2022/2023: The Art of Emergency I

  • ART RESIEDENCIES + INTERMISSIONS
  • thealit Arbeitszimmer 2022-23
  • St.-Jürgen-Str. 157/159, Bremen

  • → The Art of Emergency

The Intermission D of THE ART OF EMERGENCY in the Arbeitszimmer thealit St.- Jürgen-Str. 157/159 is given as a staged reading: Dorothea Koch comes to Bremen with "steht noch dahin" ("still stands to").

What is it about? "A personal trauma", "a staging for emergency situations". This goes back to a special management of emergency, one with full risk:

There was a fire. Dorothea Koch jumped from the third floor. "And what would happen if all my photos and books were burned?" she asked herself then and put together her favorite books. However, in a new emergency they would be much too heavy and too many. So nothing was more obvious than to compile quotations from these books, as a precaution, "which I could tuck under my arm or pack in my backpack in case of emergency. The results of such securing, fragmenting and reassembling measures can now be heard at thealit.

So says Alice in Wonderland. Actually a good advice, says Dorothea Koch, but hardly possible to follow it. Why else the stories that are always started anew and never quite finished? The stories of beginning: the myriad of creation stories. The stories of ending: the never-ending apocalypses ... 

All this read and narrated with texts by Marie-Luise Kaschnitz, Teju Cole, Dubravka Ugrešić, Alberto Manguel, Roger Willemsen, Chantal Akermann, Etel Adnan, Einar Schleef and others.

Dorothea Koch loves books, sometimes writes texts herself, lays out nets and catches them again, performs and stages (also in public spaces), deals with everyday culture and does research on things, helps build collective structures and moves in them, has worked with textiles, curated exhibitions, co-founded the artists' collective RHZ – Radical Handicraft Circle – , with a research group asked 100 questions to V.F, visited the Brandenburg Gate and the Berlin Zoo with Knut (the ice saint) (two tickets please, one adult and one polar bear), questioned the healing effect of cut flowers "Durch die Bluse" (“by/through the blouse"), explored properties of the rainbow, played with possibilities of masquerade and subculture, published a collection of texts about losses with A. Mayer, explored things of an Austrian attic with N. Noack, studied birds' nests and declared her mother's house a 24 hour museum. Dorothea Koch lives and works in relative safety mostly in Hamburg.

From February 13, the residency # 5 begins as part of THE ART OF EMERGENCY. Vicc Repasi and Dorsa Eidizadeh will then be dealing with a state of emergency, and an inverted one at that: The state of emergency, upside down. Does the title mean that an accidental state, a state and governement of emergency, has actually been floating upside down for a long time? That prevailing states of emergency should be better understood, 'turned upside down'? Not populations, but governments, indeed state systems, acutely in emergency? Vicc Repasi and Dorsa Eidizadeh put it this way:

"This is the moment to shout 

Shit is burning, falling the fuck apart 

It’s not 'over there' - it’s everywhere, influencing each other"

They declare: “The procrastination of the catastrophe will result in emergencies, and when the system is only prepared and planned for its own survival, catastrophes happen. This loop has caused the most damage to the minorities and marginalized groups who have always suffered the state violence, so to say living in the state of emergency is a daily practice for some.

Following the news these days from all around the world, one thing is particularly clear, and it’s the similarity in oppression. In the USA the right of abortion has been deprived, in Sweden, Hungary and Italy neo-fascists have been voted into power, in Germany the systematic and institutional racism towards Arabs, Muslims and Palestinian is vastly growing, in Iran, the brutal suppression of the protestors becomes the headline of the news every day. The list goes on. 

With a closer look at the situation, with all the efforts of people, horizontal groups and activists, it is becoming obvious that the state of emergency has been bottom up.

The state tries to shift and momentarily spread the fear and desperation somewhat 'successfully', only to have new hope arise the next day—organically, alive and braver than yesterday, turning the page again. Emergency reversed.

We will be looking at self-organisation, organising and planning, and search for empathy, solidarity and active imagination. Our focus will be on the contexts that we are familiar with, starting with our immediate surroundings. Trying to reverse the state of emergency here and now.”

Let's do some cartwheels with history!

