Tag: Institutional Critique

XVII: Assembling Knowledge (Satu Herrala, Ahmet Öğüt, Lotte van den Berg Florian Malzacher)

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At least since Joseph Beuys’ legendary “International College for Creativity and Interdisciplinary Research” artistic assemblies are also a playing field for the production and transfer of knowledge. The 17th edition of “The Art of Assembly investigates along concrete artistic practices how tools and experiences from performing arts offer settings and strategies for unexpected communication and transversal education: Choreographer and curator Satu Herrala in her works focusses on embodied knowledges in artistic and curatorial work, creating conditions for art to summon collective and transformative agencies. Artist Ahmet Öğüt – initiator of the Silent University, a solidarity-based knowledge exchange platform by displaced people and forced migrants- often seeks his collaborators outside the art field. Theatre maker Lotte van den Berg, one of the initiators of the ongoing project “Building Conversation”, centers her practice around collective experiences and the relation between performance and social as well as ecological challenges. How can art offer spaces for empowerment and self-development?

AHMET ÖĞÜT ° The Silent University

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The Silent University, initiated by Ahmet Öğüt in 2012, is an autonomous platform for academics who cannot share their knowledge due to their status of residence, because their degrees are not recognized or regaining access to academia is blocked for other reasons. It is a solidary school by refugees, asylum seekers and migrants who contribute to the program as lecturers, consultants, and researchers.  The Silent University proposes a new institution outside of the restrictions of existing universities, migration laws and the other bureaucratic or juridical obstacles many migrants face. At the same time it mimics the idea of exiting universities, using their representational logics by developing alternative structures of pedagogy beyond border politics, race/ethnicity and normative education. Current branches of the Silent University include Hamburg, Stockholm and Mülheim/Ruhr. Former branches were located in Amman, Athens, London and Copenhagen.

TANIA BRUGUERA ° Truth or Dare

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Tania Bruguera is a Cuban artist and activist whose work often considers totalitarianism, immigration, and human rights. Bruguera, who intended to raise awareness and expand cultural inclusion, defined her work as arte útil (useful art). Her work has been represented in leading collections of MoMA and Tate Modern among other places. In 2015 she founded the Institute of Artivism/Instituto de Artivismo Hannah Arendt (INSTAR) in order to “foster civic literacy and policy change.” In 2021 she agreed to leave Cuba to assume the position of senior lecturer in media and performance at Harvard University in exchange for the release of 25 political prisoners.

SCHOOL OF RESISTANCE ° Assembling Political Power

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On the weekend of the German federal elections of 2021IIPM, NTGent, Schauspiel Köln and the School of Political Hope hosted together with #LeaveNoOneBehind and numerous organizations from all over the world a School of Resistance for a new politics of humanity and justice. How can the system of dehumanization, illegalization and exploitation of migrants in Europe be overturned? A manifesto signed by over 80 public figures and a joint fundraising campaign which supports human rights lawyers to bring responsible politicians and officials to court, explored new possibilities and potentials for the convergence of art and activism. Is art a future tool for survival for global citizens to become agents of change in times of crisis?

MILO RAU ° From symbolic Institutions to Microecologies

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Milo Rau believes in staging and realistic representation in his theatre plays, while for his tribunals and trials or the General Assembly he invented what he calls „symbolic institutions“ – an open, often antagonistic gathering of opinions and conflicting thruths. Recent projects like The Revolt of Dignity or the School of Resistance tries to hack the economic and political systems by means of art, constructing what Milo calls „alternative micro-ecologies. In his talk, Milo will trace his path from theatre plays and trial projects like Orestes in Mosul or The Moscow Trials to symbolic institutions like The Congo Tribunal and General Assembly – the basis for his actual holistic approach in projects like The Revolt of Dignity or A filmschool for Mosul that he develops with various partners from the arts, civil society and politics.

ISABELLE FREMEAUX & JAY JORDAN / LABOFII ° Compos(t)ing Together to actually do shit!

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co-design and deploy forms of creative disobedience since 2004. Consensus decision making and assembling is at the heart of this process, which is always entangled with radical movements and yet also has a foot in cultural institutions. Whether it was co-organising the horizontal processes of Climate Camps, transforming theatre stages into meetings to organise disobedience, facilitating the mass talk shops at Occupy London or at the zad of Notre-Dame-des-Landes, coordinating shared life and struggle against an airport and its world – the Labofii has tasted many flavours of assembling. This talk/film explores Labofii’s experience of these different contexts and ask how can artists use assemblies in the art world without becoming extractivist and loosing the powerful potential of reciprocal relationships to activist movements

IX: Reassambling Institutions (Ahmed Al-Nawas, Nora Sternfeld, Sarah Waterfeld / Staub zu Glitzer & Florian Malzacher)

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Can institutions be driving forces of change? Or are they doomed to be bastions of the status quo, capable of slow reforms at best? Arguments about institutions, instituting and institutionalizing are at the core of many progressive movements. But what would it actually mean to imagine institutions in a radical democratic way? How can we understand museums, theatres, galleries, festivals, biennales as assemblies – not only symbolically but by consequently re-negotiating their organizational structures? Curator Ahmed Al-Nawas, focusing in his work on collaborative, anti-racist and de-colonizing practices, takes a close look at the role of authorship and representation within collectives. Nora Sternfeld, art educator and curator, negotiates the possibilities for a radical-democratic museum, imagining a future that is more than the mere extension of the present. And Sarah Waterfeld, spokesperson of the collective Staub zu Glitzer (Dust to Glitter) that occupied 2017 Volksbühne in Berlin with its transmedia theatre production B6112, demands a fundamental rethinking of the way the iconic ‘people’s theatre’ is run.

AHMED AL-NAWAS ° Parallel economies of thinking together

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the necessity to rethink the elitism and whiteness nurtured by the Finnish art field and the need to be independent but still engaged and the need to have spaces where failure is embraced as a counter normative actions. Often this led to the creation of what Okwui Enwezor calls ”parallel economies of artistic productions”, as opposed to “alternative spaces”. In such productions, collective knowledge-based practices are used as a strategy to both challenge and unify the field of art. 

NORA STERNFELD ° What is a radical-democratic museum?

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inking about strategies that are challenging the archive, appropriating museum space, producing alternative knowledge and rethinking education, art educator and curator Nora Sternfeld asks: Can the museum become a space of assembly that allows us to deal with what has happened in the past, to negotiate what this means for the present, and to imagine a future that is more than the mere extension of the present?