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    Artist Organisations International brings together over twenty representatives of organisations founded by artists whose work confronts today’s crises in politics, economy, education, immigration and ecology. Artist Organisations International explores a current shift from artists working in the form of temporary projects to building long-term organisational structures. What specific artistic value and political potential do such organisations have? How do they perform? What could be their concrete impact on various social-political agendas and possible internationalist collaborations?



    Artist organisations are founded by artists

    Artists Organisations International brings together organisations that have been initiated by artists and advocate a specific understanding of art within a social and political context by using the subversive and transformative potential of visual literacy, modes of re-contextualisation and performativity.



    Artist organisations choose the form of the organisation

    Artist organisations seek for continuity of cultural and political engagement that is not just based on personal interest and authorship. At the same time, the artist organisation also questions the form of the organisation itself: by emphasizing urgency, change and criticality, it is a living organism. Artist organisations translate engagement into infrastructure and open the possibility of outliving their creators.



    Artist organisations seek for structural engagement

    The last decades have seen an important change in our perception of art. The focus has shifted from artworks as ‘objects’ towards the concept of the ‘project’: a temporal intervention or engagement focussing on research and processes rather than on a final product. However the limitation of concrete artistic and political effects of temporary projects is implicit. The change from projects to organisations demands a more structural engagement, more durability and long-term vision. Artist organisations push the concept of self-governance to another level: both within and outside of the art world.



    Artist organisations propose social/political agendas

    In their work artist organisations bring forward a social/political agenda that connects the field of ethics with aesthetics. Rather than a medium merely ‘questioning’ and ‘confronting’ the world, the artist organisation situates itself in the field of daily political struggle. Rather than questioning the world, it makes a world.



    Program

    • friday
    • 09/01

    19.00 – 22.30

    Propaganda & Counter-Propaganda

    Chaired by Matteo Lucchetti

    With Concerned Artists of the Philippines (CAP), Immigrant Movement International (IM), Jewish Renaissance Movement in Poland (JRMiP), Zentrum für Politische Schönheit (ZPS)
    Respondents: Libia Castro et al.


    • saturday
    • 10/01

    11.00 – 13.45

    Learning & Unlearning

    Chaired by Maria Hlavajova

    With Artist Association of Azawad, Chto Delat – School of Engaged Art, Büro für Antipropaganda, Performing Arts Forum (PAF)


    14.45 – 17.00

    State & Statelessness

    Chaired by Ekaterina Degot

    With Artists of Rojava, Forensic Architecture, The Silent University
    Respondents: Alex Karschnia & Urok Shirhan


    17.30 – 20.00

    Violence & Non-Violence

    Chaired by Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei

    With Gulf Labor, HudRada, International Institute of Political Murder (IIPM), The Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination (labofii)
    Respondents: Véronique Dudouet & Ulf Aminde


    • sunday
    • 11/01

    12.00 – 16.00

    Solidarity & Unionising

    Chaired by Margarita Tsomou

    Grupo Etcétera, Haben und Brauchen, Institute for Human Activities (IHA), Schoon Genoeg!, WochenKlausur
    Respondents: Christoph Gurk & Galit Eilat


    17.00 – 20.00

    Final Debate

    Chaired by Charles Esche


    Participants

    Organisations

    Artists of Rojava, Artist Association of Azawad, Büro für Antipropaganda, Chto Delat, Concerned Artists of the Philippines, Forensic Architecture, Grupo Etcétera, Gulf Labor, Haben und Brauchen, HudRada & ISTM, Immigrant Movement International, Institute for Human Activities (IHA), International Institute of Political Murder (IIPM), Jewish Renaissance Movement in Poland (JRMiP), The Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination (labofii), Performing Arts Forum (PAF), Schoon Genoeg!, The Silent University, WochenKlausur, Zentrum für Politische Schönheit


    Initiators

    Florian Malzacher is a freelance curator, dramaturge and writer as well as Artistic Director of Impulse Theater Festival in Bochum, Düsseldorf, Cologne and Mülheim a.d. Ruhr. He is co-editor of “Truth is Concrete. A Handbook for Artistic Strategies in Real Politics” (2014).