…………………………

In Residency # 5 as part of THE ART OF EMERGENCY, Vicc Repasi and Dorsa Eidizadeh have an invitation coming up, to Arbeitszimmer thealit, St.-Jürgen-Str. 157/159, on Wednesday March 8, from 18:00. They write:

"A warm hello to all of you, comrades,

Things have been rough lately and we’ve experienced many difficult drawbacks. We felt helplessness, frustration and overwhelm from all the ongoing wars, an earthquake which had a devastating aftermath, resulting from unjust state policies that divide people and favour profit over well-being. We also saw more repressive and discriminatory laws being implemented with the rising wave of fascism. To form an opposition is urgent, and the fightback needs to happen on all levels. And as we never stop, we are constantly left in a state of emergency. The silver lining is that we have each other. A strong community is unstoppable.

March 8, the day to commemorate the transnational queer feminist and intersectional struggles against patriarchy and all of its productions, is coinciding with the end of our residency at thealit. During our time in the space, we’ve been carrying all these questions about self-organization, multi functional spaces, care work and community. About struggles and how to connect the grassroots resistance. 

To be able to keep up the fight, we also need to rest. Keeping that in mind, we would love to host you for an after demo get-together. We will be providing warm food and drinks and offer the thealit Arbeitszimmer as a space to decompress and recharge, and to together reflect on our experience of the demonstration and impressions of the day. We want to create a space to share our thoughts and emotions, whether excitement or disappointment, happiness, or anger, Or anything in between, or all of them at once. 

Looking forward to seeing you on the streets, and meeting after at Arbeitszimmer thealit!" 

a|head together!

Dorsa Eidizadeh is a trans-disciplinary artist, whose practice is revolving around community building, project-space initiation and care for its survival, and translation with a background in script writing. Dorsa is studying fine arts at the university of arts Bremen since 2017 with Andree Korpys and Markus Löffler and she has been active contributor to Cafe Lu, Radio Angrezi, circa 106 online publication and From the A project space and etc. 

Dorsa is dealing in her practice with the notion of language and silence in the face of massive propaganda machines, institutionalization and narrativization of the past, and she looks for ways. In which one could reclaim a voice both by the active refusal to speak and shouting ones demands upon their will and she focuses on transnational solidarity that unravels how different struggles intertwine.


Vicc Repasi is an artist interested in power dynamics, with their recent work focusing on internalisation processes of dominant narratives, and its influence on behavioural and thinking patterns. They also have an interest in politics, organisation and organisational structures, and have spent some time infiltrating bureaucracy. Lately they are moving towards more intangible formats of making and enjoy setting up moments in time, with previous experience in performance, installation and sound. 

Vicc is a member of Relationsinstitutet, an association founded around the belief that relationships, not the individual, are the foundation of our world, and that normative approaches to relationships can and should be questioned. Vicc is also part of the organisational team of circa106, a student-run and self-organised project space located in Bremen.

Ana Patiño creates from Friday, February 10 to Sunday, February 12 the Intermission C of the program THE ART OF EMERGENCY in the Arbeitszimmer thealit, St. Jürgen Str. 157/159 in Bremen with a workshop on fear. "Let's talk about fear" she writes, as if it were about "Let's talk about sex, baby ..." and that's possibly what it's about, too, if you risk a close look at the words that form a kind of motto of the workshop:

"Paralyzing fear

                       The fear that pulls your feet under the bed

The fear to which you must listen to it very carefully

                                       The fear that leads to action

                      The intermittent presence that we share 

Those who do not participate in the workshop, but are curious and want to approach "Fear", can pass by the windows of Arbeitszimmer thealit during Sunday, February 12, and see an exhibition of visual creations from the preceding days of the workshop.

  • Ana Patiño writes in opening remarks: "The current situation of multiple crisis and emergencies are difficult to bear. Due to them the uncertainty of individual existence appears intensified on the surface.
  • The workshop idea is to use the emotion of Fear as a theme, experiment with it and deconstruct it in a symbolic way. By giving it a form, presence and evidence appear.

It is not about of not being afraid, it is about to engage it in the conversation and perhaps playing with it.

Fear is a fundamental part of the feelings that many of us share sometimes secretly. To face them collectives and social networks might be a key.

Fear has the ability to makes us run away or give us the strength to help someone in danger. It is indispensable to our existence and in times of crisis and emergencies it is best not to take fear for granted."

