27/28-9-2014 the Art of Being Many Reader for an Assembly of Assemblies Kampnagel Internationale Kulturfabrik, Hamburg
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the art of being many reader for 27/28-9-2014 an assembly of assemblies kampnagel internationale kulturfabrik, hamburg 3 ︱ content the art of being many At the end of September 2014, artists, activists, researchers and participants from all over Europe and beyond will gather in Hamburg the art of being many – introduction 3 phd program assemblies and participation rehearsal assemblies – is this it? 5 for an assembly of assemblies. andreas blechschmidt the right to assemble 6 Sharing experiences from real- charter for europe 7 ivan casaola aka punk orgy tear gas democracy 10 democracy-movements and artistic program 11 experimentation they want to ex- amelie deuflhardt kampnagel and the art of being many 15 kai van eikels c.t. 16 plore new ways of coming together: tommy noonan the many deciding 17 collective insights into the materi- federica giardini art /// be(com)ing /// many 18 martin jörg schäfer the labor and leisure of performing the 20 ality, the timing, the agenda, the de- many sires and the catastrophes of being vassilis s. tsianos how to do sovereignty without people? – 21 & dimitris papadopoulos materialising experience and politics in many. At Kampnagel Inter nationale the time fo crisis illias marmaras from ‘people’ to ‘many’ and maybe back? 22 Kulturfabrik, geheim agentur* and magic. friends will build an assembly hall random people a blind date 24 and a camp to host them. Here, the assembly will become a laboratory of itself: a collective of friends and imprint strangers with many voices and the art of being many is a reader for an assembly of assemblies at kampnagel internationale kulturfabrik, hamburg, 27/28 -09-2014, it is also a supplement of the weekly newspaper Jungel World bodies including those of ghosts editor: geheimagentur, edited by: Sophie Domenz, Sibylle Peters, Esther Pilkington, Liz Rech, Martin Schäfer, Vassilis S. Tsianos, translation: Daniel Ladnar, Esther Pilkington, Liz Rech, Martin Schäfer, editing: Liz Rech, graphics: bseiten.net, and things. Feel free to join! print: A. Beig Druckerei und Verlag GmBh & Co. KG, circulation: 15.000, website: www.the-art-of-being-many.net * geheimagentur is an open collective and part of the many who initiated the project THE ART OF BEING MANY ︱ 4 ︱ hamburg︱ september 2014 ︱ the art of being many the art of being many ︱ september 2014 ︱ hamburg ︱ 5 ︱ ... rehearsal assemblies – is this it? Many of us will meet for the first time, but we all have something incommon: by Esther Pilkington We witnessed moments of assembling that made the word ‚democracy’ sound important again. Those moments may not have brought about the political changes, we hoped for. Still, we believe them to be important. We want to acknowledge them as a starting point for a new art of being many. phd program assemblies and participation Collectively chatting with activists from should be, or maybe rehearsals for as- Really? But isn’t it the feeling of NOT being names, open collectives and open sources in form of the many. Furthermore, representa- /esther pilkington Syntagma square in an internet café in semblies. The projects in the research many that art and activism share most of the our work, and we were often treated like fools tive democracy is based on the idea that the Hamburg. Having a “research dinner” programme do not only engage with the time - not enough of us to realize the desired when we refused to send in our personal CVs many can only govern themselves or be gov- while listening to lectures on sensual topic of assemblies and participation the- changes or to win the important battles? Their to appear in programs or identify the “head erned by being reduced to the few. This re- is a performance artist and part of the many at the PHD knowledge production. Going on silent oretically but also practically and perfor- shared desire for being many doesn’t make artist” of our collectives for the press. For us, duction again is organized and legitimized by Program Assemblies and Participation: Urban Publics and walks. Exploring scenarios of the future matively by producing different settings art and activism perfect accomplices. It can it was indeed like a miracle to witness how seemingly rational procedures of counting, Performance with the Young Institute for Future Re- and strategies of assembling. Creating reduce “the many” to an economic feature: this very gesture of refusal became so import- dividing, collecting, and, therefore, of repre- search. Watching films made by teen- assemblies to investigate assemblies – not prosumption, participation, social media, ant to real democracy movements all around senting. Modern representative democracy agers on monitors in buses and under- only do research subject and methods