16.3. – 6.5.2012

Animism Exhibition Conference

English Table of Contents

Preface Bernd M. Scherer 4 Chapter 6: Soul Design 59 Al Clah, Erik Steinbrecher, Daria Martin, Roee Rosen, Adam Curtis, Exhibition 6 Antje Majewski, archival material

Introduction Anselm Franke 7 Chapter 7: The Politics of Animism / Ecology / Nature 71 Walon Green, Jean Painlevé, Didier Demorcy, Angela Melitopoulos / Maurizio Lazzarato, Paulo Tavares, archival material Chapter 1: Background 11 Archival material Guided Tours 81 Chapter 2: Objectification 16 Chris Marker / Alain Resnais, Jimmie Durham, Candida Höfer, Victor Grippo, kids&teens@hkw 82 Agency, Vincent Monnikendam, Artefakte // anti-humboldt, archival material Conference: Roundtables, Lectures 85 Chapter 3: The Great Divide 27 León Ferrari, Walt Disney, Len Lye, David Maljkovic, Hans Richter, Anna and Publication 92 Bernhard Blume, archival material In Context: Contemporary Realism and Materialism 93 Chapter 4: Symptoms & Media 37 Heinz Schott / Erhard Schüttpelz / Ehler Voss, Anja Dreschke / Martin Credits 94 Zillinger, Camillo Negro, Lars Laumann, Rosemarie Trockel, Yayoi Kusama, archival material

Chapter 5: Capitalism & Phantasmagoria 47 Ken Jacobs, Marcel Broodthaers, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Fernand Léger, Thomas Alva Edison, Dierk Schmidt, Tom Holert, archival material

2 3 Preface

In close interaction with techno- In terms of the latter, ethnology Against the backdrop of the exis- to the many artists and academics logical inventions, and fueled by a placed itself in the service of a tential crisis currently confronting who have collaborated with us Capitalist economic system, the modernity defined by the natural us, the Haus der Kulturen der on the project, without whom we natural sciences finally began to sciences, and described the prac- Welt sees its primary challenge could not have achieved the de- establish themselves and their tices of non-European societies as reappraising the relationship sired complexity and multiplicity world view in the 19th century. The as animistic. In seeking to forge a both to the natural and social of perspectives. science of physics became the developmental model of human environment. This will also entail paradigm with which to understand thought, it endeavored to assert reviving the lost traditions of our Bernd M. Scherer the world. And that meant that unequivocally that the categorical history, applying them to our Director of the Haus der Kulturen der Welt Europe’s outlook on the world was separation between subject and current problems and integrating essentially shaped by objectifying object did not “yet” lie within the fruitfully the modes of thought and processes predicated on a clear capability of “pre-modern” socie- perception of the “other” into our separation of subject and object, as ties, as long as they still endowed own thinking. To do this we must already introduced in Descartes’s animals and objects with a spirit. abandon our practice of defining distinction between “res cogitans” who the “others” are, and engage und “res extensa.” However, this These two evidently closely inter- with them in an open exchange of also implied that interpretations of linked processes, the objectifica- views. the world which did not draw this tion of all our relationships to na- distinction were being increasingly ture, together with the devaluation The “Animism” project constitutes superseded or confined to the of the societal models of so-called an essential building-block periphery. This applied both to the “primitive” peoples, laid the foun- within this process. I would like to European traditions which were dations for both the exploitation express my gratitude to Anselm able to sustain their momentum of the natural resources and the Franke and Irene Albers for having until well into the 19th century, and displacement, even elimination, of conceived and curated this project also to non-European traditions. pre-modern societies. for our Haus. My thanks also go

4 5 Animism—Exhibition Introduction Anselm Franke

The exhibition “Animism” begins beyond doubt. But where is the with that which we are all familiar dividing line? What possesses a with from art and the products soul, life, and the power to act? of mass culture—the cartoon for That the border between animate example—as animation. Within and inanimate matter, or between art, animation is a common effect pure subjects and mere objects, used to evoke life and vitality, in is in no sense a natural given is particular through movement, demonstrated by the simple although it is also present when fact that in different cultures this art works—sculptures or specific border is perceived and con- pictures—appear to return the ceived of in highly different ways. gaze of the viewer. Consequently, there can never be an ultimately “objective” designa- However, what we accept as tion of the “correct” division—in an effect in art is a subject of order to illustrate this in terms of historical contention beyond its one’s own culture one only has to confines. What do we perceive think of the imponderables in the as being alive? When we ask debate on the point of death and this question outside the field of the definition of so called “brain art it invariably raises questions death.” However, the dividing which call on us to provide further line is not a “purely” subjective distinctions for the purpose of matter either—after all, it is just as clarification. The mere effect of important for the organization of vitality is not to be equated with our material relations to nature as independent life, this appears for the question of the social and

6 7 political status of living beings in subject and object) is to be found As real as animistic cultures sents a real limit to the conception a specific society. Is it possible to in animism. Animism is applied to are—according to a Christian of Western modernity, a provoca- examine this dividing line itself, to- those world views in which there handbook for missionaries they tion to the modern principle of gether with the organizing knowl- is seemingly no division between currently make up, in all their reality which has become deeply edge systems and practices? nature and culture, in which heterogeneity, around 40 percent inscribed in everyday perception. The project “Animism” proceeds objects, nature, or the entire of the world’s population—they At best animistic practices are from the premise that imaginary cosmos, are perceived of as being proved hard to explain for the recognized under the category of demarcations symptomatically alive, and thus quasi subjectified. tradition of Western modernity. “culture,” but only as long as they reflect cultures, that representa- At the end of the 19th century, at If we start from our basic as- don’t raise any claims to making tions, aesthetic processes and the zenith of colonialism and the sumptions as to what constitutes statements about the actual char- media images consolidate, reflect belief in scientific progress, the “nature” and “culture,” “subject” acter of nature or suchlike. and transgress these dividing modern world view attempted to and “object,” then it appears that lines. Consequently, the exhibi- find self-confirmation in its image we have no other option than to Consequently, “Animism” is not an tion explores how this border is of the pre-modern other. Animism characterize animism as a “faith” exhibition about animism which reflected in aesthetic subjectifica- became the exemplary manifesta- which fails to grasp the objective exhibits ethnographic objects tion and objectification processes, tion of this idea of the other. reality of things, explaining it in in display cases which other and attempts to situate these aes- Animism is an antitype to the the last instance as a psychologi- cultures claim to be animate. The thetic processes in the concrete “disenchanted,” objectified, reified cal mechanism. However, in the Western idea of animism as the socio-political contexts of colonial world of modernity. From the process, one’s own basic as- pre-modern other that falsely modernity. modern perspective, it stands for sumptions and demarcations are believes in the ensoulment of ob- a world of magic transformations uncritically projected onto other jects which are in fact inanimate The most radical antitype to in which the borders are sup- cultures. is itself a symptomatic expression the modern Western world view posedly misconceived, or—in a of modernity’s basic assumptions. (whose dualistic conception is romantic-utopian turn—overcome. We have taken animism as our In contrast, the intention is to view built on a categorical separation of theme precisely because it repre- the term and the idea inscribed

8 9 within it as a mirror which can be used to examine our own basic assumptions and thus recognize them as the product of demarca- tions. Is it possible to gain an understanding of animism as a praxis extending beyond Western conceptions of “life,” “soul,” “self,” “nature,” “supernatural forces” or “belief,” which embraces other experiences, subjectification and objectification processes and mutual interactions, and not just rigid categories? The project “Animism,” raises the necessity of a revision and decolonization, not just of the obsolete understanding of animism, but also of the modern imagination of which it is an expression.

Anselm Franke is an exhibition maker, critic, and lecturer. He is the curator of “Animism,” presented in different chapters in Antwerp, Berne, Vienna, Berlin and “Tupinamba Indians Attacked by Demons” Engraving by New York (2010 – 2012). Theodor de Bry (detail) © CORBIS

10 Chapter 1: Animism—Background

The term “animism” was intro- There are a number of long pre- reaction to the “disenchanted declared animism to be the “sub- duced by British anthropologist histories to Tylor’s conception of world.” During the course of the ject’s narcissistic overvaluation Edward B. Tylor, (1832-1917) who animism. The first is of a religious 20th century, Tylor’s animism was of his own mental processes,” adopted it from the proto-vitalist nature. Originating in classical long shunned within ethnology a belief in the “omnipotence of Georg Ernst Stahl, an influential Greek philosophy and the due to its all too explicit evolution- thought,” an “unrestricted narcis- thinker in the Berlin of the 17th Jewish-biblical tradition this led ism. It is only recently that there sism” which strives to withstand century. For Tylor, animism was to the centuries-long theological has been a renewed engagement the “inexorable laws” of reality. the minimal definition of religion debates on the constitution of with this concept of fundamental as a “belief in spiritual beings.” nature and the soul. Against the importance for the discipline. He claimed that every religion background of the expansion of However, within psychology, the stemmed from an original, false Christianity—and since 1492 Euro- concept—with direct recourse attribution of life, soul, or spirit, pean colonial expansion—Tylor’s to Tylor—has continued to play a to inanimate objects. According conception of animism was heir central role in the context of the to this theory, Europeans have to the Christian struggle against theory of “projection.” advanced from animism, via poly- “the worshipping of graven im- theism, to monotheism, and from ages,” “idolatry,” and witchcraft. While for Tylor the term animism there to the highest stage of sci- Another antecedent is to be found was a means for establishing the ence, rising from a state of nature in the thought of representative “correct” distance between mat- to one of civilization. In contrast, modern philosophers, in René ter (objects, things, nature) and the indigenous peoples of North Descartes’ separation of inner people (souls, subjects, persons), and South America, Africa, Asia, and outer worlds and primary and between the modern present and and Polynesia, were left behind secondary qualities of body and archaic past, for Sigmund Freud during this evolutionary process mind, but also in the philosophers it was a means for determining and remain as the „savage surviv- of the Enlightenment and scientific the “correct” boundary between als” of the natural state. positivism, as well as the Romantic inner self and outer reality. Freud

12 13 Archival Material

Georg Ernst Stahl, “Fragmen- Hans Christian Andersen, Sigmund Freud, “Das Unheim- torum Aetiologiae Physiologico- “Choix de Contes,” B. G. Teubner, liche,” in: Imago – Zeitschrift für Chymicae,” Bielkius Literis Ni- Leipzig 1940 Anwendung der Psychoanalyse sianis, Ienae 1683. Reproduction auf die Geisteswissenschaften, Courtesy Sächsische Landes- Karl Friedrich Vollrath vol. 5 (1919) bibliothek – Staats- und Uni- Hoffmann, “Die Völker der Erde, versitätsbibliothek Dresden, ihr Leben, ihre Sitten und Gebräu- Sigmund Freud, “Totem und Chem.1197 che, zur Belehrung und Unterh- Tabu. Einige Übereinstimmungen altung. Erster Theil,” Hoffmann, im Seelenleben der Wilden und Edward B. Tylor, “Primitive Cul- Stuttgart 1840 der Neurotiker,” Internationaler ture: Researches into the Devel- Psychoanalytischer Verlag, Leip- opment of Mythology, Philosophy, Joseph Josenhans, “Bilder zig/Vienna/Zurich 1922 [orig. 1913] Religion, Art and Custom,” vol. 1 aus der Missionswelt. Für die and 2, John Murray, London 1871 deutsche Jugend nach englischen Originalien bearbeitet u. mit Gailyn Van Rheenen, “Com- kurzen Erklärungen versehen,” municating Christ in Animistic Scholz, Mainz ca. 1860 Contexts,” Baker Book House, Grand Rapids 1991 Friedrich Karl Lang, “Abriß der Sitten und Gebräuche aller Nazi- François Fénelon, “The Adven- onen. Oder kurze Darstellungen tures of Telemachus, the Son of der merkwürdigsten menschlichen Ulysses,” 1699 Wohnplätze, Beschäftigungen und Gewohnheiten in den fünf Theilen David Hume, “A Treatise of Hu- der Welt. Vierter Band. Mit 19 man Nature,” 1739 Kupfertafeln,” Bock, Nuremberg 1811 Stewart Elliot Guthrie, “Faces in the Clouds: A New Theory of Religion,” Oxford University Press, New York 1993

