M. Vançi Stirnemann

M. Vänci Stirnemann (* 21st April 1951 in Zurich as Manfred Ulrich Stirnemann ) is a Swiss artist , author and curator . He became known for his art performances , copy art and mail art and is the initiator of the artist trading cards (ATC) art project . He has lived in Sonvilier since 2019 .

Life

Stirnemann attended the art school F + F , which was founded in 1971 by progressive teachers from the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK) led by Serge Stauffer and Hansjörg Mattmüller . He was friends with Serge Stauffer, translator and editor of Marcel Duchamp's writings, until his death in 1989. In the 1980s, Stirnemann became known for his performances and installations. In addition to the fine arts, he is active as an author, editor of art catalogs and small editions, and as a curator. Since 1983 he has published the art edition copy-left . He made radio broadcasts on modern art, wrote as a freelance writer for various magazines (including the Tagesanzeiger Magazin) and worked as an editor for Swiss television. In 1994 he opened the antiquarian bookshop "INK.art & text" in Zurich's Seefeld, which was also a meeting and exhibition space and existed until 2006. From 2005 to 2016 he was a lecturer at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences (Design & Art Department). Stirnemann is married to the historian Lea Haller .

Mail art, copyleft by Manfred Stirnemann

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Stirnemann's art is characterized by an undogmatic examination of literature, philosophy and popular culture. He dealt early with art movements such as Mannerism , Dada , Surrealism , Art Brut , Fluxus , performance and media art, as well as with artists such as Marcel Duchamp , Marcel Broodthaers and Dieter Roth , who shaped his own work. As a visual artist he is represented in the areas of performances , installations and intermedia art . He has made over 180 group and solo performances at home and abroad. In 1986 he was a founding member of the performance groups The Nomads and a 'battery a " , in 1990 he initiated the international groups Feedback and forth and POW.WOW . From 1992 collaboration with Gido Dietrich ( pseudo - through & through ). In 1987, Stirnemann accepted participated in documenta 8 in Kassel and in 1988 at the Olympic Arts Festival in Calgary , Canada.

From the early 1980s, Stirnemann worked intensively on copy art . He published photocopy art magazines, organized exhibitions and participated in copy art exhibitions at home and abroad. In addition to individual works - including L'état général: FANTOMAS for documenta 8 (100 federal files with 5000 multicolored photocopies) - numerous performance documentations were created as copy-art works during this period. From the early 1980s, Stirnemann was also active in the Mail Art network. In the field of new music he received various composition and text commissions (collaboration with Michael Heisch and Sebastian Hofmann, among others ).

In 1997, Stirnemann initiated the Artist Trading Cards (ATC) project, which became a global success. ATC are cards in the format 64 × 89 cm (2½ × 3½ inches). They correspond to the commercial hockey or football collector's pictures, are individually designed, signed and dated on the back and then exchanged. Stirnemann himself designed over 17,000 ATCs, of which more than 14,000 were exchanged (i.e. they are in other collections today). Between 1997 and 2004 he published 333 ATC editions, which involved over 800 people from 40 countries. Another long-term project is his Subjective Encyclopedia , an encyclopedic collection of images, texts, comments and everyday poetry. About 500 lemmas are available on a website. For exhibitions, parts of the subjective encyclopedia were also bound as a one-off in book form.

Stirnemann received various awards, work and project contributions, etc. a. from the federal government, the canton and city of Zurich, the canton Aargau, Pro Helvetia , the Cassinelli Vogel Foundation , the Canada Council and the Stanley Thomas Johnson Foundation . His copy art projects were sponsored by Xerox . In 1990 he was a visiting foreign artist in Calgary on a Canada Council grant . In 2006/07 he was in Paris ( Cité Internationale des Arts ) with a studio grant from the City of Zurich .

Web links

• Artist trading cards
• Subjective Encyclopedia

Publications

• Martin Klotz, Angelika Rudin, M. Vänçi Stirnemann (Eds.): COPY ART. 50 years of xerography. Photocopy in art . copy-left publishing house, Zurich 1988.
• M. Vänçi Stirnemann: Art - Communication - Illusion . In: Klaus Heinzle (Ed.): Interaction 3. Art - Communication - Illusion . The Vienna Summer Symposion, Vienna 1989, ISBN 3-900820-03-1 , p. 77-79 .
• Yegya Arman, Christine Hunold, Lilo König, Dieter Leuenberger, Paolo Rossi, M. Vänçi Stirnemann (eds.): Kunstszene Zürich 1991–1992 . art6, Zurich 1993, OCLC 604050979 .
• Urs Kummer, M. Vänçi Stirnemann: ach & krach. Encyclopedia on Events of the Nineties . Edition epoca, Zurich 1995, ISBN 3-905513-01-3 .
• M. Vänçi Stirnemann, Fritz Franz Vogel (Ed.): Flickgut! Cultural history for restoration . Jonas, Marburg 2004, ISBN 3-89445-331-1 .
• Christophe Badoux, Pierre Thomé, Vänçi Stirnemann (eds.): Reading Visuals = Strapazin . No. 109 . Zurich 2012.
• M. Vänçi Stirnemann: Art education before the Bologna reform . In: WOZ . No. 09/2013 , February 28, 2013.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Hansjörg Mattmüller (Ed.): F + F Zurich. The open art course . Benteli, Bern 1991.
2. ↑ Marcel Duchamp: The writings. Translated, commented and edited by Serge Stauffer . Regenbogen-Verlag, Zurich (2 volumes, 1981–1992; also from Cantz, Stuttgart).
3. ↑ Serge Stauffer (ed.): Marcel Duchamp. Interviews and statements . Cantz, Stuttgart 1992.
4. ↑ See e.g. B. Mail Art Archive ( Memento of the original from March 25, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
5. ↑ Monika Goedl, Manfred Schneckenburger (ed.): Documenta 8 . Weber & Weidemeyer, Kassel 1987 (While painting still dominated documenta 7 (1982), numerous performance and multimedia artists were represented for the first time at documenta 8. Since the administrative management was not familiar with collective projects, the members became international performance groups are not mentioned individually in the official catalog of the documenta, but only one (German) name is listed, in the case of The Nomads Jürgen O. Olbrich.).
6. ↑ Rosa von der Schulenburg (ed.): Arte postale. Picture letters, artist postcards, Mail Art. From the Academy of the Arts and the Staeck Collection . Academy of Arts, Berlin 2013.
7. ↑ Kornelia Röder: Topology and functionality of the network of the Mail Art. Its specific meaning for Eastern Europe from 1960 to 1989 . Salon-Verlag, Cologne 2008.