Following the cancellation of the event series ‘The Condition of No’ at short notice due to an intervention by the City of Munich against the list of speakers, Villa Stuck has together with the speakers have decided to go ahead with the series nonetheless.

“Zensur! Zensur?”, on art magazine, 30 MAY 2025

“Rückgrat zeigen für die Freiheit der Wissenschaft”, Süddeutsche Zeitung, 11 MAY 2025

“Villa Stuck: gecancelte Gesprächsreihe zu Boykott findet doch statt”, Deutschlandfunk Kultur, Fazit, 04 MAY 2025

Prologue: What are the Limits?

03 MAY 2025, 19.00 CEST
With Aziz Al-Azmeh & Susan Neiman
Moderated by Florian Malzacher

What is considered an acceptable opinion has been increasingly narrowed down in recent years. The prologue of The Condition of No (which at the same time is the 30th episode of The Art of Assembly) asks where the limits of freedom of expression lie, what we have to listen to, how we can combine the need for safe spaces with the need for agonistic spheres – and when the state should intervene. Looking at the history of the Enlightenment, philosopher Susan Neiman doubts that the explosive current debates in Germany, for example, are really about freedom of expression. The historian Aziz Al-Azmeh profiles Arab and Islamic topoi present in Germany today and juxtaposes considerations of universalism with an intensified discourse of culturalism and cultural difference.

German Institutions

04 MAY 2025, 15.00 CEST
With Margarita Tsomou & Eyal Weizman
Moderated by Michael Buhrs

While initiatives such as Strike Germany and numerous international artists accuse most German cultural institutions of complicity in silencing pro-Palestinian positions or at least a lack of balance, the latter often see themselves as defenders of freedom of expression who, against all odds, keep spaces for dialogue open. Margarita Tsomous is a curator who organises discourse programmes at Berlin’s Theater Hebbel am Ufer – HAU. Eyal Weizman, director and founder of the research agency Forensic Architecture, criticises bias and self-censorship in the German cultural field.

Universities & Academies

09 MAY 2025, 19.00 CEST
With Meron Mendel & Geraldine Rauch
Moderated by Elke Buhr

Alongside culture, the debate about freedom of expression is most heated at universities and academies: Places where the free exchange of opinions should be a fundamental prerequisite for research and teaching. The anti-Semitic incidents and pro-Palestinian protests at German universities and academies in the context of the Gaza war are the starting point for the discussion. Geraldine Rauch, President of the Technical University of Berlin, was harshly criticised for her supposedly overly understanding approach to the student protests – including by Meron Mendel, Director of the Anne Frank Educational Centre in Frankfurt.

Freedom of the Art

04 JUL 2025, 19.00 CEST
With Candice Breitz & Christoph Möllers
Moderated by Bernd M. Scherer

Numerous codes of conduct have been negotiated, passed and heavily criticized at federal, state and municipal level in recent years. Especially in the area of cultural funding, debates about the pros and cons of codes of conduct have shaken the cultural climate. Cultural institutions are unsure how to defend their own freedom – between supposed and real censorship, self-censorship and the desire to do the right thing. The discussion will feature South African-born, Berlin-based artist Candice Breitz, whose exhibition planned for 2024 at the Saarland Museum was canceled due to allegedly controversial statements on the Gaza war, and constitutional law expert Christoph Möllers, Professor of Public Law and Philosophy of Law at Humboldt-University in Berlin, who advises the German government, among others.

Epilogue: Useful Art in the Condition of No

06 JUL 2025, 15.00 CEST
With Tania Bruguera
Moderated by Florian Malzacher and Roland Wenninger

For many years, the Cuban artist and activist Tania Bruguera, who currently lives in exile in the USA, has been campaigning for freedom of speech and against censorship in her performances and exhibitions. At the Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart in Berlin, Tania Bruguera’s performance Where Your Ideas Become Civic Actions (100 Hours Reading “The Origins of Totalitarianism“) made headlines in early 2024. The reading of Hannah Arendt’s book was disrupted by protesters and stopped the following morning. Based on her experiences in Berlin and at documenta fifteen in Kassel, Tania Bruguera conceived the three-part project “The Condition of No“ for the Villa Stuck in Munich, examining the issue of censorship from different angles. Author and dramaturge Florian Malzacher and curator Roland Wenninger talk to Tania Bruguera about her experiences in very different contexts.

A production by VS – Villa Stuck
in cooperation with INSTAR & The Art of Assembly

Book a 1:1 conversation for €1 or listen to the talks via the 8 channels of the Market Radio!

Money generates, transforms, destroys ties between people and people, people and things, things and things. This has (almost) always been the case. Acceleration is increasing, the market ticks in real time and trades with the future: nowhere is the digitalisation of the world more striking than in the economic sphere. Cryptocurrencies are replacing bank accounts; alternative payment systems are challenging the power of states, which in turn are trying to counter the competition from global technology and platform corporations.

The total virtualisation of reality promises its equally total commodification. Everything – real and virtual objects, memories, feelings, care – becomes a potential carrier of value, a possible object of speculation, a token.

Money is a relational tool. It creates relationships: of debt and guilt, of dependencies, of prosperity and poverty. It irrationally rationalises the world. It is used to compare the value of things, activities, relationships, but also of people. Money is the face of capital, fetish, metaphor and machine, threatening and desirable.

In an arena running on the rhythm of administrative time, 90 experts from the fields of art, activism, theory and myriad of everyday careers will present their expertise: What actually is this strange medium of money that has been argued about for at least two and a half millennia? The Market for Useful Knowledge and Non-Knowledge traces the developments of money, looks at what it makes possible and what it does by adopting the refrain of investigative journalists and marriage swindlers: Follow the money!

