Propositions #9: Deserting from the Culture Wars
Trainings, lectures, and panel discussions with Bini Adamczak; Kader Attia; Tom Holert; Sven Lütticken; Diana McCarty; Dan McQuillan; Dina Mohamed; Transformella Malor (Johannes Paul Raether); Rose Hammer (Stacey E. Devoe, Dora Garcia, Nora Joung, Per-Oskar Leu, and Niels Munk Plum); Natascha Sadr Haghighian; Jonas Staal; and Terra Critica (Birgit M. Kaiser and Kathrin Thiele).
Propositions #9: Deserting from the Culture Wars is a week-long series of trainings, lectures, and panel discussions that seeks to bring together artists, theorists, and writers in a range of formats, to actively reflect upon this current moment of ever-more polarizing ideological combat, also reffered to as the “culture wars.” How are these culture wars defined and waged?
The program is focused on discussing and working towards a tactical desertion from the cultural conflicts being waged today in a theater of war, demarcated by the (far-) right through aggressive hypersensitivity, injured entitlement, angry rants, and memes about “cultural Marxism,” immigration, climate change, and feminism. What possibilities would be opened by a refusal to play these war games, and commit desertion—not as a withdrawal into a realm of apolitical privacy, but as a pursuit of different strategies, tactics, and coalitions?
Rather than being merely an object of debate, an emancipatory understanding of culture is to be conceived as embodied and intersubjective, a collective performance that prevents culture from becoming a self-congratulatory exercise among like minds, but marks instead a space of enactment. How to widen this further and create overlaps and alliances? What might artists and others who are professionally engaged with images and imaginaries, narratives and assemblies, have to contribute to the collective discovery of different modes of culture?
Propositions #9: Deserting from the Culture Wars is co-convened with writer and curator Sven Lütticken as a temporary spin-off from Trainings for the Not-Yet and the ninth iteration of BAK’s long-term research series Propositions for Non-Fascist Living (2017–ongoing), which seeks to collectively think and act out ways of being together otherwise.
Tickets:
Day ticket training+public program: €10 normal/€7.50 student discount, including dinner at the Basic Activist Kitchen
Day ticket public program: €8.50 normal/€5 student discount
PROGRAM
Each training includes dinner from 18.00–19.00 at the Basic Activist Kitchen (from 17.30–18.30 on the Saturday).
Wednesday 13 November 2019
Training, 13.30–17.30 hrs:
Organizational Art with Jonas Staal.
Public program, 19.00–21.00 hrs:
19.30–19.45 hrs, Welcome and opening remarks by Maria Hlavajova.
19.45–20.30 hrs, Lecture Deserting from the Culture Wars: An Introduction with Sven Lütticken.
20.30–21.00 hrs, Report from Organizational Art training.
Thursday 14 November 2019
Training, 13.30–17.30 hrs:
“The Plague” with Rose Hammer (Stacey E. Devoe, Dora Garcia, Nora Joung, Per-Oskar Leu, Niels Munk Plum; Oslo).
Public program, 19.00–21.30 hrs:
19.30–19.45 hrs, Welcome and opening remarks by Maria Hlavajova and Sven Lütticken.
19.45–20.15 hrs, Report from “The Plague” training.
20.15–21.00 hrs, Lecture Transfixing Fascist Episteme by Tom Holert.
21.00–21.30 hrs, Q&A moderated by Sven Lütticken.
Friday 15 November 2019
Training, 13.30–17.30 hrs:
Repro Communal Training Camp with Transformella Malor (Johannes Paul Raether).
Public program, 19.00–21.30 hrs:
19.30–19.45 hrs, Welcome and opening remarks by Maria Hlavajova and Sven Lütticken.
19.45–20.15 hrs, Report from Repro Communal Training Camp training.
20.15–21.00 hrs, Lecture Die Versprechen der Gegenwart (The Promises of the Contemporary) by Bini Adamczak.
21.00–21.30 hrs, Q&A moderated by Sven Lütticken.
Saturday 16 November 2019
Training, 14.30–17.30 hrs:
ReadingRoom on “Refuge, Refuse, Refrain” with Terra Critica (Birgit M. Kaiser and Kathrin Thiele)
Public program, 18.30–22.00 hrs:
19.00–19.30 hrs, Welcome and opening remarks by Maria Hlavajova and Sven Lütticken.
19.30–20.00 hrs, Report from ReadingRoom on “Refuge, Refuse, Refrain” training. Mechanisms of Group Constitution and Exclusion.
20.00–22.00 hrs, Panel Collaborations, Coalitions, In- and Exclusions with panelists: Jonas Staal, Natascha Sadr Haghighian, and Bini Adamczak, moderated by Sven Lütticken.
Sunday 17 November 2019
Public program, 12.30–17.00 hrs:
13.00–13.30 hrs, Welcome and Recapitulation of the week by Maria Hlavajova and Sven Lütticken.
13.30–15.30 hrs, Panel Working in Groups, Acting in Networks with panelists: Kader Attia, Diana McCarty, Dan McQuillan, Johannes Paul Raether, Patricia Kaersenhout, moderated by Dina Mohamed.
15.30–16.15 hrs, Closing discussion.
16.15 hrs, Drinks.
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.
