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Wednesday 24 February to Sunday 28 February

School of Resistance: A Film and Discussion Series

Examining the Conditions of Global Art Production in General and the Artistic Strategies of the IIPM In Particular.

Wednesday 24 February to Sunday 28 February

NTGent presents Schol of Resistance: A film and discussion series livestreaming on the global, commons-based peer produced HowlRound TV network at howlround.tv from Wednesday 24 February to Sunday 28 February 2021.

In search of strategies of resistance, Milo Rau, the IIPM (International Institute of Political Murder) and the NTGent have founded the global network “School of Resistance”, a series of debates streamed live, in May 2020. This symbolic institution for the future is coming to the Akademie der Künste in Berlin to examine aesthetic practices of resistance. Critically reflecting on existing projects, activists and artists discuss art as a transformative practice that shapes and creates realities.

Milo Rau and the IIPM have been working on and through the internal contradictions of global capitalism for almost 15 years through installations, plays, films, books and political interventions. Interweaving activism and art leads to an expansion of the range of artistic strategies and, at the same time, contributes to the progressive dissolution of the boundaries of the concept of art. How can art react to states of crisis? How can it contribute to strategies of resistance? Six cinematic works by Milo Rau are the starting point for this investigation: The Last Days of the Ceausescus (2009/10), The Moscow Trials (2014), The General Assembly (2017), The Congo Tribunal (2017), Orestes in Mosul (2020) and The New Gospel (2020). In reflecting back on these works, the “School of Resistance” at the Akademie der Künste examines the conditions of global art production in general and the artistic strategies of the IIPM in particular.

Wednesday 24 February

School of Resistance - Opening
General Assembly (2017)

8 a.m. PST (San Francisco, UTC -8) / 11 a.m. EST (New York, UTC -5) / 4 p.m. GMT (London, UTC +0) / 5 p.m. CET (Berlin, UTC +1).

As part of the digital conference and film series "School of Resistance", the IIPM/Milo Rau is attempting for the first time to look back on almost 15 years of work in-between art and activism. The film series begins with the documentation of the General Assembly, which took place in Berlin in 2017. The General Assembly of the first world parliament in history at the Schaubühne was followed by a controversial „Sturm auf den Reichstag“ under the motto "A democracy for everything and everyone", which was also attended by members of the Bundestag itself. Today in particular, the question arises: Is an utopian image production a possible template for opposing political formations? Together with academy member Georg Seeßlen and Kathrin Röggla, Vice-President of the Academy of the Arts, Milo Rau will discuss the entanglement of activism and art based on General Assembly (2017). Who uses and who benefits from the images of artistic interventions?

Film screening followed by discussion
The Last Days of the Ceausescus (2009/10)

10 a.m. PST (San Francisco, UTC -8) / 1 p.m. EST (New York, UTC -5) / 6 p.m. GMT (London, UTC +0) / 7 p.m. CET (Berlin, UTC +1)

Video archive not available.

The images of the sentencing and execution of the Ceausescu couple on Christmas Day 1989 have burned themselves into the collective unconscious of several generations of television viewers. In the winter of 2009/10, the IIPM brought this event of the fall of communism with 16 actors in Romanian to numerous stages in Romania, Germany and Switzerland. Based on original video documents and witness accounts, the last and most famous show trial in European history was reenacted. The project resulted in a court case against the institute by the last living son of the dictator couple. A broad discussion about the freedom of art and the handling of history began, which has not diminished in intensity to this day. Because of the trial - and despite its nomination for the Prix de Soleure, among others - the film made at that time has rarely been made accessible to the public.
The panel following the screening will discuss possibilities of reconstructing and representing the past as well as artistic strategies of intervention in the present. Together with Eyal Weizmann (Forensic Architecture), Andrei Ujica (director of "Videograms of a Revolution"), Silvia Sasse (historian) and Academy member Matthias Lilienthal (curator), Milo Rau questions the strategy of re-enactment as a means of coming to terms with the past and the present.