Ana Patiño is a multi-disciplinary artist, born in Colombia and currently works and lives in Germany. She studied fine arts in Bogotá and completed a master’s degree in digital media at the HFK Bremen. She structures her work by using the subtle humor that is produced by the idea of fiction and reality. By being a spectator of her own internal processes and the relationships within the neoliberal system she questions verticality and objectivity in relation with mental health and emotions.

Reality and fiction often change their shape and stand in mutual tension. These partly parallel, partly overlapping, fine ridges are guidelines of her artistic process. Her method is like a rhizome - growing and dividing horizontally. It determines the course of her work. She resorts to the medium of video, which allows her to manipulate time.

Art Residency #4

Maria Arzt will start her Art Residency #4 at Arbeitszimmer thealit Monday, Jan. 16—until Thursday, Feb. 9—with her project Sometimes in the same place. It's about violence in war and representations of Because the violence can not always be considered as located somewhere else, but is "sometimes in the same place" as you, at the latest when the own security must be vehemently emphasized. De facto, 'crisis' tends to be normalized as a permanent condition. Questions of solidarity and life design quickly erode into a mere question of the best possible survival.

Maria Arzt is "concerned with simultaneities of different perceptions of security, as well as their coincidence in medial mediation. A flow of media representations of violence proclaims a permanent state of crisis that questions the meanings of 'war', 'stability' and 'elsewhere'. This flow will be slowed down and examined more closely, as well as tensions and different modes of mediation."

Sometimes in the same place is exploring its possibilities as a physical space to hold, connect or superimpose different urgencies, priorities and frames of reference. It is a space that is both public and private. 

Maria Arzt will start working with tensions, densities, and frequencies of different kinds—to make tension tangible as something to work and interact with, not merely bear, hold or stage.

As she puts it, "The goal is to have something with which we can confront in a concrete way issues such as the transmissibility of violent medial landscapes, frames of reference to different 'folds,' and 'our time,' which is assumed to be expiring but historically held in recursivity. If 'history is a loop,' 'the future' is tubular-but whose time is it?"

Maria Arzt is an artist with a background in care-work and social science. S[he is studying Fine Arts at HfK Bremen since October 2020.

A goal of t[her artistic practise is sketching new fields of action, togetherness and imaginaries through tracing their current barriers and layers, examining their permeability by touch.

For this s[he is employing installation, sculpture, writing, sound and video in engaging with representability and materiality, subjectivation and culture production as well as dis-placements and signs.

Since March 2022 s[he is co-organizing the international, student-run project space “Circa 106” and is involved in volunteer and activist spaces in Bremen. Emancipatory cultural work is part of the artistic practise s[he is aiming to build, understanding t[her art-works to be part of a politics of culture.

…………………………

Here comes an invitation to the Open Studio Day at the end of Maria Arzt's Residency #4 at Arbeitszimmer thealit, St. Jürgen Str. 157/159, Bremen.

On Wednesday, February 8, Maria Arzt will open the space for visitors under the title "Creating Tensions", from 13:00-15:00, continuing at 17:00 with the performance >Atlasbefreiung< and talk. End of the Open Studio Day will be at 21:00. "It is a space with different gradients of tension/pressure and the possibility of negotiating this," be communicated, and thus there is something to "do" actively, in this space … in THE ART OF EMERGENCY..

Gabriela Valdespino and Noëlle BuAbbud create Intermission B in The Art of Emergency at Arbeitszimmer thealit, St. Jürgen Str. 157/159, Bremen. There is no German title for this public part of a block seminar on January 14, 19:30, but a Spanish/Arabic/English one:

Language of the seminar will be English, but—don't worry—translations back and forth between German, English, also Spanish and Arabic will be possible. If we put this title provisionally into automatic translation software, whirring overlays will result: 

"we feel the future escape (repetition of the free fall)

we felt the future decrease (repeated free fall)

we felt the future slipping together (a repetition of free fall)"