Article Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung (in German)

Video documentation of the market

Experts: Antigone Akgün, André Alfes, Katrin Assenmacher, Timothy Attanucci, Andrea Baldan, Frank Berger, Bastian Bergerhoff, Barbara Brandl, Karlheinz Braun, Till Breyer, Golde Carlsson, Il-Jin Atem Choi, Tsafrir Cohen, Caroline Creutzburg, Radha D‘Souza, Minh Dao, Clémentine Deliss, Jutta Ditfurth, Nicole Fischer, Carlos Franke, Petra Gehring, Claus George, Jürgen Geuter, Jan Greitens, Achim Greser, Lisa Yashodhara Haller, Pit Hartling, Michael Hartmann, Ina Hartwig, Rolf Haubl, Bernadette La Hengst, Mikael GB Horstmann, Hannah Hurtzig, Moritz Hütten, Bijan Kaffenberger, Alexander Karschnia, Alexandra Keiner, Fleur Kemmers, Radwa Khaled-Ibrahim, Tobias Klein, Christian Kremser, Bojana Kunst, Mahret Ifeoma Kupka, Agnieszka Kurant, Laura Laabs, Nikolas Lelle, Marlon Lieber, Lina Lindheimer, Julia Mantel, Katja Maurer, Fabrice Mazliah, Nana Melling, Daniel Mertens, Guadalupe Moreno, Gerald Nestler, Aleksandra Peeva, Michael Quast, Jana Ringwald, Jochen Schmith, Martin Schmitt, Inken Schönauer, Dag Schulze, Brett Scott, Shantel, Roland Siegwald, Sebastian Siepen, Robin Sommer, Peter Stamer, Marcus Steinweg, Igor Štromajer, Nathan Taylor, Joana Tischkau, Julia Uherek, Jeanne Charlotte Vogt, Klaus Walter, Carola Westermeier, Janosch Witte, Sonja Yakovleva et al.

Licence: Hannah Hurtzig / Curator: Florian Malzacher / Dramaturge: Philipp Scholtysik / Project Manager: Ulrike Veudel

A Mobile Akademie Berlin project, produced by Künstler*innenhaus Mousonturm in cooperation
with ZEVEDI (Centre Responsible Digitality). A project in the framework of the Alliance of International Production Houses, funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media. ZEVEDI is supported by the Hessian Minister for Digital Strategy and Innovation.

Unreadymade

27 JUL 2003, 19.00 – Honsellbrücke, Frankfurt
A joint project with deufert&plischke

Anna Kohlhaupt presents never realized advertising. Johannes Franzen brings his self produced wine, whose fermentation has not been stopped artificially. Klaus Walter offers unfinished music. Anke Zechner and Serjoscha Wiemer declare their “consent to unfinished repetition”. Kathrin Brinkmann shows the layout of a film that could never be realized. Kattrin Deufert & Thomas Plischke are against “work in progress” and all other guests contribute unfinished works of all kinds.

Voice

3 AUG 2003, 20.00 – Honsellbrücke, Frankfurt
A joint project with deufert&plischke

Ingrid Metz-Neun is the German voice of Marilyn Monroe and the Frankfurt subway. René Zechlin (Frankfurter Kunstverein) talks about voices in art. Patrick Primavesi (theater scientist) reflects on the voice ins works by Schleef and Pollesch. A few people come with radio plays and pieces, Tine Kopf & Bernie Schreiner pick out a few suitable films, Unfriendly Takeover is still searching for a Common hill myna, a BKA phonetician, a digital voice synthesizer, the voice of reason and a Callas lover. And everyone else present joins in.

Pretense of false facts

10 AUG 2003, 20.00 – Honsellbrücke, Frankfurt
Host: Stefan Kaegi (Rimini-Protokoll, Hygiene Today)

With: Brigitta Mensdorf (court journalist), Antje (police officer and 100-time witness), Rudi Grimm (long-time lay judge at Darmstadt Regional Court), Reiner Eggert (retired lawyer). Vayos Karavas (PhD student in internet law) brings a law book, Mateusz Borowsky moderates Polish music of the 80s and Kaegi gives details about the Leuna files, anecdotes about fake murderers and the real Günter Wallraf trial.

Cooking

17 AUG 2003, 20.00 – Honsellbrücke, Frankfurt
A joint project with deufert&plischke

Ethnologist Eva Raabe (Museum of World Cultures) talks about cannibalism in religious and cultural contexts. Tobias Brenk listens to Alfred Biolek smacking his lips in his radio play Appetito. Susanne Pfeffer talks about cooking & art. Thomas Orban reports on Frankfurt beer and sausage wars. Bernie Schreiner brings cookbooks, Sebastian Stöhrer himself. And Thomas Marcowic takes care of the physical well-being. Everyone is invited to contribute (and if someone reveals the secret of the only true green sauce – so much the better).

Unreadymade II

24 AUG 2003, 20.00 – Honsellbrücke, Frankfurt

Stefanie Wenner (Diskursive Poliklinik, Berlin) interprets the phantasm of infinity. Oliver Augst starts the folk song machine. Johannes Franzen pixels himself into the incessant. Kattrin Deufert brings John Cage with her. N.N. rushes into space (Space’ the final frontier).

Too late

26 FEB 2004, 21.00 – TAT, Bockenheimer Depot, Frankfurt

Dieter Kramer (Head Custodian Museum of World Cultures) talks about time and time sovereignty; Mona Suhrbier (Custodian for South America, Museum of World Cultures) knows that in indigenous cultures nobody has to be late. Thomas Maagh (Verlag der Autoren) knows about being late in theater and tells about missed dialogues and dramatic/dramaturgical structures of “too late”. Louise Neri (Curator and Artistic Director TAT) and Christine Peters (Theater der Welt, former Artistic Director Mousonturm) believe in the decline of art and aesthetics. Klaus Walter (DJ, radio host) brings music. Sevo Stille (Radio X, field) did it all ten years ago, and Christian Schröder (artist and architect) beiβen the dogs. Probably. It is also possible that everything will be completely different.

Errors and error analysis

04 MAR 2004, 21.00 – TAT, Bockenheimer Depot, Frankfurt

Rafael Haack (Engineer. for mechanical engineering, expert at DEKrA) reports about the test engineer between safety and auto death. Justin Salisbury (computer linguist and web programmer) brings the 5 golden rules of debugging systems. Klaus Walter presents and talks about music created from mistakes, oversights and errors. Michael Breker (ACM Siggraph Chapter Leader and cineaste) on camera errors and continuity. Petra Leutner talks about literary positions on mistakes, and Andreas Kallfelz (Thing) considers what else …

Auratic Things

18 Mar 2004, 21.00 – TAT, Bockenheimer Depot, Frankfurt

The Indian Raqs Media Collective deals with those things that refugees never leave behind, Mona Suhrbier (Custodian for South America, Museum der Weltkulturen) talks about processes that turn objects into fellow beings. Josef Franz Thiel (ethnologist of religion) talks about the sacred power in objects. Thomas Orban contributes auratic things from his immense fund.

