Workshop I Warum wir nicht das tun, was wir eigentlich wollen. Und doch Akteure sind

“Every group, no matter how large or small, needs a limes like

the mythical one that Romulus drew around emerging Rome.”

Bruno Latour

For some time now, people have been diagnosing a crisis of action. Briefly, this crisis is due to the fact that the sovereign, autonomously acting subject has begun to question itself. At the same time, the effectiveness of its actions is questioned by complex outer processes. How should we act sensibly as individuals in terms of ecology? Can we influence technological developments or globalisation as individuals? Such questions illustrate how small our scope for action usually is. They also show that familiar social affiliations such as families, parties or nations, in which we act, are crumbling.

In this workshop therefore unpredictable but nevertheless productive inherent dynamisms and efficacies of groups will be discussed. For when we act we are usually not alone. We act in formations and create new ones – even if they are only very small. We are actors in networks, swarms, complicities, we form gatherings or teams. In most cases, action – be it conceived as individual or collective – does not seem to be subject to the full control of our consciousness.Often we do not know why we do something and do not do something else. Still we are constantly ‘committers’ or – to put it less dramatically – actors. What could being an actor mean today? Debates regarding the notion of agency are helpful in this regard: it means something like action, but also effectiveness. Agency may indicate that not only autonomous human beings act but also non-human beings (Bruno Latour). Let us imagine an “imaginary supermarket of social links” in which objects, for example, also interact with each other. Let us try to envisage new social interactions with the aid of an associative approach.

The focus is on aspects of perception and movement in group formation, that are of equal relevance in art and theory. Rhythm, speed, direction or intensity of movement often decide as to the success or failure of group formations. With guests from these fields we will discuss approaches in theory and in art, taking a look at concrete examples in the festival, and engaging in practical experiments. Can a (moving) theory of small groups become a new practice of action?

Together we will start our working method of reformulation based on the already individually collected material. In a circular structure we initiate processes of formulation, rendering, reformulation, passing on and giving up. In the end we will come up with individual projects without a fixed authorship that can be worked out further. The idea of giving up and passing on is a central concept of our workshops. The participants experience through the giving up of authorship a possible difference of individual and shared reference within the frame of always also socially sharable and communicatable aesthetical processes. Gesa Ziemer

Konzept / Idee: Gesa Ziemer
Mitwirkende / Mitwirkender: Tony Chakar
Mitwirkende / Mitwirkender: Scott Lash
Mitwirkende / Mitwirkender: Geheimagentur / Club der autonomen Astronauten
Mitwirkende / Mitwirkender: Claus Pias