Labs
Our annual laboratory meetings focus topical points of debate. Labs are prepared through long-term planning in the thealit network and realized jointly under the leadership of one or more theorists or curators from our network of long-standing and new collaborators, who design and look after the labs programme. The network mostly organizes symposia, exhibitions, actions, filmseries and publications.
To recapitulate means to repeat something in a structured way, to organize point by point what may previously have been perceived as less or differently ordered and structured. A recapitulation not only concerns content and turning points of written and oral statements, but also historical and political events, including predicted and planned futures - again, as if what is recapitulated in this way has always been and been in this order.
To capitulate means to admit defeat in various forms of war, in general, to submit one's will to that of the opponent in a conflict. Submission also to the interpretation of the conflict on the part of the victorious opponent goes hand in hand with capitulation, and that also means: with the opponent's recapitulation of the conflict.
We find ourselves in an age of global emergencies. War, pandemic, and climate catastrophe—when not directly fatal—have universal consequences in the form of physical psychic, social, cultural, and economic damage. The current, most significant threats call for emergency plans as well as immediate, sustained changes in our behavior.
An emergency situation can seem to occur suddenly, plunge a system into chaos, alter old, familiar patterns, and exacerbate existing imbalances—and always at unpredictable times. Action is immediately demanded, an active answer. Fast, improvised, operating with unknown dimensions. Previous plans and measures must be adjusted. Because it’s about one thing, and one thing only: survival.
- ART RESIDENCIES + INTERMISSIONS
- thealit Arbeitszimmer
- St.-Jürgen-Str. 157/159, Bremen
- October 2022 - March 2024
- September 2023 - March 2024
- +Online until June 2024 (im Virtual Arbeitszimmer)
COAPPARATION? Cooperation is a process or behavior that can be regarded as essential for many things, ranging from culture and cultural politics to evolution, and vice-versa. Like an engine, it enables the stop and go of functional relationships, whose complex rhythms and intervals can in turn appear instrumental. In an apparition—another word for manifestation—perhaps? In that case COAPPARATION would be a little bit of COAPPARITION, because each instance of cooperation or each instance of its rejection comes down to common understanding, agreement, inquiry, hesitation, and action.
- PUBLICATION:
- COAPPARATION I, II, III
The zine with projects addressed to thealit or realised at thealit in the COAPPARATION program
- Publication date: Juni 2022
- Book launch: July 15, 2022
- at Tor 40, Güterbahnhof Bremen
Debates are often cited as proud witnesses to our democratic order: parliamentary and political debates, classic scientific debates right up to debates in television and on talk shows, online panels and in chat rooms... Debates exist within the context of politics and media, but you can already find them in schools and kindergartens, as a means of learning self expression and fair decision making.
We hold debates, we don’t perform them. However, the debate itself as well as those engaged in them are always performing, even putting on a show. Which means: debates are performative tryouts, marking shifts within a culture of speech acts, for all persons involved. These acts stand for the enactment of certain positions, for making a show of arguments and for the show-casing of eligibilities.
What relationship exist between enactment, engagement and show, between the act as such and the art and techniques of debating?
Debates are often cited as proud witnesses to our democratic order: parliamentary and political debates, classic scientific debates right up to debates in television and on talk shows, online panels and in chat rooms... Debates exist within the context of politics and media, but you can already find them in schools and kindergartens, as a means of learning self expression and fair decision making.
We hold debates, we don’t perform them. However, the debate itself as well as those engaged in them are always performing, even putting on a show. Which means: debates are performative tryouts, marking shifts within a culture of speech acts, for all persons involved. These acts stand for the enactment of certain positions, for making a show of arguments and for the show-casing of eligibilities.
What relationship exist between enactment, engagement and show, between the act as such and the art and techniques of debating? These are the research objects of the thealit Lab DEBATE!