Hold on: Documentaries

2 APR 2004, 21.00 – TAT, Bockenheimer Depot, Frankfurt

Matthias Altenburg (writer) leads and reads diaries. Claus Richter documents “Examples of Extreme Enthusiasm IV”, a prop reconstruction of science fiction film fans. Kathrin Brinkmann (Arte editor) uses a short film by John Smith to show how documentation becomes fiction, Eckart Voigts-Virchow explores how TV documentaries fake history, Noah Holtwiesche thinks aloud about performance art and its documentations, and Rebecca Groves (dramaturge Ballett Frankfurt) confronts the difficulties of preserving choreographies for posterity.

Empty

29 APR 2004, 21.00 – TAT, Bockenheimer Depot, Frankfurt

Martin Wilhelm sees a changed quality of urban emptiness. Gerald Hintze reads Henri Lefebvre. Susanne Traub likes the emptiness in theater and dance. Ernst Albrecht Stiebler describes music as frozen architecture and seeks emptiness in musical spaces.

Second League

16 MAY 2004, 21.00 – TAT, Bockenheimer Depot, Frankfurt

Michael Gabriel (Koordinationsstelle Fanprojekte, Eintracht fan & author of a book about the trauma of Rostock ’92) doesn’t like Burghausen. Ansgar Warner (taz-Berlin columnist, doing his doctorate voluntarily in Giessen) is “in the middle of Hesse surrounded by middle Hesse” and ponders about province as 2nd league. As well as other contributions to friend and sorrow of the second league.

50 years TAT in memory snippets

29 MAY 2004, 20.30 – TAT, Bockenheimer Depot, Frankfurt

After fifty years, the TAT is finally abolished. Handke’s Offending the Audience, Beuys’ mold, Fassbinder’s scandals, grueling co-determination, Cage’s 70th birthday. On the penultimate evening of the TAT, we want to look back on all this and much more – everyone is invited to bring along the memory of an evening, an experience, an event, a nuisance at the TAT – whether a maker, an audience member or someone else involved.

With Elli Lindner (TAT box office from 1985 to 1991), Karlheinz Braun (Suhrkamp theater editor in Offending the Audience times and Experimenta initiator), Ulrike Schiedermair (former TAT-director), Walter Flamme (actor in times of co-determination), Ernstalbrecht Stiebler (musicologist and Cage-friend), Rainer Römer & Hermann Kretzschmar (Ensemble Modern), Johanna Milz (ex-assistant director with Kühnel/Schuster and still press spokeswoman of the TAT), Günther Rühle (ex-FAZ-feuilleton-chief and ex-Intendant) and many others.

Naked

20 OCT 2004, 19.00 – Museum of Applied Arts, Frankfurt

Gerald Siegmund (theater scholar) discusses naked dancers. Hans-Jürgen Döpp praises his renowned collection of erotica. The lawyer Uwe Säuberlich from the law firm TaylorWessing explains the offense of causing public nuisance.

Dressed

24 NOV 2004, 19.00 – Museum for Applied Arts, Frankfurt

Eva Raabe (Museum für Weltkulturen) explains the ethnological transition from naked to non-naked; Gerald Hintze (Weser5) quotes Roland Barthes and reflects on striptease; Michael Wagener (artist, gutleut verlag) talks together with Meike Behm (art historian) about his project mobile fashion; Philiz Phillip and Svetlana Kapitonova (Museum für angewandte Kunst) report on intercultural fashion aspects.

Florian Malzacher & Gesa Ziemer on Doing Theory

2006: Nothing but Control: Surveillance, Participation, Collaboration and Open Sources

Workshops & Lectures
Curated by Florian Malzacher & Gesa Ziemer
With Jochen Becker, Ulrich Bröckling, Bojana Cvejić, Ina Maria Greverus, Mette Ingvartsen, Xavier Le Roy, Lawrence Liang, Sebastian Luetgert, Erin Manning, Brian Massumi, Goran Sergej Pristaš, Nikolina Pristaš, Jan Ritsema, Irit Rogoff, Florian Schneider, Peter Spillmann, Marion von Osten, William Walters & Michael Zinganel et al.

2007: Close Enough

Walking Conference
Curated by Florian Malzacher & Gesa Ziemer
With Franzobel, Gabu Heindl, Clément Mutombo, Michael Ostrowski, Georg Schöllhammer, Ruth Sonderegger, Joseph Vogl, Eyal Weizmann et al.

Workshops & Lectures
With deufert&plischke, ifau & jesko fezer, Philip Jeck, Francisco López, Tom Lamberty, Jeroen Peeters, Katharina Pewny, Heike Schleper, Bernhard Schreiner, Staalplaat Soundsystem, Marcus Steinweg, Matthias Vogel et al.

2008: Strategies for Avoiding Misfortune

Walking Conference
Curated by Florian Malzacher & Gesa Ziemer
With Isolde Charim, Scott Lash, Michaela Ott, Philipp Stöllger, Wolfgang Welsch Et al.

Workshops & Lectures
With Tony Chakar, Helgard Haug/Rimini Protokoll, Schott Lash, Geheimagentur, Claus Pias, René Pollesch, Judith Revel, Paz Rojo, Manuela Zechner Et al.

2009: All the Same

Conference of Elective Affinities
Curated by Florian Malzacher & Anke Schleper

Workhops & Lectures
With John Baker, Brian Finoki, Max Hinderer, Jorge Hurtado, Tomislav Medak, Marko Peljhan, Sergej Goran Pristaš, Ivana Ivković, Ana Vujanović, Dmitry Vilensky Et al.

2010: Masters, Tricksters, Bricoleurs

Conference on virtuosity as a strategy for art and survival
Curated by Florian Malzacher & Sibylle Peters
With Pierre Basieux, Gabriele Brandstetter, Jonathan Burrows, Matteo Fargion, Brigitte Felderer, Ole Frahm, Ralph Heidenreich, Stefan Heidenreich, Friedrich Kittler, Michael Warner et al.

