Jean Tinguely, Méta-Matic No. 17, 1959. View of Atelier Impasse Ronsin, Paris, ca. 1959. © Museum Tinguely, Basel. Photo: Hansjörg Stoecklin

Jean Tinguely Revisited: Critical Re-Readings and New Perspectives

20 - 22 March 2025

Organized by Dr. Sandra Beate Reimann with Roland Wetzel, Dr. Andres Pardey, Annja Müller-Alsbach, Tabea Panizzi and Andrea Absenger.

To mark the centenary of Jean Tinguely’s birth, Museum Tinguely will host the international conference Jean Tinguely Revisited: Critical Re-Readings and New Perspectives. The aim of this event is to encourage, discuss and publish new art-historical research and interdisciplinary analyses of the artist and his milieu. The conference’s principle objective is to critically reappraise Tinguely’s art in the light of today’s issues, theories and discourses.

Jean Tinguely building Die Mutter (The Mother) on the occassion of the exhibtion Tinguely, Galerie Beyeler, Basel, 1987, Photo: Leonardo Bezzola

Although Tinguely experienced his breakthrough as an artist in 1959 and was successfully pursuing an international career by 1960, his work has played a subordinate role in art-historical research for a long time. It was not until the first and especially the second decade of the twenty-first century that his work began to be studied and contextualized in art-historical research as well as in exhibition projects and accompanying catalog publications. Many aspects of his oeuvre have not been explored extensively or have yet to be examined at all. The artist’s pioneering achievements (including performativity, dissolution of sculpture into ephemeral occurrences, choice of material and criticism of consumerism, interactivity, and immersive situations), which in the late 1950s already had a decisive influence on the development and understanding of art, are not well known, considering that writing on the history of sculpture is essentially focused on the development of Minimalism and Postminimalism. At the same time, changes in discourse (performativity and event terms, actor-network theory, and machine concepts) provide scholars with an opportunity to view Tinguely’s work from a contemporary perspective and, most of all, to challenge it critically (especially in terms of gender, postcolonial discourse, as well as animal ethics and aesthetics). With this call, the Museum Tinguely would like to create a platform for the newest research on Tinguely’s oeuvre and inspire scholars to consider it in new ways.

With performances by Samia Halaby and Sam Belinfante the conference offers outstanding artistic contributions that invite those present to reflect on aspects of the kinetic, the mechanical and the performative.

Programme

Thursday, 20 March 2025
Historical references and contextualizations

14:30 Welcome, Roland Wetzel, Basel
14:35 Introduction, Dr. Sandra Beate Reimann, Basel

14:45 Ara H. Merjian, Professor Italian Studies and Affiliate of the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University - Jean Tinguely’s Futures Past: Meta-Mechanics, Dynamism, Dysfunction
Moderation: Annja Müller-Alsbach

15:20 Dr. Nicola Foster, Associate Professor (visual arts), University of Suffolk - Jean Tinguely at the Bachelor Machines (1975): the Machines and Masculinity and its Myths
Moderation: Till Langschied

15:55 Coffee break

Panel: Painting and Kinetics

16:25 Dr. Sandra Beate Reimann, Curator, Museum Tinguely - Return to Almost Conventional Sculpture – Painting in Tinguely’s Kinetic Works

16:45 AnnMarie Perl, Research Scholar and Lecturer, Department of Art & Archaeology, Princeton University - Spectacle empirique: Tinguely, the painter, in three acts

17:05 Discussion, Moderation: Dr. Andres Pardey

17:35 Break and snacks

18:00 Joint visit of the collection

19:00 Samia Halaby (Artist), Kevin Nathaniel (Music Director), Kinetic Painting Group, performance
19:30 Samia Halaby in conversation with Dr Sandra Beate Reimann

Friday, 21 March 2025
Digging Deep. Tinguely in the light of today’s discourses

Panel: Animals and Bones

9:00 Dr. Fabiana Senkpiel, Institut Praktiken und Theorien der Künste, Hochschule der Künste Bern - Jean Tinguely’s Self-Portraits with Stuffed Birds

9:20 Christine Burger, PhD Student, Southern Methodist University, Dallas - Jean Tinguely Dreams of Electric Cows

9:40 Prof. Dr. Petra Lange-Berndt, Kunstgeschichtliches Seminar, Universität Hamburg - Beasts and Bones: Bones and Skulls as Material in Jean Tinguely’s Late Work

10:00 Discussion, Moderation: Giorgio Bloch

10:30 Coffee break

Panel: Letter Drawings, Collaboration and Gender Attributions

11:00 Dr. Anne Röhl, Universität Siegen - Tinguely and the Decorative: Reconsidering the Artist’s Letter Drawings

11:20 Anna Kipke, Leuphana Universität Lüneburg/Freie Universität - Witches, Carnival, Dance of Death. On the Artistic Collaboration between Eva Aeppli and Jean Tinguely

11:40 Discussion, Moderation: Till Langschied

12:10 Lunch break

Panel: Approaches to a postcolonial questioning of the Baluba group of works

14:00 Dr. Sandra Beate Reimann, Curator, Museum Tinguely - Introduction to Tinguely’s Sculpture Group Baluba

14:10 Prof. Dr. Barbara Lange, Kunsthistorisches Institut der Universität Tübingen - The ‘Urban Indian’. Tinguely and the Seemingly Wild

14:30 Professor Sarah Wilson, The Courtauld, University of London - From Dakar to Paris, Pioneering critique: Bernard Rancillac’s Dinner-Party of the Head-Hunters, 1966

14:50 Discussion, Moderation: tba

15:20 Coffee break

15:50 Roland Wetzel, Director Museum Tinguely, Basel - The Museum as a Playground: Le Crocrodrome de Zig et Puce at the Centre Pompidou, Paris, 1977
Moderation: Giorgio Bloch

Panel: Performative actions

16:35 Federica Milano, PhD Candidate, Sorbonne Université - Paris IV, La Sapienza Università di Roma - ‘Afraid of Movement’: Entropy and Kinetics in Homage to New York

16:55 Dr. Toni Hildebrandt, Institut für Kunstgeschichte/Walter Benjamin Kolleg, Universität Bern -Pathos and Parody – Study for the End of the World No. 2 (1962) Between Discourse and Representability

17:15 Discussion, Moderation: Tabea Panizzi

18:00 Sam Belinfante, Artist, London - On Falling Short, performance lecture in collaboration with local musicians.
18:30 Sam Belinfante in conversation with Tabea Panizzi

Saturday, 22 March 2025
Tinguely’s thinking and networks

9:00 Dr. Jenny Körber, Universität Hamburg - Jean Tinguely’s Installation Cenodoxus – The Exposed Skeleton of Jesuit Theatre
Moderation: Leena Crasemann

9:35 Coffee break

Panel: Networks and Anarchy

10:05 Dr. Andres Pardey, Curator, Museum Tinguely, Basel - Tinguely as Curator

10:25 Pierre Ruault, PhD student in contemporary art history, Université Rennes 2 - ‘Les hommes révoltés’: Revisiting the Friendly Exchanges of Pontus Hultén and Jean Tinguely Through the Cultural Anarchism of the 1950s

10:45 Georg Kreis, Historian, em. Prof., Universität Basel - AIn Search of the Political Tinguely
11:05 Discussion, Moderation: Roland Wetzel

11:35 Summary, Dr Sandra Beate Reimann
11:45 Thanks and farewell, Roland Wetzel