15.9.22 // 19.00 & 21.9.22 // 19.00 OPEN LABS
„David Bowie“ / Foto: Massimo Latte
Sa 29.1.2022 // 19.00 // OPEN LAB POSTPONED
15.9.22 // 19.00 & 21.9.22 // 19.00 OPEN LABS
Bräuhausgasse 40, 1050 Vienna
with theoretical contributions, participatory exercises and discussion // free donation
with: Tobias Draeger, Claudia Heu, Lisa Hinterreithner, Michael Hirsch, Kilian Jörg, Anita Kaya, Sara Lanner
We live between the suffering of normality and the dreams of another normality.
„What is normal, who is normal, who or what is not? What is a norm anyway?“ How is normality formed in society and what sets such processes in motion? Where are the boundaries of normality, how and through what are they shifted? To what extent can a life outside normality function? What role does art play in this field of reference?
The Denkkollektiv #7 explores the phenomena of normality and deviation from it as a construction of conforming and non-conforming ways of life. Of patterns of behavior, posture and movement of bodies, psyches, souls, couples, social groups, organizations and collectives.
„Normality“ oscillates between the terror of submission to a ruling norm on the one hand, and the longing for comforting habits and everyday rituals on the other. Normality is not an unchanging essence, but an ever-transforming process of intra- and extra-societal negotiation of values, boundaries, identities, and affiliations. All that we call normal today has by no means always been so and will not be so in the future. The collective experience of the suspension of so-called „normality“ by the state policies in the „Corona crisis“ of the last 2 years calls for renegotiation of normality, for impulses for new, processual normalities.
„What is normal for me?“ Based on the respective particular answers of the participants, the Denkkollektiv #7 artistically and reflectively explores present ways of life, and asks for new life possibilities.
Denkkollektiv #7 – Normality is part of the transmedia research project Stoffwechsel – Ecologies of Cooperation. www.stffwchsl.net
Message to guests who have registered for the open Lab on 1/29/22:
Our approach to normality – tomorrow’s event will not take place
Dear Guests,
As the metabolism collective, we have been intensively and transdisciplinarily engaged with normality this week – reading utopias of another world, analyzing the tension between normality as a hold and as a constraint, questioning third places in public space as a micro-utopian horizon of possibility, and examining normality as catastrophe. Gently, we also let the hottest iron on normality into our research space: the often named “new normality” uncertainty regarding Covid-19 regulations and how to deal with it in the “somehow panting on” culture scene.
For two years now, we as artists have been at the mercy of massive uncertainties and have been trying to adjust to this new and ever-changing normality for just as long. For the most part, this process of adapting to an ever-changing normality is not addressed much in public – and one simply wears a mask, moves the publication to Zoom, introduces new border regimes and thus excludes a part of the population or makes other – little artistically and aesthetically reflected or incorporated – compromises with the currently dominating conditions. An inclusive space is not the same if everyone has to wear masks (as current state policies dictate), nor is a performance or lecture the same if it is followed across the smooth surface of a display.
Where should we not address these big questions of our digitally pandemic times if not in our research context, which has chosen normality as its primary focus even before the pandemic? We had a controversial, exhausting, but at the same time very respectful and productive discussion of how to deal with this normality of covid regulia perpetuating itself as a state of exception. We no longer wanted to “pretend” and simply hold our event as if there were no implications for the social and aesthetic experiences that this pandemic situation has on cultural events.
We were ultimately unable to reach consensus over the course of the work week on a formal solution to the question of how to coherently share the results of our work process with an audience under existing regulations. The current Covid regulations, no matter what one’s political position on them, are a cultural-political phenomenon that is too often swept under the table. We want to address this phenomenon and our first step is a failure to do so. We believe that failure is a satisfying solution and part of addressing the problem of the “new normal” – and a first step towards a productive and satisfying way of dealing with a world marked by various disasters as normality. With this decision, we want to open a process that enables and fuels adaptation, compromise, and reinvention. We are therefore taking a step back as a first step. In the fall, at the 2nd part of the lab on normality, we will explore and reflect on further normalities.
