Lecture by Dirk Snauwaert
Speaker/Nominator Sommerakademie

On Jef Geys and „After Army“
Contingencies between biography and artistic trajectory

Kunstraum Oktogon, August 19, 2012, 18.30h

In this talk possible correlations and contingencies will be looked at between biography and artistic programmatic structures.

Starting from the projects Jef Geys realised for international group shows such as the biennals of Venice and Sao Paolo, their cosmopolitan scope and issues of 'self-determination and self-reliabilitywill be confronted with questions related to biographical data.

Jef Geys, grew up in a Belgian city that was/and is basically an army camp annex a city called Leopoldsburg. His childhood and adolescence - like that of many boys of his generation growing up during the second World War and the following militarised era of the Cold War - must have been marked and dominated by military presence and career opportunitys in the armed forces. The trajectories of life and of artistic research are interdependent, although not determined, and how does biography then compose with history.