Performing Rights Vienna - Full Programme
Performing Rights Vienna
8 - 10 March 2007
The Live Art Development Agency have been commissioned by Tanzquartier, Vienna to create a Live Art programme for March 2007. Building on the strengths and continuing the momentum of Performance Studies international (PSi)#12: Performing Rights, the Agency have curated Performing Rights Vienna.
Performing Rights Vienna is a programme of performances, presentations, debates, workshops, screenings and interventions that sets out to reflect the relationships between performance and human rights and between art and activism; to illustrate the creative strategies artists are using to effect social, cultural and political change; and to consider the role and responsibilities of artists, and performance itself, in the understanding, enactment and sustenance of human rights.
Workshop
John Jordan (UK)
Creative Resistances workshop
Wednesday 7 and Thursday 8 March
12.30 - 18.30 daily
A two day workshop exploring methodologies of art and activism. Sharing skills and ideas workshop participants will look at ways that creativity can be applied directly to movements for social and ecological change. The workshop is suitable for those who are interested in live work which does not merely represent a political issue, but is directly confronting and transforming the issue itself. If you are interested in radically engaged performances that look neither like art nor activism but take the best of both of these worlds, that sit somewhere between direct action and live art, resistance and creativity then this workshop is for you.
Creative Resistances Public showing
Thursday 8 March
20.00
A public event with John Jordan and participants revealing the ideas and approaches they have been exploring in the Creative Resistances workshop.
Artist in Residence
Richard Dedomenici (UK)
Artist in Residence
Thursday 8 to Saturday 10 March
The one-man subversive think-tank from the UK will be in residence at Tanzquartier throughout Performing Rights Vienna making interventions, making mischief, and making friends.
Performances
Richard Dedomenici (UK)
Did Priya Pathak Ever Get Her Wallet Back?
Thursday 8 March
21.00
Richard Dedomenici explores the complex relationship between his artwork and the police in this provocatively topical solo performance.
Metropolitan Police commissioner Ian Blair has called for a widespread national debate in the UK to decide what kind of police force we need after the London bombings of July 2005. Did Priya Pathak Ever Get Her Wallet Back? is Richard Dedomenici's fair and balanced contribution to this debate. The performance references case studies including that time in 1996 that Richard nearly got shot in the head by a police sniper in a McDonald's Drive-Thru, that time in 2001 when Richard got arrested for attempting to break into a prison, and that time in 2005 when Richard got woken up at 3am by anti-terror police trying to break down his front door.
Franko B (UK/Italy)
Don't Leave Me This Way
Friday 9 March
19.30 and 22.00
Franko B is at the forefront of artists testing not only the limits of how it is permissible to represent the body in art, but the limits of the body itself. His work is concerned with making the unbearable bearable and inviting us to witness the human condition at its most exposed, essential and existential. In 2006 Franko began a process of developing new creative strategies to explore and voice alienation and trauma stemming from culture, religion and politics. His new work, Don't Leave Me This Way marks a departure in his performance practice away from his signature blood-based works into a different, but equally visceral, live encounter. Here Franko's body is presented as a sculptural form - naked and seated on a plinth - whilst the audience are flooded with powerful lighting, opening up a new and unexpected range of emotional and bodily responses for artist and audience alike. Created in collaboration with Kamal Ackarie.
Robin Deacon (UK)
Whatever Happened To Colin Powell?
Friday 9 March
20.30
A lecture performance offering an alternative perspective on the life and times of former US Secretary of State Colin Powell. Originally written in response to Powell's resignation in 2004, this new version continues to interrogate the theme of comparative biography between performer and politician, while questioning its own relevance in the light of Powell's virtual disappearance from the public eye. Exploring an increasingly 'unnatural' order of things embodied by the likes of Powell, the performance expounds some theories as to why Powell looked and acted the way he did (the two are connected), with Deacon asking himself - is this really a self portrait?
Aine Phillips (Ireland)
Harness
Saturday 10 March
19.30 and 22.00
The artist re-enacts her experiences of growing up with a profoundly brain damaged brother. This boy is violent and beautiful, harnessed to a wheelchair, helmeted to protect his face from falling in seizures.
Twenty years later she gives birth to a daughter with dislocated hips who is strapped into traction for half a year. The artist speaks their embodiments and performs their modes of harness, translating constraint into tenderness, torture into rapture, helplessness into command.
She shows the vulnerability of wholeness, the purpose of union in extreme human experience and how the personal becomes political...
Curious (UK)
(be)longing
Saturday 10 March
20.30
longing: A strong persistent yearning or desire, especially one that cannot be fulfilled._belonging: the state of being comfortable and accepted in a place or community. (be)longing is a performance with film and live music created and performed by Leslie Hill and Helen Paris and developed as part of a year long project with The Women's Library in London which explored longing and belonging as experienced by women working in and around the sex trade in East London. In (be)longing, Hill and Paris explore their own ideas of longing and belonging. Stories of yearning and the search for home are told against two very different landscapes - one is the vast searing landscape of the American Southwest, the other is the discreet, hidden, interior, private landscape of the heart.