- „’Most people […] see order in everything’“ (1)
- "„… an analysis […] is structural if (and only if) it can present content as a model.” (2)
Social order is kept under control and protected by keepers of order. Order is proclaimed in written form. In the case of violation, the script (usually) contains a list of sanctions that can be enforced in the occasion of violation. Orders are written down, and in consequence are generally seen as a way of understanding the world. Order structures societies. On the other hand, structures clarify conditions that are less precise. They, as well, mirror processes and habits, responsibilities and advantages as well as disadvantages within societies. However, they are not codified within the law and are not openly regulated by an apparatus pertaining to the state or other entities. The essence of order can be seen in its being fixed, its obviousness. Structures, on the other hand, may be assumed, they seem to contain a leeway for understanding and enforcement. There are those who would see this the other way around: orders allow for a leeway of understanding and debate, while structures are unconscious and indestructible.
DOCUMENTATION
Aufgrund drastischer Kürzungen der öffentlichen Förderung des thealit war die Umsetzung des Ausstellungsteil im alten Finanzamt leider nicht möglich. Um dennoch einen gemeinsamen Präsentationsrahmen für diese Beiträge zu ermöglichen, wurde eine DIGITALE PLATTFORM erstellt.
Die audiobeiträge (des Radioprogramms) stehen online zum hören bereit.
Was ist ein Schutzraum? Ein Rückzugsort, an dem man sich vor Katastrophen in Sicherheit bringen kann. Ein individuell oder kollektiv eingenommener Raum, den vielfältige Gewaltformen nötig machen. Denkweisen, Artikulations-formen (z.B. künstlerische) und Ansichten (z.B. politische) können ebenfalls Schutz benötigen, aber auch bieten. Virtuelle Welten und digitale Räume ermöglichen Schutz, scheinen aber die Mechanismen von materiellen Schutzräumen teilweise zu invertieren. Schutzräume können überlebens-notwendig sein. Sie funktionieren als exklusive Räume, in die man sich zurückziehen kann, als diffuse Sphären, in denen Einzelne nicht mehr identifizierbar sind und auch als Gewebe von mehr oder weniger intimen Beziehungen.
quite queer… this hints at several different interpretations. Rather queer for instance, or: queer beyond measure ... articulated as an understatement.
queer: this term was turned over from injury to tactical concept that indicates radicalism, diversity and perversity against a heterosexual norm. Queer or not queer that's a question that only makes sense in the logics of either / or. But does this mean a down to earth, two-valued, black and white way of thinking? Obviously not!
»quite queer« at least doesn't think so, even wants to strengthen fabulously strange, dreamy or desperate visions on the base of a clear contradictory opposition. Not a diluted grey but contrasts and colours are expected.
Was ist Verrat? / What is "Treason"?
(The German title "Was ist Verrat?" cannot be translated without loss. "Verrat" includes treason, treachery, perfidiousness betrayal, spilling secrets etc. Please read the English translation in reference to an all-encompassing word – like "Verrat".)
Treason must not fear revenge and must love great secrets, because to give away these will create supreme beauty and will require the highest degree of artfulness. But what if there are no more great secrets to betray as they all have been unveiled? A society shaped by such media of stored – clueless or cunning – treason apes governmental requirements to disclose, surveil and evaluate. This only leaves us to betray for betrayal´s sake as a final effort of criminal virtue! We have to choose insanity, the extreme violence of treason, the force of creation!