14 15 Chapter 2: Objectification

From Greek tradition we have in- objectification brought forth by herited the butterfly as the symbol modernity. of the psyche and metamorpho- The exhibition “Animism” displays sis. However, the butterfly only a series of artworks reflecting the enters museums or display cases paradoxical relationship of the when fixed with a needle at a medium of the exhibition to ani- determinate point in the taxonomy mism. This relationship is a para- of knowledge. doxical one not least due to the fact that objects in a museum con- Thus an exhibition on animism, tinue to be animistic in a further in the true sense of the word, is sense—they animate a specific an impossibility. As soon as an historiography, knowledge system “object” is taken out of its original or the fantasy of the visitor, who, context within a specific praxis confronted with mummies or and transferred to a museum it dinosaur skeletons, imagines with necessarily loses its specific form a shudder how they return to life. Is of animation and enters another this also conceivable for the entire field, which requires that it first reified world under colonialism? be objectified, conserved and thus de-animated. It is removed from the flow of time just as it is from praxis; every form of change must be excluded. The medium of “Étienne Jules Mareys photographic gun,” Engraving by the exhibition is thus itself a part Louis Poyet © Conservatoire numérique – Cnum, “La Nature,” 1881, p. 329 of that institutional apparatus of http://cnum.cnam.fr 17 Chris Marker (*1921), Alain Resnais (*1922) Jimmie Durham (*1940) “Les statues meurent aussi” 1953. Film, 16 mm, transferred to DVD “The Museum of Stones” 2011/2012. Installation consisting of various stones and other materials, measurements variable

In “Les statues meurent aussi,” addresses the problems implicit in With “The Museum of Stones” active, a character in an unfolding French filmmakers Chris Marker the similarity between musealiza- Jimmie Durham inverts conven- story—quite aside from how an- and Alain Resnais trace the colo- tion and the forms of mortification tional Western thinking on mime- thropomorphism may call to mind nial appropriation of the African imposed by the medium of film sis, architecture and the museum. totems or other ritualistic objects. artifact in its two dominant forms: in light of the limitations of the Along with found and defunct its transformation into an exhibit in cinematographic “re-animation” it objects, stone plays a significant an ethnographic museum or into attempts. metaphoric role in Durham’s work, a commercial tourist commodity. standing for the representation of The film studies the complex state narratives, identity construc- configuration of self-reflection tion, and all things structured: the colonial gaze engenders—the architecture, monumentality, sta- appropriation of the “other” as bility—and “belief.” For Durham, a (negative) affirmation of the stone is the ultimate sculptural self—insisting on an ontological form, because each stone is itself difference of African artifacts: a changing entropic sculpture, they are neither “art” nor in and of shaped over time by the elements. Courtesy the artist and kurimanzutto Gallery, Mexico City; “The Dangers of Petrification,” 2007 (Detail) © Mairie themselves “spiritual” in a world He is fascinated by the ways in de Paris, Musée d’art moderne de la ville Paris, photo: in which these very categories are which seemingly static objects Philippe Ladet Produced with the support of the Haus der Kulturen without meaning. The film also Courtesy Présence Africaine Editions; film still like stones can become incredibly der Welt, Berlin

18 19 Candida Höfer (*1944) Victor Grippo (1936–2002) „Ethnologisches Museum Berlin III 2003.” Photograph, C-print, 85 x 85 cm “Tiempo, 2da. versión” 1991. Potatoes, zinc and copper electrodes, electric wire, digital clock, painted wooden base, glass vitrine and text “American Museum of Natural History Measurements (overall without base): 5 x 50 x 50 cm New York I 1990” Photograph, C-print, 24 x 36 cm

“Musée du quai Branly Paris I 2003” Photograph, C-print, 152 x 152 cm

“Pitt Rivers Museum Oxford IV 2004” Photograph, C-print, 85 x 88 cm

“Pitt Rivers Museum Oxford VI 2004” Photograph, C-print, 31 x 24 cm

Candida Höfer’s large-format institutions such as the Musée du Victor Grippo was a painter, sculp- where the people of the Andes photographs emphasize ornate quai Branly, Paris, aim at a non-hi- tor, and installation artist, and cultivated potatoes long before architectural details and the bold, erarchical aesthetic contemplation one of the founding figures of European colonists brought them large structures of libraries and of cultural diversity while largely conceptual art in Argentina. He to Europe. The potato is not just museums. Höfer’s photographs masking their political heritage was trained as a chemist, and “charged” with colonial history, it turn ethnographic museums into and the associated constructions from early on was interested in also plays an important, virtually “specimens” not unlike the collec- of the subject. Candida Höfer’s the processes of exchange and global role as the food of the poor. tions of non-Western artifacts the works bring to light these trans- transformation of energy on which Grippo draws parallels between same museums preserve, classify, formations and re-evaluations of life depends. A key to Grippo’s potatoes and states of conscious- and exhibit in the framework of artifacts beyond the context and work is alchemy as the activation ness by alluding to and “mobiliz- ethnic and cultural narratives. praxes which originally gave them and transformation of matter. ing” the various forms of energy Ethnographic museums gather meaning. His early works display a special generated during their growth objects from cultures set at a dis- interest in electricity. In “Tiempo, phase. tance by geography. What started 2da. versión,” four potatoes, with out as a collection of trophies the assistance of zinc and copper from the colonies became, over electrodes, provide battery power the course of the nineteenth cen- for a digital clock. Grippo chose tury, the Primitivist construction the potato due to its associations Courtesy the Estate of Victor Grippo, and Alexander and of an evolutionary past. Today, © Candida Höfer, Cologne; VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2012 with the history of Latin America Bonin, New York © Photo: Jason Mandela

20 21 Agency Vincent Monnikendam (*1936) “Assembly (Animism)” 1992 ongoing. Installation, various materials, “Mother Dao, the Turtlelike (Moeder Dao, de schildpadgelijkende)” total dimensions variable 1995. Film, 35 mm, color, sound, 88 min, transferred to DVD

Agency, founded in 1992 by Kobe archival court cases prepared This film by Dutch filmmaker of the world through Mother Dao, Matthys in Brussels, compiles an for “Animism” pose the question: Vincent Monnikendam is the result who is called “the Turtlelike” be- ongoing list of things that resist can non-human protagonists— of six years of work with more cause the shell of a turtle resem- classifications and binary op- animals, objects—be creative, than two hundred hours of found bles the curved horizon. Animistic positions such as: nature/culture, and consequently authors as footage shot between 1912 and spiritual practices, which preserve fact/creation, human/non-human, understood in terms of copyright? 1933 in the former Dutch Indies, the social communion with nature, originality/banality, individual/ Agency’s archive installation il- today’s Indonesia. Through the have traditionally been a central collective. Agency explores ideas lustrates how the instable border omission of the usual commentary element of Indonesian cultures. of intellectual property (copyright, between “nature” and “culture” and a different narrative frame Against this backdrop, the film patent, trademark etc.) which rely is never a simple given but (in Monnikendam’s montage reverses offers a different interpretation of on the division between nature/ this case through the institution the power relations inscribed in colonialist administrative moderni- culture, and subject/object. The of jurisprudence) is “made” and the camera gaze. “Mother Dao” zation. list of things is derived from negotiated. is a story about the silencing and juridical cases, lawsuits, legal de-animation of the colonized controversies and affairs. Agency by the coming-into-being of the invokes these things from its list colonial world. This counter-epic during assemblies in exhibitions, is framed within a creation myth and explores gestures of author- from one of the West Sumatra Courtesy The Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision / ship. The special selection of Photo: © Agency islands which tells the genesis NTR; film still

22 23 Artefakte // anti-humboldt Archival Material “‘Rise, for you will not perish’ (on mummymania)” 2011/2012 Installation, mixed media, dimensions variable

René Descartes, “Les Passions Félix-Louis Regnault, “Hommes de l`Âme,” Paris 1651 Négres,” 1895, duplicate on flex- Courtesy Staatsbibliothek zu ible transparent film Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz; Courtesy La Cinémathèque Abteilung Historische Drucke Franc˛ aise, Paris

René Descartes, “Le Homme De Étienne-Jules Marey, “La René Descartes, Et La Formation machine animale. Locomotion Du Foetus / Avec les Remarques terrestre et aérienne,” Librairie de Louis De La Forge,” Paris 1677 Germer Bailliere, Paris 1873 Courtesy Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz; “Étienne-Jules Marey’s photo- Abteilung Historische Drucke graphic gun,“ engraving by Louis Artefakte // anti-humboldt museums and film breath fresh life Poyet (www.humboldtforum.info) was into what are dead and preserved René Descartes, “Discours de © Le Conservatoire numérique launched in 2008 in Berlin as a objects. The installation renders la méthode pour bien conduire sa Cnum, “La Nature,” 1881, p. 329 reaction to the scheduled recon- experiential the ambivalent rela- raison, & chercher la vérité dans struction of Berlin’s City Palace tionship between the observer les sciences,” Le Gras, Paris 1658 Étienne-Jules Marey, selected and plans to house the Humboldt- and the object within an artistic Courtesy Staatsbibliothek zu films Forum there. Created collectively and scientific context, whilst, at Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz; Courtesy: La Cinémathèque by Brigitta Kuster, Regina Sar- the same time, interrogating the Abteilung Historische Drucke Française, Paris reiter, Dierk Schmidt and Elsa de meaning of this relationship. Seynes, this installation stages an René Descartes, “Renati Des- Wilhelm H. I. Bleek and Lucy C. encounter between the traditions cartes Tractatus De Homine, Et Lloyd, “Specimens of Bushman of archeological museums and the De Formatione Foetus Quorum Folklore,” London 1911. practices of the modern media, prior Notis perpetius...,” Amstelo- and calls upon visitors to view the dami, Apud Danielem Elsevirium, Eliot Weinberger, “The Camera work from two different perspec- 1677 People,” in: Transition, No. 55 tives simultaneously. “‘Rise, for Courtesy Staatsbibliothek zu (1992), pp. 24–54. Reproduction you will not perish’ (on mum- Film still from “The Haunted Curiosity Shop,” directed by Walther R. Booth, UK 1901 Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz; mymania),” alludes to the practice Courtesy Artefakte // anti-humboldt Produced with the support of the Haus der Kulturen Abteilung Historische Drucke of mummification to highlight how der Welt, Berlin

24 25 Nell Irvin Painter, “Soul Murder and Slavery,” Baylor University Press, Waco 1995

“Code Noir,” decree by the French King Louis XIV, 1685. Reproduc- tion

Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, “Dialektik der Aufklärung,” Querido, Amsterdam 1947

Anonymous (ascribed to Wetalhok from the Belcher Islands), Robert J. Flaherty’s staff on the set of the film „Nanook of the North – A Story of Life and Love in the Actual Arctic“, original drawing on paper, reproduction

