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Discussion Video Artists’ studios have emerged throughout time as spaces that are not only real but also imaginary (e.g., today the virtual space of a computer). With the change of artistic idioms and practices, studios have evolved from spaces in which one can think and create in solitude to dynamic environments for (collective) production, social interaction, and the presentation of works along with their storage, possibly in a well-organized archive. Furthermore, studios have been associated with an inspiration and an independence that, when it comes to output, give rise to an oscillation between vast expectations and often-uncertain outcomes.
This event is particularly concerned with the gendered coding of the studio. Is the studio still a gendered place and, if yes, what kind of frame does it provide for female artists today? Do they — who have often been denied creative agency and representative spaces — have special claims, needs, and practices with regard to the studio space? Does the studio still offer temporary shelter, privacy, and an opportunity to escape the care work of home?
A second aspect is devoted to the future of the studio in the 21st century. This aspect focuses on the studio’s separation from public space as well as its limits in terms of flexibility and mobility. In what ways have the notion of the studio and the conditions of artistic practice been transformed? What elements of the studio live on if there is no longer a room to live in and to share? What are the social, political, and aesthetic implications of these developments for today’s (post-)studio experience?
Alice Pedroletti: www.notalike.com
moderated by Cristina Baldacci and Claudia Peppel
2023
Discussion Video Das Verhältnis von Aktivismus und Wissenschaft ist eines der großen Reizthemen unserer Gegenwart. Während Aktivist*innen aller Richtungen die Wissenschaft als selbstverständliche Arena ihres Engagements betrachten oder wissenschaftliche Erkenntnisse zur Durchsetzung ihrer Anliegen in Dienst nehmen wollen, wähnen andere die Wissenschaftsfreiheit oder gar das freie Wort überhaupt in Gefahr. Die Fronten verhärten sich, die Logik politischer Lagerbildung hat längst gegriffen.
Mit Armin Nassehi und Eva von Redecker kommen zwei Wissenschaftler*innen ins Gespräch, die auch außerhalb ihrer Disziplinen (der Soziologie und der Philosophie) als politisch engagierte, öffentliche Intellektuelle auftreten. Wie verorten sie ihre eigene Praxis im Spannungsfeld von Aktivismus und Wissenschaft? Sehen sie sich selbst als Aktivist*innen, und wenn ja, wie verhält sich ihr Aktivismus zur wissenschaftlichen Arbeit? Das von Patrick Eiden-Offe (ZfL) moderierte Gespräch wird aus der Selbstbeobachtung zu einer differenzierteren Betrachtung unserer Gegenwart führen, bei der gängige Frontstellungen aufgelockert und hinterfragt werden sollen.
Armin Nassehi ist Professor für Allgemeine Soziologie und Gesellschaftstheorie an der Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München. In seinen letzten Büchern hat er sich mit den Möglichkeiten und Grenzen sozialen und politischen Protests in der Gesellschaft der Gegenwart beschäftigt, die er als »digital« und »überfordert« charakterisiert. Er ist Herausgeber des Kursbuch und schreibt regelmäßig für verschiedene Tages- und Wochenzeitungen.
Eva von Redecker ist Philosophin. Sie schreibt über Kritische Theorie, Feminismus und die Revolution. Nach Stationen an der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, der University of Cambridge und der New School for Social Research in New York forschte sie 2020/2021 als Marie-Skłodowska-Curie-Fellow an der Università di Verona zur Theorie und Gegenwart des autoritären Charakters.
Patrick Eiden-Offe arbeitet am ZfL auf einer Heisenberg-Stelle an einer intellektuellen Biographie von Georg Lukács. Er hatte Gast- und Vertretungsprofessuren an den Universitäten Chicago, Bochum und Hamburg sowie an der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin inne. Sein Buch Die Poesie der Klasse. Romantischer Antikapitalismus und die Erfindung des Proletariats (2017) erscheint 2023 in englischer Übersetzung.
Die Diskussion ist Teil der ZfL-Tagung Aktivismus und Wissenschaft I: Zur Theorie, Geschichte und Aktualität einer Provokation.
2022
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Discussion Femi(ni)cide is defined as the homicide of women and girls. This extreme form of gender-based violence is often associated with certain regions of the world, rather than being recognized as a global problem. The true dimensions of these crimes, such as the frequency of domestic offences or the particular risk level associated with separation from a partner — as well as the societal acceptance of violence against women — remain largely unknown because of a lack of in-depth analyses and because these crimes are usually not statistically recorded.
