There is hardly a living creature as annoying as the fly: it appears without being called and settles down unexpectedly. In his lecture “In Praise of the Fly. Encounters with a Puzzling Insect”, Peter Geimer demonstrates the astounding multifacetedness of this seemingly unnecessary insect—from the fascination with its particular vision in the history of film and photography, to its occurrence in world literature up to its appearance in contemporary art.
The lecture by Peter Geimer takes place on occasion of the current exhibition “I borrowed optimism from the past” by Sonja Gangl. The house fly, which appears in a number of Gangl’s exhibited works, acts as a symbol for diversity within the show and as a reference to the innumerable possibilities and perspectives of our present, by implication also to the current problems and tasks that define our ways of seeing and thinking.

Prof. Dr. Peter Geimer (*1965 Kettwig, lives in Berlin) is a professor for art history at the Freie Universität Berlin. His research emphasis lies on the history of photography, the historic narration in paintings, as well as the art and cultural history of the thing. His published books include among others “Flies. A Portrait” (Berlin 2018), “Derrida is not Home. Encounters with the Absent” (Hamburg 2013), “Images by Chance. A History of Photographic Apparitions” (Hamburg 2010) and “Theories on Photography” (Hamburg 2009).