Schweinfurth Collection, Inventar- Nr. 231, winding of sheets by Mimusops Schimperi Hochst. (singles sheets spread out) from a grave of the xx-xxvi dynasty at Schech Abd-el Qurna (Theben), Maspero 1884 Courtesy Botanisches Museum Berlin-Dahlem, Freie Universität Anonymous, “Assembly of the animals,” 1965–1975, oil on canvas. Courtesy Tropenmuseum, Amsterdam, Berlin Coll.nr. 5965-5

26 Chapter 3: The Great Divide

What makes modernity modern? stood on the side of an archaic, today on a global scale by the Social scientists, amongst other traditionalist past which modernity environmentalist crisis. things, cite the categorical division had supposedly broken with com- The exhibition will be showing between “nature” and “culture.” pletely. For modernity separates a series of works and materials The historian of science Bruno things from the sign, the symboli- illustrating the extent to which the Latour described modernization zations and projected meanings, animated imagination is always since the 16th century as the while the pre-modern era (animist) a borderline case. Animation progressive “purification process” hopelessly mixes them. The idea begins where the rigid order of of these two categories. Scientific of this mixing, which can also be knowledge and objectification is objectification measures itself on conceived of as the unity of inner loosened and the border crossed. its ability to cleanse objects in the and outer worlds, is also the origin On the other side of the border laboratory of all human “projec- of that described within the his- begins a world of wondrous trans- tions” and—symmetrically—to tory of art as Primitivism. However formations, monstrosities and hor- remove the subject from its the point of Latour’s analysis of ror. The animations in these works interdependence with nature and modernity is that it is precisely this are like maps, symptomatically the world of objects, whereby the categorical division which leads to illustrating, surveying and travers- “autonomous subject” of human- a mixing of nature and culture on ing the imaginary elements of the ism and the social contract which a previously unimaginable scale in “Great Divide.” distinguishes us from the “natural the form of technology. According state” are first made possible. to Latour every praxis has always Latour also describes how the contradicted this conceptual Cartesian categorical separation divide, and it is this contradiction enabled modernity to speak of a that constituted the productivity of “Great Divide” separating it from modernity—until this contradiction non-modern societies. These now reached its limits, as exemplified

28 29 León Ferrari (*1920) Walt Disney (1901–1966) “L’Osservatore Romano” 2001–2007. A selection from 43 collages on “The Skeleton Dance” 1929. From the series of the Silly Symphonies paper, each 42 x 29.5 cm Film, 35 mm, B&W, sound, 5:30 min, transferred to DVD

León Ferrari is a leading figure of mation and metamorphosis. They As the first episode of the Silly is choreographed to the music the Buenos Aires avant-garde. depict the reality of terror lurking Symphonies, which Walt Disney by Carl Stalling, based on Edvard His works examine ideas and beneath the surface of Western Studio produced in 1929, “The Grieg’s “March of the Trolls” and mechanisms that modern culture, reason and a world that comes Skeleton Dance” exemplifies the Camille Saint-Saëns’s “Danse with its Christian and Western into being through the destruction very laws of the animation genre. Macabre,” and each bone is as- roots, uses to legitimize its own of cultures—from the Inquisition By reworking the motif of the sociated with a musical note—a barbarism. The series of col- and colonial South America to danse macabre it celebrates the principle perhaps best expressed lages “L’Osservatore Romano” recent military dictatorships and victory of life over death in a spec- in the scene where one skeleton (2001–2007) is an example of such Abu Ghraib. In the encounter be- tacle that is reminiscent of Mexi- uses another as a xylophone. a clash. Articles from the Vatican’s tween news reports, history, and can celebrations on the Day of the “The Skeleton Dance” articulates daily “Osservatore Romano” that art history, the terror of the past Dead. Quite literally the victory a fundamental principle of anima- address issues of Christian moral- resonates in that of the present. of the animated drawing over the tion film, namely that many voices ity in today’s world, are overlaid static picture is celebrated. The must be combined into a single with images from the canon of trope of the Ghost Hour invokes tune within a barebones musical Christian iconography with scenes the aesthetics of the uncanny structure. The “enchanting” ef- of the ecclesiastical torture of her- and suggests that Disney is com- fect of the genre is rooted in this etics. These images stem from the menting on the animistic quality principle. Western imagination of evil and Courtesy Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst Antwerpen of animation as the return of the (M HKA) damnation, of violence, transfor- Image © Fundación Augusto y León Ferrari Arte y Acervo repressed. “The Skeleton Dance” © Disney Enterprises, Inc.

30 31 Len Lye (1901–1980) David Maljkovic (*1973) “Tusalava” 1929. Film, 35 mm, B&W, silent, 10 min, transferred to “Missing Colours” 2010. Slide show, 80 slides, unique 16 mm, from material preserved and made available by the New Zealand Film Archive Nga¯ Kaitiaki O Nga¯ Taonga Whitia¯hua

The New Zealand–born painter, champion of psychoanalysis and David Maljkovic’s installations The work melancholically imparts sculptor, and filmmaker Len Lye especially of the concept of the focus on collective memory and the literal and figurative emptiness was active in London’s avant- unconscious, which played a amnesia, portraying the transition of failed utopias that are evident garde scene from 1926 on. In his central role in his method of “doo- from communism to capitalism not just in Novi Zagreb, but in first animated film, “Tusalava,” he dling:” “I doodled to assuage my in recent Croatian history. Mixing many places around the world. developed a new filmic idiom that hunger for some hypnotic image videos, drawings and objects, synthesized a Primitivist visual I’d never seen before.” he redirects our gaze towards language with that of modernist abandoned buildings or already abstraction in the medium of demolished architectures. Novi animated film. The work reflects (New) Zagreb, planned and built his studies of the indigenous art under Socialist rule, is a point of of Australia, New Zealand, and departure for his work “Missing Samoa. Following Primitivist and Colours.” Inspired by the Yugoslav Surrealist ideas, he replaced the comedy “Balkan Spy” (1984), in apparatus of the movie camera which an artist is arrested for with a physical activity aiming at throwing colored paint against an automatism: drawing. After Courtesy Len Lye Foundation grey apartment blocks, Maljkovisc reading Freud’s “Totem and Ta- Film still © Courtesy New Zealand Film Archive Nga¯ sets up a sculpture with four color Kaitiaki O Nga¯ Taonga Whitia¯hua Len Lye Foundation/ boo,” Lye became an enthusiastic Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, Wellington planes and photographs these. Courtesy Annet Gelink Gallery, Amsterdam

32 33 Hans Richter (1888–1976) Anna and Bernhard Blume “Vormittagsspuk” 1927. Film, 35 mm, transferred to DVD (*1937 / 1937–2011) “Unfall” 1991. From the series “Im Wald,” silver gelatine print, light protection coating, 3 parts, each 250 x 126 cm

Hans Richter, painter, filmmaker realization of Richter’s concep- The artist couple Anna and a sinister life of their own, provoking and art theorist, considered Dada tion of art as a balance between Bernhard Blume are best known the “accident.” Thus it comes to a critique of the predominance of order and disorder. It can also be for their staged photographs in an ironic break with traditional commonsensical rationality and understood as an allegory on the which they appear parodying the images of the forest, the idealized an attempt to restore the lost symmetrical interdependency of everyday life of the petty bour- understanding of nature associ- balance between reason and un- the order of things and social hi- geoisie. In the large format photo ated with this place of enchant- reason. He thought that film, and erarchies—once anarchy breaks series “Im Wald” (In the Forest), ment making way for gravity and avant-garde cinema in particular, out in the order of things, the created between ca. 1982 and the loss of control. had the potential to do so. Richter social order breaks apart, too. 1991, Anna and Bernhard Blume believed the magic, the poetic, place themselves in the midst of and the inexplicable to be es- the forest as a landscape of the sential cinematographic qualities. soul. The elaborate photographs The movement of the medium in demanded great physical exertion “Vormittagsspuk” (Ghosts before involving climbing and balancing. Breakfast) casts a magical spell The forest as site of the Romantic on the viewers who follow the pictorial tradition and German play of floating objects without sensibility becomes the setting for recourse to the logic of cause strange stories. The natural forces and effect. The film is a literal Courtesy Cinédoc – Paris Films Coop distribution; film still rebel, the trees appear to develop Courtesy Buchmann Galerie Berlin and the artists

34 35 Archival Material

M.C. Escher, “Hand with Reflect- Bruno Latour, “On the Modern ing Sphere,” 1935, lithography Cult of the Factish Gods,” Duke Reproduction University Press, Durham 2010

Joseph Wright ‘of Derby’, An Alfred Gell, “Art and Agency: An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Anthropological Theory,” Claren- Pump, oil on canvas 183 cm × 244 don, Oxford 1998 cm, 1768. Reproduction Courtesy National Gallery London Anonymous (origin: Addis Abeba), “Assembly of the animals,” Thomas Hariot, Jacobus Le 1965–1975, oil on canvas Moyne, Hans Staden, “America Courtesy Tropenmuseum, Am- [Ps.1] Admiranda Narratio Fida sterdam. Coll.nr. 5956-5. Tanem, De Commodis Et...., Se- cunda Pars Americae [Ps.2] Brevis Gustav Weill (ed.), “Tausend und Narratio Eorum Quae In Florida eine Nacht. Arabische Erzählun- Americae Provi[n]cia..., Americae gen,” Rieger, Stuttgart 1866 Tertia Pars [Ps. 3] Americae Tertia Pars Memorabile[m] provinciae Istvan Orosz, „L’Origine du Brasiliae Historiam...,” Bry, Feira- monde“ 1. (Durer paraphrase) and bendius, Wechelus, Francoforti Ad „L’Origine du monde“ 2. (Durer Moenum 1590 [Ps.1], 1591 [Ps.2], paraphrase), 2008, prints on pa- 1592 [Ps.3] per, each 30 x 40 cm Courtesy Staatsbibliothek zu Courtesy the artist Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz; Abteilung Historische Drucke

Pablo Picasso, “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon,” 1907, oil on canvas. Reproduction Courtesy Museum of Modern Art, Illustration: “Animal magnetism,” after Franz Anton New York Mesmer, end of the 18th century 36 Chapter 4: Symptoms & Media

Animism, which modernity at- of animism against its exile to the exchange of the organism with its of relationality, of situated, dialog- tempted to categorically expunge, kingdom of “mere” fiction? And environment, which first consti- ical-reciprocal relationships, and re-emerges in the form of insistent what of the early modern technical tutes itself through this dialogical thus essentially the articulation of symptoms. Everything that resists “media” since the “theater of exchange. The rational male white collectivity. This last dimension is the progressive “purification” and phantasmagoria,” frequently subject of bourgeois humanism also articulated in a symptomatic, objectification process seems to described as “haunted,” as a defines itself through the success- dislocated fashion in that the return as symptoms, and these stage for ghosts, Frankensteins, ful containment and suppression “collective spirit” is projected into lead a strangely delirious life of zombies, and alike? Are they not of all mimetic forms of behavior the phantasmagorial dimension of their own. These symptoms are the site for the return of all that and relationality (which essentially national identities. generally characterized as the has been excluded—and later de- embrace the affected) as exempli- persistence of an archaic past ployed in a compensatory fashion fied by so-called pre-modern within the human psyche, as by mass culture à la Disney? And rituals. For modernity mimetic primitive atavisms. However aren’t are not the Romantic and Primitiv- behavior becomes characteristic phenomena such as mediumism ist fantasies of a recovered unity of primitives, women, children or the psycho-pathological symp- or return to nature precisely such and the mad. It is only in art and toms typical of each age such as symptoms? aesthetics that modernity has “hysteria” precisely the manifesta- created a ghetto for the legitimate tions of a rebellion of the “psycho- But what exactly is it that modernity “persistence” of mimetic im- logical” against its objectification, excludes and suppresses here? pulses under a special sign. In against reification and privatizing For Theodor W. Adorno it was particular it is the feminist critique occlusion? And there, where this “mimetic behavior.” Not in the of modernity’s dualisms and their reification has failed, for example sense of a product such as a identitary essentialisms that has in the form of an objectifying picture, a mimetic copy or more shown the suppression of the mi- recourse to physiological laws, or less realistic imitation, but in metic to be nothing other than the are we not witnessing a rebellion the sense of a transformational constitutive-patriarchal exclusion