Thursday 25 February

"The (Im)possible Art"
8 a.m. PST (San Francisco, UTC -8) / 11 a.m. EST (New York, UTC -5) / 4 p.m. GMT (London, UTC +0) / 5 p.m. CET (Berlin, UTC +1).

Together with the philosopher Juliane Rebentisch, Milo Rau talks about art as a transformative, reality-creating practice: can art intervene in social orders to question, overturn or even tear them down? Does engaged art herald the future - or is it merely a substitute and melancholic remnant of revolts that have already failed in realpolitik? How can art contribute to strategies of resistance?

Film screening followed by discussion
IN GERMAN
The Moscow Trials (2014)

10 a.m. PST (San Francisco, UTC -8) / 1 p.m. EST (New York, UTC -5) / 6 p.m. GMT (London, UTC +0) / 7 p.m. CET (Berlin, UTC +1)

Video archive not available.

The pictures of the show trial against "Pussy Riot" went through all the media. Because of a 5-minute performance in the Moscow Cathedral of the Saviour, three of the activists of "Pussy Riot" were finally sentenced to 2 years in prison. As a theatre production, The Moscow Trials (2013) traced the history of a state and church-orchestrated campaign against inconvenient artists - using the means of political theatre. A courtroom is set up in the Sakharov Centre in Moscow, where the exhibition "Beware, Religion" took place, which was destroyed in 2003. In a staged show trial with the most important exponents of the Russian culture war, "art" is pitted against "religion", the "dissident" against the "true" Russia. In the style of an open-ended courtroom drama, in cross-examinations, pleas and the arguments on the sidelines of the trial, a disturbing and contradictory picture of today's Russia emerges: Does Putin's cultural policy violate freedom of expression and human rights? Or is art hurting the feelings of the believers? Who is the aggressor, who the defender?
The post-screening discussion explores the potential of artistic strategies as acts of revolt. Curator and dramaturge Florian Malzacher discusses together with Andres Veiel (documentary filmmaker) the possibility of resistant art and its limits based on the Moscow Trials.

Friday 26 February

Aesthetics of Resistance - Part I
7 a.m. PST (San Francisco, UTC -8) / 10 a.m. EST (New York, UTC -5) / 3 p.m. GMT (London, UTC +0) / 4 p.m. CET (Berlin, UTC +1)

As activists and artists, Edouard Louis, Geoffroy de Lagasnerie and Milo Rau discuss the possibilities and contradictions of engaged art in three short podcasts. What role do documentation and truth play in the face of an unbounded conception of art? Should art merely depict reality - or change it? Is art conceivable as a hermetic space - or deeply enmeshed in social events? How can art contribute to strategies of resistance?

In the first conversation, especially the contradictions of the bourgeois representation regime and the distribution logics of the artistic field are problematised. The transcribed conversation will be published as a book by "Arche Editeurs" and is the basis for a production by Milo Rau together with Édouard Louis.

Transnational (In)justice
8 a.m. PST (San Francisco, UTC -8) / 11 a.m. EST (New York, UTC -5) / 4 p.m. GMT (London, UTC +0) / 5 p.m. CET (Berlin, UTC +1)

In search of strategies of resistance, the IIPM/Milo Rau founded a globally networked School of Resistance as a livestream debate series in May 2020. In this tradition, the lawyer and deputy legal director of the ECCHR Miriam Saage-Maaß, the curator and artist Lara Staal and the political scientist Surer Mohamed will discuss the possibilities, conditions and problems of transnational justice together with the dramaturge Kasia Wojcik. How can the disputes about global justice be dealt with by aesthetic means, but also scientifically and legally? What would a global jurisdiction mean? Are artistic projects like the "Congo Tribunal" groundbreaking for creating utopian spaces of possibility for a new law?

Film screening followed by discussion
The Congo Tribunal (2017)

10 a.m. PST (San Francisco, UTC -8) / 1 p.m. EST (New York, UTC -5) / 6 p.m. GMT (London, UTC +0) / 7 p.m. CET (Berlin, UTC +1)

No video archive available for this event.