Workshops
With geheimagentur, Eric Joris, Jan Holger Mauss, Tino Sehgal, Mårten Spångberg, Kai van Eickels, Sven-Olov Wallenstein et al.

2011: Second Worlds

The Patient
Performative Conference on the Dual Citizenship of Illness
Curated by Hannah Hurtzig & Florian Malzacher
With Barbara Duden, Harald Haynert, Céline Kaiser, Hermes Phettberg, Claus Philipp et al

Workshops & lectures
With Michael Esposito, Guido Kleene, Oliver Marchart, Achille Mbembe, Public Movement, Lotte van den Berg, Carl Michael von Hausswolff, Joanna Warsza, Artur Żmijewski et al.

Departing from the observation that (1) artist organizations are founded by artists, (2) artist organizations choose the form of the organization, (3) artist organizations seek for structural engagement, and (4) artist organizations propose social/political agendas, the AOI sought to explore the artistic value, political potential, and performative characteristics of the artist-organization, as well as the possibility for transnational collaborations and alliances between them.

This fundamental turn in artistic practice was mirrored spatially in the HAU Theater, transforming the stage into the seating section of the audience, and vice versa. The modular neo-constructivist lecterns were repositioned for each session, displaying an ongoing composition – an ongoing construction – parallel to the attempts of allying the different artist organizations participating to the AOI.

www.artistorganisationsinternational.org

Moderators: Ekaterina Degot, Charles Esche, Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei, Maria Hlavajova, Matteo Lucchetti, Margarita Tsomou. Respondents: Ulf Aminde, Libia Castro, Galit Eilat, Christoph Gurk, Alex Karschnia, Urok Shirhan.

Curators: Florian Malzacher, Jonas Staal, Joanna Warsza / Producer: Younes Bouadi / Project coordinator: Renée In der Maur / Communication: Suzie Hermán, Henry Procter, Imara Limon / Architect: Paul Kuipers / Construction: Kasper Oostergetel / Graphic designer: Remco van Bladel / Photographer: Lidia Rossner / Website developer: Charlie Berendsen

Commissioned by HAU Hebbel am Ufer, Berlin. Supported by Hauptstadtkulturfonds Berlin

The coronavirus crisis has made visible the devastating consequence of our weakened structures of common life support. As a result, the demand for universal healthcare, well paid care workers and cleaners and basic income had strengthened, making visible what Jodi Dean has called a “collective desire for collectivity.”

Therefore, this edition of Training for the Future was structured around the changing notions of collectivity, collectives and collectivizations. What cooperative models enable new understandings of collectivity? How does the idea of collectivization and the collective resonate in different cultures and geographies around the world?

Each training took place under regionally specific pandemic circumstances, shaped by the need to take care of others and oneself, meaning that the size of participation and the form of each training differed in each locality. Despite the decentralized nature of this edition, Training for the Future 2021 insisted on the importance of physical assemblies and the role of art, culture, activism and social organization to shape our collective desire for collectivity into solidary presents and shared futures.

trainingforthefuture.org

Artist: Jonas Staal / Curator & co-programmer: Florian Malzacher / Coordinator Studio Jonas Staal: Nadine Gouders / Co-programmers Zurich: Hayat Erdoğan and Nikolai Prawdzic Performing Architecture/Goethe-Institut: Susanne Traub / Visual Identity: Studio Remco van Bladel / Website Development: Studio RGB

Co-produced by Goethe-Institut / Performing Architecture Venice & Theater Neumarkt

Gemeinschaftsgärten (community gardens) took a look – with field trips, talks and working groups – at collaborative, collegial and collective ways of working and organising – in the arts and beyond.

The two-day conference began in a decentralised way. Five excursions led into the neighbourhood to different places in Stuttgart: What everyday practices and competences of community and society building exist from which art can benefit and to which it can perhaps also contribute? The second day broadened the view with reports from various guests on radical approaches: How can cultural organisations, institutions, hierarchies and quality criteria not only be thought of differently, but concretely realised differently? In which and for which neighbourhoods is work done in the independent performing arts and which institutions and forms of organisation would best support this form of artistic work?

T.I.N.A. “There is no alternative” – This credo has defined public conscience in recent years and destroyed the faith in the possibility of changes and the viability of utopia. The ideology of T.I.N.A. is not only the opposite of revolutionary spirit, but a sedative for independent thinking.. The postmodern “anything goes” has been replaced by the post-political “nothing goes”. On the one hand. On the other hand, in recent years we have seen more and more movements and manifestations by young people striving to prove the oppo- site: that the world can be changed.

The Austrian writer Robert Musil – unsuspicious of being too close to revolutionary ambitions — called the ability to believe that things could be completely different the “sense of possibility”: Because if there is a sense of reality, then there must also be a sense of possibility — a sense that surpasses mere pragmatics and resig- nation, and allows us to imagine and conceive new and different worlds.

The view on the revolution that began a hundred years ago in St. Petersburg is ambiguous. The history that followed was too brutal, the neglection of ideals too disillusioning, and the instrumentalization of the conflict by all sides too powerful as that we could maintain a naïve or even euphoric look back on the events in October 1917. But still the promises of the revolution keep resonating., a hundred years later. And the mere fact, that once people truly believed that it was possible to fundamentally change the course of his- tory, remains fascinating and inspiring.

Partly concrete, partly ambiguously readable leitmotifs led as red threads through the program: “Control, Collaboration, Participation and Open Sources” (2006), “Close enough” (2007), “Strategies for Avoiding Misfortune” (2008), “All the Same. What Is Valid If Everything Is Valid?” (2009) or “Truth is concrete” (2012).

At least, when we create concepts, we are doing something.