38 39 Heinz Schott (*1946), Erhard Schüttpelz Anja Dreschke and Martin Zillinger (*1961), Ehler Voss (*1974) “TRANCE/MEDIA. The ‘Isa¯wa in Morocco” 1992–2011. Video installation “Baquet (based on instructions from Franz Anton Mesmers) and Dis- play Panels” 2012. Baquet: Loan Heinz Schott, Texts: Schott/Schüttpelz/ Voss; Tree in front of the HKW (freely adapted from Puységur)

Today we associate the term course of which Edward Tylor In their rituals the Moroccan public as an art form. The ethnolo- medium with the technical com- reintroduced the term “animism:” ‘Isa¯wa Sufi Brotherhood act gist Martin Zillinger has worked munication between transmitters Firstly by virtue of the display out the powers of lions, jackals, with the ‘Isa¯wa from Meknes over and receivers. For many hundreds panels charting the key elements and camels in elaborate trance the last 9 years, examining how of years, however, nature was of an “iconography of the term choreographies. Their ecstatic trance is shaped and altered by the medium, namely God’s “in- medium,” and by means of a dances are spectacular for both technical media. The installation termediary.” In the Romantic era wooden “baquet,” assembled themselves and observers. in this exhibition is part of a larger and in spiritualism people with according to the instructions left Misunderstood by colonial and film and research project on the supernatural powers appeared by Franz Anton Mesmer, who in religious modernizers to this theme of “trance media and new as mediums: as trance mediums. the 1780s condensed the fluid day, their traditions are currently media” which he is pursuing Between the 1780s and 1890s, of “animal magnetism.” A tree in experiencing a revival. Beyond the together with the ethnologist and mediumism became the subject front of the Haus der Kulturen der allegedly naive conception of an film maker Anja Dreschke at the of heated debate which covered Welt recalls a disciple of Mesmer, animated cosmos, their sacred University of Siegen. the fields of mesmerism, spiritual- the Marquis de Puységur, whose act addresses the general human ism, hypnosis research to the application of somnambulism in capacity for transformation and establishment of modern psychol- 1784 is regarded as the foundation the creative handling of experi- ogy, esotericism and art. of modern psychotherapy. ences of alienation. Increasingly, This installation evokes memories the trance adepts are presenting Video still/VHS from the archive of the adepts, Morocco Image: “The Tree of Marquis de Puységur,” French A man in the trance state of the camel, agitating the of this great debate, during the postcard (ca. 1900) their practices to an international crowd from a cactus; filmstill

40 41 Camillo Negro (1861–1927) Lars Laumann (*1975) “La Neuropatologia” Italy 1908. Film, 47:57 min, transferred to DVD “Berlinmuren” 2008. Video, 23:56 min

“La Neuropatologia” is an Norwegian artist Lars Laumann case, she is particularly drawn to educational medical film from investigates object relations and objects with “parallel lines, usually Italy. From the perspective of the human bond with the material horizontal … such as bridges, medical history it can be seen world, provoking a complicated fences, and railroad tracks,” as as a demonstration of a fit of mixture of curiosity and empathy. well as “things that divide.” Not a hysteria. In terms of film aesthet- He unearthed the inspiration for fetishist, she is rather an animist, ics, however, it can be termed “Berlinmuren,” one of the highlights one who believes that objects an “expressionist drama.” As the of the Fifth Berlin Biennial, while have souls. There is something media theorist Ute Holl writes: surfing the Web in the late 1990s. starkly sobering, if not subversive, “Without the medical stage, the In documentary format, his film about the sudden ambiguity of theatre, the staging, the medical tells the true story of Eija-Riitta the Berlin Wall in this film—a par- fact cannot be made visible. With Berliner-Mauer and her love for, adigmatic object that had once the introduction of photographic and eventual marriage, in 1979, appeared so unquestionable. techniques in a number of clinics to the Berlin Wall. Mrs. Berliner- at the end of the 19th century—as Mauer (German for Berlin Wall— in the Salpêtrière in Paris—begins she took its name when they wed) a shift to the primacy of the visual claims she is “objectum-sexual,” in medical methodology as well a condition characterized by as neurological diagnostics.” Courtesy Museo Nazionale del Cinema, Turin; film still sexual attraction to objects. In her Courtesy the artist and Maureen Paley, London

42 43 Rosemarie Trockel (*1952) Yayoi Kusama (*1929) “Replace me” 2009. Digital print, B&W, 32.8 x 40 cm / 53 x 59 cm “Kusama’s Self-Obliteration” 1967. Film, 16 mm, 23:32 min, trans- (framed) ferred to DVD

Rosemarie Trockel’s drawings, to reanimate the image, adding The work of Yayoi Kusama, sculp- filmmaker Jud Yalkut, documents videos, and knitted sculptures a new layer of meaning. It intro- tor, performer, and novelist, re- the seminal “nude happenings” appropriate familiar artworks duces an uncanny element into mains outside conventional classifi- performed by Kusama and collabo- and symbols to make political, the sexual fantasy of the origin of cations, yet has apparent surrealist, rators during the sixteen years she often feminist statements. The the world and highlights the role feminist, and psychedelic leanings. spent in New York City, when she photographic montage “Replace of the artist as an animator of the There is a distinctively ecstatic also organized body-painting festi- Me” substitutes the model’s pubic pigment or the pixel. quality to her work, a systematic vals, and antiwar demonstrations, hair in Courbet’s famous painting transgression of the boundary and gained significant recognition “L‘Origine du Monde” (1866) with a between body and environment, with her large paintings, soft sculp- spider. The gray-scale reproduc- between mind and physical space. tures, and environmental works. tion of the original color painting In the scenographies of her instal- “Kusama’s Self-Obliteration” can suggests the transformation of lations and performances, the be regarded as an exemplary the female genitalia, rendered subject reacts to its appropriation document of Kusama’s practice in astonishing life-like detail by through the relinquishment of its and its social and political context, Courbet, into lifeless tissue. own boundaries, the turning out- a document in which we see her Trockel creates a counterpoint ward of the inward, the collectivisa- work enacted as an enunciation of to the original’s emphasis on the tion and spatialization of individual- collectivity. human capacity to procreate. Si- ity. “Kusama’s Self-Obliteration,” Courtesy Sprüth Magers Berlin London Courtesy Victoria Miro Gallery, London, Ota Fine Arts, multaneously, the spider appears Image © Rosemarie Trockel, VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2012 filmed by eminent experimental Tokyo and Yayoi Kusama Studio Inc. © Yayoi Kusama

44 45 Archival Material

Jay Leyda (ed.), “Eisenstein on Disney,” Seagull Books, Calcutta 1986

Lewis Carroll, “Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There,” Macmillan and Co., London 1872

J. J. Grandville, “Das gesamte Werk. 2 Bände,” Rogner und Bernhard, Munich 1969

J. J. Grandville, “Règne animal – La Caricature No. 131,” 1832, colored lithography, 36 x 55 cm Courtesy Private Collection, Parma

Frontispiece by Max Ernst in: Paul Éluard, “Répétitions,” Paris, éd. Au Sans Pareil; Kaldor Ex. 186 of 350, 1922 Courtesy Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kunstbibliothek

Linley Sambourne, “In The Rubber Coils. Scene–The Congo Free State,” published in: “Punch Magazine,” 28 November 1906 © Punch Limited

46 Chapter 5: Capitalism & Phantasmagoria

Modernity draws the boundaries “others,” so was electricity for was a leitmotif of the critique of only for them to be transgressed modern capitalist society. capitalism and the conformism by capitalism—by money and of consumer society in the 20th desire—for capitalism was never That which the Marxist George century. The struggle against interested in the “exclusion of ani- Lukács called the “phantom ob- instrumental rationalism, as well mism.” It was far more interested jectivity” of capitalist culture in his as against the objectification in the utilization of “life,” “vitality,” famous critique of “reification,” is of subjects in the disciplinary and “psyche” as inexhaustible the manner in which the capitalist institutions, reached a highpoint resources, in the exploitation and world presents itself as “natural,” in the counterculture of the 1960s. mobilization of the body and its systematically concealing its However, capitalism has also desires. The control and canaliza- essential reality, social relations, changed since then. If in the past tion of the vital energies are the classes and relations of produc- the struggle for emancipation es- precondition—just as the recording tion. Lukács’ analysis seizes on a sentially consisted in demanding and registration of movement famous motif from Karl Marx, his full recognition as a subject of a using the notational method of the analysis of the fetish character of specific marginalized collective physiologist Étienne-Jules Marey the commodity form. According identity, or in unlimited individual- led to the development of the to Marx capitalism represents an ity, today, in deregulated network cinema’s moving image as well as inverted world in which people capitalism, everyone has to take serving as a model for Taylorist become objects and objects their own subjectivity to market as work efficiency studies, and thus acquire a new form of animation their capital, and, if one believes for the modern factory regime. as commodities. The critique of the bibles of popular psychology, And that which for the ethnologists the alienation and reification of become an animist, permanently of the early 20th century was the factory work and the conditioning animating and subjectifying one’s dubious, all-penetrating, animat- produced by the phantasmagoria of self and environment. ing and connecting “Mana” of the the capitalist world of commodities,

48 49 Ken Jacobs (*1933) Marcel Broodthaers (1924–1976) “Capitalism: Slavery” 2006. Video projection, color, silent, 3 min, “Caricatures—Grandville” 1968. Slide projection, 80 slides transferred to DVD

The New York-born film maker image space. Ken Jacobs plays “Caricatures—Grandville” is a exposes the fundamental am- Ken Jacobs is a member of the with the historically determined slide show for which Belgian bivalence in the phantasmagoric “New American Cinema” genera- interaction between matter and artist Broodthaers primarily used objectification achieved by the tion of the 1960s and 70s who spirit, physiology and technology, images from J. J. Grandville’s caricatures by masking humans questioned the common film prax- while simultaneously underscor- book “Un Autre Monde” (1844), as animals and thus unmasking is of the time with their aesthetic ing the social relations which first juxtaposing these images with human society as “natural.” experiments. Jacobs worked with make such economies of vision newspaper photographs of the Broodthaers simultaneously cre- found picture material, and in possible. Not least, this work student revolts of May 1968. “Un ates a collective dream-image allusion to long past viewing and “re-animates” a primal scene of Autre Monde” is among the most of an epoch and an “uncanny” presentation customs, developed colonial capitalism—slave labor powerful of Grandville’s works: depiction of the objectification of a defamiliarized vision of the past. on the plantations. The collective and satiric phantas- both nature and human society in “Capitalism: Slavery” is based on magoria here is exhibited formally the world of modern science and a stereoscopic image taken in the by blurring the boundaries and capitalism. USA of workers on a cotton plan- upsetting the orderly hierarchies tation. The stereograph is digitally between people, animals, and animated by switching back and things. Broodthaers takes Grand- forth between two identical im- ville’s images literally, by using ages, while the stroboscopic flick- Grandville’s “types,” “characters,” ering gradually draws us into the Photo: anonymous / courtesy the artist “figures,” etc. like “text.” He Courtesy Estate Marcel Broodthaers, Brussels

