Vita
Studied Media and Cultural Studies at the Heinrich Heine University (B.A.) and Media Arts at the KHM Cologne (Diploma I). Since 2021, he has been a Scientific Associate at the documenta Institut and in the Department of Art and Economies at the University of Kassel and is doing his PhD on questions of utilization and the social function of artistic practice. In addition to his academic research, he has been active as an artist in the fields of performance and media art since 2018 and has had exhibitions and performances at the Akademie der Künste der Welt, Cologne, and at the Ruhrtriennale 2019 in Bochum, among others.
Research project
Decentralization, autonomy and socially engaged art
The research topic deals with the question of whether the tension between artistic autonomy and the socio-political function of art can be described as a central motif in the art-theoretical and cultural-political discourse of the 20th and 21st centuries. The aim is to formulate a genealogy of those concepts, movements and cultural programs that were proposed in times of social transformation, with the Russian Revolution serving as the first historical case study. The comparison of the latter with contemporary discourses on the function of art enables an analysis of how art has been ascribed a specific political and transformative role in the past and today, not only despite but also because of its supposed autonomy.
This thesis will be written in English.
Main research topics
Social function of art
Art & financialized capitalism
Socialist cultural politics
Marxist theory of value
Projects
2023-2027 SDG+ Lab; employee in the preparation of the theme year “Culture & Living Together”
2023-2025 Art meets Companies - Subproject of the Transformation Network Kassel. Project Coordinator
2022: Migrant Worker's Summit: The Lost Art of Organizing Solidarity; documenta Institut & European Alternatives: Project Coordinator Kassel
Lectures (selection)
2024 New Right Art (Andreas Niegl & Nikolay Smirnov). traces, Kassel.
2023 From Kekistan to Hyperborea: Meme Metapolitics And The Traditionalist Reactionary Imaginary. Far-Right Memory in Digital Age. Universität Leipzig.
2023 Struggles Beyond Reason: Contemporary Dialectics of the Conservative Revolution & Evola’s Neoreactionary Heirs. From Politique to Mystique. MLA Annual Convention.
Academic conferences and workshops (conception, organization and/or moderation)
2024 Experimental Publics (Kassel, documenta Institut): Organization, moderation
Publications (selection)
Niegl, Andreas (2024): 'The Wild and Awful Pursuit of an Indefinite Object’ - Desire, Randomness and the Death Drive in Roguelikes. In: Tamara Bodden und Rebecca Bachmann (Hg.): New Skills Unlocked: Kulturwissenschaftliche Theorien und Analysen von Games. Glückstadt: Werner Hülsbusch.
Niegl, Andreas (2023): Between l’art pour l’art and total instrumentalization of art. In: ARTSFORMATION JOURNAL: Mobilising the arts for an inclusive digital transformation.
Niegl, Andreas (2021): Intelligence Leakages - Formulary of Cold War Espionage. In: Madhusree Dutta (Hg.): Fake Hybrid Sites Palimpsest. Berlin: De Gruyter.