Dictionary of War is a collaborative platform for 100 concepts on the subject of war, formed and presented at four two-day events in Frankfurt, Munich, Graz and Berlin, each featuring twenty-five contributions of scientists, artists, theorists and practitioners. As lectures, performances, films, slide shows, readings, concerts in strict alphabetical order as a marathon discourse. From ABC weapons to civilian population, from parachute invasion to facts on the ground, from potato to collateral damage, from infowar to radar surveillance, from homesickness to resistance.
The aim was to (re)create key concepts that already play a significant role in current discussions of war, had so far been neglected, or had yet to be created. Dictionary of War served to scrutinise a reality that characteristically obfuscates existing power relations the more people talk about war and peace.

War as an armed confrontation between sovereign (nation) states seemed to be a thing of the past. Today it is rather: new war, post-modern war, global war, immanent war… War becomes a “constitutive form of a new order” (Alliez/Negri) that no longer knows inside or outside, that not only destroys, but also produces life. In this new world order, there is no difference between war and non-war: war is perpetual and everywhere.

Dictionary of War set out to intervene in this war and, at the same time, to appeal for desertion from a war of words in which facts are created and asserted with such a tremendous deployment of communication and propaganda that they can no longer be challenged. The concept formation of Dictionary of War, in contrast, remained transparent and took the form of open process in which people can and should intervene.

Over the past few years independent theater in Austria, Germany and Switzerland became part of a very international network and established a sophisticated discourse on art. Impulse is perhaps the most significant platform and at the same time the most powerful lobbyist of this scene in the German-speaking countries. The festival challenges the independent performance-based art forms to make use of their fundamental freedom. It challenges them to amplify, to try, to strain and overstrain the freedom of theater as medium; the freedom to start from scratch again and again; the freedom to create structures, hierarchies, stereotypes, processes, and collaborations in a way appropriate to each artistic endeavor – and not the other way around.

Independent theater provides impulses for an idea of theater that does not remain trapped in particular spaces of thinking and staging. It provides impulses not to simply accept the boundaries of genres set by the logics of grant applications, markets, and marketing. It provides impulses to reclaim theatricality in art, music, literature, film, and theory as theater. It provides impulses to think differently about theater as art. The task of independent theater is not to be the low-cost repertoire by the up-and-coming. It is not a special path as the German-speaking theaters and funding structures would suggest. It is an explicit alternative in its art as well as in its work structures.

From 2013 – 2017 the festival was curated by the artistic director Florian Malzacher. The thematic orientation for each edition was supported by an advisory board consisting of experts from academia and arts. Alongside the program of selected visiting productions, an open call extended the focus to works beyond the beaten path. The festival was accompanied by theoretical and socio-political debates as well as by an online collection of material that took up specific questions of independent theater and put them up for discussion.

Artistic Director: Florian Malzacher
Dramaturgy: Dominik Müller (2017), Felizitas Stilleke (2017), Nadine Vollmer (2015-16), Stefanie Wenner (2013)
Artistic Assistant: Charlotte Hesse (2017), Dominik Müller (2013-16)
Production Manager: Emily Keller (2015-17), Anne Schulz (2013)

There is a word for people like you – and that word is: audience. […] An audience likes to sit in the dark and to watch other people do it. Well, if you paid your money: Good luck to you. From this end of the telescope things are somewhat different. You all look very small and very far away, but there’s a lot of you. It’s important perhaps to remember that there are more of you than of us. So if it does come to a fight you will undoubtedly win. Forced Entertainment, Showtime

Solely the banal fact that in theatre, in contrast to the other arts, production necessarily takes place in the same time-space as the reception puts audi- ence in a precarious position: Being somehow responsible for actions witnessed on stage. Being present, being part, being involved. It is this phenomenon which has repeatedly fascinated theatre artists in all periods, particularly during the last century, and has stimulated them to reflect on this circumstance and turn it into a subject. The transitory character of theatre as an event elevates the audience into a constitutive element.
These aspects gain a new quality in a time when the arts are again more and more concerned with the political on which politics itself is loosing its grip.

Even though theatre is no longer the social medium of self-clarification which it has always been it has the possibility of being politically strong wherever it becomes apparent that it remains the only artistic place of direct confrontation of the audience with itself as a collective.
How does that compare to other art-forms whose audience is more abstract, perhaps more absent from the work, but which are because of this more independent from the spontaneous whims of a few individuals?
The Fifth International Summer Academy poses the questions concerning the audience from two perspectives: with respect to aesthetic practice and with respect to political stance. The Fifth International Summer Academy wants to take account of both conceptual approaches and also their communication by curators.

Four Academies – and more

Form follows function – a smart advice for graphic designer and sometimes even for artists. But what form can follow the function of the International Summer Academy? What is the function of the International Summer Academy anyhow? Knowledge has always been closely associated with conventions of power, institutions, pedagogy, ethics and politics. Consequently, modes of passing knowledge have to be a central theme for any reflective practice. The International Summer Academy tries to reflect on its own conditions, possibilities and restrictions. This is why we this time want to go a step further, actually at least four steps further:

In 2004 there will not be one, but four academies. Four academies at the same time at the same place giving probably more than four answers. Very personal answers perhaps, very radical perhaps, very theoretical or very intuitional, very precise or very vague. Six artists / theoreticians / curators are invited to invite – not only a partner for a joint workshop but partners for a whole academy. Four Acade- mies at the same time at the same place: Performances, group work, no work, discussions, muttering, opening, closing …

Eva Behrendt in taz- die tageszeitung

With the forfeiture of master narratives, society and art have largely lost the possibility to take unambiguous ethical, political, but also aesthetic positions. New framings, representative orders, shifts in cultural, political and scientific paradigms challenge our concepts of identity, reality and ethics. But how and in what way do our realities break down? What new decipherments are necessary to understand the world? And how can these starting points be the beginning or result of an artistic process?

The 4th International Summer Academy considered such questions by focussing on the act of perception itself: On the one hand, it investigated the concept of fake as a means of questioning traditional notions of biography, reliability of perception, and quality of representations as intersubjective designations. What “is” that screen upon which we look, and how does this screen affect our gaze?

On the other hand, the notion of perception implies the question of perspective and spectatorship. In what ways have spectatorial positions been reorganized by the advent of new media and political agendas – as manipulation as much as critical stance? And has the spectator renewed his or her own perspective in a comparable way? It seems that aesthetics today is no longer a matter of organizing form and content, but rather a matter of uncovering ideological perspective – as fake, “truth,” experience, adventure, spectator, process, institution, politics, or simply: identity.