In this discussion, four activists from different contexts share experiences from their work: Hannah Beeck and Aleida Luján Pinelo, with their initiative Feminizidmap, document the murders of women in Germany; Valeria España focuses on court verdicts and criminal prosecution in various South American countries; and Meena Kandasamy is an author whose work is dedicated to trauma and violence against women, especially in India. They seek to raise awareness of the complex issue of extreme violence against women and they demand greater public debate and the development of strategies in order to prevent crimes and obtain consistent criminal prosecution.
2022
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Discussion Is it our right to touch and be touched? When is it our ethical imperative to doubt our right to touch or the rightness of our touching?
The pandemic requires each of us to suspend our practices of coming into touch. It also requires us to suspend our certainty towards our freedom to touch. The opportunity to doubt our touch in each instance is also an opportunity to grasp touch itself differently. Touching is not just a private matter but has global consequences.
And yet the international rise of conspiracy theories and science denialism suggests that cultural skepticism is itself a kind of pandemic. One of the dangers of radical skepticism is its tendency to betray itself. The activity of doubting or questioning what is presented as truth, gives birth to a theory, which itself becomes the new dogma that cannot be questioned.
Cultural skepticism can be identified as a global crisis. Yet, other expressions of skepticism challenge a dogmatic-skepticism that justifies recklessness and violence. How does haptic skepticism—the suspension of touch—hold open the ethical and political space of questioning?
This roundtable discusses the varieties of cultural dogmatism and skepticism that have emerged during the pandemic. The participants will specifically explore touch as the site of radical certainty and doubt, by analysing pandemic experience through the lens of their recent publication A Touch of Doubt: On Haptic Scepticism, ed. by Rachel Aumiller (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2021, open-access)
2021
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Discussion It first of all means that politics should not be conceptualized in any narrow sense of the term, that is, neither with respect to current political systems nor as a particular kind of action. The turn toward ontology thus implies a turn away from politics-as-we-know-it toward ‘the political’. Yet secondly, it becomes important to specify what ‘the political’ consists in. Should the political be conceived in terms of a political ontology of the multitude (Antonio Negri), of ‘being-with’ (Jean-Luc Nancy), of ‘the social imaginary’ (Cornelius Castoriadis), or of precarity (Butler)?
As Oliver Marchart argues, ‘the political’ means conflict, and conflict is the law of being. In the last instance, all social relations are formed and deformed in moments of insurrection, uprising, protest, but also oppression, subordination, and exclusion. All social action, consequently, bears the mark of negativity: to act is to negate the given. Such a praxis-based ontology of the political has consequences not only for the way one looks at the world, but also for the particular form of action called thinking. If indeed thinking is acting, then to think is also to negate the given. Yet the given cannot be negated by the individual, it can only be negated politically – in short: collectively and conflictually. We can only think as a collective, and we can only think through conflict.
The panel discussion builds on Marchart’s recent book Thinking Antagonism. Political Ontology after Laclau (2018) and serves as the opening event of the conference ‘Ontologien des Politischen im Widerstreit’, 26-27 September 2019, at the Freie Universität Berlin, co-organized by the FU Berlin and Vienna University (full programme).
Oliver Marchart is professor of political theory at the University of Vienna. He works in the fields of political theory, cultural theory, and aesthetics. His recent books include Thinking Antagonism. Political Ontology after Laclau (2018); Conflictual Aesthetics. Artistic Activism and the Public Sphere (2019); and Das unmögliche Objekt. Eine postfundamentalistische Theorie der Gesellschaft (2013).
Allan Dreyer Hansen is associate professor at the Institute for Society and Globalisation at Roskilde University, Denmark. He has published widely on radical politics, the discourse theory of Laclau and Mouffe, as well as on the question of political ontology.
Vassilios Paipais is a lecturer at the School of International Relations, University of St Andrews. He is the author of Political Ontology and International Political Thought: Voiding A Pluralist World (2016).
Sara Gebh is a university assistant at the Department of Political Sciences of the University of Vienna. She is currently finishing her PhD at The New School on the concepts of stasis and conflict in the history of democratic thought.
2019
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