assembly

To become public necessarily means to assemble — to join systems, orders, groups and publics. It implies aspects of inclusion and exclusion likewise and thus links different audiences, media, spaces, things, and actors. What is the political and emancipatory potential of an assembly? And how can this open up spaces for discussion?

Space and Graphic Design
Sibel Beyer, Tobias Fabek, Christian Kölbl, Leen Murad, Jana Slaby, Phil Stahlhut

magda tyżlik-carver

Magdalena Tyżlik-Carver is Assistant Professor of Digital Design at Aarhus University and independent curator. Her research investigates intersections of computation and practices of participation in contemporary art and culture bringing together art history, software studies, affect theory, curatorial practice and new materialism. She is co-editor of Executing Practices (Autonomedia 2017, Open Humanities Press 2018) and her most recent curatorial project Screen Shots: Desire and Automated Image exhibited in Aarhus Galleri Image in March and April 2019.

binna choi

Binna Choi is a curator, and the Director of the Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons in Utrecht, The Netherlands, in which she, together with her team, re-established in 2018 under its current name and modus operandi after a 10-year trajectory within the institution. During this time, she conceived the long-term, art-driven transdisciplinary project, “Grand Domestic Revolution” (2009–2013) and the artistic research program, “Composing the Commons” (2013–2016). The latter includes a collaborative project between artist Annette Krauss and the Casco Team Site for Unlearning (Art Organization) and the Arts Collaboratory, a trans-local ecosystem that practices art in an expanded sense of inventing new ways of living and working together. Currently, she is working on a project focusing on the Gwangju Democratic Uprising (aka 5·18) and, together with You Mi, the exhibition on Eurasia both as a relevant geopolitical and geopoetical space for imagining the commons, both set to unfold in 2020. Choi has been a faculty member at the Dutch Art Institute, and a member of Akademie der Kunst der Welt as well as the Community Economies Research Network.

hans d. christ &
iris dressler

Hans D. Christ and Iris Dressler have been the directors of the Württembergischer Kunstverein (WKV) in Stuttgart since 2005. One of their priorities is the exploration of collaborative, transcultural and transdisciplinary practices of curating. They are currently the conveners of Bergen Assembly 2019, titled, Actually, the Dead Are Not Dead. In Stuttgart, Hans D. Christ and Iris Dressler presented solo exhibitions by artists such as Imogen Stidworthy (2018, with Katia Krupennikova), Alexander Kluge (2017, with La Virreina Centre de la Imatge, Barcelona, at La Virreina and WKV), Ines Doujak (2016), Pedro G. Romero (2012, with Valentín Roma), Teresa Burga (2011, with Miguel Lopez and others), Peggy Buth (2009), NOH Suntag (2008), Daniel G. Andújar (2008), Anna Oppermann (2007, curated by Ute Vorkoeper) and Stan Douglas (2007, with Staatsgalerie Stuttgart). Recent group exhibitions include 50 Years after 50 Years of the Bauhaus (2018), Tito’s Bunker (2017, with Biennial of Contemporary Art Sarajevo, at Tito’s Bunker in Konjic and WKV), The Beast and the Sovereign (2016, with MACBA, Paul B. Preciado and Valentín Roma, at WKV and MACBA), Acts of Voicing (2012, with a core group of twelve co-curators) and Subversive Practices (2009, with a core group of thirteen co-curators).

curatorial research

chris paxton

What are the potentials and limitations of assembly as a strategy for facilitating open and inclusive discursive spaces, that is, spaces where a transformative processes of negotiation can take place?

martin buhlig

Day 5—assembly

busy
anxiety
fear
program
composing
commons
resource
organizing
cummunity
situated
system
divided
public
private
state
maintain
system
collective
research
project
knowledge
generate
artistic
thinking
unlearning
privileges
habit
question-learning
economy
unaware
blind
perform
embody
knowledge
important
bodily
engagement
impossible
precarious
rely
wobbly
situation
exercise
produce
need
demand
pressure
busy
frustrated
obstruction
habit
cleaning
office
protect
presentation
domestic
revolution
curate
ongoing
conversation
exercises
images
background
time-machine
network
iceberg
relation
salary
backbone
dialogue
introduction
essays
glossary
bark
common
elephant-in-the-room
art-institute
office
annual
assembly
backside
programming
presenting
interrogation
formalize
editorial
committee
draft
facilitate
writing-process
morals
transcultural
practice
modernist
transparent
democratic
participatory
institution
association
tunnels
constellation
embedded
recycle
logic
economy
porosity
board
backup
jury
interest
architecture
exhibition
library
copy
protest
ignorance
member
interest
relationship
top-down
need
camp
occupation
neighbor-help
workshop-space
cleanup
elections
escalation
administration
research
knowledge
corruption
civic
obedience
homeless
competence
survive
city
action-conference
political
design
insurance-value
participatory
practices
organize
results
invited
translated
museum
local
context
gather
discuss
move
formation
black-board
rent
events
access
artist-scene
demonstrating
legal
play
opportunities
infrastructure
institution
transition
sharing
de-curate
curator free zones
grass-root
Mus�e imaginaire
medium
sharing
knowledge
fragmented
research
archive
kitchen table
representation
projection
reordering
tableau
montage
constellation
collaboration
subversive practices
isolated
generational
context
dictatorship
production
canon
modernity
subjects
transfer
transition
architecture
sections
conflict
political bodies
mail-art
resistance
evidence
tomorrow
censorship
substitute
visualize
material
commentary
irritating
language
imitate
adept
dissident
tactics
urgency
history
official
rethinking
silk-screen
suspicion
comprehensive
implications
inappropriateness
experts
expertise
unusual
perspectives
productive
acts of voicing
viewer
curiosity
story
non-seen
hidden
intimate
experience
environment
chorus
rehearsal
queer
manifesto
assembly
conference
convener
logics of production
artistic
metaphorical
rhizome
goals
processes
control
to dare
sense
communality
collectivity
dissolve
revelers
singularity
network
disembodiment
pre-formulated
unexpected
alliances
understanding
rereading
parody
utopian thinking
narratives
emancipatory
the ungrieveable
vulnerability

asya yaghmurian

Show and try again?



