ON RESEARCH Lecture Performances + Discussion, Berlin

[Marlon Barrios Solano]

ON RESEARCH
Lecture Performances + Discussion

with Rabih Mroué + Hito Steyerl
Ina Wudtke + Dieter Lesage
Xavier Le Roy
and others

4 and 5 May 2012

Haus der Kulturen der Welt
John-Foster-Dulles Allee 10
10577 Berlin

www.hkw.de

The debates about new models in science, art, and education have drawn additional attention to the topic of "artistic research." What scientific strategies do artists use and what artistic processes do scientists avail of?

"These questions underlie our current program," points out Bernd M. Scherer, director of Haus der Kulturen der Welt. "The exhibition Animism exposes the complexity of distinctions in the modern world-view. The biennial Berlin Documentary Forum questions how media, art, and photography construct and reshape reality and history. The international network SYNAPSE brings together young curators working at the interface of art and science. Global prayers explores how new religious movements are changing the metropolis. In 2013/2014, a long-term project sets out to understand the new paradigm called anthropocene from the point of view of culture."

On May 4 and 5, ON RESEARCH will explore artists' and scientists' strategies through lecture performances and discussions. Hito Steyerl and Rabih Mroué launch the proceedings on Friday by premiering their work entitled "Probable title: zero probability." In this new joint production, the film-maker and the theater director enter into a dialogue about the (im-)probability of events. The lecture performance weaves a poetic-fictional web of relationships between Mroué's father, a mathematician by profession, his favorite subject, the calculation of probabilities, and his experiences in the Lebanese civil war. Excerpt from a dialogue between Rabih Mroué and Hito Steyerl: "Probability zero means that an event is absolutely not possible. …We are calculating these impossible events. They happen within a space in which, on the contrary, everything is possible. This space is accessible through art."

On Saturday, scholars and artists address current forms of exchange processes between sciences and art. Beatrice von Bismarck, Gabriele Brandstetter, Tom Holert, Kirsten M. Langkilde, and Bernd M. Scherer will discuss the potential of an alternative understanding of research and the production of knowledge. This panel discussion brings together the results of the previous interdisciplinary workshop, kindly supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG).

On the same evening, two further artistic performances address the problem of the status of knowledge as a product. In Kuhle Wampe Remix, oder Wem gehört die Stadt?, artist Ina Wudtke and philosopher Dieter Lesage examine contemporary gentrification debates in the context of academic studies. Dancer and choreographer Xavier Le Roy stages his life story in a lecture performance: in Product of Circumstances (1999), he analyzes how he went from being a doctor of molecular biology to a performance artist.


ON RESEARCH is a cooperation between the Schering Stiftung, the Freie Universität Berlin, and the Zentrum für Bewegungsforschung.

A program conceived by Gabriele Brandstetter (Freie Universität Berlin), Sigrid Gareis (Akademie der Künste der Welt, Cologne), Heike Catherina Mertens (Schering Stiftung), and Bernd M. Scherer (Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin).

ON RESEARCH is taking place in conjunction with the workshop Forschung in Kunst und Wissenschaft. Herausforderungen an Diskurse und Systeme des Wissens, funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG).

Haus der Kulturen der Welt is supported by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media as well as by the Federal Foreign Office.