Propositions #9/2: Training “The Plague” with Rose Hammer & lecture Transfixing Fascist Episteme with Tom Holert
This second day of the week of Propositions #9 Deserting from the Culture Wars consists of a training with Rose Hammer (Stacey E. Devoe, Dora Garcia, Nora Joung, Per-Oskar Leu, Niels Munk Plum; Oslo), and a public program including the lecture Transfixing Fascist Episteme with Tom Holert.
THURSDAY 14 NOVEMBER 2019
TRAINING #2: 13.30–17.30
“THE PLAGUE” with Rose Hammer (Stacey E. Devoe, Dora Garcia, Nora Joung, Per-Oskar Leu, and Niels Munk Plum; Oslo)
Rose Hammer is an artistic persona consisting of twenty artists that was created as a response to an invitation from osloBIENNALEN to create a work in public space. Rose Hammer aims to escape the logic of the individual artist, becoming instead a transnational, transgenerational, and transdisciplinary persona. The group carefully considers relatively unknown stories at the origin of mainstream notions of identity, nationality, and history, in order to construct a counter narrative, and to present it following the rules of Brechtian agitprop: with explicit, clearly formulated political positions, non-hierarchical dynamics, and a reductio ad absurdum of notions such as professionality, virtuosity, and entertainment. The presentations are always site- and context specific. In this training, Rose Hammer introduces participants to their new project, based on The Plague by Albert Camus and the opera of the same name by Roberto Gerhard. The participants are guided through a classical session of Rose Hammer group work, using as material one of the chapters of the novel/opera, and involving singing, dancing, and dialogue.
PUBLIC PROGRAM #2: 19.00-21:30
https://youtu.be/sWDsJqMIqB8
19.00–19.30 hrs
DOORS OPEN
19.30–19.45 hrs
WELCOME AND OPENING REMARKS
Maria Hlavajova (artistic and general director, BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht) and Sven Lütticken (art historian, critic, and writer, Utrecht)
19.45–20.15 hrs
REPORT FROM “THE PLAGUE” TRAINING
20.15–21.00 hrs
LECTURE: TRANSFIXING FASCIST EPISTEME
Tom Holert (art historian, writer and curator, co-founder of the Harun Farocki Institut, Berlin)
In an attempt to spell out the things that should definitely be avoided by those working in the media, progressive US-Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently urged them, among other things, to avoid providing neo-Nazis with airtime on TV: “You will open a box you don’t know how to contain.” The brown box of contemporary fascism contains highly incoherent and, at times, absurd thought, which has been among the key characteristics of its preceding, twentieth-century versions. However, as underlined by Theodor W. Adorno in a recently rediscovered 1967 lecture on right-wing radicalism, not all elements of fascist ideology are simply untrue, “but the truth serves a false ideology, and the real feat of defense is to transfix the abuse of the truth for the sake of the untruth, and to fight it.” Considering the peculiar, intoxicating function of “truth” in contemporary politics, how could an appropriate epistemic politics be envisioned in order to impale the truth-untruth of (neo-)fascist thought?
21.00–21.30 hrs
Q&A, moderated by Sven Lütticken
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Tickets (via Eventbrite)
Day ticket training + public program: €10 normal/€7.50 student discount, including dinner on 13-15 November (Wednesday-Friday) at 18-19 hrs and 16 November (Saturday) 17.30-18.30 hrs by the Basic Activist Kitchen.
Per public program: €8.50 normal/€5 student discount.
Free places: For each training and public program, BAK provides a few free places for those who would otherwise not be able to attend. To apply, please send a short explanation (max. 120 words) to olga@bakonline.org, at least four days prior to the training/public program. (First come, first serve).
BAK’s activities are made possible through financial contributions by the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science and the City Council, Utrecht.
BAK’s main partner in the field of education and research is HKU University of the Arts Utrecht.