Unless the results of such kind of translation are discarded as absurd, it seems to emerge that the title lines in three languages are not meant to articulate the same thing—as they alternate between present and past tense, that as well "future escapes" as a "future escape" is denoted, and it remains uncertain how "we" and "together" relate to such "future". Is a significant sliding into the abyss of meaning set in operation, in repetition of the free fall of the familiar real? Anyhow, Noelle BuAbbud and Gabriela Valdespino propose a collaborative exploration based on their experiences of emergency and collapse in Lebanon and Venezuela: "We observe the shifts in the capitalist era when disasters began to accumulate—like collapses of financial markets.To analyze and sharpen our sense-making in the face of emergency, we will seek to connect our cultural experiences and creative backgrounds through research, writing, somatic exercises, sound experiments and visual collages."

untitled, 2023 Noelle BuAbbud

Specifically, regarding the seminar in thealit workroom, "We present a convergence of our audiovisual mappings, a testimony of parallel accumulations of collapse that mediate between external and internal experiences. The exchange between Gabriela's audio part and Noëlle's video parts acts as a complement to each other's absence (for Gabriela a missing visual archive of Venezuela, for Noëlle an auditory lack in relation to Lebanon). We engage in tracing our past premonition after the fact." 

Slime moulds, include 900 -1500 species - research is still divided -, only certain is: it is not fungi in the true sense, because these amazing creatures combine properties of fungi and animals. A slime mould in a natural environment, for example, lives on rotting wood or in mold and consists of protoplasm with many cell nuclei, sometimes several billion. In a hitherto largely unexplained way, these microorganisms, which can grow to several square meters under laboratory conditions, exhibit intelligent behavior: they seem to remember, think and actively decide, as is evident from their locomotion to food sources. In any case, they are only apparently fragile in their soft, gelatinous body, because in the tens of millions of years of their existence they must have successfully survived many emergency situations ...

Jana Piotrowski writes: "Thinking with Slime Mould" is an attempt to take a step out of the human perspective and to establish careful relationships. The Slime Mould (Physarum Polycephalum) is a single-celled creature that acts as a collective body, remembering, carrying knowledge into the system, and connecting with other organisms. Through pulsating movements, the Slime Mould orients itself in the environment, scans it and leaves traces that are legible to it. Where are memories stored and how do biological entities make decisions together? How does the Slime Mould perceive the world?"

Jana Piotrowski will dedicate her residency time to the slime mould and invites you into Arbeitszimmer thealit on three dates to follow in its tracks and those of some queer/ feminist thinkers. The thinking about and with the slime mold can be approached by all curious people on January 7, 10 and 12, 2023.

Also a look at thealit at Instagram thealit_fkl is recommended, because for the time of her residency it's Takeover Jana Piotrowski. 

Jana Piotrowski is a freelance artist and studies in the Meisterschüler:inklasse with Ingo Vetter at the HfK Bremen.

'Yes, where do we think?,' ask at the turn of the year

Jana Piotrowski invites you to the project "Thinking with Slime Mould". On 3 dates it is about getting closer to the amazing slime mold, an almost unimaginable creature: at thealit Arbeitszimmer, St. Jürgen Str. 157/159 in Bremen. Jana Piotrowski writes:

ChipPraxistipp

I'll be in the workroom and you're welcome to visit me from 5pm, make yourself comfortable in the reading corner and read, browse or take home a slime mould yourself if you like (for instructions and building an environment for your Slime Mould on the Petri dish we'll meet at 7pm) I'll be serving porridge and beer, the Slime Mould's favorite!

I invite you to a guided meditation/body journey (with 3-8 people) where we connect with the Slime Mould's network and get closer to him*her*it. Through pulsating movements the Slime Mould orients itself in the environment, scans it and leaves traces that are readable for it. A slippery journey, without a brain, in friendship with the water, the darkness and the earth. Please bring comfortable clothes!

With registration:

jana-pi(at)web.de 

You can also come spontaneously, we'll see if a place is available.

Afterwards the Arbeitszimmer thealit is open for everyone, starting at 8 pm. 

I'm looking forward to seeing you!"