In eight “formations,” participants were invited to develop their own maps within a grid of lectures, working groups, sessions, performances, and various forms of work and communication. Each formation had an internationally recognized artist and theorist as host, who in turn has invited his or her own hosting partner.

The Title „True Truth about the Nearly Real“ is a commission work by Tim Etchells (Forced Entertainment)

A project by Künstlerhaus Mousonturm
In cooperation with: Institute for Applied Theatre Science / University of Giessen, Frankfurter Kunstverein, Centre for Performance Research, Janus, Kunstencentrum Vooruit, Ghent, Rotterdamse Schouwburg

The online platform 100 Ways to Say We imagines a multitude of futures and speculates about possible conceptions and visions of “We.” Artists, theorists, and activists from around the planet share and propose diverse ways of living together—from the perspective of an imagined future. What emerges is a net of voices, stories, and opinions revolving around the notion of a diverse, contradictory, and ambitious “We.” Looking back at the past, which is our present, and asking: Who do we want to have been?

“We” implies a common ground, some sort of universalism. But there are reasons to distrust any “We”; to call attention to differences; and to point out privileges as well as hierarchies. By all means of the all-including gesture of “We, the people,” there is also the danger of fragmentation: For decades, neoliberalism has been atomizing society into singularities, undermining collectivity. With the need to create new imaginaries for our future arises the necessity of a new “We”—a transversal collective will in which a multitude of demands come together.

100 eyewitnesses of the future contribute with lectures, talks, performances, videos etc. their speculative, realistic, fictional, analytical, lyrical, and/or musical view on the possible paths ahead of us. In the coming weeks, the archive will continue to grow. “100 Ways to Say We” is a utopian map created in a time of dystopian presence, as well as an archive of hypothetical futures that could expand our sense of possibility and open perspectives we haven’t had before.

www.100ways.space

With contributions by Moayed Abu Ammouna, Preethi Athreya, Aukanaw, Kamran Behrouz, Jérôme Bel, Franco “Bifo” Berardi, Deborah Birch, biriken, Black Dads Germany, COME iN TENT, Emanuele Braga, Benjamin Burger, Brandy Butler, Ilenia Caleo, kaur chimuk & Soumya Mukhopadhyay, Zhao Chuan, Dragonfly, Radha D’Souza, Seraina Dür + Jonas Gillman & the Pigeons Ensemble, Malcolm Ferdinand, Tatiana Filippova, Julia Fritzsche, Benno Gammerl, Goldendean, Helen Hester, House of Tupamaras, Wissal Houbabi, Theater Hora & Stefan Burger, Abraham Hurtado, Invernomuto, Dagna Jakubowska & Gawrońska-Kula, Asmaa Jama & Gouled Ahmed, Kieron Jina, Eisa Jocson, Ranjit Kandalgaonkar, Mikhail Karikis, Zaayan Khan, Oskar Kirmes, Song Long, Ana Longoni & Santiago Suarez Longoni, Sugano Matsusaki, Piersandra Di Matteo, Marvi Mazhar, Mateja Meded, Wu Meng, Mentah, akramul monem, Eleanor Morgan, Ibrahim Nehme & Frida, Adrian Notz, Sunna Nousuniemi, Janiv Oron, Paper Tiger, Dan Perjovschi, Yassine Rachidi, Firi Rahman, Riar Rizaldi, Philip Rizk, Annalisa Sacchi, Alessandro Schiattarella (Army of Love), Gregory Sholette & Themm! Collective, Jonas Staal & Florian Malzacher, Mackda Ghebremariam Tesfau, Françoise Vergès, Angelo Vermeulen & Fred Sena (SEADS), Stefan Winkler, Sik Ying Ho & Felix Hui, Salam Yousry et al.

Curated by Marco Baravalle, Hayat Erdoğan, Florian Malzacher, David Niederer, Nikolai E. Prawdzic & Susanne Traub
Concept by Hayat Erdoğan, Nikolai E. Prawdzic & Florian Malzacher
Website design: Juan Ferrari
Project assistance: Lucia Graenicher

The online platform “100 Ways to Say We” is a co-production of Theater Neumarkt & Goethe-Institut / Performing Architecture in collaboration with S.a.L.E. Docks & Florian Malzacher

When in 1989 the Berlin wall and one Communist regime after the other fell, it came as a surprise to almost everyone. As a result many things were done hastily, the change often was just a sell-out. Today we witness the results: Ruined social systems, broken biographies and the rise of right-wing populism.

In Cuba the road to change turns out to be driven in slow motion. Since 1989 it is clear change will come. But it still didn’t yet. How to use the time till the inevitable will happen? How to prepare? What is plan A, plan B or even plan C? What does one want to keep, what to change? Who wants to play a role?

¿Cómo estar preparado para lo (im)predecible? was a half day marathon with performances, readings, lectures, surveys, talks, and a party resulting from a workshop given by Joanna Warsza and Florian Malzacher on invitation of Tania Bruguera at INSTAR – Instituto de Artivismo Hannah Arendt, her newly found institute for artistic activism in Havana. In its rigid, fast rhythm the marthon produced a feeling of urgency that contrasts the seemingly lethargic political atmosphere in Cuba. The fragmented, sometimes improvised character of the presented works by young Cuban artists enabled the audience to interfere, react, discuss, go along – and created an atmosphere of open, engaged, brave and generous exchange. Tania Bruguera says that INSTAR exist when there is a feeling of freedom. That night her private house became a public space.

With Luis  Manuel Otero Alcántara, Boris González Arenas, Yuri Obregón Batard, Fernando Bon, Tania Bruguera, Julio Lópiz Casal, Yaser Castellanos, Yimi Conklase, Miguel Coyula, Abel González Fernández, José Ernesto Alonso Fernández, Iris Ruiz Hernandez, Hamlet Lavastida, Adonis Milán, Yanelis Nuñez, Amaury Pacheco, Nonardo Perea Lia Villares

We need a history that does not save in any sense of the word; we need a history that performs. Jane Blocker

Appropriation (Aneignung), including cultural appropriation, is always a violent act. The (direct or structural) violence with which many objects of ethnological collections were appropriated is repeated in the ever new appropriations of these objects through interpretation and contextualisation. But appropriation also always implies an approximation that does not leave those who appropriate unchanged. The German word Aneignung functions in this regard like a picture puzzle: Depending on the focus it emphasizes either the negative aspect of possessing and taking away or the positive aspect of learning and wanting to understand.

