[artinfo] HKW presents Illiberal Arts

[e-flux]

Illiberal Arts

September 11-November 21, 2021

Exhibition, performances, workshops, publication

Curated by Anselm Franke and Kerstin Stakemeier

Art and its institutions find themselves at a 
turning point. Increasingly they are becoming 
venues for forces that call into question their 
equally exemplary and compensatory function as a 
realm of absolute freedoms. The irreversible loss 
of Western hegemony and the defensive struggle 
for liberal privileges and ownership rights are 
also tearing apart the modern special status of 
art. Institutions, exhibitions, and individual 
works are progressively becoming the focus of 
debates about colonial forms of violence and 
systemic exclusion, historical trauma and 
cultural reparations. The formalisms of modern 
and contemporary art more and more appear to be 
historically instituted constraints into which 
ways of living and practices, devalued over 
centuries, now break.

The exhibition Illiberal Arts presents more than 
20 new artistic productions that make desires and 
contradictions apparent, that remain unredeemable 
and inextricable, but in whose cracks horizons 
open up beyond the value form and confinement of 
art. Illiberal Arts locates artistic life's works 
at precisely those fractures within which the 
current dissolution of liberal promises of 
freedom and order intersect with a shift in 
perspective materialized in these practices 
themselves. Starting from very concrete 
dependencies, the assembled artistic forms of 
work are attempts to open up to non-artistic 
forms, to social processes.

For Illiberal Arts, artist Anne Imhof 
collaborated with the architectural firm sub to 
develop a spatial work that realigns our bodies 
along a shifted horizon. In addition to the 
acoustic works, installations, visual works and 
films shown in this structure, Illiberal Arts is 
accompanied by a series of live performances. 
With participating poets, workshops will 
demonstrate language as a material form of 
perception. The revisions of (art) history 
developed, for example, in the catalog essays 
will be located in the present by a podcast 
series and online seminars.

With contributions by Cassandra Press, Raven 
Chacon mit Candice Hopkins, Cut away, with 
effects (2021), Bill Dietz, Stephan Dillemuth, 
Övül Ö. Durmus¸og˜lu, Thomas Eggerer, Frank 
Engster, Ciarán Finlayson, keyon gaskin, Melanie 
Gilligan, Larne Abse Gogarty, Nicholas Grafia, 
Tamar Guimarães, Natascha Sadr Haghighian, Danny 
Hayward, Johanna Hedva, Ho Rui An, Anne Imhof, 
Pauline Curnier Jardin with the Feel Good 
Cooperative (Dana, Giuliana, Alexandra Lopez, 
Serena Olcuire, Gilda Star, Barby Valentina), 
Lisa Jeschke, Karrabing Film Collective, 
Aristilde Paz Justine Kirby, Anja Kirschner, Dani 
Leder, Jota Mombaça, Rosalind C. Morris, MYSTI, 
Jenny Nachtigall, Henrike Naumann, Fumi Okiji, 
Orakel, Ana Teixeira Pinto, Steve Reinke, Miko½aj 
Sobczak, Juliana Spahr, Jordan Strafer, Sunset 
Open Call (Kasi Althaus, Elena Peters Arnolds, 
Kathy Seitzinger Hepburn, Laura L. LePere, Aude 
Lèvere, Andrea Victoria Paradiso, Denise Pinnell, 
Christin Rothe, Suzie Sullivan, Amy Sutryn, 
Rosana VanHorn), Marina Vishmidt, Simone White, 
Philip Wiegard, Kandis Williams, Constantina 
Zavitsanos

A continuation of the Illiberal Arts project is 
planned for 2022/2023 in cooperation with the 
Ludwig Forum Aachen.

Publication
Illiberal Arts
Edited by Anselm Franke, Kerstin Stakemeier and 
Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin
PolYpeN, b_books

Part of Berlin Art Week
Sep 15, 2021, 8pm
Sex work'n'roll
Conversation with Pauline Curnier Jardin, 
Alexandra Lopez, Dr. Serena Olcuire and others
Special opening hours: 12-10pm

Performances and workshops
September 10, 2021, 8pm Performance with Miko½aj Sobczak and Nicholas Grafia
September 12, 2021, 3pm Workshop with Aristilde Paz Justine Kirby
September 12, 2021, 7pm Performance with Ho Rui An
September 24, 2021, 9pm Performance with keyon gaskin
October 30, 2021 Workshop with Simone White and Juliana Spahr
November 21, 2021 Workshop with MYSTI and Lisa 
Jeschke; workshop with Larne Abse Gogarty, Danny 
Hayward, Marina Vishmidt
Ten-week online workshop seminar with Cassandra Press
and much more

Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW)
John-Foster-Dulles-Allee 10
10557 Berlin
https://www.hkw.de/en/index.php