ROMANA SCHEFFKNECHT 1982 2013 - romana scheffknecht videos

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scientific approach to working in a context of theory and art. In addition, he is one of the first
people to have advocated not just ‘high’ art but any form of visualisation (book illustrations,
postcards, calendars, advertisements) and by extension even taking everyday objects into
consideration as an art theorist. This is clearly legible as the intention underlying Romana
Scheffknecht’s selection of box number 118.
For the maverick scientist Aby Warburg there is no attribution, no finality. His scientific approach,
working method, way of thinking and personality are explicitly not discipline-specific.
Romana Scheffknecht rejects any attempts to categorise her own work. Her oeuvre is interdisciplinary
and not concentrated around any one medium. Romana Scheffknecht is fascinated
by apparently ‘impossible’ interconnections, like Warburg’s Krieg und Kunst. 11
1 Aby M. Warburg, “Sandro Botticellis Geburt der Venus und Frühling”, 1893, in: Aby M. Warburg, Ausgewählte Schriften
und Würdigungen, Baden-Baden 1980.
2 “Amburghese di cuore, ebreo di sangue, d’anima Fiorentino”, quoted from: Gertrud Bing: Rivista storica italiana. Issue 71,
1960, p. 113.
3 Warburg suffered from physical and psychological illness from early in his life, which influenced this decision.
4 Cf. Gottfried Korff (Ed.), Kasten 117. Aby Warburg und der Aberglaube im Ersten Weltkrieg, Tübingen 2007, p. 51.
5 Peter J. Schwartz, “Aby Warburgs Kriegskartothek. Vorbericht einer Rekonstruktion“ [preliminary report for a reconstruction
of Warburg’s wartime index file], in: Kasten 117. Aby Warburg und der Aberglaube im Ersten Weltkrieg, published for
the conference “Der grosse Krieg, Warburg und der Aberglaube” [The Great War, Warburg and superstition], organised
by the Ludwig-Uhland-Institut für Empirische Kulturwissenschaft und Sonderforschungsbereich 437 in Tübingen, Tübingen
2007, pp. 39-69.
6 The only reference to this event is provided by Carl Georg Heise, in: Persönliche Erinnerungen an Aby Warburg, Wiesbaden
2005.
7 Hamburgischer Correspondent, Hamburger Nachrichten, Neue Hamburger Zeitung, Hamburger Fremdenblatt, Frankfurter
Zeitung, Vossische Zeitung, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Tübinger Nachrichten der Auslandspresse, Corriere della Serra, Giornale
d’Italia, Cicerone, Kunstchronik, Kunstwart etc. See Peter J. Schwartz, fn. 5, p. 58.
8 Aby Warburg quoted by Peter J. Schwartz, see fn. 5, p. 55.
9 “Documentation of the lies of the entente cordiale has to be systematically collected” as “printed aids”, serving to keep a
“record in wartime” to counter the Allied “offensive of lies”. Aby Warburg, quoted by Peter J. Schwartz, see fn. 5, pp. 44-46.
10 Excerpt from the Medien Kunst Archiv Wien online information page, URL: http://www.mka.at/info.html: “The Medien
Kunst Archiv has a mandate to archive, describe and inform people about media art. [ … ] The archives are based on the
stocks of the federal art department and the collections of the basis wien, the Kunst- und Diskussionsraum depot, the
University of Applied Arts as well as the video art collection of the state of Lower Austria. Text, images, art-historical and
technical descriptions show the diversity of thematic and formal investigations that artists have been engaged in over the
past 30 years of media art. [ … ] Accordingly, the archives contribute to the documentation and development of electronic
art from 1970 to the present day in both the local and international contexts.”
11 In two collages in Warburgzimmer Romana Scheffknecht links the themes of art and terrorism, and aesthetic and war.
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