50 51 Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922–1975) Fernand Léger (1881–1955) „The Hawks and the Sparrows“ (Uccellacci e uccellini), Italy 1966 “Ballet Mécanique” 1923/1924. Film, B&W, 35 mm , transferred, to DVD Film, B&W, 88 min

Apparently without aim, Father they barbeque and eat the raven. Pumping machines, rotating its origin. The “Ballet Mécanique” Innocenti and his son wander Based on his own script, Pier objects, a kaleidoscope of was originally a piece of music by through the outskirts of Rome. Paolo Pasolini directed this film mechanical parts, interspersed the American composer George A talking raven, initially mocked, fable, situated between surrealism with people, changing faces, Antheil who intended to use his joins the two wanderers. He intro- and slapstick, as a meditation on and geometrical figures: “Ballet composition as the soundtrack duces himself as a bird from the class society, the Catholic church Mécanique”—a cinematic industri- for an abstract film. However, Land of Ideology, son of Father and the demise or fragmentation al ballet—is a co-production of the insurmountable problems during Doubt and Mother Consciousness, of communism. director Dudley Murphey and the synchronization of the film and and attempts to enlighten them French artist Fernand Léger, with music resulted in two independent with philosophical questions on additional creative input provided art works: the preserved version the meaning of life. The raven tells by Man Ray and Ezra Pound. The is ca. 18 minutes long, while the them the story of Saint Francis film was premiered in 1924 at music is 28 minutes long. who preached Christian charity the “Internationalen Ausstellung to the birds in the 12th century neuer Theatertechnik“ in Vienna (and entered hagiography as a and is recognized as one of the declared animist). Under priva- first Surrealist-Dadaist films and a Courtesy “Unseen Cinema: Early American Avant-Garde Film 1894-1941,” a collaborative preservation project tions, father and son also learn masterpiece of early experimental sponsored by Anthology Film Archives, New York, to speak to the birds. However, cinema. However, there are and Deutsches Filmmuseum, Frankfurt am Main, and underwritten by Cineric, Inc., New York. www.unseen- as hunger finally rears its head, Courtesy © Filmgalerie 451; film still contradictory reports concerning cinema.com

52 53 Thomas Alva Edison (1847–1931) Dierk Schmidt (*1965) “Execution of Czolgosz, with panorama of Auburn Prison” 1901 “Image Leaks” 2011. Installation, oil, acrylic, paper and bitumen on Film, 35 mm, transferred to DVD acrylic panels, 413 x 275 cm

“Sioux Ghost Dance” 1894 “Color Change” 2012 * Film, 35 mm, transferred to DVD Installation, oil, bitumen and acrylic on acrylic panels, 393 x 262 cm

In September 1901 Leon F. of “Buffalo” Bill Cody’s Wild West In his projects Dierk Schmidt for- With its direct allusion to the oil Czolgosz shot President William Show. This dance was created mulates a critique of both the his- disaster in the Gulf of Mexico in McKinley, initiator of the Spanish- in the 1860s as part of the revi- tory painting and painting itself as 2010 caused by the multinational American War. Edwin S. Porter’s talization of the Native American a representational medium for the oil corporation BP, “Image Leaks” reenactment of his execution for resistance movement. With the production of historical truths. His raises the question of whether, Thomas A. Edison Inc. marked the Wounded knee massacre that first contribution “Image Leaks,” is and how if at all, the application culmination of Edison’s opportun- ended the Indian Wars in 1890 the a replica of the transparent grid of of artistic image strategies are istic involvement in electrocution. vision of an Indian Renaissance the illuminated ceiling consisting even feasible or expedient to “Execution of Czolgosz” was an was also buried. What we see on of painted panels, as shown in his counter BP’s corporate identity example of electricity in the service the celluloid of this film performing last exhibition in the Frankfurt policy. With scant regard for its of the restoration of a social order a “Ghost Dance” is thus the ghost Kunstverein; “Color Change,” in statutory commitment to truth, momentarily disrupted by the kill- of the genocidol history of the contrast, is a tableau organized the company did everything in its ing of the President of Progress, American colonial frontier. into larger color fields. Their power to make the oil “invisible.” Industry, and Empire by a self- thematic connection lies in the Among the measures implemented proclaimed anarchist. interrogation of the materiality of were, for example, not only the oil as a raw material and a prod- use of dispersant agents to break

“Sioux Ghost Dance” shows Still from “Execution of Czolgosz, with panorama of uct, which has found its cultural down the oil, but also the control Native Americans performing the Auburn Prison,” Courtesy Motion Picture, Broadcasting refinement in, among other things, and manipulation of the live digital and Recorded Sound Division of the Library of Congress, “Ghost Dance” within the context Washington, DC oil paintings. images being streamed from

54 55 the wellhead. In this struggle Change” cast into sharp focus for the supremacy of the digital the historical juncture at which Tom Holert (*1962) image, Schmidt’s painted panels the transition from the exploitative “The Labours of Shine” 2012. 2-channel video, B&W, sound, materialize into contributions to paint production of the colonial 18:26 min, shoe-shine-furniture, 1940s USA, chromed steal (on a plinth the competition organized by era to the industrialized chemical under acrylic glass) Greenpeace calling on people to laboratories took place: With the redesign or “digitally pollute” BP’s first synthetic-organic “aniline logo. dye” the chemicals industry was “Color Change” addresses the founded, and the chemists at IG- issue of raw materials and materi- Farben morphed into “magicians,” ality from a different perspective. who propagated the technocratic, This work examines the historical omnipotent fantasy of the un- significance of paint, the demys- restricted syntheticisation of all tifying revelation of the burden of natural products. Image sources history and its cross-references and materials are placed into to the crimes of industrial mo- critical dialogue with painterly pro- dernity, which seemingly stand cesses which are also presented in contradiction to its puristic in these two works. aspirations. The fields of “Color In his video essay “The Labours aesthetic-political phenomenon, of Shine,” Tom Holert, artist, art which extends far beyond the historian and publicist assembled physics of light and optical materials and references alluding psychology. In its relationship to to discourses on shining, gleam- shining surfaces, modernity has ing, radiant surfaces which in staged a debate on subjectifica- the first half of the 20th century tion and objectification, on attrac- produced diverse and partly con- tion and repulsion, on vitality and tradictory functions and meanings inanimateness which explores of “shine.” The film engages in a both the sexuality of things and speculative dialogue with an objet the “thingliness” of sexuality. trouvé: an approximately 80-year- old American shoe-shining cabinet, comprising a wooden footrest attached to a chrome-plated steel upright, which evokes associa-

Courtesy the artist and Galerie Ursula Walbröl tions with Constantin Brancusi’s Image: Detail from “Image Leaks” polished bronze sculptures. In Produced with the support of Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin this project, “shine” is a complex Courtesy the artist

56 57 Archival Material

Linley Sambourne, “In The Rub- ber Coils. Scene – The Congo Free State;” published in: Punch Magazine, 28 November 1906 Courtesy Punch Limited

H. R. Robinson, “A Galvanized Corpse,” 1836. Reproduction

Poster of “Andy Warhols Franken- stein” 1973. Reproduction

19th century stereoscope

Interior of the Electricity Building from north gallery, World’s Colum- bian Exposition, Chicago, 1893

John Maynard Keynes, “The General Theory of Employment Interest and Money,” Macmillan, London 1936 Courtesy Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz; Abteilung Historische Drucke

Electro-suggestive Theory – A.K. Fiala, „Elektrophysiologische Zukunftsprobleme“, in: Der Deutsche Rundfunk 3 (1925). Reproduction Rorschach Inkblot, second card, 1921

58 Chapter 6: Soul Design

Within anthropology there has one assume that every conception is devoted to dividing lines and an animated conversation from been a re-engagement with the and condition of an “object” cor- demarcations, an attempt will be an un-animated one—however, concept of animism of late, in responds to a specific form of the made to illuminate precisely these articulating this difference or even particular within the context of “subject?” That every organism is divisions and boundaries, in other objectifying it is incomparably an exploration of different ideas something akin to the articulation words, the procedure used to harder. And “exhibiting” this of what constitutes a “person,” of a specific milieu or force field? survey, produce and administer difference can virtually only be “personification” and “selfhood.” However this would mean that the the territory of the soul. How- done in the form of the joke or the Anthropology teaches us that question of the “soul” needs to be ever, in order to illuminate these caricature. the social structures, knowledge posed differently. demarcations, a starting point is system and material praxis of a required which does not restrict society are inseparable. Count- Modernity’s “trouble with the the soul from the outset. What if less films, above all slapstick and soul” can essentially be traced to we were to imagine the soul as an catastrophe films—including the the fact that over the course of the “event,” as something that cannot film “Vormittagsspuk” by Hans last 2,000 years it has become an be owned but only exists in the Richter shown in the exhibition— internally displaced transcenden- intermediary realm? Wouldn’t this illustrate how the social order is tal substance, something that one enable us to pose the question dependent on the relative stability does or does not “possess.” As of animism differently—not as of its material base and how it long as we retain this conception a question of what possesses comes apart at the seams when of the soul the question of ensoul- a soul, but as a question of the this stability can no longer be ment will always remain within different forms of being animated assured. Consequently, shouldn’t the orbit of a specific theological and animation, understood as one speak of a continuum in debate which ultimately serves to a communication event? What which society, subjectivity and provide a legitimation frame for if “the soul” was the medium of object determine one another in denying things (“savages,” “ani- such events? After all, each of a symmetrical fashion? Shouldn’t mals,” etc.) a soul. As this exhibition us is capable of distinguishing

60 61 Al Clah Erik Steinbrecher (*1963) “Intrepid Shadows” USA 1966/69. Film from the series “Navajo Film “TROUBLE MIT DER ANIMA” 2012. Ed. Anselm Franke, Design: Themselves”, 16 mm, B&W, silent, 18 min Stephan Müller, Winfried Heininger and Erik Steinbrecher. Published by Kodoji Press, first edition, 300 copies

“(FRISÜRCHEN)” Published on the occasion of the exhibition “ANIMISMUS” at Haus der Kulturen Berlin/ March 2012 Design: Stephan Müller and Erik Steinbrecher, © 2012 Erik Steinbrecher and Kodoji Press Published by Kodoji Press, first edition, 300 copies

O.T., 2000–2012 Mixed media; furs, prints and castings

In 1966 the anthropologists Sol The Swiss artist Erik Steinbrecher objects, sculptures and collages. Worth and John Adair asked works with various materials and This printed materials and other members of the Navajo Nation in objects. By shaping them into works—such as the “Les Cheveux Pine Springs, Arizona, to shoot new guises and forms, he cre- de Monsieur Rousseau” (2009)— films “which depict their culture ates his own scenarios and new are presented in the exhibition in and themselves as they see fit.” associations and relationships: separate display/show cabinets. One of the most complex—and “TROUBLE MIT DER ANIMA” is least understood—films was “In- an artist’s book which transforms trepid Shadows,” which Margaret a selection of collected photo- Mead described as “one of the graphs by Erik Steinbrecher into a most beautiful examples of ani- kind of buffet. Using the left-overs mism in film.” In contrast to the of eaten meals, he fashions them other films, this work deals more into faces and grimaces in pans, with subjective than objective bowls, or on porcelain and card- aspects of the life of the Navajos. board plates. “(FRISÜRCHEN)” Al Clah endeavors here to relate is an artist edition comprising 12 the Western concept of god to printed and foldable cardboard Image (Detail) O.T., Photos from the series “TROUBLE the Navajos’ traditional notion of “Intrepid Shadows” distributed by Arsenal—Institut für Film panels. The motifs are based on MIT DER ANIMA” und Medienkunst Produced with the support of Haus der Kulturen der deities. Image courtesy Arsenal—Institut für Film und Videokunst a series of works featuring hair Welt, Berlin

