Tanzende Scheren. Eine alternative Geschichte der Collage

Presentation of Juliane Vogel: Nehmt Scheren! Ansichten eines Werkzeugs im Zeitalter der Collage (Konstanz University Press 2026) [Take Scissors! Perspectives on a Tool in the Age of Collage]

When literature and the arts began working with cut material at the beginning of the 20th century, they made use of a long-discredited tool: scissors. Only when the act of cutting became central to artistic and literary production did scissors gain recognition, albeit fragile and often revoked. At the same time, however, they represented a new model of creativity that was not rooted in the great history of art and literature, but rather traced back to the early beginnings of modern popular culture in the 18th century.

This is where the practices that would also inform modern collage began, and where the imaginative horizon that would accompany the cutting of the first avant-gardes took shape. With the scissors, originality, wholeness, and closure as fundamental concepts of bourgeois art and literature are undermined, new actors become active in the arts, genre and media boundaries are crossed, and a practice is developed that questions connections—especially the false ones.

We will present the book with the participation of Juliane Vogel (University of Konstanz) and Beate Söntgen (Leuphana University Lüneburg). The evening will be moderated by Eva Geulen (ZfL).