Meister, Trickster, Bricoleure

Virtuosity becomes a core skill for everyone in cognitive capitalism: with no distinction between masters and tricksters. Immaterial labour demands virtuosity, and the parallels with art production and performance, are unmistakable: consultation and information, therapy and organisation are all about forms of production that produce virtually nothing but themselves.

Against this foil, the question of virtuosity in art must be negotiated anew, and with it questions regarding the boundaries of art, work, politics and economy. New kinds of virtuosity are evolving along these boundaries today. Between everyday trickery and masterful skill they are hard to grasp and they put artful thought and artistic action into new constellations. They transform thought into dance, non-art into art, and vice versa, and they defy division into those that have something to show and those that merely watch. At the same time, however, they address the question of skill from a new perspective: what is a virtuosity of observing, watching, listening? When is artistic activism virtuoso? Is there a virtuosity of the public sphere, of addressing? Every age, every society produces different virtuosos, different tricksters. Has the subversive potential of trickery become obsolete in deregulated capitalism, or is it also possible to be a virtuoso in eluding the logic of utilisation? What is virtuoso when dealing with economy, and which economies are associated with virtuosity?

For one week, tricks were collected, traded and shared at the casino of the geheimagentur, which is housed in the steirischer herbst festival centre. Artists and theorists, tricksters and virtuosos from various fields are now coming together to discuss virtuosity as a figure of contemporary political and artistic thought.

Mitwirkende / Mitwirkender: Michael Warner
Mitwirkende / Mitwirkender: Ole Frahm
Mitwirkende / Mitwirkender: Jonathan Burrows
Mitwirkende / Mitwirkender: Matteo Fargion
Mitwirkende / Mitwirkender: Gabriele Brandstetter
Mitwirkende / Mitwirkender: Jonathan Burrows
Mitwirkende / Mitwirkender: Matteo Fargion
Mitwirkende / Mitwirkender: Brigitte Felderer
Mitwirkende / Mitwirkender: Pierre Basieux
Mitwirkende / Mitwirkender: Yann Moulier Boutang
Mitwirkende / Mitwirkender: Ralph Heidenreich
Mitwirkende / Mitwirkender: Stefan Heidenreich
Mitwirkende / Mitwirkender: Friedrich A. Kittler
Kuratorin / Kurator: Sibylle Peters
Kuratorin / Kurator: Florian Malzacher