Screening presentations
Adrien Sina (France)
Performance, Politics, Ethics and Human Rights
Thursday 8 March
18.00
A screening and contextualising talk on twentieth-century artists responses to war, politics, racism, injustice and repression. Adrien Sina will illustrate a history of performative practices and strategies in relation to ethical and human rights issues by artists including Josephine Baker, Valentine de St-Point, Vaslav Nijinski, Bertolt Brecht, Tadeusz Kantor, Josef Beuys, Hermann Nitsch, John Lennon, Martin Scorsese, Adrian Piper, Ana Mendieta, Chris Burden, Gina Pane, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Valie Export, William Kentridge, Zhang Huan, Marina Abramovic, Guerrilla Girls, Yinka Shonibare, Mona Hatoum, and Shirin Neshat. Complementary strands within the screening will look at early political actions and the roots of political performance in Greek tragedy, and women's performative and theatrical acts against the terror, the violence and the cruelty of the French Revolution, the origin of the Declaration of Human Rights, with Olympe de Gouges and Charlotte de Corday.
The Vacuum Cleaner (UK)
11 Morsels To Suck On
Friday 9 March
22.30
Thorn-in-the-side of your local Multi-National, the vacuum cleaner, present 11 of their current favourite films and stories from a across Europe. Political pranks, art activism and acts of creative resistance with all the subtle one can expect from groups with names like The Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army and The Space Hijackers.
Jeremy Xido (USA), Claudia Heu (A), Cabula6 (Austria/USA)
Crime:Europa
Saturday 10 March
17.30
A series of five short complimentary films investigating the ways in which inhabitants of five towns across Europe deal with a recent local criminal case that has somehow captured the public imagination. Concerned less with the "truth" of the cases, the films focus on how people try to retell the stories of what happened in an attempt to understand who they are and with whom they live. The films, focusing on cases as diverse as the murder of a homeless man in Salzburg by four teenagers to the industrial crimes of the Solvay factory in Rosignano, Italy, were filmed in Berlin, Germany / Salzburg, Austria / Rosignano Solvay, Italy / Ribamar, Portugal and Kortrijk, Belgium.
Illustrated Talks and Dialogues
As many artistic practices that are concerned with these issues are taking place on the frontline or within community contexts, Performing Rights Vienna will also feature talks, dialogues and presentations that attempt to represent some of the creative approaches and artistic projects artists are engaging with.
Friday 9 March
From 17.00
Florian Malzacher (Germany/Austria)
Dictionary Of War
Created by the activist network Multitude e.V. and the curatorial collective Unfriendly Takeover, Dictionary of War is a collaborative platform for creating 100 concepts on the subject of war, featuring contributions from scientists, artists, theorists and practitioners as lectures, performances, films, slide shows, readings, concerts in the form of a marathon discourse. From Amphetamine to Defeat, from Electronic Soldiers to Heroes, from NATO to Resistance, Theatre of Operation, Throne of Blood and Weather, the aim is to (re)create key concepts that already play a significant role in current discussions of war, have so far been neglected, or had yet to be invented. The Dictionary of War serves to scrutinise a reality that characteristically obfuscates existing power relations the more people talk about war and peace.
PLATFORM (UK)
Promoting Creative Processes of Democratic Engagement To Advance Social and Ecological Justice
PLATFORM talk about their cross disciplinary work which for over twenty years has been bringing together environmentalists, artists, human rights campaigners, educationalists and community activists to create innovative projects driven by the need for social and environmental justice. This interdisciplinary approach combines the transformatory power of art with the tangible goals of campaigning, the rigour of in-depth research with the vision to promote alternative futures.
Gini Muller (Austria)
Movements, Networks and Activations
Gini Muller will explore the artistic and activists movements that she has been part of or witness to over the last few decades including VolxTheaterKarawane, no-racism.net and ladyfest. This presentation has been created in a collaboration with Christine Standfest, performer, theorist and member of theatercombinat.
Saturday 10 March
From 15.00
Franko B (UK/Italy)
Blinded By Love?
Franko B presents an illustrated talk about his practice from his early political and artistic motivations through to his recent works including I Miss You!, Oh Lover Boy and Aktion 398, and particularly their extreme use of the body as a site for the representation of vulnerability, pain and loss. Like all aspects of his practice, Franko's talks have been described as being "rich in reasoned politics, humanity and compassion" (Glasgow Herald).
Oliver Ressler (Austria)
Performing Rights Venezuela
In Venezuela, a profound social transformation identified as the Bolivarian process has been underway since Hugo Chávez's governmental takeover in 1998. Oliver Ressler will talk about the situation in Venezuela, presenting excerpts from his films "Venezuela from Below" (67 min., 2004) and "5 Factories-Worker Control in Venezuela" (81 min., 2006), both carried out in collaboration with Dario Azzellini.
