In his lecture on the Concept of Class Frank Engster reconstruct the mutative history of this concept and its political applications. Developed as a verbal medium of the emancipation of a social group that had only come into existence as a result of capitalist production, the affirmative identification of class and the critical account of its necessary abolition soon began to deviate from one another. It is these conflicts between the orthodoxies and heterodoxies within the concept of class which Engster in his lecture trace into our present.

Frank Engster is the author of Das Geld als Maß, Mittel und Methode. Das Rechnen mit der Identität der Zeit (2014) and published widely on the nexus of measure, money and time as well as on the intersection of epistemological and social critique. 2011-2012 he was a junior fellow at the Postwachstumskolleg of the Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, and subsequently a research associate at Helle Panke e.V. – Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung Berlin as well as project coordinator of the Institut Solidarische Moderne e.V. and Marx200.org. The Lecture by Frank Engster was part of the exhibition CLASS LANGUAGES. Exhibition, Magazine, Debate, on view from November 11, 2017 – February 4, 2018 at Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf.

CLASS LANGUAGES at the Kunstverein was the second station of a long- term collaborative project. It was launched with an exhibition and a debate program at District Berlin as well as Issue Zero of a collective journal in summer 2017 with the generous support of Hauptstadtkulturfonds. In continuation of these activities the Kunstverein presented an extension of the project with lectures, workshops, and performances, aiming at furthening the Berlin discussions in Düsseldorf. With Kai Althoff / Isa Genzken, Gerry Bibby, Cana Bilir-Meier, CAConrad, Michaela Eichwald, Frank Engster, Fehras Publishing Practices, Sarah M. Harrison, Danny Hayward, Ann Hirsch, Karl Holmqvist, Infofiction, Stephan Janitzky, Jutta Koether, Justin Lieberman, Hanne Lippard, Thomas Locher, Karolin Meunier, Johannes Paul Raether, Aykan Safoğlu, spot the silence, Josef Strau, Hans Stützer, Linda Stupart, Ryan Trecartin, Marina Vishmidt, Peter Wächtler, Ian White, Tanja Widmann. A project initiated by Manuela Ammer, Eva Birkenstock, Jenny Nachtigall, Kerstin Stakemeier, and Stephanie Weber. Exhibition design together with Fotini Lazaridou-Hatzigoga.

The presentation of the video documentation is part of our endeavour to activate the Kunstverein's new website not only as an archive, but as much as a site of participation, debate and production. In addition to announcements of events and exhibitions, it will offer documentations, ephemera, archive records as well as new artistic productions from the Kunstverein's long history.