[artinfo] PUBLIC DAYS OF THE ASSEMBLY

[Geert Lovink]

PUBLIC DAYS OF THE ASSEMBLY

September 27th and 28th 2014, Hamburg (D), Kampnagel Theatre

http://the-art-of-being-many.net/

Topics:

	* Materiality and Decision
	* Timing and Breaks
	* Blockade and Panic
	* Vogue and Voodoo
	* Sound, Systems and Voices
	* Affects and Documents
	* Real Fictions

End of September 2014 artists, activists, 
researchers and participants from all over Europe 
and beyond will gather in Hamburg for an assembly 
of assemblies. Sharing experiences from 
real-democracy-movements and artistic 
experimentation they want to explore new ways of 
coming together: collective insights into the 
materiality, the timing, the agenda, the desires 
and the catastrophes of being many. At Kampnagel 
Internationale Kulturfabrik  geheimagentur and 
friends will build an assembly hall and a camp to 
host them. Here, the assembly will become a 
laboratory of itself: a collective of friends and 
strangers with many voices and bodies including 
those of ghosts and things.

Many of us will meet for the first time, but we 
all have something in common: We witnessed 
moments of assembling, which made the word 
’democracy' sound important again.  The 
square-squattings and neighbourhood-assemblies of 
the real-democracy-movement may not have brought 
about the political changes, we hoped for. But 
they have been the initial for a new art of being 
many.

Before the public assembly starts about 150 
people will meet in groups, to focus on the art 
of being many from different angles: materiality 
and decision, timing and breaks, blockades and 
panic, vogue and voodoo, sound, systems and 
voices, affects and documents, real fictions. 
(see the headers on the left for more 
information) Together they will prepare an 
assembly for about 400 people, that is going to 
last for two days from noon to midnight. Then - 
for the second two days of the conference - the 
assembly hall will be opened to the public. As an 
assembly of assemblies the conference is not 
meant to be a series of individual presentations, 
acts and keynotes. It is meant to focus on what 
can be done together. There is no audience, no 
performers, only those, who will be part of the 
assembly for these two days.  Just two days. Not 
the most important days in the history of 
anything or the breaktrough of a new aesthetics. 
No. We might just be sad together - thinking 
about lost battles. We might be very tired. But 
we will try to have an assembly just the way we 
like, for two days or for as long as it takes.

THE ART OF BEING MANY is a project by 
geheimagentur. It is also an experiment in 
collective curating. It is prepared by a large 
group of artists, activists and researchers from 
collectives like Embros Theatre Athen, Enmedio 
Barcelona, Gängeviertel Hamburg,  LIGNA, 
Megafonchor, Random People, Mobile Academy, Sweet 
and Tender, Showcase Beat le Mot, MACAO Milano, 
Teatro Valle Occupato, La Fundación de los 
Communes, Grupo de Choque and many others (see - 
the ever changing and never complete - Map of 
Assemblies).

in cooperation with: Assemblies and 
Participation. Urban Publics and Performative 
Arts. PHD Program, Kampnagel Internationale 
Kulturfabrik and Institut für Soziologie, 
Universität Hamburg.