Lisl Ponger (Austria)
Challenging what is accepted
Lisl Ponger presents a talk and preview for her new film Imago Mundi - Challenging what is accepted. Imago Mundi re-stages a 17th century still life - bringing its symbolic criticism of religious and secular power structures into line with those of a post-colonial, neo-liberal and globalising world in order to propose a re-reading of both the representation of politics and the politics of representation. Leading us on an excursion through the layers of symbols, work processes and the art forms of film, photography, dance, theatre, music and literature it uncovers the normative parameters that form the invisible or unacknowledged cultural cage in which we spend most of our time. In the interaction of political discussion, art forms and levels of meaning the film is a text which can be read as part of a discourse on political art and political activism.
Performance Panel
Saturday 10 March
12 noon - 14.30
A Performance Panel led by Adrian Heathfield (UK) and Lois Weaver (USA/UK) with creative interventions by the artists Hubsi Kramar (Austria), Ines Doujak (Austria), Daniel Aschwanden (Austria), Oreet Ashery (UK), Rajni Shah (UK), and Philippe Riera/Superamas (Austria).
Oreet Ashery will focus on Welcome Home, an ongoing series of investigations into notions of Returning, No Returning and disappearance, from political, psychological and domestic perspectives, and particularly the Palestinian Right to Return. At the core of Welcome Home as a performative art practice are the ways in which every day life is an important part of the process, and personal contact with relevant people is integral to the project.
Daniel Aschwanden will ask what is the relation between globalization, everyday-life, dance and performance, and how does capitalism actually function on a global level? In a shooting-gallery-like performance installation - Shoot Oneself Free - he will talk about his own practice and, with the help of Christian Felber's book 50 Suggestions For A Fairer World, will demonstrate playful solutions to the capitalist trap.
Ines Doujak is a visual artist who questions representations of sex, sexuality and racism within, and outside of, institutions. In 2001 she created a performance action to address issues of racism, and particularly racist attitudes to men, in which white men sold postcards to passers-by featuring stereotypical images of black men as a public menace. For Performing Rights Ines will recreate the action in the city centre and, for the Panel, engage in a dialogue about the work and its' public response with the Free Fighter, cook and former skinhead Thomas Talasch who she will invite to witness the action.
Hubsi Kramar describes his occupation as 'public annoyance', and, through his theatre and film practice, campaigning work, and direct actions (such as appearing as Hitler at public events) is an infamous and influential agent provocateur in Austria. For the Panel he will talk about the ideas and impulses driving his work and the creative strategies he continues to explore to effect cultural change.
Rajni Shah creates performance interventions that are also gifts, spaces of wonder and enquiry, inviting the public to be included and implicated in a delicate but very real unravelling process. Some of her questions for the Panel will be: what is the space beyond confrontation? what validates me to you? what is the pattern of these many tiny intersections, interventions, all over the world? and if we're all at this table... where to go from here?
Philippe Riera of Superamas will focus on two crucial military concepts, which are usually considered, and used as facts, to create (or annihilate)
states and identities - the victory and the defeat. As an example, Robert Ouvrard (Souvenir Napoleonien/Societe Francaise d'Histoire
Napoleonienne) will tell us all about a strange battle which challenges those two concepts.
Library of Performing Rights
Thursday 8 - Saturday 10 march
12 noon - 18.00
In collaboration with Lois Weaver, artistic director of Performance Studies international #12: Performing Rights, Performing Rights Vienna will also host The Library of Performing Rights; an actual and a virtual library, housing resources, research materials and technologies to explore and enable the transmission and documentation of human rights and performance.
The Library of Performing Rights was developed for Performance Studies international #12: Performing Rights to create a body of materials, documentation and evidence that aimed to archive the remains of performance-related interventions, as well as to stimulate performance and human rights experimentation, and further networks between academics, artists, and activists involved in the intersections between performance and human rights work. Since the PSi event in London in June 2006 the Library continues to grow as both a website and a physical resource containing publications, videos, DVDs, CD-ROMs, brochures, digital and web-based initiatives that will be transported, reassembled, and further developed in different locations and contexts. www.performingrightslibrary.org/
Lois Weaver's Long Table
Friday 9 March
13.00 - 16.00 (and on demand)
"If you can imagine something you can make it. If you can make something, you can make it change. Artists help us imagine the future and Live Artists remind us of what it mean to be alive in the present" Lois Weaver. Lois Weaver hosts a space where audiences and artists and audiences are invited to gather for informal conversations on serious topics.
Performing Rights Vienna is curated by the Live Art Development Agency, London. Performing Rights Vienna has developed from Performance Studies international #12: Performing Rights, a festival of creative dialogues between artists, academics, artists and audiences that took place in London in June 2006 and was produced in a collaboration between Queen Mary, University of London, East End Collaborations, PSi and the Live Art Development Agency.
Read contibutors biographies here