    Jonas Staal is a visual artist and PhD researcher in art and propaganda. He is the founder of the artistic and political organization New World Summit, which develops parliaments for stateless and blacklisted political groups worldwide, and of the New World Academy (with BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht), which explores the role of art within stateless political struggle.


    Joanna Warsza is an independent curator for visual, performing arts and architecture and Senior Lecturer at Konstfack Stockholm. She was Head of Public Programs at Manifesta 10 in St. Petersburg, curator of the Georgian Pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale, as well as associate curator of the 7th Berlin Biennale.


    Chairs

    Ekaterina Degot is an art historian, art writer and curator whose work focuses on aesthetic and sociopolitical issues in Russia, predominantly in the post-Soviet era.


    Charles Esche is director of Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven (NL), curator of the 31st São Paulo Biënnale (2014) and director of Afterall Journal and Books.


    Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei is a philologist and LGBT activist, director of project bureau The Department of Eagles and multilingual publishing house Uitgeverij. He lives and works in Tirana, Albania.


    Matteo Lucchetti is an art historian, independent curator and critic. Currently he co-directs the visible project based in Brussels together with Judith Wielander.


    Marion von Osten is an artist and cultural researcher. She is a founding member of Labor k3000 in Zurich, kleines post- fordistisches Drama (kpD) [Small Post- Fordist Drama] and the Center for Post- Colonial Knowledge and Culture in Berlin.


    Margarita Tsomou is a writer and performer from Greece, based in Berlin. Tsomou writes and performs on political intervention, sex-positive feminism, capitalism, media criticism and subversion.









    about the participating organisations


    Artists of Rojava

    Representative to be announced

    The struggle for self-governance in Rojava (Syrian-Kurdistan) against the Assad regime and the self-proclaimed Islamic State is the result of decades of political and cultural struggle by the Kurdish people. This struggle resulted in the model of “democratic autonomy”: a practice of democracy that rejects the framework of the state. With the artists of Rojava we will explore the role of art in establishing new models of political representation and democratic practice.


    Artist Association of Azawad

    Represented by Mazou Ibrahim Touré & Moussa Ag Assarid

    The Artist Association of Azawad is the cultural wing of the National Liberation Movement of Azawad (MNLA), a multi-ethnic coalition of peoples from the Sahara and Sahel that struggles for a new independent state of Azawad, situated north of Mali. The Association brings together members from different artistic fields including music, literature, theatre and storytelling.


    Büro für Antipropaganda

    Represented by Marina Naprushkina

    The Büro für Antipropaganda [Office for Anti-Propaganda] was founded in 2007 and investigates how modern political ideologies work and how they influence society. Using artistic methods, the Office for Anti-Propaganda attempts to break open these patterns. At AOI, the Office for Anti-Propaganda is presenting the “Refugees’ Library” which features mainly drawn court notebooks of the asylum process as a source of information for refugees for better preparing their own cases.


    Chto Delat

    Represented by Dmitry Vilensky

    Chto Delat [What is to be done?] was founded in 2003 in Saint Petersburg by a working group of artists, critics, philosophers, and writers with the goal of merging political theory, art, and activism. Chto Delat is active in many fields - producing a newspaper, plays, video films, total installations and community work. In 2012 Chto Delat founded the School of Engaged Art as a modular art school based on experimentation with the possibilities of engaged art practices in a time dominated by reactionary discourse.


    Concerned Artists of the Philippines (CAP)

    Represented by Lisa Ito

    The Concerned Artists of the Philippines is an organisation of writers, artists and cultural workers committed to the principles of freedom, justice and democracy. It was founded in 1983 to unite Filipino artists against the dictatorial regime of then President Marcos. Since then it has continued to countervail the onslaught of globalisation and remnants of feudalism and to struggle for the people’s political and economic liberation.


    Forensic Architecture

    Represented by Lorenzo Pezzani

    Forensic Architecture is a research project based at Goldsmiths, University of London, assembling a team of architects, artists, filmmakers, activists and theorists to undertake research that gathers and presents spatial analysis in legal and political forums, providing evidence for political organisations, NGOs and the United Nations. Additionally, the project undertakes critical examinations of the history and present status of forensic practices in articulating notions of public truth.


