Origin Unknown
Title: Origin unknown Year: 2016 Material: concrete, reinforcing steel bars Dimensions: L: 55 x W:55 x H: 150 cm
Schlossghost #1
In its new collective publication, Schlossghost #1, Akademie Schloss Solitude examines the ways in which politics meet artistic and aesthetic practices in contemporary societies. For this the Solitude-fellows who had residencies in 2014, 2015 and early 2016 were invited to reflect on following questions: »Would you say that your practice is political? If so, how would you describe its political dimension?« Schlossghost #1 takes over the role of the traditional yearbooks by the Akademie. Every second year since 1990 they were summarizing all the facets of the work done in Solitude and maintained as a final truth Stéphane Mallarmé’s affirmation that »the ultimate state of the world is a book«. This new publication has lost its materiality and exists only as a virtual yearbook, or one could say as the ghost of a book. WWW.SCHLOSS-GHOST.COM
Politics In The Frame of Art
Novels typically focus on a single character or group of characters, and on the nature of the relationship between the self and its environment, the self and society, the self and time, the self and history. For novelists, then, the kind of story they choose, the kind of language they choose to write it in, their choice of major and minor characters, even the kinds of people or situations they do not write about – all these things have an
Terra Nullius
Open Vacanc(i)es
Is your practice political? Is your practice also your work? Or is it just a job, a way to pay the bills and your living expenses? How do you decide to work, or not to work? What are you ready to give up or not? To do or not to do? Where are your limits? Which compromises could you accept and which are definitely out of the question? Meanwhile, enjoy your holidays! * Vacancy n. pl. vacancies the state or
Small Actions
Shit, Migration and Position of the Other
What is Critical Music?
What is critical music? In my book, After Sound: Toward a Critical Music, I use the term critical music to describe socially engaged art practices that reconceive music beyond the limits of sound. I look at a collection of artists from the global visual and performing arts of the past ten years – Pussy Riot, Ultra-red, Hong-Kai Wang, Peter Ablinger, Pauline Boudry and Renate Lorenz, and others – who intervene into political and philosophical conflicts by exploring music’s unique historical forms. What
Territories of Invention
When Anselmo visited the Butantã Institute he said he was not afraid of scorpions or snakes, but was very frightened by the crickets. Ana asked if her body had stayed in the eyes-closed relaxation. Dersu is a geographer; he embroiders, dances, and writes. Rita invented a mermaid that consults with Freud so she can sing without people avoiding her. Alexandre invented a virtual reality game where he is in a room and on a ship at the same time. Bianca
The Mule Skinners
Is your art political? Our collaborative practice emanates from forms of embodied knowledge that leads us to employ different methods and approaches in our work. This allows us to tackle issues such as citizenship, border politics, mobility justice, processes and histories of colonialism, and militarism; while at the same time foregrounding the ways we feel tied to the same narratives that we attempt to dismantle. Through humor and play we perform provocations that might lead to imagining new ways of
Everywhere You Find Yourself in this Country, There Is a Story
A photographer-filmmaker-playwright friend of mine once said, »Everywhere you find yourself in this country, there is a story.« I have also discovered that everywhere you are in any part of the world, there is a story. These stories, scattered in every corner of the globe, demand for us to carry them, to tell them, and pass them on to the generations to come. Wherever we are, it is as if there is a demand for each of us to share
The Fine Art of Nothing Happening
All works exist in relation to a context. Works can be read for political content by examining the ways, formally, subtly, obliquely, as well as overtly, they interact with that context. If one of the salient features of context is understood by the person reading the work as »political,« then the work itself can be read in political terms by that particular viewer. How well someone is able to parse a work’s relation to its context will determine the extent
Work-ing out
»Art is not a mirror to reflect reality, but a hammer to shape it.« Theater or performing arts are always political instruments. Society is political. Art is a weapon to shape a society simply because it shows that other realities are possible (or it sells the dream of a perfect reality). If you want to reflect a piece of reality in the performing arts and invite somebody to look at it, you are inviting this person »look through your eyes.«
Housing for Syrian Refugees in Germany
An old photo album from a Flohmarkt (flea market) in Weimar contains pages with empty, often torn slots where photos had been. The pages are removed from their binding to construct temporary living quarters (in miniature), with windows that open onto their international interiors.
»I Chose To Be an Artist.«
I chose to be an artist. I’m not a politician. I’m interested in people and their feelings. I don’t want to choose one political side. Especially not when political opinions lead to the death of people and the destruction of countries. The most important thing for all forms of art is freedom. An artist should have the freedom to talk about everything including religion, sexuality, and also politics. http://reportage1.stzn.de/mozart-oper-idomeneo-mit-fluechtlingen http://www.regio-tv.de/video/422945.html
Liminal States
Transitory expression/pleasure to pain/manufactured fear/the male gaze/latent pornography/institutionalized medicine/bodily instinct/objectified process quietly seeps. Found images of women giving birth printed on vellum and layered. Liminal States, 2016, digital inkjet on vellum, 24 x 36 in.
To Be Political
I believe every public work is political, the question is only on which level, how direct the work is, and how aware we are of this fact. To be political means staying and working in a country that half of my generation is leaving for economic reasons, and in which tourism is the only remaining industry. To be political means squatting a place in a city where every other window is abandoned, the mayor is corrupt and acting solely in