A capitalist order counts on people´s ebbing courage and sustains itself through the everyday, servile self-betrayal that has come to being perceived as a duty on par with the duty that "loyalty” becomes in any kind of dependency. Therefore – be daring! Risk breaking boundaries! Betray yourselves! Do not denounce the small mistakes, but betray your own betrayal! Hic rhodos, hic salta! Loveliness extreme.
www.thealit.de/lab/streik_academy/
To strike means to end what is unendurable. It can serve to establish improvements, point to alternatives or, as a symbolic action, attract public attention. It relies on collective organization or, if one "goes on strike alone,” at least on publicity. It can be part of an organized strategy, as a powerful threatening gesture, or a self-empowered wildcat strike, independent of institutions. And by the way, becoming a woman (and as we know, one is not born a woman) is work, too. But what happens if one is an entrepreneur in one’s own right and markets oneself? In any case: striking (itself) is work and a public activity too.
www.thealit.de/lab/prototypisieren/
Eine erste Ausführung, der Inbegriff von etwas, das man sich vorstellt, ein Normalmaß, ein Testverfahren: das alles können Prototypen sein. Der Wortgeschichte folgend (gr. proto: vor), versteht man unter Prototypen oft "Vor-Bilder" oder "Vorlagen", auch die so genannten besten Beispiele. Prototypisieren kann als das Verfahren bezeichnet werden, das vor der Serienfertigung, also "vor dem Produkt" liegt, aber auch - und das ist thealits Anliegen - "vor der Theorie", "vor dem (Kunst)Werk". Prototypen sind eben auch Kunstwerk, Produkt und Theorie. Diese Möglichkeiten werden in einer Messe ausgestellt und gehandelt.
www.thealit.de/lab/donotexist/
Is it possible to speak of the non-existence of what is labelled "Europe", "Woman" or "Digital Medium" and does this open up a new perspective in thinking and behaviour? The project do not exist ... is designed to examine his concept and experiment with it. The idea of a lacking, incomplete or imperfect existence of the three notions, conjectures or realities has already been undertaken in different ways by media and cultural studies, historical and political sciences as well as by psychoanalysis, gender studies and media art: however, the attempt has not yet been made to bring these different concepts together and into confrontation with each other. Our challenge is to perform this in full recognition of a female perspective, allowing the querying of the non-existence of woman from a female point of view.
Kookiness seems to be a current tendency in politics, media and art. But how do images, films, works of art or campaigns reveal their specific reaction to this daily spiral of absurdies? Even critical strategies are no longer transgressive as they are nor longer directed ‘against’ anything, but tend to be ‘kooky’ in their specific way of repeating accustomed things within a new context – so as to make the result seem crazy enough. How can both science and art reflect upon such follies? Couldn’t it be fruitful for them, to explore kooky thinking figures themselves?
www.thealit.de/lab/virtualminds/
Agents, spies, zombies, con-men, fakes, legal entities, novel and dream characters, avatars and bots are crossing borders in a virtual as well as in a real setting. They allow themselves to be understood as those staged, imagined, dreamt of, substituted or programmed. According to the respective context they change their properties and tasks as well as their relationship with us, the real, respectively natural persons. The fictitious figures acting in the graphically oriented or text-based MUDs, in our dreams, however, on all stages are perceived from time to time as uncanny yet partly funny, too, because they never tend to side completely with, for example, life, death or one gender. These fictitious figures - whether originating from the context of internet, dreams, theatre, secret service or psychiatry - trace a border that can question any identity assurance, if ever crossed. Existing they indicate that reality is no clearly defined secure notion or even state, but a question permanently posed anew.
www.thealit.de/lab/eingreifen/
Künstlerinnen und Wissenschaftlerinnen untersuchen in Ausstellung und Symposium wie Modelle das denkbare strukturieren, wenn sie nur ansteckend genug sind. Denn Modelle sollen erklären oder entwerfen – streng genommen tun sie stets beides und halten so ihre User zum Narren.
www.thealit.de/lab/cyberfeminism/cyber.html
Künstlerinnen und Wissenschaftlerinnen präsentieren eine cyberfeministische Vision, eine Arbeit, die ihren Bezug zum Cyberfeminismus reflektiert oder eine Kritik am Cyberfeminismus. 'technics of cyber feminism' mode = message' begreift sich als Teil eines Netzwerks aus Veranstaltungen und Kooperationen.
