With a view to Nauman’s interweaving of studio, film and video praxis, which has prompted art theorists to reflect widely on the interaction between fine arts and performative arts within the context of cybernetic feedback systems, this lecture focuses on the characteristic topos of the (dance) rehearsal. Inspired by the 2016/17 exhibition Giacometti-Nauman at Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, it is the crucial in-the-making aspect of the approach taken by both these artists that warrants putting forth the hypothesis that the reciprocity of the performative act simultaneously constitutes its negation, whereby it may be posited as the dialectical point zero of an art production grounded in aesthetic reception.

Sabeth Buchmann is an art historian and art critic. Since 2004 she is Professor of Modern and Postmodern Art at the Institute for Art Theory and Cultural Studies at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. She is a member of the advisory board of the art magazine Texte zur Kunst and, together with Helmut Draxler, Clemens Krümmel and Susanne Leeb, co-editor of PoLYpeN – a book series on art criticism and political theory published by b_books, Berlin. She is a regular contributor to international art magazines, catalogues and anthologies. Her publications include the monograph Denken gegen das Denken. Produktion – Technologie – Subjektivität bei Sol LeWitt, Yvonne Rainer und Hélio Oiticica, Berlin: b_books, 2007 as well as Film, Avantgarde, Biopolitik (ed. with Helmut Draxler and Stephan Geene), Vienna: Schleebrügge.Editor, 2009, Hélio Oiticica, Neville D’Almeida: Block-Experiments in Cosmococa – program in progress (ed. with Max Jorge Hinderer Cruz), London: Afterall Books, 2013 and Putting Rehearsals to the Test. Practices of Rehearsal in Fine Arts, Film. Theater, Theory, and Politics (ed. with Ilse Lafer and Constanze Ruhm), Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2016.