Launch artist book + keynote speech

CARLOS LEÓN ZAMBRANO
Special Effeggs

Foto links: Vincent Leifer 


Launch artist book + keynote speech (digital) [in German]
Thursday, 20 May 2021, 6 pm

Video documentation

In the context of the exhibition CARLOS LEÓN ZAMBRANO – Special Effeggs
Moderation: Anna Nowak (Curator of the exhibition)

In his artist book “Oro parece, plata no es…” Carlos León Zambrano takes up the text „Psychologie als Überlebensstrategie. Die Evolution der Demokratie nach Friedrich Nietzsche” by Dr. Kyung-Ho Cha.

We are pleased that the literature and cultural studies scholar Dr. Kyung-Ho Cha will accompany the event with his lecture “‘Kunstformen der Natur’/ ‘Urformen der Kunst”’. Cha’s focus research examines the evolutionary biology concept of mimicry, which entered the human sciences around 1900. Based on the explanation of moral, psychological, social and aesthetic adaptation phenomena in humans, Cha reconstructs the resulting new image of Man. He explores the question of how the new concept of human mimicry can unite very different fields of knowledge (anthropology, biology, philosophy, psychology, sociology, literature) that had previously not been in any exchange with each other. In his studies, he focuses on the literary structures that enable the genesis and connections of this scientific myth, which is still influential today, in the natural and human sciences as well as in the arts.

Zambrano will then introduce the currently published artist’s book and report on its conception and creation process.

The artist’s book was supported by Stiftung Kunstfonds, Kunsthaus Hamburg and Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg. It is published in an edition of 150 and can be ordered on request via register@kunsthaushamburg.de

Materialverlag – HFBK
Print: Druckerei Siepmann GmbH


Carlos León Zambrano (b. 1986, Caracas, Venezuela) lives and works in Hamburg. He graduated from the MFA programme at the Academy of Fine Arts Hamburg and has already received several scholarships, et. al. Hamburg grant for Contemporary Art of the Ministry of Culture and Media in 2019. In 2017 he was nominated for the Hiscox Kunstpreis.

PD Dr. Kyung-Ho Cha is a literature and cultural studies scholar at the University of Bayreuth. He studied literature and philosophy at the Universities of Bonn, University of Oxford and Columbia University New York. He has held fellowships at ICI Berlin and the Humanities Center at Harvard University. Currently he is a fellow at the Alfried Krupp Wissenschaftskolleg Greifswald. He conducts research on the ecological relationship between humans and nature (ecocriticism), human rights violations, and (post-)migration. One of his research interests is the phenomenon of mimicry in nature and culture (Humanimikry. Poetik der Evolution, Munich: Fink 2010).