62 63 Daria Martin (*1973) Roee Rosen (*1963) “Soft Materials” 2004. Film, 16 mm, 10:30 min “Vladimir’s Night” by Maxim Komar-Myshkin, 2011/2012. A selection from an album of 40 gouaches and text on paper, each 55 x 36.5 cm

Daria Martin’s filmic works, all others, in prostheses and gesture “Vladimir’s Night” is a hybrid of Roee Rosen is behind the Russian shot on 16 mm, sound out the ex- generation—the dancers engage a children’s book, an exceedingly author and artist Efim Poplavsky pressive possibilities of corporeal- in a choreography of reciprocity gory martyrdom, and a twisted (1978–2011) a.k.a. Maxim Komar- ity, of the body in space, exploring and resonance, a two-way ex- political treatise. Here, Vladimir Myshkin. Poplavsky was deeply what might be called a stylistics of change between artifice and body. (Putin, although the name is never influenced by Daniil Kharms’s affection. Consequently, the film becomes mentioned) is both a little child funny and horrifying sense of the Shot in a laboratory of “embodied a scene of interaction between and a political leader vacationing absurd, which epitomized for him artificial intelligence” in Zurich, machine and the human senso- in his summer mansion. Before two seemingly incommensurate which focuses on developing rium, beyond the technophobic falling asleep he imagines seeing states: an exhilarating, defiant, the sensory capacity of robotic and technophile fantasies which faces in the wooden veneer of and irrational autonomy through structures, “Soft Materials” shows have so decisively shaped popular his bedroom cabinet. The faces art, and the all-encompassing two naked bodies—specially culture since the advent of techni- move, a mouth opens up, and ani- sense of realistic terror. trained dancers—in mutual, bodily cally reproducible media. mated objects flow out to cuddle exploration with (notably non- with Vladimir, soon to be joined anthropomorphic) robotic devices. by energetic friends hailing from Based on the experimental work Vladimir’s drawer and his bag. of the laboratory, in which robots The merry frolicking turns violent. “learn” through interaction—which Vladimir is raped, tortured, and finds its applications, among Courtesy the artist and Maureen Paley, London; film still murdered by objects. Israeli artist Courtesy the artist; image: detail

64 65 Adam Curtis (*1955) Antje Majewski Extracts from “The Century of the Self” 2002. Documentary series, “La coquille. Conversation entre Issa Samb et Antje Majewski. film transferred to DVD Dakar 2010” HD-Video, color, sound, 58 min

“Madonna Maschine Rosenk- ranz / Die Steine, die Muscheln. Gespräch zwischen Thomas und Helke Bayrle und Antje Majewski, Frankfurt 2011” HD- Video, color, sound, 36 min

Curtis is a documentary filmmaker mind needed liberation, paving the “Madonna ...” is a conversation I put my ear to the engine block who works for the BBC. His series way for unrestricted individualism. with the artist Thomas Bayrle and actually heard the delicate, “The Century of the Self” focuses But this break with the legacy of in his studio in Frankfurt, about little voices of women singing on Sigmund Freud’s family: his Anna Freud was not a departure prayers in machines, the weav- somewhere deep in the transmis- daughter Anna Freud and his from Bernays, as PR managers ing of the fabric of society, the sion...” nephew Edward Bernay influenced found ways to address these new meadow as a „wonderful and Helke Bayrle talks about stones the way corporations and govern- self-realized individuals within terrible symbiosis“, and a new as gods that are alive and tells ments have used Freud’s ideas of consumerist lifestyles. concept of freedom starting from us how she helps shells to move the unconscious mind. Anna Freud our bodies. For Bayrle, there is no from one ocean to another: “So I believed that psychoanalysis fundamental difference between threw Chinese shells into the sea would help individuals to control the technical and the natural in England, or in Italy, and vice unconscious drives that were world, between our bodies and versa, threw Italian shells into the barbaric and animalistic. Bernays a motor. He first experienced Chinese sea.” used the idea of unconscious this when he was working as a desires to develop the art of public weaver. “La coquille” is a conversation relations, at the service of American “In any case, I didn’t trust my with the artist and philosopher corporations. The series also senses—when suddenly I started Issa Samb in his yard in Dakar. describes the counterculture of hearing human voices at a certain Issa Samb talks about our re- the 1960s where the unconscious Courtesy the artist and BBC; video still frequency in the dynamos. sponsibility to help objects move

66 67 in the world, while respecting neither is it even a question of Archival Material their history and origin, even in interference. It is a question of the tiniest object made in China. the inter-relationships of living The charge that objects carry things…” (Issa Samb) derives ultimately from the same In the second half of the film Issa force that also fills us. “Each Samb unexpectantly tells Antje leaf that may fall in this garden Majewski to listen to a big shell Henri Michaux, “Misérable Carl Einstein, Selected manu- here, and that passes from the that she had brought with her, miracle (la mescaline),” New York script pages from “Handbuch der situation of being a natural leaf and guides her into a trance in Review Books Classics, New York Kunst 1930–1940” to becoming an object, moving which she describes the inside of 2002 Courtesy Akademie der Künste, from here to there, adopts a the sea and hears a voice singing Berlin, Carl Einstein Archiv position, which participates in the in the shell. Henri Michaux, “Misérable mira- definition of the whole ensemble cle (la mescaline),” Editions du Carl Einstein, “Die Kunst des 20. in front of us. And beyond this Rocher, Monaco 1956 Jahrhunderts,” Propyläen, Berlin location, the whole peninsula of 1926 Dakar, and beyond the peninsula Richard Brautigan, “All watched the whole continent, and beyond over by machines of loving grace,” Carl Einstein, “Negerplastik,” the continent the whole world. It paper mimeographed broadside Wolff, Munich 1920 (2nd edition) is not a question of interactivity, ca. DIN A4, The Communication Company, San Francisco 1967 Ernst Lehmann, “Biologischer Courtesy Craig V. Showalter, USA Wille. Wege und Ziele biologischer Arbeit im neuen Reich,” J. F. Leh- William Rubin (ed.), “‘Primitivism’ mann, Munich 1934 in 20th Century Art: Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern,” 2 vols., Corinna Treitel, “A Science for Museum of Modern Art, New York the Soul. Occultism and the Gen- 1984 esis of the German Modern,” The Johns Hopkins University Press, Eduard Renner, “Eherne Scha- Baltimore/London 2004 len: über die animistischen Denk- und Erlebnisformen,” Haupt, Bern A. Irving Hallowell, “Ojibwa On- [et al.] 1967 tology, Behavior, and World View,” in: Culture in History, ed. by Stan-

“La coquille” produced by Kunsthaus Graz / Weltkulturen ley Diamond, Octagon Books, Museum, Frankfurt; “Madonna…” produced by Kunsthaus New York 1960. Reproduction Graz. Both videos are part of a series of philosophical conversations about “talking” objects, conducted by Antje Majewski for “The World of Gimel,” Kunsthaus Graz 2011. Image taken from “La coquille” © Antje Majewski Courtesy neugerriemschneider, Berlin

68 69 Pierre Dufour, 1a7, Rue Person, Paris 13, Electronic two-hand tester, dates probably from 1970s/1980s; nickled brass, syn- thetic material, 295 x 260 x 100 and 165 x 165 x 105 mm Courtesy: Adolf-Würth-Zentrum für Geschichte der Psychologie der Universität Würzburg

Cap (incorporating electrodes) of an electroencephalograph, ca. 1940, 250 x 210 x 185 mm Courtesy Deutsches Museum München

“Rorschach Inkblot,” 1921, Hans Huber, Bern 2009 © Verlag Hans Huber AG, Bern, Switzerland, 1921, 1948, 1994

Electric Soul Research with Diagnoscopy—Zachar Bissky, “Die Diagnoskopie. Eine neue Methode zur medizinischen Psy- chologischen und forensischen Diagnostik,” Berlin: Bios – Institut für praktische Menschenkunde, 1925. Reproduction “Two Maps.” An interview with Chihiro Minato; photo- graphs: Angela Melitopoulos; scans from the notebook: Chihiro Minato; from: “The Life of Particles,” Angela Melitopoulos and Maurizio Lazzarato

70 Chapter 7: The Politics of Animism / Ecology / Nature

The political dimensions of ani- paradigm of a “dissolution of last two decades, however, the mism, beyond the Marxist social boundaries,” represents situation has begun to change. critique of reification and al- a politicizing lens with the aid of Within the political movements of ienation already discussed, are which it first becomes possible to indigenous populations the term primarily found in the field of visualize difference. As a result, it is being increasingly employed as psychopathologies, the critique plays an essential role in the anti- a self-description. It is now be- of colonialism, environmental psychiatry movement, if frequently ing marshaled in battles for land politics, and more recently, within only an implicit one. Here the fun- rights and the protection of natural the context of indigenous political damental aim is to go beyond the resources, with rights being movements. The political horizon Western paradigm of “subjectivity” claimed for nature itself by virtue of animism which they all share in order to establish a new means of a concept of the “social” not consists in the de-naturalization of articulating relational and partial restricted to the “human subject.” and politicization of the social subjectivities. boundary. For the issue of what is actually conferred the status of a However, for those cultures legitimate “subject” is a genuinely originally described as animist, political question (if not the politi- and still described in these terms cal question par excellence), with to this day, animism has always immediate consequences for its been a description imposed from legal status and scope for action. outside, a term used by the West to indicate their status as the Within the critique of the institution non-modern other. The majority of psychiatry and its normative of societies described in this way pathologizations with their drive reject the term as a colonialist for conformity, animism as a ascription. Over the course of the

72 73 Walon Green (*1936) Jean Painlevé (1902–1989) “The Secret Life of Plants” 1979. Film, 35 mm, color, sound, 96 min, “Les amours de la pieuvre/The Love Life of the Octopus” 1967 transferred to DVD Film, 16 mm, color, sound, 13 min, transferred to DVD

Walon Green is best-known for his plants build emotional ties to hu- Painlevé’s films categorically relations with its environment, ex- work for television, documentary mans and the Hashimoto couple refute the modern myth that sci- ploring form and movement along features for National Geographic, who use gadgetry and green fin- ence is demystifying the world. He a porous border between organism and documentary-cum-science- gers to teach a cactus the sounds intended his films to be taken and world, thus involving us in fiction-films such as “The Hellstrom of Japanese in order to give seriously as scientific documen- a “becoming-animal” of sorts. Chronicle” (1971). the plant quite literally a voice. taries and conducted meticulous Painlevé also engages us in the The film “The Secret Life of Plants” Numerous time-lapse sequence research. Only their artistic form immersive effects of cinema and is based on the eponymous animate plants, bringing them to betrays his surrealist leanings. narration in both a very thoughtful book by Peter Tompkins and a life more easily perceived by He strove for a passionate and passionate way. Christopher Bird and explores the human eyes. At other instances, relationship and exchange with physical, emotional, and spiritual however, the film radically inverts his “subjects.” The trigger for relations between plants and man. this perspective and now uses “The Love Life of the Octopus,” Like the book, the film presents time lapse to present man’s Painlevé recounted, was early en- the thesis, that despite lacking a everyday life from what we may counters with octopi, during which central nervous system and brain, describe as the point of view of he recognized their intelligence, plants are sentient beings. This is the slower species: a life defined impressive memory, and capacity backed up by several experiments by “pointless mechanical rush.” to express emotions. The film in the film: the parapsychologist introduces us to the “assemblage” Courtesy Les Documents Cinématographiques, Paris; who hopes to demonstrate that Courtesy Paramount Pictures; film still of the octopus, its affective web of film still

