FREIRAUM FESTIVAL 2021 - RATIONALE
After 1,5 years of pandemic life, a new normal is taking shape, placing public health and biological survival at the centre of global discussions. Our daily habits, working practices, and social interactions have been subjected to the common priority of halting the propagation of the virus. A regulated way of life is acquiring a kind of seasonal pattern, with summers of controlled freedoms and winters of isolation and restricted movement. Despite the sacrifices, the end is not near, as talks about the day after the pandemic co-exist with new waves and new Covid variants.
In October 2020, the 1st Freiraum Festival & Online Summit offered a wide perspective of reflection on the emergent situation. A year later, the curated programme of the Freiraum Festival & Online Summit 2021 aims to delve deeper into some of the systemic issues the pandemic has revealed, and to question the amalgams of hope and pragmatism populating the in-between.
In October 2020, the 1st Freiraum Festival & Online Summit offered a wide perspective of reflection on the emergent situation. A year later, the curated programme of the Freiraum Festival & Online Summit 2021 aims to delve deeper into some of the systemic issues the pandemic has revealed, and to question the amalgams of hope and pragmatism populating the in-between.
Demo-Crisis and the Future of Protest
Session 1: 19 November 2021
Lockdowns, curfews, and surveillance tools have extended illiberal practices previously considered incompatible with a democratic and egalitarian public sphere. The social and economic costs of the management of the recent pandemic have befallen the least affluent, while producing gains for the richest – characteristically, Amazon tripled their profits during the pandemic. A biopolitical nexus, equipped with new, digital technologies enhanced an invigorated disparity and division. The coupled march of globalisation and private profit has proven immune to the virus, at the expense of democracy and equality, with the role of technology a critical but uncertain component.
New incursions of the digital into the sphere of collective human activity have restaged questions about modern media ecologies, which numerous theories and empirical studies since Habermas (1968) have attempted to interpret. Can the Internet, with its well-known problems of participation and access, substitute the "old" public sphere? Will it bring together arguments, defences, and consensus proposals, or will it become a place of fragmentation, where collective articulations come up against impossible barriers? The rise of new platforms and forms of social interaction in hybrid space offers glimmers of hope, making way for agile micro-movements capable of focused local impact. The ease with which social media allow the creation and sharing of engaging content has opened up new possibilities for viral protest, synchronising online activism with traditional actions, as seen in Indonesia, Myanmar, Malaysia and Thailand, in 2020 and 2021. New collective action possibilities emerge, especially for the generation now entering society, whose lifetime may have consisted of successive crises, but whose understanding of a hybrid reality is intuitive.
New incursions of the digital into the sphere of collective human activity have restaged questions about modern media ecologies, which numerous theories and empirical studies since Habermas (1968) have attempted to interpret. Can the Internet, with its well-known problems of participation and access, substitute the "old" public sphere? Will it bring together arguments, defences, and consensus proposals, or will it become a place of fragmentation, where collective articulations come up against impossible barriers? The rise of new platforms and forms of social interaction in hybrid space offers glimmers of hope, making way for agile micro-movements capable of focused local impact. The ease with which social media allow the creation and sharing of engaging content has opened up new possibilities for viral protest, synchronising online activism with traditional actions, as seen in Indonesia, Myanmar, Malaysia and Thailand, in 2020 and 2021. New collective action possibilities emerge, especially for the generation now entering society, whose lifetime may have consisted of successive crises, but whose understanding of a hybrid reality is intuitive.
New political subjectivities, social movements, and solidarities
Session 2: 19 November 2021
What are the emancipatory possibilities in a world of emergency injustice and medically prescribed disconnection? Alongside growing digitisation and artificial intelligence, many feel that performances of human culture and knowledge are ready to move beyond fixed categories, including the dominant anthropo-centric and gender paradigms.
Since gender mainstreaming constitutes the "light" aspect of current governmentality, the question at stake is how meaningful work and critical creativity can be understood in a post-feminist society. Femininity is carefully produced and regulated by the global industries of the imaginary, while neoliberal economy secures a "feminine citizenship" that benefits consumer culture in a capitalist labour market. The question is whether the development of artistic and cultural practices in contemporary consumer society and in the post-feminist aestheticisation of everyday life contradicts political action and consciousness.
On another front, we have been witnessing the recent resurgence of numerous examples of anti-LGBTI bias - from humiliation and torture practices under the pretext of curfew enforcement in Uganda and the Philipinnes, to Orban’s anti-trans legislation in Hungary, or the recent Polish law on the establishment of "LGBTI free zones". Looking ahead, towards healing and re-invention, new political blueprints are needed for turning the freshly exposed fault lines into grounds for assembly and resistance, and for leveraging technology to that end. In many countries, issues of trans-visibility are discussed more openly, signalling new levels of maturity in the debate, if not the early days of paradigmatic change. In Slovakia and elsewhere, parents of LGBTI+ children are raising their voices to protect their rights and respectful place in society. Critical pride in Madrid (Orgullo crítico), Free Pride Glasgow, and several small and mid-city queer movements are denouncing rainbow capitalism, commodification, and the reduction of their political fight to white, middle-class experiences. Feminist post-humanist perspectives offer to take us beyond the universal category of 'man', and towards greater consciousness of the links between today's health, social, and ecological disasters, and the extractive, colonial, and masculinist logics built into our centuries-old notions of 'humanity'. Can we speak about gender in a non-anthropocentric way? Could our current predicament open the way for new forms of radical trans-human equality?
