Freie Universitaet Berlin: Annual Conference of the Collaborative Research Center ‘Intervening Arts’ on November 9-10, 2023
This year’s conference of the Collaborative Research Centre (CRC) 1512 “Intervening Arts” will be taking place at ICI Berlin Institute for Cultural Inquiry on November 9 and 10, 2023, under the title “Dynamics of the Intransitive: Undirected Interventions.” It will be accompanied by two events in the evening held at the Volksbühne’s Roter Salon and at Pfefferberg Haus 13, which will both be open to the public. The CRC “Intervening Arts” is based at Freie Universität Berlin. The conference will be held in German and English. Anyone with an interest in the topic is warmly invited to attend. Registration is open online at: https://www.ici-berlin.org/events/dynamics-of-the-intransitive.
The motto of this year’s annual conference is “Dynamics of the Intransitive: Undirected Interventions.” It will be dedicated to artistic procedures and practices that do not pursue an explicit political or critical agenda but that nevertheless, or precisely as a result, draw forth their specific potential for intervention. As guiding aspects of such interventions, improvisation, obstinacy, and objectlessness will be explored. Improvisational practices will move playfully between normativity and freedom, setting impulses and offering them to other actors for further work. Obstinacy, as an artistic attitude, will develop creative spaces of interruption within firmly established power relations in order to escape pregiven rhythms. Finally, some practices of the visual or performative arts will derive their effect from an objectless execution. Even if these interventions are not directed towards a goal, they will irritate, disturb, and interrupt.
The annual conference will open up space for dialogue between artists, scholars, and the public through performances, lectures, and discussions. The contributors are all active in areas that intersect the borders between academia and art. Talks by prestigious guests such as the American curator Sue Spaid, German philosopher Judith Siegmund, and Freie Universität Berlin legal scholar Bertram Lomfeld are on the program as well as a reading and discussion with writers Heike Geißler and Kathrin Röggla, emancipatory guided tours by the fem_arc collective, and a presentation by the performer Mateja Bučar. CRC members will also be hosting a panel discussion titled “Scheiter eiGEnSiNn Umpruvusutuun – try again.”
Two evening events round off the program. The interdisciplinary project “Interwoven Sound Spaces” on Thursday, November 9, will be a telematic music performance on the Roter Salon stage at the Volksbühne. Following a performance, reading, and conversation featuring Brandon LaBelle and other illustrious guests, the conference will come to a close on Friday, November 10, with DJ sets from Calamidades Lola and Radio Vampiro at Pfefferberg Haus 13.