    Grupo Etcétera

    Represented by Federico Zukerfeld & Loreto Garín

    Formed in 1997 in Buenos Aires, Grupo Etcétera is composed of visual artists, poets, puppeteers and actors who share the intention of bringing art to the site of immediate social conflict and of bringing this conflict into arenas of cultural production, including the media and art institutions. In 2005 Grupo Etcétera co-founded the movement International Errorist, which considers the notion of error as a fundamental human condition of the capitalist world that eschews mistakes and failures.


    Gulf Labor

    Represented by Natascha Sadr Haghighian

    Gulf Labor is a coalition of artists and activists who have been working together since 2011 to highlight the coercive recruitment, and deplorable living and working conditions of migrant labourers in Abu Dhabi’s Saadiyat Island [Island of Happiness]. The Gulf Labor campaign focuses on the workers who are building the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, Louvre Abu Dhabi, and the Sheikh Zayed National Museum (in collaboration with the British Museum) on Saadiyat Island.


    Haben und Brauchen

    Represented by Sonja Augart, Tatjana Fell, Alice Münch, Ina Wudtke & Inga Zimprich

    Haben und Brauchen [To Have and To Need] is an informal platform for discussion and action founded in 2011. It advocates the recognition and preservation of a self-organised artistic practice that has grown out of the specific historical conditions in Berlin. Haben und Brauchen’s manifesto goes beyond individual artists' interests and makes connections to debates around the commons, precarious economy, urban development and housing policy as well as the shifting notions of labour in contemporary society.


    HudRada & ISTM

    Represented by Lada Nakonechna

    HudRada [Artistic Committee] and ISTM [Art Workers' Self-defence Initiative] are interdisciplinary artist, curatorial and activist groups established in Kiev in 2008 and in 2013. Both aim to impact the formation of new cultural policy principles. HudRada works mostly within the realm of exhibitions, while ISTM’s main objective is to defend artists and their practices in relation to the institutions that solicit and present their work as well as to act in solidarity with other workers’ associations.


    Immigrant Movement International (IM)

    Represented by Tania Bruguera

    Tania Bruguera’s Immigrant Movement International is a long-term art project in the form of an artist-initiated socio-political movement. Engaging both local and international communities, as well as working with social service organisations, elected officials, and artists focused on immigration reform, IM examines growing concerns about the political representation facing immigrants. IM also delves into the implementation of art in society, examining what it means to create “Useful Art”.


    Institute for Human Activities (IHA)

    Represented by Renzo Martens

    In 2012, the Institute for Human Activities began “A Gentrification Program” on a former Unilever plantation in Congo. The IHA asserts that even when art critically engages with global inequalities, it most often brings beauty, jobs and opportunity to the places where such art is exhibited, discussed and sold, creating a gap with the zone of intervention of critical art. The IHA turns art’s potential for gentrification into a progressive and effective tool.


    International Institute of Political
    Murder (IIPM)

    Represented by Milo Rau

    The International Institute of Political Murder was founded by writer Milo Rau in 2007. The IIPM’s past productions (“The Last Days of the Ceausescus,” “Breivik’s Statement,” “The Moscow Trials,” “The Civil Wars”) have enjoyed great international success and stand for a new, documentary and aesthetically compacted form of political art – with a special focus on multimedia adaptation of historical or social conflicts.


    Jewish Renaissance Movement in Poland (JRMiP)

    Represented by Yael Bartana, Susanne Sachsse & Walter Solon

    The Jewish Renaissance Movement in Poland calls for the return of 3.300.000 Jews to Poland to symbolize the possibility of our collective imagination – to right the wrongs history has imposed and to reclaim the promise of an utopian future. Members of the movement recognise that Europe needs to be re-thought, that Israel must change to be part of the Middle East and that as citizens we have the responsibility to imagine the world differently. The JRMiP was initiated by Israeli-born artist Yael Bartana in 2007.


