Bazon Brock | |
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.jpg) Brock in 2017 | |
| Born | Jürgen Johannes Hermann Brock 2 June 1936 |
| Education | Würzburg University |
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| Awards | Honorary doctorate from the ETH Zurich |
Bazon Brock (born Jürgen Johannes Hermann Brock, 2 June 1936) is a German art theorist and critic, multi-media generalist and artist. He is considered a member of Fluxus. He was a professor of aesthetics at the Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg, the University of Applied Arts Vienna and the University of Wuppertal.
Brock was born in Stolp, Pomerania, now in Poland. His father, a historian, was executed by the Soviets for collaborating with Hitler. The family fled to Denmark. After two years of internment, they settled in Itzehoe in 1947. Brock attended and graduated from the Kaiser-Karl-Gymnasium, a gymnasium with a focus on the humanities, Latin and Greek. The name Bazon is Greek for chatterer and was applied to him at school by his Latin teacher. From 1957 to 1964, he studied German studies, art history, philosophy and political science at the universities of Zurich, Hamburg and Frankfurt.[1] He did not study art at a university. During this period, he published poems and "Aktionslehrstücke" (plays), using "Bazon" as his pen name.[2] In 1957, he trained as a dramaturge at the theater of Darmstadt[1] and in 1960, began working at the Lucerne Municipal Theatre.[3]
Brock was a professor of "non-normative aesthetics" at the Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg from 1965 to 1976. From 1978, he was professor of the "theory of design" at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. In 1981, he was appointed professor of "aesthetics and cultural educations" at the University of Wuppertal, where he became professor emeritus in 2001.[4] In 2010, Brock was a Fellow at the Kolleg Friedrich Nietzsche in Weimar.[5]
In the 1960s, Brock participated in happenings with Friedensreich Hundertwasser, Joseph Beuys and Wolf Vostell.[6] In a 1968 exhibition, he showed a metal plate in the style of a high-voltage warning: "death must be abolished, this damned mess must stop. He who speaks a word of consolation is a traitor" ("der Tod muß abgeschafft werden, diese verdammte Schweinerei muß aufhören. Wer ein Wort des Trostes spricht, ist ein Verräter") and signed Bazon Brock.[7] The text is a truncated version of his eulogy for Siegfried Kracauer, which continued, "betrays the solidarity of all human beings against death ... Death ... is a scandal, a beastly mess! ... Don't let yourselves submit to it, understand death ... [is] a monstrous scandal, against which I protest.") ("ist ein Verräter an der Solidarität aller Menschen gegen den Tod ... Der Tod ist ein Skandal, eine viehische Schweinerei! ... Lasst euch nicht darauf ein, versteht: der Tod ... [ist] ein ungeheuerlicher Skandal, gegen den ich protestiere.")[8]
Also in 1968, Brock installed a "Besucherschule" (visitors' school) at documenta IV, introducing exhibition visitors to contemporary art in several hours of "action teaching". The device was repeated several times until 1992. In 2006, he initiated a "Stadientournee des Live-Philosophierens" (stadium tour of live philosophy), entitled "Lustmarsch durchs Theoriegelände" (pleasure march through the terrain of theory).[9] This was done in the style of the late 1980s, when the "Lange Marsch durch die Institutionen" (Long march through the institutions) was started.[2] This installation commemorating his 70th birthday was shown first at the Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, then at a number of museums, including the Schirn, Frankfurt, Museum Ludwig in Cologne, Von der Heydt Museum in Wuppertal and the Haus der Kunst in Munich.[6] One of the photos shown is titled "Empedocles revised Mortal Philosopher embarrasses Mount Etna by throwing his shoes instead of himself into the crater" (1984).[4] In 2009 he conducted action teaching in the Berlin Gropiusbau at the exhibition "Sixty years. Sixty works", commemorating the 60th anniversary of the creation of the Federal Republic of Germany.[10] In 2011, he introduced the exhibition "Trans-Skulptur" of his friends Anna and Bernhard Blume in Berlin.[11]
Brock's radio plays were published as tapes in the S-Press Tonband-Verlag, Cologne. A video documentary on his work is titled Ästhetik als Metatheorie – In zwanzig Kapiteln wird ein strukturierter Einstieg in die Denkwelt des KünstlerPhilosophen und GeistTäters gegeben ("Aesthetics as Meta-Theory: Presenting a Structured Introduction into the Sphere of Thought of the Artist Philosopher and Spirit/Mind Actor in Twenty Chapters.").
Bazon Brock received an honorary doctorate in Technical Sciences from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich on 21 November 1992.
