ISBN 3-433-02480-4 .
  • Kazimir Malevich. The black square . Fischer paperback, Frankfurt a. M. 1998, ISBN 3-596-12419-0 .
  • Up & Down - The elevator vertical . Ars Digitalis, Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-00-001411-X .
  • Malevich. Life and work . Publishing house Könemann, Cologne 1999, ISBN 3-8290-2684-6 .
  • Kidai Shonan . CD-Rom, Museum of East Asian Art, Berlin Buchhandlung Walther König, Cologne 2000, ISBN 3-88375-466-8 .
  • as editor: Telematik - NetzModerneNavigatoren . Bookstore Walther König, Cologne 2002, ISBN 3-88375-547-8 .
  • Total loss . B&S Siebenhaar Verlag, Photographs Jim Rakete : Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-936962-40-6 .
  • Berlin-2010.eu . Edition Club Bel Etage Berlin, Photo-Essay Thorsten Heinze : Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-00-030055-4 .

Prices

2001 Three design awards for the Kidai Shôran CD-Rom . Production for the Museum for East Asian Art, Berlin

  • Design Prize Switzerland 2001 for "Interaction Design", Design Center Langenthal
  • German Multimedia Award 2001, category “Publishing Objects / Content Publishing”, DMMV, Stuttgart
  • red dot design award 2001, Best of the Best Communication Design

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Simmen, Jeannot
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German author and curator
DATE OF BIRTH 1946