    The Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination (labofii)

    Represented by John Jordan

    At the heart of labofii’s experiments lie new ways of organising ourselves: working without hierarchy, taking direct action against capitalism and living ecologically sensitive lives. The laboratory treats insurrection as an art and art as a means for the coming insurrections. This has included transforming bikes into tools of disobedience during the UN Climate Summit, a pirate armada to shut down a coal fired power station, sabotaging banks with ants and covering the Tate Gallery in molasses.


    Performing Arts Forum (PAF)

    Represented by Jan Ritsema

    Performing Arts Forum is a place for the professionals and not-yet-professionals in the field of performance arts, visual art, music, film, literature, new media, theory and cultural production, who seek to research and determine their own conditions of work. Initiated and run by artists, theoreticians, practitioners and activists themselves, PAF is a user-created informal institution. PAF is located in a former convent school in the village of St. Erme, France.


    Schoon Genoeg!

    Represented by Matthijs de Bruijne

    Schoon Genoeg! [(Clean) Enough!] is the campaign of cleaners in the Netherlands that started in 2009 for better wages, working conditions, and social recognition. As part of this campaign the union organised the cleaners’ strike of 2010, which was the longest strike in the Netherlands since 1933 as well as the recent strikes in 2012 and in 2014. Other elements of the Cleaners Union’s actions included a temporary Afvalmuseum (Trash Museum) in Utrecht's Central Station as well the campaign to improve domestic workers rights and the ratification of ILO Convention 189 in the Netherlands.


    The Silent University

    Represented by Emily Fahlén & Ahmet Öğüt

    The Silent University is an autonomous knowledge exchange platform by refugees, asylum seekers and migrants. It aims to address and reactivate the knowledge of the participants and make the exchange process mutually beneficial by inventing alternative currencies in place of money or free voluntary service. These explorations attempt to make apparent the systemic failure and the loss of skills and knowledge experienced through the silencing process of people seeking asylum.


    WochenKlausur

    Represented by Hannah Rosa Öllinger & Manfred Rainer

    Since 1993 the artist group WochenKlausur develops concrete proposals aimed at small, but nevertheless effective improvements to socio-political deficiencies. Proceeding even further and invariably translating these proposals into action, artistic creativity is no longer seen as a formal act but as an intervention into society. So far, 38 projects have been realised all around the world – from Alaska to Japan.


    Zentrum für Politische Schönheit (ZPS)

    Represented by Fabian Eggers, John Kurtz & André Leipold

    Zentrum für Politische Schönheit [Centre for Political Beauty] is an assault team exploring moral beauty and human greatness in politics. The basic belief is that the legacy of the Holocaust is rendered void by political apathy, the rejection of refugees and political cowardice. In 2014, the ZPS helped Syrian refugees enter the European Union by adapting the 1938/39 British Kindertransport to the present. In 2014 the ZPS also linked the victims of the Berlin Wall to those at the outer EU borders in a highly debated action.


    Tickets

    Main box office Hebbel am Ufer / HAU
    at HAU2 (Hallesches Ufer 32, 10963 Berlin)


    Open: Monday to Saturday from 3 p.m. until one hour before the program begins, on days without a program from 3 to 7 p.m.


    Closed Sundays and holidays.


    Tel.: +49 30.259 004-27


    hebbel-am-ufer.de


    Online reservation


    Contact

    Colofon:
    • Produced by Artist Organizations International & HAU
    • Initiated by Florian Malzacher, Jonas Staal and Joanna Warsza
    • Head of production: Younes Bouadi
    • Project coordination: Renée In der Maur
    • Communication: Suzie Hermán, Henry Procter, Imara Limon
    • Architectural design: Paul Kuipers
    • Architectural production: Kasper Oostergetel
    • Visual Identity: Remco van Bladel
    • Photography: Lidia Rossner
    • Website: Charlie Berendsen


    Artist Organisations International is a co-production with HAU Hebbel am Ufer


    Supported by Hauptstadtkulturfonds Berlin
    Gefördert aus Mitteln des Hauptstadtkulturfond