Mit Symposium
Die Hand bildet den Kreuzungspunkt natur- und kulturwissenschaftlicher Modelle. Ihre Bilder und Bewegungen bestimmen unterschiedliche Schnittflächen von symbolischen Gesten, Handlungen und Arbeit, Berührungen, Schmuck, Körpersprache ...
Mit Filmen, Ausstellung und Symposium
www.thealit.de/lab/serialitaet/
Das theaLit-Laboratorium ging der Serialität als Produktionsbedingung von Kunst, Literatur, Architektur, Film, Video und Musik nach und diskutierte die Figuren der Linearität und des Netzes in verschiedenen Veranstaltungsreihen (Ausstellung, Symposium, Filmprogramm, Konzert).
Mit Filmen, Ausstellung und Symposium
www.thealit.de/lab/tischsitten/starttisch.htm
Die Tischsitte wird so zum Ausgangspunkt für Aktionen, Vorträge, Performances von Künstlerinnen und Wissenschaftlerinnen, die sich sowohl mit dem "Akt des Essens" selbst als auch mit Ordnungen und Gesetzen bei Tisch als Schauplatz und Funktionsträger beschäftigen.
Mit Aktionen, Performances und Symposium
www.thealit.de/lab/LIFE/labor.htm
Vom 4.10 bis zum 2.11.97 veranstaltete das Frauenkulturhaus thealit an verschiedenen Orten in Bremen eine Reihe von Performances, Präsentationen, Filmen, Vorträgen und Diskussionen. Künstlerinnen und Wissenschaftlerinnen stellten Arbeiten zum "Künstlichen Leben" vor: zu Viren und Frauen, Medizin und Kannibalen, Tatoos und virtuellen Körpern, Frankenstein und dem Marionettentheater.
Mit Aktionen, Performances und Symposium
www.thealit.de/lab/fernerkundung/ferne.htm
Von wo aus lässt sich die Ferne also erkunden: Von hier oder dort, von nah oder fern? Eine Antwort würde immer eine Unterscheidung von Innen und Außen voraussetzen, einen traditionsreichen Dualismus, den die Fernerkundung möglicherweise schon in die Ferne vertrieben hat. Bringt nicht die Fernerkundung selbst die Frage zum Verschwinden, wenn die Fernerkundlerin immer hier und dort zugleich ist?
Mit Ausstellungen, Filmen und Symposium
www.thealit.de/lab/ausdruck/ausdruck.htm
Es geht um den Ausdruck, der sich auf dem Feld der Theorie zur Darstellung eines Dazwischen, eines Übergangs anbietet. Auf der Schwelle zur Darstellung tritt stets ein Ausdruck hinzu und übernimmt die Führung, wenn es auch traditionell so scheinen mag, als stellte sich der äußerliche Ausdruck bescheiden in den Dienst eines unabhängigen Innen: eines Gedachten.
Mit Ausstellung, Filmen und Symposium
www.thealit.de/lab/maschinen/maschine.htm
Vermittlungsmaschinen sind auch Buch und Schrift. Aber wie tun sie das? Wie funktionieren unsere traditionellen Kulturtechniken? Künstliche Führungen schlagen Funken aus dem Papier. Die Maschine thealit wirft Blicke auf Frauen und Medien.
Mit Lesungen, Vorträgen, Aktionen und Ausstellungen
www.thealit.de/lab/konzeptart/konzeptart.html
Solange Kunst eigentlich nicht selbst ist, nur als etwas ist, als Bezug auf einen bestimmten Rahmen, hat ihre Vermittlung immer noch kein Selbst, sondern steht im Dienst, um zu zeigen, dass Kunst schon vorm Zeigen gewesen ist. Kunst ist künstliche Voraussetzung für Führungen: leere, aber produktive Stellen. Sie produzieren Kunst, insofern sich kein Werk ohne seine Darstellung sehen lassen kann. Kunst kommt von künstlich.
Mit Vorträgen, Führungen, Filmen, Aktionen und Ausstellungen