Hans Ulrich Reck

Spiel Form Künste (Play, Form, Arts)
Zu einer Kunstgeschichte des Improvisierens (Toward an Art History of Improvisation)
VOLUME 197

What Can Chance Do?

These days, artists only achieve recognition when they can assert themselves as a musical virtuoso, in a visually hermetic style, in a fragmentary and awkward way, or as conceptualists strictly divested of all traditional recipes. It seems that the paradox of improvisation has congealed into a new doctrine of “free art creation.” Creativity, sensitivity to complexity, emotional intelligence, the management of not-knowing—and not least (the art of) improvisation are concepts and semantics undergoing a boom at the moment as they offer an openness to the future in times of crisis.

Against this discursive backdrop, Hans Ulrich Reck unpacks the branching configurations of improvisation and chance through seven art-theoretical and sociohistorical frameworks—including the work of Serge Brignoni, Gordon Matta-Clark, Henri Michaux, Surrealist film, improvisation in music and technology, and European art education. Here, he eschews mythical terminological categorizations as well as the instrumental exploitation of improvisation which is only concerned with continuing the familiar with different, unfamiliar means.

Hans Ulrich Reck (b. 1953) is an art historian, philosopher, curator, and writer. From 1995 to 2019, he was Professor of Art History in the Medial Context at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne (KHM), where he was also the rector from 2014 to 2020. Reck has written numerous publications in the fields of aesthetics, art history, contemporary art, and philosophy of media and images.

Bernd Ternes (b. 1964) is a sociologist and lecturer at the Institute of Sociology at the Freie Universität Berlin. His books include, Soziologische Marginalien 1–6 (1999–2009), Exzentrische Paradoxie (2003), Technogene Nähe 1 (2007), and Karl Marx (2008).