co- data mining — in all these discourses “the the world. Of course, we do not claim that this produces a certain version of the many just to ground trains. Listening to stories told incide here, the research to some degree many” are potentially treated as a resource. gesture of refusal was first rehearsed in the have it easily reduced again afterwards. by elderly people, and to the sounds of produces its own objects. A question that And success is defined as providing access arts. It has its roots in radical activism’s self- their bodies. Coming together to make has thus emerged in our discussions about to this resource one way or another. protection against repression. But after 2008, Now, what we have found in the social move- decisions, using light, chairs and doors these assemblies is: is this still a rehears- Nevertheless, the desire for being many is the means of radical activist self-defense and ments of recent years is that the many are to vote. Meeting seafarers at a Seaman‘s al/a test-run/a scenario/speculation, or nothing to feel bad about. For good reasons, the cultural critique of representation merged actually not equal to countable members of Club to play a game. Protesting and re- is this already it? And: to what extent do it rises up against the cultural tyranny of the and produced something beautiful: the will- parties or to statistical figures of biopolitics. membering the demolition of the Esso these assemblies – which in many cases individual. The individual, who has long been ingly-not-represented, the unrepresentable The given procedures for producing and then Houses in St Pauli with the Megaphone involve or incorporate people from very captured and redesigned as the self-opti- many. reducing the many to the few have turned out 1 Research projects by Margarita Tsomou, Inga Reimers, Choir.1 different backgrounds, not only artists and mizing subject of cognitive capitalism. The to be invalid, as they notoriously fall short of Martin Nachbar, Eva Plischke, Dorothea Grießbach, scientists but also so-called “experts of the desire for being many rises up against the So, who or what are the many? The many are the potential, the richness, and the essential Stefanie Lorey, Hannah Kowalski, Esther Pilkington, Since 2012, we have devised, staged and everyday”, children, seafarers, activists - economics of attention, its imperatives of the what emerged after the bubble of individu- horizontality of the many. Sylvi Kretschmar. tested many different kinds of assemblies feedback into socio-political contexts from big name, the keynote, the star, and the prin- alism crashed: the many failed to be auton- as part of the artistic-academic postgradu- which they emerge, to which they respond ciples of scarcity and accumulation. It rises omous subjects and then stopped feeling What to do with this insight? Maybe we could ate research programme “Assemblies and and with which they interact? up more generally against the ongoing con- guilty about that. The many are those who start by admitting that most of the time we Participation: Urban Publics and Perfor- centration of power and capital in the hands realize that, as individuals, we are precarious, are not many. We are actually few. Even in 2 The programme was founded in Hamburg as a co- mance”.2 Some of these events attempt- At this point, it is important that all these of the fewer and fewer. And if then, all of a fragile, and totally incapable of living, where- those moments when we seem to be many, operation between the HafenCity University, FUNDUS ed to invent or introduce new types of experiments with assemblies, even though sudden, there are many, it feels like a mira- as, on the other hand, we are totally capable as, for example, in the Occupy Movement, Theatre/Researchtheatre and K 3 / Centre for Chore- assemblies, others took well-established they can be described as rehearsals, take cle. When the many emerge and start to en- of producing a common life together. The “we” have never for real been the 99 percent. ography. For more information see: www.versammlu- settings for assemblies as their starting place in public. Thus, they also convey gage in the constituent process of becoming many have a special kind of knowledge—the Compared to this claim we have always been ng-und-teilhabe.de points and modified them in a way that new certain ideas of how the public for this a “we,” terrible and wonderful things can so-called “wisdom of the many” identified few. But we acted “as if we were many.” And hybrid forms could emerge. These differ- particular event should be composed and happen. The wonderful part is that, at such as typical of digital societies. The many are what is this acting “as if we were many” if not ent approaches share a belief that what organised. In his book Publics and Coun- moments, the most important things can be those who collectively produce the commons.