ChipPraxistipp

In thealits program "The Art of Emergency" will take place between the residencies events, the Intermissions: Lectures, performances, installations and more. The first Intermission will be held by Sulme & Jae-Nder Fluid as a lecture plus discussion, showing a new video work, on a fundamental question of the Korean collective, that of ways of critical escape from threatening emergencies. Come to thealit, St. Jürgen Straße 157/159 in Bremen on Saturday, December 17 at 18:30 - and think with us! In the words of the artists, it sounds like this: 

"Are evasion and flight from something unknown threatening, as often assumed, a cowardly act that brings no solution? As individuals, we encounter situations in which we are either directly or indirectly forced to decide—to belong or not to belong, to resist or to integrate: We encounter such situations every day in direct confrontation; we are not talking here about theoretical analysis but immediate concreteness. 

Often, the choices made in these conflicts have the effect of strengthening or weakening or even changing our self-image. Do we define who we are, or do the choices we make decide who we are? Are we prepared for them, or at least aware of how the decision will affect us? 

When we feel pressured to choose something whose consequences are unclear and far-reaching, it feels threatening. Evasion is not only avoidance, but also an act that leads us to seek a temporary refuge in which we protect ourselves."

Sulme & Jae-Nder Fluid (Yeosulme Kang und Jaehwa Baek) is a collective duo at the intersection of individual practices and the social discourses. Their individual practices involve the narratives spoken from utopian and dystopian perspectives on various social discourses in a marginalized society.

Come, flee with us...

The Art Residency #2 at Arbeitszimmer thealit on THE ART OF EMERGENCY starts on November 21 with Ariane Litmeyer's project "More traces might surface"—ongoing until December 16. That's what it's supposed to be about:

The emergence of long-forgotten artifacts is, along with dying fish and forest fires, probably one of the most obvious consequences of the drought caused by climate change. What was previously hidden unseen at the bottom of rivers or lakes is reappearing. Ariane Litmeyer writes: "In recent months in Texas, for example, 113-million-year-old dinosaur tracks have resurfaced, brought to light again by extreme weather conditions in a dried-up riverbed. At that time it was—according to present knowledge—an asteroid and its devastating consequences that ended the life of the dinosaurs after 150 million years. Also so-called 'Hungersteine', which are actually hidden in the river bed or on water bottoms, come to light in many places. These stones have been placed for several hundred years to mark the water levels—often they are marked with a year or even with inscriptions of warning: Emergency. The low-water engravings are bearers of history, reminders, heralds of doom, bad omens in many places. What the famine stones and the dinosaur bones have in common is that they are testimonies of historical catastrophes and part of a meteorological chronicle—and that quite obviously. But what do we do with the knowledge linked to these finds? We live in an illusion of continuity and reliability, even if scientific forecasts and social developments paint a clearly different picture. 'Climate, Crisis, Archaeology' was the title of a conference of the German Archaeological Institute this year. This arrangement, which still leaves out the wars and social upheavals of our time, shows that Emergency is bogged down in the arrangement. Crises are everyday occurrences. Through distraction, powerlessness, repression and the habit of emergency/state of emergency, we hardly notice the creeping apocalypse, because it does not affect us in everyday life—after all, it is not four horsemen who perform a one-day work, but a doom that stalks over decades."

excited to see what will emerge....

Ariane Litmeyer invites to the end of her Art Residency #2 to an open studio on Thursday, Dec. 15, starting at 7 pm.

  • at thealit Arbeitszimmer
  • St.-Jürgen-Straße 157-159
  • Bremen.

The Art of Emergency will be especially related to the current protests in Iran—and her project "new traces might surface" interpreted in this sense. When does emergency begin, when does resistance begin? An electric utility box in a street, the "Revolution Street", in Tehran today reveals the trace of a protest from 2017—it was the platform of a protester who waved her headscarf in the air on a stick. Today, a mounted roof made of sheet metal is supposed to make this place inaccessible to people as a precaution.

Faza-ye'adi is the title of Ariane Litmeyer's invitation to the open studio, meaning "ordinary space". She writes: "It seems, get used to everything, even perpetual emergency. Where does crisis begin, where does everyday life end, and is that negotiable?" She is concerned with the "emergence and apparent habituation of or to artifacts of the perpetual state of emergency." The "open studio" format offers an opportunity for exchange and a snapshot of an artistic process.

…………………

Ariane Litmeyer was born in Jever in 1988 and graduated her studies in design and fine art at Hochschule für Künste Bremen. In 2021 she completed her master's degree with Andree Korpys and Markus Löffler. Her works are conceptual and interdisciplinary. She works with diverse forms of media whereat the form follows the subject of a work and guides the artistic implementation. Political and social issues—such as the impact of established power structures on social contexts and subjects—are her main interests. They can be seen through all of her work.