In their film The Congo Tribunal (2017), IIPM/Milo Rau illuminate the background to the war in the Great Lakes region, which has been going on for 20 years and has already claimed over 6 million lives. The number of rebel armies involved may be inscrutable - even more inscrutable are the arms dealers operating in the supply lines, the role of foreign diplomats and humanitarian aid organisations, but also the involvement of multinational mining companies. Due to the direct or indirect involvement of all the major powers of our time, the Congo war is also considered a "Third World War" and one of the decisive economic distribution battles in the age of globalisation.
The Congo Tribunal draws a humanly harrowing, analytically profound tableau of the neocolonial world order. In the post-screening discussion, Celine Tshizena, one of the directors of the Congo Tribunals, will discuss the conditions of global art production and the significance of artistic strategies of resistance with the curator and journalist Dorothee Wenner and the sociologist Harald Welzer. In particular, they shed light on the founding of symbolic institutions: How effective are artistic interventions? Whose struggle is it actually about? Who ultimately puts themselves in danger?

Saturday 27 February

Aesthetics of Resistance - Part II
7 a.m. PST (San Francisco, UTC -8) / 10 a.m. EST (New York, UTC -5) / 3 p.m. GMT (London, UTC +0) / 4 p.m. CET (Berlin, UTC +1)

As activists and artists, Edouard Louis, Geoffroy de Lagasnerie and Milo Rau discuss the possibilities and contradictions of engaged art in three short podcasts. What role do documentation and truth play in the face of an unbounded concept of art? Should art merely depict reality - or change it? Is art conceivable as a hermetic space - or deeply enmeshed in social events? How can art contribute to strategies of resistance?

In the second conversation, the intertwining of activism and art will be discussed. How do civil society actors contribute to an expansion of artistic strategies? To what extent does engaged art lead to the dissolution of the boundaries of the concept of art? The transcribed conversation will be published as a book by "Arche Editeurs" and is the basis for a production by Milo Rau together with Édouard Louis.

Can there be a global art?
8 a.m. PST (San Francisco, UTC -8) / 11 a.m. EST (New York, UTC -5) / 4 p.m. GMT (London, UTC +0) / 5 p.m. CET (Berlin, UTC +1)

Lebanese director Rabih Mroué and other guests discuss the challenges of global art production in conversation with Milo Rau. Can there be a global art? Where does a global approach (such as Schlingensief's Opera Village or Milo Rau's Orest in Mossul) tip over into neo-colonial formations of a self-righteous, Eurocentric concept of art? How can artists use their privileged position for global solidarity? Artistic strategies can frame already existing activism and (thereby) make it more visible. And yet the preconditions and realisation of global solidarity are always contradictory: who brings in the relevant (experiential) knowledge? Whose struggle is at stake and how can it be supported? Who uses and who benefits from the images of artistic interventions?

Film screening followed by discussion
Orest in Mosul (2020)

10 a.m. PST (San Francisco, UTC -8) / 1 p.m. EST (New York, UTC -5) / 6 p.m. GMT (London, UTC +0) / 7 p.m. CET (Berlin, UTC +1)

No video archive available for this event.

How can a crime be atoned for without provoking new violence? Can a person who has been oppressed and tortured for years by the "Islamic State" forgive his tormentor? As in the "Oresteia", Aeschylus' ancient trilogy and founding myth of Western civilisation, the tragic hero Orest also ends up before a tribunal in Mosul: an attempt to break the endless cycle of revenge killings with the introduction of a modern legal system. A multilingual ensemble with European and Iraqi actors, an Iraqi drama school class, musicians and amateurs talk about themselves and their lives in a destroyed city.
The post-screening discussion takes up the central question of the theatre and film work: How can a crime be atoned for without provoking new violence? In which compulsions of repetition do we entrap ourselves again and again? The panel also turns to the challenges of global art production: How can "global realism", as an artistic programme of IIPM/Milo Rau, avoid merely repeating the depicted relationships of violence and dependency? How can global art be equitable and sustainable? In a discussion with the cultural theorist and writer Klaus Theweleit, the theatre author Mohammad Al Attar and the Iraqi-German actress Susana AbdulMajd, the conditions of global art production will be questioned as well as the significance of artistic strategies of resistance.

