HSz: as is/as if
CCA Graduate Program in Curatorial Practice, 2010
Paperback, 200 pages, free upon request (please email sstone@cca.edu)

HSz: as is/as if, produced by the Graduate Program in Curatorial Practice at CCA, is a collection of essays and interviews resulting from a course taught by Julian Myers on Harald Szeemann's 1983 exhibition Der Hang Zum Gesamtkunstwerk: Europaische Utopien seit 1800. In setting out to unravel Szeemann's orchestration of various artistic theories and manifestations of utopia, the class pursued paths he signposted into the realms of art, architecture, music, poetry, literature, cinema, politics, and history. The book is prefaced by Myers's essay "Totality: A Guided Tour," first published in Afterall magazine in 2009. The students' contributions range from interviews with Balthasar Burkhard and Christian Bok to essays on W. E. B. Du Bois's complex relationship to Richard Wagner and the approach to the Gesamtkunstwerk evinced in the cinema of the early 20th century.