The performative conference Appropriations as well as its remains in the permanent exhibition afterwards reflected on the possibilities of appropriating knowledge and cultures foreign to the West by investigating the concepts of reenactment and performative reconstruction as well as the resistance of the objects.

From 2004 – 2006 Unfriendly Takeover presented the series of “Performing Lectures”. Within this series the practical and theoretical possibilities and borders of lecture performances were investigated as a continuous, ever changing definition in progress. Learning by watching.

Unfriendly Takeover was founded in 2000 as a no-budget curatorial collective consisting of Andreas Bohn, Janine Hauthal, Mikael Horstmann, Florian Malzacher, Anke Schleper, Heike Schleper and Bernhard Schreiner; former active members included Manuela Demmler and Jens Holst. From 2004 to 2006, Unfriendly Takeover had its base camp at Atelierfrankfurt, of which it was a co-founder. Unfriendly Takeover ceased its activities in 2008.

It matters that as bodies […] we arrive together in public. As bodies we suffer, we require food and shelter, and as bodies we require one another in dependency and desire. So this is a politics of the public body, the requirements of the body, its movement and its voice. […] We sit and stand and move as the popular will, the one that electoral politics has forgotten and abandoned. But we are here, time and again, persisting, imagining the phrase, ‘we the people’. Judith Butler, Occupy Wall Street, 2011

Soon it was no longer stage versus auditorium, but one big assembly hall, one big battlefield, one big demonstration. Erwin Piscator, The Political Theatre (1929)

The last ten to fifteen years have been marked by countless social and political movements around the world. Whether in Tunis, Cairo, Madrid or Lisbon, in Athens, New York, London or Istanbul, in post-Fukushima Tokyo, amidst Niemeyer’s iconic parliamentary architecture in Brasilia, under the umbrellas of Hong Kong or on the streets of Minneapolis: what characterises the majority of these movements and distinguishes them from many of their predecessors is their search for alternative forms of coming together, of arguing and deciding, of negotiating community and society. The potential of these assemblies lies not merely in their demands. They change reality not only by designing radical models of democracy but simply by living them.

At the same time, a new interest in models of assembly and the public sphere has awakened in the arts, in concepts in which society is not only mirrored, but constantly tried out, performed, tested, rethought or even reinvented. Court hearings on artistic freedom, religion or censorship; summit meetings at which climate targets or cultural policy are negotiated; parliaments in which the otherwise voiceless raise their voices: staging forms of gathering that tread the fine line between art and reality, theatre in particular has become a democratic arena of radical imagination.

Since 2021, the ongoing nomadic lecture series and internet platform “The Art of Assembly” has brought together more than 80 protagonists from various fields of art, activism and theory on stages in cities like Vienna, Berlin, New York, Oslo, Helsinki or Bucharest to speculate on the potential and limits of human assemblies at a time when there seem to be no certainties.

All dates, lectures, videos, podcasts etc. at:
art-of-assembly.net

Co-produced by Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Goethe Institut / Performing Architecture, Neumarkt Theater Zurich, Ruhrtriennale

2017-2019. Supported by Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, Goethe Institut Torino & Mondriaan Fund.

trainingforthefuture.org

Perceived well before the Occupy movement began and happening almost shortly after its first anniversary, the TIC Marathon Camp brought together more than 200 artists, activists, and theorists, in the city of Graz, Austria. They were joined by 100 students and young professionals, as well as by a local and international audience, to meet on the small but common territory of art and activism: a 24 hour a day, 7 day a week marathon camp with 170 hours of lectures, performances, productions, discussions to pool useful strategies and tactics in art and politics. The Marathon machine ran nonstop—often too fast, sometimes too slow—all day every day and all night every night. It produced thought, arguments, knowledge, but it also created frustration and exhaustion.

The 2022 edition focussed on chronopolitics: the politics of time in a moment we are out of time. Artists, philosophers, activists as well as non-human presences led trainings on time travel, deep listening, radical slowness, the subconscious present and plant based time to reclaim the means of production of our future.

The architecture of the training camp shaped the content and practical engagement: fossil ammonites from a family of polyps and octopuses that was wiped out in the 5th mass extinction 66 million years ago next to used tyres – symbol of the Turin car industry and the Italian economic boom, but also simply hardened petroleum, fossil heritage whose burning accelerates the destruction of our shared futures.

trainingforthefuture.org

Artist: Jonas Staal / Curator & co-progammer: Florian Malzacher / Coordinator Studio Jonas Staal: Nadine Gouders / Architect: Paul Kuipers / Visual Identity: Remco van Bladel / Photo and video documentation: Ruben Hamelink / Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo: Curators: Irene Calderoni and Bernardo Follini / Assistant Curator: Rosita Ronzini / Curatorial Assistant: Carlotta Bandieramonte / Technical production manager: Giuseppe Tassone / Technical Production: Chiara Casassa, Fabio Di Camillo and Kimitake Sato / Logistics: Carla Mantovani / Educational Department: Elena Stradiotto and Francesca Togni / Accessibility: Annamaria Cilento / Accessibility Consultant: Diana Anselmo

Commissioned by Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin. Supported by Mondriaan Foundation, Amsterdam; Goethe-Institut Turin. Special support by Direzione Rifiuti, Bonifiche e Sicurezza Siti Produttivi della Città Metropolitana di Torino; Amiat Gruppo Iren; Turin Carta.

Climate activists demand exnovation instead of innovation: to take a real pause in the breathless onrush of political, cultural, economic pursuits, to make space, to give things up. Postcolonial, anti-racist, and queer theory and action sharply interrupt white and patriarchal repetitive loops. Habits of speech are under scrutiny and contemporary politics of memory seek ways out of entanglement in historical memorial rituals. In the arts, on the other hand, repetition is often a critical practice. Loops, citations, parody, and drag contradict concepts of originality and individual authorship, dissolve gender binaries, and shake up traditional representations.