Since gender mainstreaming constitutes the "light" aspect of current governmentality, the question at stake is how meaningful work and critical creativity can be understood in a post-feminist society. Femininity is carefully produced and regulated by the global industries of the imaginary, while neoliberal economy secures a "feminine citizenship" that benefits consumer culture in a capitalist labour market. The question is whether the development of artistic and cultural practices in contemporary consumer society and in the post-feminist aestheticisation of everyday life contradicts political action and consciousness.
On another front, we have been witnessing the recent resurgence of numerous examples of anti-LGBTI bias - from humiliation and torture practices under the pretext of curfew enforcement in Uganda and the Philipinnes, to Orban’s anti-trans legislation in Hungary, or the recent Polish law on the establishment of "LGBTI free zones". Looking ahead, towards healing and re-invention, new political blueprints are needed for turning the freshly exposed fault lines into grounds for assembly and resistance, and for leveraging technology to that end. In many countries, issues of trans-visibility are discussed more openly, signalling new levels of maturity in the debate, if not the early days of paradigmatic change. In Slovakia and elsewhere, parents of LGBTI+ children are raising their voices to protect their rights and respectful place in society. Critical pride in Madrid (Orgullo crítico), Free Pride Glasgow, and several small and mid-city queer movements are denouncing rainbow capitalism, commodification, and the reduction of their political fight to white, middle-class experiences. Feminist post-humanist perspectives offer to take us beyond the universal category of 'man', and towards greater consciousness of the links between today's health, social, and ecological disasters, and the extractive, colonial, and masculinist logics built into our centuries-old notions of 'humanity'. Can we speak about gender in a non-anthropocentric way? Could our current predicament open the way for new forms of radical trans-human equality?
Art in the Digital Public Sphere
Sessions 3 and 4 - 20 November 2020
In partnership with “State of the Arts” project in the context of Common Lab, a programme by Goethe-Institut and ArtBOX*
What positive and negative possibilities follow the arts' transition to the digital?
What is the new role of museums and art institutions in the current context?
Is the transition to the digital a triumph of resilience and art innovation or a defeat?
As Kittler notes, the media - old or new, analogue or digital, in the cloud or somewhere on earth - determine our situation. New semantic relationships, positioning the artwork alongside terms such as "hyper-text", "interactive", "simulated", "virtual" and "networked" are re-structuring our view of the artistic sphere. The "live arts", theatre, performance, installation art, and all other forms participatory, interactive and dialogic artistic practice, are searching for ways to deal with the absence of physical presence. What are the alternatives, beyond the documentation and online presentation of exhibitions and other events?
In addition to today's digital tools, the relationship between the artist, the artwork, and the audience is being transformed by new parameters of production and diffusion. The implications of a perpetual and continuous mediation (remediation) of content upon the formation of personal identities and collective communities remain to be seen. In the context of a cognitive capitalism, open ended and process-oriented practices interlink the intellectual work with the network (Moulier-Boutang). How do participatory art forms and social practices influence the formation of the "public"? Do exhibition practices that are redefined as "rituals" (Down to Earth, Berlin) change the modernist framework of the exhibition practice that Tony Bennett calls the "exhibitionary complex”? How do evolving media theories influence the practices of artists and the expectations of viewers / co-creators of the work of art?
* State of the Arts explores the ways contemporary art is produced, presented and received, as these have emerged during the Covid-19 pandemic crisis and the widespread closure of art spaces in the context of social distancing policies. With the contribution of artists, theorists, art critics, curators, policy makers and other agents active in the art world, and in collaboration with a network of institutions in Greece and abroad State of the Arts addresses crucial issues having to do with the ways in which the arts adapt or react to the challenges of the creation of a digital public sphere.
What is the new role of museums and art institutions in the current context?
Is the transition to the digital a triumph of resilience and art innovation or a defeat?
As Kittler notes, the media - old or new, analogue or digital, in the cloud or somewhere on earth - determine our situation. New semantic relationships, positioning the artwork alongside terms such as "hyper-text", "interactive", "simulated", "virtual" and "networked" are re-structuring our view of the artistic sphere. The "live arts", theatre, performance, installation art, and all other forms participatory, interactive and dialogic artistic practice, are searching for ways to deal with the absence of physical presence. What are the alternatives, beyond the documentation and online presentation of exhibitions and other events?
In addition to today's digital tools, the relationship between the artist, the artwork, and the audience is being transformed by new parameters of production and diffusion. The implications of a perpetual and continuous mediation (remediation) of content upon the formation of personal identities and collective communities remain to be seen. In the context of a cognitive capitalism, open ended and process-oriented practices interlink the intellectual work with the network (Moulier-Boutang). How do participatory art forms and social practices influence the formation of the "public"? Do exhibition practices that are redefined as "rituals" (Down to Earth, Berlin) change the modernist framework of the exhibition practice that Tony Bennett calls the "exhibitionary complex”? How do evolving media theories influence the practices of artists and the expectations of viewers / co-creators of the work of art?
* State of the Arts explores the ways contemporary art is produced, presented and received, as these have emerged during the Covid-19 pandemic crisis and the widespread closure of art spaces in the context of social distancing policies. With the contribution of artists, theorists, art critics, curators, policy makers and other agents active in the art world, and in collaboration with a network of institutions in Greece and abroad State of the Arts addresses crucial issues having to do with the ways in which the arts adapt or react to the challenges of the creation of a digital public sphere.