The art of the lecture invited eight performances from the German-speaking and (ex)Yu region to Cologne in October and November 2021. In essay performances, choreographies of thoughts and card-reading practices the series provides alternative and speculative perspectives on known and unknown fields such as healing, the art market, the dark net or the lectures of the sophists.

The works presented in this context are informed by the ›tradition‹ of lecture-performance that arose in the noughties, but whether they develop or challenge the format remains an open question. They employ strategies of partisanship and trickstery, and initiate a dialogue with themselves, their artistic materials, their compositional form, and their audiences. The art of the lecture is interested in what we call knowledge co-creation, rather than knowledge production.

We would like to think of the title of the series in multiple ways: the art of the lecture could be the art of lecturing, the lecture as an art form, the artistic lecture or the lectured art. The series on contemporary lecture art is curated by Helen Brecht, Nina Gojić, Jascha Sommer and Zrinka Užbinec.