I want to be a dog in America

Stih & Schnock are Berlin based artists, who explore how memory functions in the social sphere and how it is reflected symbolically in culture and urban space. There is to be found an ongoing interest in collections and museums, which they conceive as places of collective cultural memory.

In the academic year 2012/13 Stih & Schnock have been teaching as »Freund Fellows« at the Washington University, Sam Fox Graduate School of Art, USA. In this time they conceptualized an exhibition for the St. Louis Art Museum and the new extension of the building by Chipperfield. It will be on view through January 2014. Their exhibition, part of the ongoing series »Currents« and subtitled »The German Connection—Raft with Stranded Objects,« features site-specific interventions installed in several spaces throughout the Museum. Through extensive research they uncovered three compelling stories about St. Louis and German history. The subjects of the tales include a 15th-century sculpture of a Virgin and Child, a plaster model of the Reichstag that German emperor Wilhelm II had shipped to the Midwest, and a former double agent for West German intelligence who studied at Washington University under a new identity.

The lecture will discuss questions of identity, cultural mobility, and transnational exchange with particular reference to the exhibition »The German Connection — Raft with Stranded Objects«. In addition versions of the exhibits in St. Louis as well as documentary material will be on view at the Kunstraum of Leuphana University of Lüneburg.

Prof. Renata Stih and Dr. Frieder Schnock are teaching at the Beuth University of Applied Sciences in Berlin and the Leuphana University of Lüneburg. Stih & Schnock had numerous exhibitions at international galleries and museums, amongst others the St. Louis Art Museum (2013), the Beacon Arts, Los Angeles (2012), the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University, St. Louis (2008), the KW Institute for Contemporary Art (2005) and the ZKM in Karlsruhe (2001-2002).

For further information about the projects of Stih & Schnock, please have a look at their website: www.stih-schnock.de