Collective interactions are an essential part of her artistic work. Since 2016 Ariane Litmeyer is working together with the artist Anna-Lena Völker. The artist duo uses different materials and forms of media in their installations. They understand their practice as a focused exploration of contemporaneity. Thereby they draw on post-structural thinking in their analysis. This can also be seen in their artistic statement: “It is the interplay of weight and weightlessness, which we concern ourselves with—that out of every formed entity, a contradiction seems to develop, that the pattern of our actions reflects the pattern of a fly, which then reminds one of a wasp. In an apparent specious authenticity, which is ‘not the same’, ‘but quite’, we create waiting rooms and wait ourselves.” Ariane Litmeyer is also part of the artist collective ELAF. Since 2019 she is working together with Jan Charzinski on the history of the city Jever based on the biography of Fritz Levy. 

This text by Paule Potulski, who will begin the series of residencies on THE ART OF EMERGENCY from Oct. 24 - Nov. 17 at Arbeitszimmer thealit, asks about temporality – in dealing with one's own and other deaths, also about fatal congealment versus a finality that becomes conscious.

Paule Potulski will start The Art of Emergency with death

  • when something changes
  • there must be space for change
  • therefore she will
  • expand the exhale
  • let the air out
  • make herself empty
  • until the end
  • to open up space
  • for something
  • different

  • And invites you to various games that continue her questioning.

This evening is reserved for another game. Paule Potulski invites the Artist Vafa Aminikia to a game of life and death.

Seed planter is an interactive work, that for lack of a better word could be thought of as a machine or a game.

Further details on the mechanism of the game/machine cannot be stated, since for the game/machine to function more profoundly each participant shall enter the circle with minimum ideas and presumptions about what will happen.

Paule Potulski invites to the end of her residency in the Arbeitszimmer thealit, in St. Jürgen Straße 157/159, Bremen

"I will simply be there and am happy about farewell visits. During this time, a small booklet of texts has now been created (or is in the process of being created), which I will leave in the study, for the artist following there. In addition, one of the werewolves games by Lui Kohlmann and Katharina Dacrés will be auctioned among the visitors. The proceeds will go in shares to the artists (10 euros) and everything above that will be donated to the Verein Sterbehilfe."

The "booklet" in black and white, maybe with more black than white, will contain own short texts and literary quotations - about death. For Paule Potulski's working time during the residency started from the end, as she put it, "with death" and is not over with this retrograde beginning. 

Dates and events

Arbeitszimmer:
2024/2025: Re Capitulating. queer
2023/2024: The Art of Emergency II
2022/2023: The Art of Emergency I
18.11.2022: Zu Gast: Heimat und Welt – Otthon és Világ,
2021/2022: COAPPARATION (Teil 3) Atelierstipendien
2020/2021: COAPPARATION (Teil 2) Atelierstipendien
Februar bis Mai 2020: Programm im Rahmen von Fluidity
2019/2020: COAPPARATION (Teil 1)
2018/2019: Debate! Performing Antagonisms - Part 2
2016/2017: DEBATTERIE! Antagonismen aufführen - Teil 1
Lesung Queer Story 27.01.2016
The Wildes - A Victorian Salon, 7.10.2015
Buchpräsentation ***quite queer*** 16.12.2014
Vortrag: Vom 'Freudenmädchen' zur 'Sexarbeit' - 02. Juni 2014
Lesung Queer Strory 28.11.2013
>Schutzraum< Lesegruppe - Juni-September 2013
Archival Activism: Zanele Muholi & Dagmar Schultz in dialogue, 22.01.2013
Lesung: Träume Digitaler Schläfer, Do. 10.05.2012
quite queer Lesegruppe, Juni 2011-September 2012
Szenische Lesung, 03.03.2011
Forschungsprojekte: Was ist Verrat?, 10.2010-01.2011
Lesegruppe "Was ist Verrat?" April 2010-Januar 2011
Buchpräsentation: Nervenkostüme, 20.02.2010
MARS PATENT - space for free, 04.12.2009-12.02.2010
Streikladen, 15.06.-20.07.2009