Showing as non-action, as a state of being.


Treating show as a process that constantly evolves as on open space that welcomes new participants and ideas.
Accepting the neutral space and not treating the activities and knowledge as goods.

There is no ‘us’ and there is no ‘them’, there is no ‘inside’ and there is no ‘outside’.


We should talk more about art.
Trusting the process of the show, thus trusting the pause, the gap, the anarchic dimension.


Considering to not show, not try or never again.
Freeing the show, emancipating it from the structures.
Thinking about what to offer to the show and what to offer to try.
Questioning the show and questioning what do you want to show.
Finding the right addressee for the question.
Showing the try is already a show.
Showing the things that are not supposed to be shown.
Trying to show on behalf of others, the ones who don’t have the tools to assembly.
Trying to avoid the clashes of the show.


Being careful not to be stuck in the loopholes of the show.
Not bringing boredom to try again or to show.


Being careful not to cross the line between the show and the showoff.
Showing the assembly, not assembling the show.


Remembering and caring about the spectator who finally shapes the show.
Walking with the spectator through the show.
Imagining the show, as seen from non-show, assembly or try!

QUESTIONING THE AFTER-SHOW is the result of a field research—trying to capture the voices of the audience in the form of questions.

It created an archive of collected questions, that have grown out of the participation in the 5 days of Show and Try Again.

Following the approach of generating a living archive that stimulates new reflections and serves as a starting point for new discussions, this encyclopedia was translated into a game—that brings the manifold thoughts of visitors, participants, artists and initiators into motion and contact.

This format uses the active, discursive qualities inherent in the nature of the questions and tries to catalogue some of the experiences of the various participants in the program.

You are cordially invited to download the game and question the follow-up of the program-week in a playful way.

jana dohmann

ASSEMBLY

What is the political and emancipatory potential of an assembly? And how can this open up spaces for discussion?

How can these temporal structures become productive in terms of meaning production?

How can this meaning production participate in shifts and changes of existing knowledges as well as existing social, economic, institutional conditions?

How can coming together support urgent solution building processes?

Where is the crack in every system, that allows us to change the structure?

Have you had a productive day?

What is the role of the pause in public events? And how is it possible to use it more consciously?

With what kind of practical measures will art and art institutions take care for our planetary?

How is it possible to create touchabilities?

Where and when to stop or to boycott?

Can a discussion also be an artwork?

How to talk back? Does the talk back use the same terms as the talk?

Is there a post-representational museum?

What does it take to stop? When do you say enough is enough?

How to perform things that are philosophically impossible?

What are the consequences of failure?

How is infrastructure embedded in our aesthetics?

Was macht einen Vortag für mich lebendig und lädt meine Lebendigkeit als BesucherIn in den Prozess mit ein, in der Form, dass ich mich dazu berufen fühle Fragen zu stellen, zu partizipieren usw.?

Welche Bedingungen braucht Humor, um sich wohl zu fühlen?

How to use movement to restructure hierarchies in curated situations?

Who is aware of which friction?

Who is allowed to talk about which topic?

Can a biennial be an assembly?

How is it possible to hack the system?

Welche Frage, die du gerne gestellt hättest, hast du nicht gefragt? Und warum?

How to invite the (potentials of) vulnerability?

How do you dissolve and conserve singularity?

nadine vollmer

Memory Shots

31 November, 2019

This morning there is no wake up call at 7:30am and I don’t have the time to remember the day before. Therefore these notes were written down at a later time of the day while trying to remember what I thought about when rushing to the train station after the event.
That really unpleasant moment in a staged situation of an assembly—people sit in a circular arrangement for one and a half hours (although we learned the day before how long-lasting assemblies can/should be), Mia and me chose to be the ones to hand over the mics between those who want to speak in order to (at least me) be in a background position -- somebody hands over the microphone to me and wants me to explain what he just summed up in a quite abriged way. Actually, I don’t want to say anything, I’m still on my way to comprehend the previous speaker’s not voiced line of thought. But instead of not saying anything, my mouth starts speaking and urges others to be part of my gradual production of thoughts while speaking. Sorry. If only I was quicker, I would have said: I prefer not to, thanks, another time. And then I would have handed over the mic to someone else.
Or, better:
Yes, you’re right, Hans. Thanks. And then I would have handed over the mic to someone else.
How to disrupt a preconceived situation.
That was the question hovering behind.
By singing when singing is not part of the protocol.
That’s what Hans proposes.
To change the protocol by ignoring it. By intervening when the protocol suffocates the air in the space.
Which means not to ask a question in a room full of questions (even if the question tries to twist the perspective and the direction).
But to simply change the whole register.
To learn how to change one’s own register.
Otherwise one can only try to repair.
So one option would be to repair the sinking ship while keeping on track at full speed. The other option would be to let the ship sink intentionally, jump overboard (everyone) and start anew.

Everything I haven’t done during this last week.
Everything I haven’t said during this last week.
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Archive of Things Left Unsaid or Undone.

birgit messmer