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Till Nikolaus von Heiseler
Theater im Forum I: Offener Brief an meine Sachbearbeiterin Silvia Thiem

Vertritt: Landeseinwohnermeldeamt Berlin - Zentrale Ordnungsaufgaben, Einwohnerwesen – Pass- und Ausweisangelegenheiten, sonstige Ordnungsaufgaben, nicht verkehrrechtliche Ordnungswidrigkeiten

„Könnten wir Theater (das Mediale, das Wirksame) zum Erkenntnisgewinn einsetzen? ------------------------------------------------------------ Das wäre dann eben keine Praxis, die weiß, was sie tut, sondern die stattfindet, um überhaupt einen Ansatzpunkt für eine Theorie zur Praxis zu finden.“

Brian Holmes writes about “Conceptualism” in the Work of Bureau d'études: "The closure of the gallery space is a classic conceptual gesture. Witness this proposal by Robert Barry: "My exhibition at the Art & Project Gallery in Amsterdam in December, '69, will last two weeks. I asked them to lock the door and nail my announcement to it, reading: 'For the exhibition the gallery will be closed.'"

The Flexible Personality:
For a New Cultural Critique
Brian Holmes

The events of the century's turn, from Seattle to New York, have shown that a sweeping critique of capitalist globalization is possible, and urgently necessary—before the level of violence in the world dramatically increases. The beginnings of such a critique exist, with the renewal of "unorthodox" economics.1 But now one can look further, toward a critique of contemporary capitalist culture.
To be effective, a cultural critique must show the links between the major articulations of power and the more-or-less trivial aesthetics of everyday life. It must reveal the systematicity of social relations and their compelling character for everyone involved, even while it points to the specific discourses, images and emotional attitudes that hide inequality and raw violence. It must shatter the balance of consent, by flooding daylight on exactly what a society consents to, how it tolerates the intolerable. Such a critique is difficult to put into practice because it must work on two opposed levels, coming close enough to grips with the complexity of social processes to convince the researchers whose specialized knowledge it needs, while finding striking enough expressions of its conclusions to sway the people whom it claims to describe—those upon whose behavior the transformation of the status quo depends.

(Written for the "Yugoslav Biennial of Young Artists" 2004)

Emancipation

L'amour est la seule passion qui se paye d'une monnaie qu'elle fabrique elle-même.
Stendhal

The "world market." Never have two words encompassed such promise. Power. Pleasure. Ubiquity. Freedom. And it’s no illusion. The world market can get you that – if you obey its injunction. To distinguish yourself from the others. To stand apart. To rise above. To become the sovereign individual.
What is the paradox of the market individual?
To conform – through uniqueness and originality – to the perverse law of value which gives rarity its price.

Till Nikolaus von Heiseler

Theater hat für jeden politischen und jeden künstlerisch avancierten Menschen ein Problem: Es ist immer geschlossen. Seine Geschlossenheit ist sozusagen sein selbstkonstruktives Moment. Es bezieht seine Form und seine Schönheit aus seiner Exklusivität und unterscheidet immer gewaltsam zwischen Inklusion und Exklusion. Die Geschlossenheit besteht sowohl auf der Produktionsseite als auch auf der Rezeptionsseite.

This text had been written by Eric Alliez directly in English for the Symposium TransArt IV,"Theorie und Praxis des organlosen Koerpers" (Akademie der Bildenden Kuenste, Wien, 8-10 november 2001) and published in E. Alliez, E. von Samsonow (Hg.), Biographien des organlosen Koerpers, Wien, Turia + Kant, 2003, p. 11-29. This is the forth volume of the TransArt Series edited by Eric Alliez and Elisabeth von Samsonow.

A text written by D. N. Rodowick

This text by Bojana Kunst was first published in Maska, Magazine for Contemporary Performing Arts, January, 2003.

Brian Holmes writes about Bureau d’etudes and Multiplicity

Voice, Vision, and the Prosthetic Subject in Dancer in the Dark. A text by Cary Wolfe