We look forward to seeing you again in the fall and send you a link to the reading (starting on p 27) we engaged with. bolobolo.pdf
Thank you for your understanding
The Metabolism-Collectiv
Vienna, 28th of January, 2022
Anita Kaya (AT) born 1961, is a freelance choreographer, performer and curator living in Vienna. Under the label OYA-Produktion (1988-2005) she created dance productions, site-specific performances, performative installations and dance videos that were presented internationally. In 2000, she initiated the artists for artists initiative Im_flieger – research laboratory for dance, performance and transmedia art (Concept funding from the City of Vienna 2022-25). In artistic direction and in collaboration with numerous artists and theoreticians, she develops new concepts and structures of artistic cooperation and mentoring programmes: e. g. the European residency programme for young choreographers TERRAINS FERTILES 05 (Innovation Prize 2005 of IG-Kultur Vienna). She is engaged with the body as a reservoir of individual and collective memory, and its potential for communication with the environment, the human and more than human: e. g. Translocations / One-to-One Performance located at the intersection of history/trauma, archiving, installation and performance. 2023 she cooperates with Theatercombinat/ Claudia Bosse as performer/ choreographer in the production Bones & Stones. In 2019/20 she completed the university course “Curating in the Scenic Arts” at the University of Salzburg and Munich. She is co-editor and author of the publication VISCERAL FICTION – Im_flieger schreibt Geschichte/s – 20 Jahre Künstler:innen für Künstler:innen. 2021, monocrom. www.imflieger.net, www.stffwchsl.net
Claudia Heu (AT) is an artist, performer and lecturer living in Vienna. She works in Europe, Mongolia and the USA. Her work includes site-specific performances, installations and interventions. Her collaboration with filmmakers, activists, hairdressers, actors, bus drivers, visual artists, night watchmen, etc. changes depending on the project and location. Since 2013, she has been working with Mongolian and Austrian artists and scientists on the research project Alga Bolokh – On Disappearance in Ulan Bator, the Gobi Desert and Berlin. Alga Bolokh deals with threatened places and spaces, with the untold and the invisible. www.claudiaheu.com
Kilian Jörg (AT) works both artistically and philosophically on the topic of ecological catastrophe and how its transformative forces can best be imagined and deployed. Previous publications have been on club culture, the political backlash from an ecological perspective, cultivating distance in catastrophic times and a speculative religion of waste. His current research topics are the car as a metaphor for our toxic entanglements with modern lifestyles (released in book form as “Das Auto und die ökologische Katastrophe” in September 2024), the socio-psychological effects of living with ecocide and radical activist strategies of reclaiming land like the ZAD in France. He is working with the Futurama.Lab at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and is affiliated to the SFB Affective Societies at the FU Berlin. www.kilianj.org & www.kilianjoerg.blogspot.com
Lisa Hinterreithner (AT) Die Künstlerin und Performerin Lisa Hinterreithner verschränkt in ihren Arbeiten Körper und Materialien. Dabei sucht sie nach experimentellen Performance Formaten, die Fragen zu Repräsentation und Teilhabe thematisieren. So entstehen gemeinsame Prozesse und Räume, in denen sich Publikum, Performer*innen und Dinge verbinden. Sie hat u.a. mit Julius Deutschbauer, Jack Hauser, Rotraud Kern, Elise Mory, Laura Navndrup Black, Lilo Nein, Martina Ruhsam, Linda Samaraweerová gearbeitet. www.lisahinterreithner.at
Michael Hirsch (DE) is a philosopher, political scientist and art theorist. He teaches political theory and the history of ideas at the University of Siegen and lives as a freelance author in Munich. He is a regular participant in the workshops and research labs of “Stoffwechsel. Ecologies of Cooperation” as part of Im_flieger. Recent publications: Richtig falsch. Es gibt kein richtiges Leben im falschen (2019); Die Überwindung der Arbeitsgesellschaft. Eine politische Philosophie der Arbeit (2016); Logik der Unterscheidung. 10 Thesen zu Kunst und Politik (2015). www.michael-hirsch-archiv.de
Sara Lanner (AT) arbeitet als Tänzerin, Choreografin und performative Künstlerin im Bereich der bildenden sowie darstellenden Kunst. In ihren Arbeiten thematisiert sie den Körper und dessen Erscheinungsform als soziale Choreografie und Skulptur. Ihre Performances finden in Galerien, auf Bühnen sowie an interdisziplinären und öffentlichen Orten statt. Ihr Interesse ist es dabei, performative und choreografische Zugänge zu verbinden und dadurch die bildende Kunst und den zeitgenössischen Tanz gleichermaßen zu erweitern. www.saralanner.com
Tobias Draeger (AT) ursprünglich aus Deutschland, ist ein nomadisierender Künstler, der über die Grenzen von Tanz, Körpertheater und Osteopathie hinaus praktiziert. Seine Arbeiten konzentrieren sich oft auf die Körperlichkeit von Performer und Publikum, die Manipulation von Objekten und Materialien und die Entwicklung intuitiver Beziehungen mit und zwischen den Zuschauern. Seine Arbeit ist zugleich spielerisch und fokussiert, da er mit Praktiken und Dramaturgien experimentiert, die das Publikum zur Aufmerksamkeit und Konzentration auf die Folgen von Wahrnehmungen einladen