Arranged side-by-side in an arena and running according to a strict administrative rhythm, 100 experts from the arts, activism, theory, and a wide variety of professions present their expertise in support of and against the repetitive. Which routines need to get kicked to the curb, given fresh meaning, or taken up anew? Or is everything already there and we’re just repeating the wrong things?

Audio Archive

Daniel Moldoveanu: “Into the Void, Again” (Spike Magazine)

ExpertS: Mohammad Al Attar, Neta Alexander, Fikri Anıl Altıntaş, Ulf Aminde, Robin Arthur, Biplab Basu, Burkhard Blienert, Boris Buden, Jörg Buttgereit, Hamze Bytyci, Vasyl Cherepanyn, Radha D’Souza, Viviana Druga, Patrick Eiden-Offe, Caitlin Fisher, Dominique Haensell, Alexandra Heimes, Nele Hertling, Max Jorge Hinderer Cruz, Heinrich Horwitz, Stefan Kaegi, Joy Kristin Kalu, Alexander Karschnia, Natasha A. Kelly, Susanne Kennedy, Prem Krishnamurthy, Thomas Kuczynski, Şeyda Kurt, Joanna Kusiak, Jürgen Kuttner, Oliver Marchart, Luise Meier, Małgorzata Mirga-Tas, Alia Mossallam, Rabih Mroué, Bodo Mrozek, Tobi Müller, Ogutu Muraya, Lucía Muriel, Fatuma Musa Afrah, Ahmet Öğüt, Matthias Pees, Michael Philipp, Berno Odo Polzer, Krishan Rajapakshe, Cord Riechelmann, Kevin Rittberger, Mohammad Salemy, Tomás Argentina Saraceno, Louna Sbou, Promona Sengupta/Captain Pro, Marc Siegel, Marcus Steinweg, Nora Sternfeld, Marita Tatari, Oxana Timofeeva, Margarita Tsomou, Kat Válastur, Joanna Warsza, Stefanie Wenner, Daniel Wetzel u.v.a

Curator:Florian Malzacher / Research & Dramaturgy: Cory Tamler / Licencer:Hannah Hurtzig / Licencee: Fonds Darstellende Künste / Project Office: Peer Stark / Advisors: Alexander Karschnia, Necati Öziri, Promona Sengupts

A Mobile Akademie Berlin project, produced by the Fonds Darstellende Künste in the framework of the “Bundesweites Artist Labor der Labore” and in cooperation with the Berliner Festspiele. Funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media as part of NEUSTART KULTUR.

Huge swathes of people, in Europe and North America in particular, spend their entire working lives performing tasks they secretly believe do not really need to be performed. David Graeber, On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs: A Work Rant (2013)

The increasingly large gap between rich and poor, the accelerated climate change and most recently the state of emergency of the Corona crisis leave no doubt about the need for profound social and economic changes.

On the discourse platform Work in the Crisis, artists, theorists and activists with different focal points are looking for answers to fundamental questions – with a special focus on what can be learned from artistic processes about the nature of production and work today:

How secure and sustainable are global financial, economic and social systems based on value creation? How do material and immaterial production relate to each other? How do digitality and artificial intelligence change work and production? How must work change in the face of climate catastrophe? What new connections between local, regional and planetary thinking must now be found? How can new forms of collaboration and collectivity, how can social production be thought as a whole?

A Project by the LVR-Industriemuseums Kraftwerk Ermen & Engels (Engelskirchen) And the NRW KULTURsekretariats (Wuppertal) on Occasion of the200.birthday of Friedrich Engels. Supported by Regionale Kulturförderung des Landschaftsverbandes Rheinland.

The supervision of machinery, the joining of broken threads, is no activity which claims the operative’s thinking powers, yet it is of a sort which prevents him from occupying his mind with other things. Friedrich Engels, The Situation of the Working Class in England (1845)

What comes after work, at least after the kind of work that prevents the “mind from being occupied with other things”? On the occasion of Friedrich Engels‘ 200th birthday ten artistic positions in Engelskirchen examined the intellectual and political legacy of the influential political thinker and activist: What does work mean today, in a time of serious crises and changes? How much is our life interwoven with work – hasn’t it even become a form of work itself? Who stands in the light, who remains invisible? How many of our occupations are activities that no one really needs, but which are often far better paid than those that are actually “system-relevant”? So what is it today anyway: the “working class” – in an era of global markets and networks, digital monopolies and new class struggles?

The history of the municipality of Engelskirchen is closely linked to that of each of the Engels family: in 1844, the Ermen & Engels cotton spinning mill began production, a factory based on the efficient English model. Apart from favourable transport routes and the Agger river, which supplied both energy and water for dyeing the yarns, there was another good reason for the choice of location: sufficient women and children as cheap labour. So while Engelskirchen was preparing to become one of the engines of the Industrial Revolution, Friedrich Engels Jr. wrote his seminal book on The Condition of the Working Class in England, which can be read in passages as a description of what was then just beginning in this region.

As populations boom in Manchester and cities like it, communities appear and disappear, moulded by the forces of growth and development. What is happening to neighbourliness amid the chaos of urban change? What will city living be like in ten years’ time and should we – can we? – steer change in a different direction?

The performative conference People and Cranes was an open invitation to be part of a conversation about how we live together. Bringing together a diverse range of voices and practices – from performance to activism, economics to planning – it asked important questions about how rapid development is being driven and who it is affecting.

People and Cranes

Supported by Arts Council England, the European Union’s Creative Europe programme, the Rank Foundation, Unity Theatre Trust and Slater Heelis.

trainingforthefuture.org

Artist: Jonas Staal / Curator & Co-programmer: Florian Malzacher / Architect: Paul Kuipers / Designer: Remco van Bladel / Production Studio Jonas Staal: Younes Bouadi, Evelien Scheltinga and Nadine Gouders.

A project by Ruhrtriennale 2019. Made possible, in part, by Mondriaan Foundation & Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung / bpb. Kindly supported by Goethe-Institut.

“Kann Kunst Zukunft gestalten?”

Reportage by Susanne Luerweg (Deutschlandfunk, 2019)
(in German language)