This year again, three workshops bring young international artists, theorists and students to Graz during the festival to explore the diffuse boundaries between various worlds and to reflect on the art works on show at the festival.
25/09 - 30/09
Workshop 1: Death as an aesthetical tool
History, techniques and treatments of Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP)
By Michael Esposito (USA) & Carl Michael von Hausswolff (S)
With Heidi Harman (USA)
Electronic voice phenomena (EVP) are electronic noises in the air, resembling speech – stray radio transmissions, background noises for example. Are they sounds from another world? The artists Michael Esposito and Carl Michael von Hausswolff are two of the most renowned experts in this area, who have been researching and working artistically with EVP for many years. Together with the sound healer and psychic medium Heidi Harman, in this workshop they not only have a close look at the history of such phenomena from the spiritistic séances of the 19th century to the high tech expeditions of today, but they also work practically and theoretically on questions of recording environments with their parallel ghost worlds of sounds. How to process, identify, isolate and clean EVP captured on space specific location recordings? What characteristics do they have? What are their aesthetic and artistic qualities? And how do they relate to the sonic landscape of our world in the past, present and future?
Michael Esposito & Carl Michael von Hausswolff in concert / Auditory Thresholds series
Carl Michael von Hausswolff is also participating in the exhibition: Hauntings – Ghost Box Media
03/10 - 08/10
Workshop 2: The State Artist
Aesthetics of politics
By Public Movement (IL)
With Oliver Marchart (A), Joanna Warsza (PL) & Artur Żmijewski (PL)
What kind of physical knowledge exists in our bodies as political beings? What is the dance of a citizen? How does the state perform? Which politics are possible through physical contact, what are the aesthetics and erotics of the
Volk and of the state?
Beautiful actions in a public space are the centre of this workshop: What is the art of “pre-enacting” which introduces a political fact into the public realm? Events and actions, initiated by artists, whose works of art are discourse-specific, which can only happen at this place and at this point in time, which are governed by a specific constellation of social trauma and political ambition. Against the idea of a political commitment within the for / against paradigm, Public Movement proposes the role of a state artist. A state artist is responsible for broadening political imagination. A state artist works in society and within the political collective which is the state, and is not there to serve a rigid partisan ideology.
09/10 - 14/10
Workshop 3: Translating the Unknown
By Lotte van den Berg (NL) & Guido Kleene (NL)
With André Yoka Lye (CD)
The ghost world of Kinshasa is not a remote, ethereal place. It might be invisible, but it exists quite concretely next to the real world – a parallel religious sphere with great influence on daily life in the Congo. How can we relate to places and rituals that are strange to us? How can we translate experiences in a theatrical context?
The Dutch theatre-makers Lotte van den Berg and Guido Kleene spent several months together in the Congo, researching for the show “Les spectateurs”. Even though both have been inspired by first-hand experience and documentary material, their treatment is very different: Guido Kleene’s performances are rather text-based documentaries, where as the theatre of Lotte van den Berg operates in the more visual and abstract sphere.
Visiting an African church in Graz, meeting a philosopher from Cameroon, watching film material, talking to people on the streets, the participants in the workshop will be challenged to create their own interpretation of a world unknown to them.
Lotte van den Berg / Omsk: Les spectateurs
Co-presented by NXTSTP, with the support of the Culture Programme of the European Union
Open Ups of herbst Academy 2011
Playing field research / Theory at steirischer herbst
