1 March–31 December 2013
Project group
Freja Bäckman, Elis Hannikainen, Annika Högner, Vappu Jalonen, Johanna Karlsson, Clara López Menéndez
Assistance
Birgit Auf der Lauer, akademie der autodidakten, Amelia Bande, Anja Bodanowitz, Interflugs, Rubia Salgado, Yes! Association/ Föringen JA!
Series of events: March - July
Performances Naunynstraße: 15.12.2013 and 13./14.2.2014
Book Release: 15.12.2013
WIR SPIELEN (WE PLAY) is a series of events concerned with the topic of “we”, an inescapable utterance in the formation of collectivities, two letters that involve alignment, affects, bodies, spatial boundaries and political realities.
The events are taking place at NGBK, once a month, between March and July 2013, together with Amelia Bande, Interflugs, Rubia Salgado, with members of NGBK and YES! Association/Föreningen JA!, all artists and activists with experience in collective ways of working and organising. Every event will result in a text, conceived as the act of a theater play. At the end of the series in December 2013, a theater play in five acts will be published and staged in cooperation with akademie der autodidakten (Ballhaus Naunynstraße).
The form of the play is inspired by “THE PEOPLEMOVER – A Demonstration Poem (1968)”, written by Mary Ellen Solt. THE PEOPLEMOVER is a collage of quotations from a variety of sources, reaching from historical records and political speeches to eyewitness accounts of demonstrations. The text brings up issues of political frustration, mistrust in institutions and the failure of democracy’s fundamental principles. WIR SPIELEN (WE PLAY) is inspired by the plurality of voices and their conflictive demands contained in the poem, as well as provoked by its patriotic belief in the US-American dream.
Which are the demands nowadays; who are the ones that will express them, who are the ones that will be heard the most and why? What are our possibilities for change and how are they shaped by our desires and personal interactions? Is collective work still a political standpoint? A marketing strategy? A failed project or a necessity for our survival?
A book accompanying the project will be published.
More information at www.wirspielen.net
Events:
Saturday, 16 March 2013,
Workshop
with Amelia Bande and the text “THE PEOPLEMOVER- A Demonstration Poem (1968)” by Mary Ellen Solt
at nGbK event space, 1st floor
MAR. 16–17
10h –17h
Two day workshop conceived around the reading and deconstruction of Mary Ellen Solt’s play “THE PEOPLEMOVER – A Demonstration Poem (1968)”. The workshop will be conducted by the NGBK-workgroup WIR SPIELEN (WE PLAY) and the Berlin based dramaturg Amelia Bande. Various collective and anti-authoritarian writing methods will be explored with the participants, with the intention of re-negotiating and composing a new Demonstration Poem for Act 1. In English
Tuesday, 23 April 2013, 18.30h,
Event / Act 2
with Interflugs
at nGbK event space, 1st floor
Interflugs and the Free Class is an autonomous, political, activist organization of students that since 1989, in the framework of the Universität der Künste (UdK) Berlin, comments, contradicts and reflects critically on (fine arts) education and university policy. The collective Interflugs offers teaching and learning alternatives outside of the institution, promotes self-organisation and is open for any kind of discussion, artistic discipline or self-educational initiative. At the moment Interflugs is in a process of reflection on whether self-organisation within a neoliberal university is still political. Act 2 will be written as a result of Interflugs’ interaction with the NGBK-workgroup WIR SPIELEN (WE PLAY).
www.interflugs.de
In German
Tuesday, 28 May 2013, 18.30h,
Event / Act 3
with Rubia Salgado
at nGbK event space, 1st floor
The point of departure for Act 3 builds upon arguments on the questions of migrant identities, strategic essentialism, and ensuing contradictions occurring from this. These arguments happen within maiz, a feminist and anti-racist self-organisation of migrants in Linz/Austria, in which Rubia Salgado has been cooperating since its establishment. Do migrants remain a group despite all differences? How can we act and negotiate with mainstream society equipped with our selfdefinition as migrants as strategically constructed identity without being consumed by the neoliberal utilitarian logics of diversity and without being pocketed as an alibi?
In German
Tuesday, 25 June 2013, 18.30h,
Event / Act 4
with the members of nGbK
at nGbK event space, 1st floor
With members of the nGbK and in collaboration with the Reiseagentur (Art Mediation NGBK: Birgit Auf der Lauer and Anja Bodanowitz).
This event is concerned with the different forms of togetherness within the NGBK. The New Society for Visual Arts (NGBK) is an art society with 850 members, people with different professions and ambitions. The members (we) are the ones that form the organisation, all projectrelated decisions are taken at a grass-roots level and realized jointly. What is the “we” within the institution? Which are the voices that speak in the NGBK? Act 4 will be written in the form of minutes. Who will write the minutes of this event?
In German
Neue Ebene…
Tuesday, 23 July 2013, 19-21h,
Event / Act 5
Meeting: Hermannstraße S-Bahn station in Berlin-Neukölln
“Zyklisches Gesellshaftsreise”
The YES! Association/Föreningen JA! hereby invites us on a cyclical trip on the Berlin Ringbahn. We will travel collectively and engage in our desire to make sense of “today” through looking, moving, conversing, and reading aloud.
Mary Ellen Solt’s point of reference for THE PEOPLEMOVER was the train that transported a fun-seeking crowd around Disneyland. This train was simply called The PeopleMover. For Solt The PeopleMover of Disneyland represented a world of fantasy, fake history, consumerism and political amnesia. Instead she wanted to locate The Peoplemover in the real world, in the USA of 1968, a nation transfixed by political degradation and in need of awaking. She envisioned The PeopleMover as a demonstration. We suggest to locate The PeopleMover in the public transport sphere of Berlin’s S-Bahn.
Sunday, 15 December 2013, 17 h,
book release
at the nGbK event space, 1st floor
“WIR SPIELEN (WE PLAY)”
Publisher: nGbK
ISBN: 978-3-938515-55-6
Sunday, 15 December 2013, 20 h,
Performance
at Ballhaus Naunynstraße
“WIR SPIELEN (WE PLAY) – A collective performance project”
Ballhaus Naunynstraße, Naunynstraße 27, 10997 Berlin
WIR SPIELEN (WE PLAY) is an artistic investigation on the topic of collectivities and the significance of the pronoun ‚we‘. As part of the project a series of events was organized in 2013. Throughout the five events a variety of textual material was produced and compiled. The text took the shape of a theater play and will now be published as a book. This script was consequently given to the akademie der autodidakten at Ballhaus Naunynstraße, who developed its staged version.
The performance will be shown again as part of the Festival der akademie der autodidakten at Ballhaus Naunynstraße in February 2014.
www.ballhausnaunynstrasse.de
In cooperation with
akademie der autodidakten / Kultursprünge im Ballhaus Naunynstraße GmbH