74 75 Didier Demorcy (*1965) Angela Melitopoulos (*1961) and “Vital Phantasy – Berlin version” 2010 – 2012. Video projection of a digital slide show, color, silent, interactive loop Maurizio Lazzarato (*1955) “Assemblages” 2010. Three-channel video installation, color, sound, 62 min, transferred to DVD

“Déconnage” 2011 Video installation, color, sound, 100 min, transferred to DVD; inte- grated archival table

“Two Maps” 2012 Video installation, color, sound, 45 min, transferred to DVD; inte- grated archival table

Didier Demorcy is a filmmaker there,” but rather an entering-into Throughout his life, Félix Guattari, The video installation “Assem- and activist, interested in ques- relation with it. “Nature” may be philosopher, psychiatrist and blages,” which in its expanded tions related to the production of “known,” assume new tasks, and activist sought to lay the founda- form incorporates the archive in- knowledge, perception, and the answer to the scientists’ questions tions for a fundamental critique stallations “Déconnage” and “Two animal sciences. In “Vital Phan- by means of various “translations” of modernistic concepts. Shortly Maps,” follows the path and think- tasy,” Demorcy takes us through that align, transform, and con- before his death in 1992, he was ing of Félix Guattari in his four ex- the discovery of evolution, which struct it. Demorcy concludes by convinced that a “temporary, but istential territories which were so slowly should change our static, suggesting that “animation” may necessary return” to animism decisive in shaping his therapeutic mechanical perception of nature perhaps be above all a question could deconstruct the ontological and political practice: the asylum in which inert matter rules to one of entering into a relation with the tradition of modernity which sepa- in Saint-Alban, the clinic in La defined by permanent change and world through curiosity and play. rates subject and object, nature Borde and his journeys to Brazil engagement. Demorcy alludes to and culture, man and animal, the and Japan. Guattari transformed a series of scientists whose work animate and inanimate, matter institutional psychiatry with a points to a renewed engagement and soul, symbol and thing, indi- “politics of experimentation” and with the “more than human” world vidual and collective. These dual- turned it into a laboratory for po- and its morphologies. Key to such isms are, according to Guattari, litical and theoretical discussions a non-reductionist twist of mind the reason for the majority of the on the production of subjectivity. is the recognition that science is Courtesy the artist political, ecological, scientific or “Assemblages” shows archive Produced with the support of Haus der Kulturen der not a “discovery” of a world “out Welt, Berlin aesthetic problems of our time. footage featuring Félix Guattari,

76 77 excerpts from documentaries Chihiro Minato focusing on the and essay films, radio interviews, nuclear disaster in Fukushima, the Paulo Tavares (*1980) interviews with friends and col- archive table “Two Maps” updates “Non-Human Rights” 2011/2012. Film installation leagues, footage from the La Guattari’s theses on schizoanaly- Borde clinic in France, excerpts sis and ecosophy. from films by Fernand Deligny, Renaud Victor, François Pain, together with material shot during his research trip to Brazil. The archive installation “Déconnage” comprises a series of footage of an interview with the psychiatrist and resistance fighter Franc˛ois Tosquelles, the founder of the first open, institutional psychiatry dur- ing the Second World War in the Saint-Alban asylum. Featuring an interview, photos and a note book from the Japanese photographer Written and approved in 2008 Rights” by Brazilian architect after a decade-long period of Paulo Tavares presents archive successive political convulsions, interviews and documents about the new constitution of Ecuador the historical process that led to is the first of its kind to include the formulation of the “rights nature, alongside human beings, of nature” and reflects upon the as a subject of law. The “animist” juridical, political and ethical impli- conception of this legal text, cations of its claims towards the which grants fundamental rights commonality between humans to elements such as rocks, moun- and non-humans. tains, river deltas and the seas, in- troduces a radical legal-epistemic shift that challenges the rigid borders that separate the world of objects from the world of sub- jects, the natural from the social, Courtesy Angela Melitopoulos and Collection Generali Foundation, Vienna and thus presents a critical stand Image: Constitution Assembly, Ecuador, 2008, Courtesy Film still from “Assemblages” © the artist to the central tenets of the consti- ECTV Produced with the support of Haus der Kulturen der Produced with the support of Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin tution of modernity. “Non-Human Welt, Berlin

78 79 Archival Material Guided tours by the curators

Sun 18.3, Sun 6.5. 3 pm. Anselm Franke: curator of the exhibition “The Life of Particles.” A visual re- Universal Declaration of the search project by Angela Melito- Rights of Mother Earth, submitted Sun 25.3. 3 pm. poulos and Maurizio Lazzarato to the United Nations for consid- Irene Albers (Freie Universität Ber- eration by the Bolivian govern- lin): project director “Animism” “Two Maps.” An interview with ment, 2010. Reproduction Chihiro Minato Photographs: Angela Melitopou- los; Scans from the notebook: Chihiro Minato Expert Guided Tours Michel Serres, “The Natural Contract, Studies in Literature & Science,” University of Michigan The expert guided tours grant a Student’s Day Press, Ann Arbor 1995 deeper insight into the exhibition, Wed 25.4. 3 pm. and highlight key aspects. Guided tour through the exhibition Eugenio Raúl Zaffaroni, “La by students of Freie Universität Pachamama y el Humano,” Sun 1.4. 3 pm. Berlin (Sakine Weikert and Linn Ediciones Colihue, Buenos Aires Diedrich Diederichsen: cultural Taubert), followed by a discussion 2011 journalist, pop theorist, Professor with Irene Albers and guests for the Theory, Practice and Me- Christopher D. Stone, “Should diation of Contemporary Art at the Gallery Weekend Trees Have Standing? And Other Akademie der Bildenden Künste Sat 28.4. from 3.30 pm. Essays on Law, Morals and the Vienna. “Assembly” by Agency and Artist Environment,” Oceana Publications, Talk with Angela Melitopoulos, New York 1996 Sun 15.4. 3 pm. Anselm Franke, and others. Gertrud Koch: film- and art Rights of Nature Articles in Ecua- theorist focussing on questions In “Assembly,” Agency calls things dor’s Constitution. Reproduction of representation and aesthetics. forth, speculating on the question: Professor of film studies at Freie Can non-humans get included Universität Berlin within art practices? Followed by an Artist Talk with Angela Melitopoulos at 5 pm. 80 81 kids&teens@hkw 15.4. 15 h Family-oriented program FLIP-BOOK & Co Animation-Workshop with Stefanie Bokeloh and Frauke Menzinger for children aged 6 and over Films and Workshops What is animation? How are the pictures propelled into motion? The workshop invites participants to take a journey through the history of Sun 18.3. 3 pm. animated images from the Laterna Magica, the flip-book to the modern Animal – Man – Animal animations. The shortfilm created in the workshop will then be available Comic Workshop with Nadia Budde for children aged 6 and over for viewing on the HKW Internet site. Stefanie Bokeloh is an illustrator, The cunning fox, the stubborn donkey, the timid hare: in fairy-tales, designer and flip-book expert. each and every animal is endowed with its very own distinct charac- teristics. Against the backdrop of such humanization of animals in fairy-tales, we transfer our own characteristics onto animals in this workshop. Nadia Budde is a children’s book illustrator, having achieved acclaim for her novels “Eins, zwei, drei, Tier” and “Trauriger Tiger toastet Tomaten.”

Sun 25.3. 3 pm. Sun 22.4. from 12 pm. Animalix Hayao Miyazaki – Film Sunday for the whole 3D Comic Workshop with Imke Trostbach for children aged 6 and family over. In this workshop we design comic characters and confer upon Mythical forest gods, speaking passenger buses, and flying castles— them specific personality traits of animals. Subsequently the animal Hayao Miyazaki’s animated films conjure magical realms inhabited by characters are formed from felt, before springing into action. An illus- possessed objects, animals and people alike. Often these worlds are trator and graphic artist, Imke Trostbach launched the Illustrator group threatened by unimaginative adults and other destructive energies, Berlinerstrich in 2006. and have to be rescued. And this is where the children come in... A specialist in Japanese animated cartoon films or animé, Eriko Ogihara- Sun 1.4. 3 pm. Schuck, presents three of Miyazaki’s most beautiful films. When things speak to us Media-Workshop with Frauke Menzinger and Gabriele Nagel 12 pm. “My Neighbor Totoro” (1988) for children aged 10 and over The two sisters Satsuki und Mei move with their father into a haunted Embarking on a multimedia journey of discovery through the exhibition, house. In the adjacent forest they encounter the giant animal Totoro, the workshop explores the interaction between the exhibits and the which only the children can see. Totoro can fly and invites them to join visitors. Using camera, pencil and paper we post comments of our him in an adventure. Also accompanying them is a cat-bus equipped own impressions of the exhibition. Frauke Menzinger is a stage and with ten legs which can travel as quickly as the wind. Rather than being costume designer and since 2010 has been head of the Junior und simply invented, the story is based on the traditional Japanese belief in Teens Workshop at C/O Berlin; Gabriele Nagel is a video artists, who in 8 million gods and spirits. 2009 founded the HOR artists’ collective.

82 83 2 pm. “Spirited Away” (2001) Chihiro, a 10-year old girl steps into the world of the Japanese gods Animism—Conference and spirits in order to save her parents, after they were changed into pigs by the witch Yubaba who runs a bathhouse for the gods. To liberate her parents Chihiro starts working in the bathhouse. Here she meets Haku, who explains to her the rules of the realm of the gods and helps her to survive in this alien world.

5 pm. “Ponyo” (2008) Ponyo is a goldfish. One day she swims into the world of human beings, and is saved by the 5-year-old Sosuke who lives atop a cliff by the sea. Ponyo falls in love with him and wants to become a human so they can share their lives together. So she steals her father’s magic powers and acquires arms and legs. Ponyo’s mother, the sea goddess, suggests that she become a human. However, she also warns her of the danger that Ponyo could turn into foam.

Sun 6.5. 3 pm. Living fairy tales Literature Workshop with Isabella Gresser for children aged 8 and over In the fairy-tales by Hans Christian Andersen the boundaries between humans, animals and things become very blurred. With self-designed masks and silhouettes, the stories are recounted and the characters animated into life. Isabella Gresser is an artist and art educator, who works at the interface of literature, art and film.

