On 11 July 2023, Dr. Elisha Masemann (Auckland/New Zealand) gave her Fellow Lecture on the topic “Art in the City, the City in Art”. 

In her lecture, Elisha Masemann explored how art in cities can disrupt the predefined order and thus prevent an excessive focus on pure utility and functionality. Cities, according to Masemann, are often, above all, consumer paradises that encourage the routines of shopping and working. Masemann demonstrates how art can disrupt these routines. By making use of streets, squares, buildings and bridges, art not only enables a new perception of urban space, but also challenges the rules of urban life that demand quickness, efficiency, productivity and obedience. Masemann demonstrated the strategies employed by 20th- and 21st-century artists to achieve this: through shock and interaction, performative embodiment, playful interludes and nonsensical installations, art creates irrational breaks in a reality perceived as seamless.

Dr. Elisha Masemann is an art historian at the University of Auckland (New Zealand). Her research field is contemporary urban and visual art, with an interest in the intersections of art, architecture, urbanism and socio-cultural theory in the context of today’s rapidly changing cities.