Sunday 28 February

Aesthetics of Resistance - Part III
7 a.m. PST (San Francisco, UTC -8) / 10 a.m. EST (New York, UTC -5) / 3 p.m. GMT (London, UTC +0) / 4 p.m. CET (Berlin, UTC +1)

As activists and artists, Edouard Louis, Geoffroy de Lagasnerie and Milo Rau discuss the possibilities and contradictions of engaged art in three short podcasts. What role do documentation and truth play in the face of an unbounded concept of art? Should art merely depict reality - or change it? Is art conceivable as a hermetic space - or deeply enmeshed in social events? How can art contribute to strategies of resistance?

The third talk will discuss how to "break out of the cave": How can activists and artists together, as experts of change, build a repertoire (and archive) of strategies of resistance? How do we manage to remain capable of action and to intervene in real terms? The transcribed conversation will be published as a book by "Arche Editeurs" and is the basis for a production by Milo Rau together with Édouard Louis.

Die Revolte der Würde - The Revolt of Dignity
8 a.m. PST (San Francisco, UTC -8) / 11 a.m. EST (New York, UTC -5) / 4 p.m. GMT (London, UTC +0) / 5 p.m. CET (Berlin, UTC +1)

In search of strategies of resistance, the IIPM/Milo Rau founded a globally networked School of Resistance as a livestream debate series in May 2020, which now has a dozen international "lectures". In this series, the writer and activist Yvan Sagnet, the philosopher Lorenzo Marsili and the activist Luca Casarini discuss contradictions of global capitalism and the corresponding efforts to resist unbearable suffering and oppression. In the film The New Gospel (2020) by IIPM/Milo Rau, Yvan Sagnet, as a Jesus figure, leads a movement for the rights of refugees who came to Europe via the Mediterranean Sea, only to end up being enslaved in tomato fields in southern Italy. The panel reflects on this "revolt of dignity" as an artistic intervention that creatively intervenes in social orders to realise alternative possibilities for life and action.

Film screening followed by discussion
The New Gospel (2020)

10 a.m. PST (San Francisco, UTC -8) / 1 p.m. EST (New York, UTC -5) / 6 p.m. GMT (London, UTC +0) / 7 p.m. CET (Berlin, UTC +1)

No video archive available for this event.

What would Jesus preach in the 21st century? Who would his disciples be? And how would today’s bearers of secular and spiritual power respond to the return and provocations of the most influential prophet and social revolutionary in human history? With The New Gospel, director Milo Rau documents and stages a "revolt of dignity". Led by political activist Yvan Sagnet, the movement fights for the rights of migrants who came to Europe across the Mediterranean only to be enslaved on the tomato fields in southern Italy and to live in ghettos under inhumane conditions. Together they return to the origins of the Gospel and stage it as a passion play of an entire population. In Matera, in southern Italy, where the great Jesus films from Pasolini to Gibson were shot, an authentically political as well as theatrical and cinematic “New Gospel” emerges for the 21st century. A manifesto of solidarity with the poorest, a revolt for a more just, humane world.

Following the screening, the actress Maia Morgenstern, the politician Erik Marquardt, the writer and activist Yvan Sagnet and academy member Georg Seeßlen will discuss artistic strategies of resistance. How can art react to states of crisis? To what extent does art create a possibility for exploring other ways of living and relating? Can emancipatory-utopian designs encounter and change a present that is seen as without alternatives?

About HowlRound TV
HowlRound TV is a global, commons-based peer produced, open access livestreaming and video archive project stewarded by the nonprofit HowlRound. HowlRound TV is a free and shared resource for live conversations and performances relevant to the world's performing arts and cultural fields. Its mission is to break geographic isolation, promote resource sharing, and to develop our knowledge commons collectively. Participate in a community of peer organizations revolutionizing the flow of information, knowledge, and access in our field by becoming a producer and co-producing with us. Learn more by going to our participate page. For any other queries, email [email protected], or call Vijay Mathew at +1 917.686.3185 Signal/WhatsApp. View the video archive of past events.

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