84 85 Animism—Conference Fri 16.3. 2 – 6 pm. Fri 16.3. + Sat 17.3. Roundtable 1: Roundtables (in English) Animism and the Other Narratives of Modernity Lectures (simultaneous translation English/French–German) In English

In recent years the categorical separation between the subjective This roundtable explores the capacity of the concept to act as a histo- and objective world in modernity’s imaginary and societal space has riographic device. Here, the critic of the modern-colonialist assump- in many disciplines been subject to a fundamental reappraisal, and tions implicit in the concept opens new perspectives on the writing of kindled, not least, a new interest in animism. The conference on the modern history, concerning the constitution of the modern order of exhibition brings together a broad range of current perspectives from knowledge, things, disciplines and society. How can the imaginary and the fields of ethnology, literary criticism, art, the natural sciences, the historical realms of modernity be reflected anew through the concep- history of science and politics. The focus and starting point of the tual prism of animism? debate is to identify possible and surprising correspondences and connections, render both the concept and history of animism a fruitful With: Cornelius Borck (Director of the Institute for the History of Medi- subject for self-interrogation and foster a new critical reflection of cine and Science, Universität zur Lübeck), Harry Garuba (Director of modernity. The discussions scrutinize modernity’s established practice the Centre for African Studies, University of Cape Town), Thomas of separating and demarcating between nature and culture, things and Macho (Professor for Cultural History, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin), actors, world and imagination. Spyros Papapetros (Professor for History and the Theory of Archi- tecture, Princeton University), Elisabeth von Samsonow (Professor for Three roundtables place “Animism” in relation to the current issues the Philosophical and Historical Anthropology of Art, Akademie der concerning the modern order of global economic, political, and Bildenden Künste, Vienna), Erhard Schüttpelz (Professor for Media ecological conditions. The evening lectures comment on the newly Theory, Universität Siegen), Gabriele Schwab (Professor for Com- discovered transdisciplinary attention commanded by “Animism” from parative Literature, University of California/Irvine). a philosophical, political and scientific perspective. Moderation: Irene Albers, Anselm Franke

Conception: Irene Albers, Professor for General and Comparative Literature and Romanic Philology at the Freie Universität Berlin Anselm Franke, curator of the exhibition

86 87 Fri 16.3. 7 pm. 8 pm. Sat 17.3. 2 – 3.45 pm. Reclaiming Animism The Speech of Things and Roundtable 2: Isabelle Stengers, Lecture the Commonwealth of Animism and Capitalism Simultaneous translation Breath In English English–German David Abram, Lecture Simultaneous translation “Reclaim” means demanding the English–German The second roundtable questions the concept’s history in relation return of that from which we were to the critique of the commodity form and its alleged animation. It once separated. Not, however, This talk will suggest that animism, explores the historical problem of the animation of matter in relation to in the simple sense of retrieving first and foremost, is a way of economy, to desire, and recent transformations of the capitalist image- what was once “lost,” but rather speaking in close accordance sphere. recovering from this separation with the spontaneous life of our and “regenerating what was bodily senses. By acknowledging With: Avery F. Gordon (Professor for Sociology at the University of poisoned as a consequence of it.” the active agency and eloquence California/Santa Barbara), Tom Holert (art historian and publicist, Vi- What must be the constitution of of things (whether those things be enna), Angela Melitopoulos (visual artist, Berlin) / Maurizio Lazzarato a mode of thinking, such as a sci- creatures, artifacts, dry riverbeds, (sociologist and philosopher, Paris), Isabelle Stengers (Professor for ence, which negotiates animism gusts of wind, or spoken words), The Science of Philosophy at the Université Libre de Bruxelles) within the complex construct of we awaken our animal senses Moderator: Anselm Franke “knowledge production?” What from a kind of slumber. To learn possibilities can then arise if we to speak (and to sense) in this ensure that the preconditions of manner is a gesture of humility, a this thinking and the “objects” practice that calls the human mind of science are flexible and freely back to its body—and calls the negotiable? body, again and again, into dynam- ic relation and exchange with the Isabelle Stengers is Professor more-than-human community of for the Philosophy of Science at earthly things. the Université Libre de Bruxelles. David Abram is a US-American cultural sociologist, philosopher and author.

9 pm. In conversation: Isabelle Stengers and David Abram Moderator: Anselm Franke

88 89 Sat 17.3. 4.15 – 6 pm. Sat 17.3. 7 pm. 9 pm. Roundtable 3: “The Death Ship” Towards an ecology of Animism and Politics Michael Taussig, Lecture the invisibles In English Simultaneous translation Tobie Nathan, Lecture English–German Simultaneous translation French–English–German The third roundtable is devoted to the political implications of the “The Death Ship” (written by B. discussion. It revolves around current political struggles, for instance Traven in 1926) tells stories, better Since “invisible” beings have indigenous and ecological movements in South America, and dis- even than the sailors who have appeared on the agenda, the zar, cusses them from a historical perspective, in terms of the constitution no official papers and are worked djinn, ‘afritt, melk, who share the of political representation, recognition, and rights to the bone. How can a ship be a world with humans in Ethiopia, storyteller? And what about those Yemen, Somalia, Arabia, the With: David Abram (cultural sociologist and philosopher, New Mexico), massive truck tires in the movie Maghreb, India, and Pakistan, as Alejandro Haber (Professor h.c. at the Universidad Nacional de Cata- “Wages of Fear?” Are they not well as in the migration countries marca, Argentina, working on the theory and Philosophy of archeology), alive, too? They fill the screen, of the West—people have tried to Esther Leslie (School of English and Humanities, London, works on inching forwards, more alive than find psychological explanations Marxist theory of Asthetics and Culture), Michael Taussig (Professor any human. Finally, if there is a for the phenomenon. We should for Anthropology, Columbia University, New York), Paulo Tavares finally, consider the whirring sub- take them seriously, analyze the (Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmith College, London, stance the medicine man takes thoughts, theories, and systems working on the political and ecological movements in South America), out of his body in Tierra del Fuego their existence implies, in order to Rane Willerslev (Professor for Anthropology at the University Aarhus, circa 1920 that can see, can kill, see that they draw another image Denmark) can cure, and goes in and out of of “the other,” who is different, Moderator: Avery F. Gordon (Professor for Sociology at the University the body at alarming speed with and at the origin of the true rules of California/Santa Barbara) a great screech, the epitome of of hospitality. Being’s Becoming, the ur-animate. Tobie Nathan is Professor for Michael Taussig is Professor for Clinical Psychology and Psychopa- Anthropology at Columbia Univer- thology at the Université Paris 8. sity, New York

90 91 Animismus – Revisionen der Moderne In the Contact of the Project: Publication Modern Realism and Materialism Lectures Irene Albers/Anselm Franke (Ed.) Diaphanes, March 2012 In German

“Animism” is an invention of 19th century ethnology, established at the Wed 11.4. 7 pm. Graham Harman: Strange Realisms apogee of European colonialism. Animists endow inanimate nature Thu 19.4. 7 pm. Quentin Meillassoux: Iteration and repetition. with souls and spirits. This is explained as a projection distorting the Ontology of the meaningless sign (material) reality, through which life and agency are ascribed to things Fri 4.5. 7 pm. Ray Brassier and nature. Thus animism becomes the antithesis to modern science, Fri 11.5. 7 pm. Iain Hamilton Grant an exemplary expression of a “natural condition,” in which the psyche and nature are deemed to be inseparable. If a new multidisciplinary In English interest in animism has been rekindled, then this is attributable not to the rehabilitation of the concept as a scientific category, but by virtue The series of lectures addresses realism and materialism within of the fact that the categorical separation of the subjective and objec- modern philosophy. Common to the invited philosophers Ray Brassier, tive world has itself been subject to question. Iain Hamilton Grant, Graham Harman and Quentin Meillassoux is the critique of post-Kantian philosophy, in which the world cannot be An accompaniment to the exhibition and conference, the volume collates thought of independently of human beings. The philosophical positions key texts in this debate. introduced furnish a variety of arguments in their rejection of the cor- relation of thought and the world—the post-Kantian paradigm, which With contributions by Bruno Latour, Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, Alf Meillassoux has termed “Correlationism.” By developing a transcen- Hornborg, Nurit Bird-David, Isabelle Stengers, Gabriele Schwab, dental naturalism, a speculative materialism, an object-oriented phi- Elisabeth von Samsonow, Erhard Schüttpelz, Oksana Bulgakowa, losophy or a scientific realism, the relationship between epistemology Edwin Carels, Sergeij Eisenstein, Harry Garuba, Angela Melitopoulos, and metaphysics, science and philosophy, thought and nature can be Maurizio Lazzarato, Irene Albers, Anselm Franke and Diedrich redefined. Diederichsen. In cooperation with the Collaborative Research Centre 626 (Aesthetic Experience and the Dissolution of Artistic Limits) at the Freie Universität Berlin

92 93 Credits

Artistic Directors Communications The Project „Animism“ is a cooperation between Extra City – Kunsthal Antwerp; Museum van Hedendaagse Anselm Franke, Irene Albers Silvia Fehrmann (Head of Department) Kunst, Antwerp; Kunsthalle Bern; Generali Foundation, Franziska Wegener, Anne Rüdiger (Edi- Vienna; Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin. The project Exhibition torial Office) in Berlin is a cooperation with the Freie Universität Berlin and is funded by the Kulturstiftung des Bundes. Anselm Franke (Curator) Anne Maier, Henriette Sölter (Press Valerie Smith (Head of Department for Office) Visual Arts, Film, New Media) Eva Stein, Jan Köhler, Fabian Schwarz Sigrun Angermann (Program Coordination) (Internet) Sonja Oehler (Curatorial Assistance, Christiane Sonntag, Sabine Westemeier Animism is presented by Project Coordination) (Media Planning/Distribution) Janina Prossek (Program Assistance) Cornelia Pilgram (Processing) Director’s Office Julia Ahmad (Trainee) Bernd M. Scherer (Director) „Agency“ is supported by Roberta di Martino, Ulrike Hasis, Lars Katharina Gelhaar, Kirsten Einfeldt (Pro- Lierow (Internships) ject Coordination) Charlotte Weyrauch (Research) Leila Haghighat (Trainee) Gernot Ernst und Team, Christian Das Haus der Kulturen der Welt is a division of the Kulturveranstaltungen des Bundes in Berlin GmbH. Dertinger (Technical Coordination) Booklet Bernd M. Scherer (Director) Kerstin Meyer-Ebrecht (Architecture) Anselm Franke (Concept) Charlotte Sieben (General Manager) FACtum Ausstellungsbau GmbH Martin Hager, Sonja Oehler, Julia Ahmad, Funded by: (Exhibition Construction) Lars Lierow (Editorial Team) Studio Manuel Räder (Graphic Design) Colin Shepherd, John Rayner, Herwig Lluïsa Sàrries y Zgonc (Registrar) Engelmann (Translation) Jörg Hartung, Axel Lapp (Copy Editing) John-Foster-Dulles-Allee 10 Conference Double Standards (Graphic Design) 10557 Berlin Irene Albers, Freie Universität Berlin, and www.hkw.de Anselm Franke (Concept) Parts of the texts are derived from the T: 030 – 39 78 71 75 Cordula Hamschmidt (Program Coordi- publications on the project in Antwerp nation) and Vienna, as well as from the artists. www.facebook.com/HausderKulturenderWelt Ticket Information: www.hkw.de/tickets Anna Laura Bartels (Program Assistance) We wish to express our thanks to the authors and institutions. Outreach Program Silvia Fehrmann, Eva Stein, Maria Foun- Every care has been taken to identify the toukis (Concept) holders of copyrights. If any unintentional Maria Fountoukis (Coordination) error or omission has occurred, please contact us. Technical Department Jochen Petzold and Team Editorial Deadline: February 27, 2012

94 95 Mehr Lust auf Kunst mit Berlins größtem Stadtmagazin

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Das volle Kunstprogramm fi nden Sie alle 14 Tage neu am Kiosk und unter www.tip-berlin.de, sowie als iPad App im iTunes-Store! 31. Mai – 3. Juni 2012 boros

gallery weekend DOCUMENTARY Berlin Forum 2 april NEW PRACTICES ACROSS DISCIPLINES 27 – 29 2012

www.gallery-weekend-Berlin.de www.berlindocumentaryforum.de 99

120229_GWB12_HdKdW_105x148.indd 1 29.02.12 13:52 Animism had endowed things with souls; industrialism makes souls into things.

Theodor W. Adorno / Max Horkheimer, “Dialectic of Enlightenment”