Event: Peter Weiss and Harun Farocki, October 24, 2016, silent green

We were isolated individuals and simultaneously subsumed into a totality*
* Translation from: Peter Weiss, Die Ästhetik des Widerstands. Erster Band, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1975, S. 137

Peter Weiss and Harun Farocki
An event organized by the Harun Farocki Institut (HaFI)
October 24, 2016
silentgreen Kulturquartier
Gerichtstraße 35
13347 Berlin

3:30 to 5:00 pm
„[to] turn a place that one otherwise passes by thoughtlessly into an important place.“**
A guided tour of real and imaginary places and locations from The Aesthetics of Resistance in Red Wedding from and with Julia Lazarus/Undisciplinary Learning
Meeting point: Nettelbeckplatz, at the “Tanz auf dem Vulkan” fountain
For the guided tour please register under: info@harun-farocki-institut.org

The extended environs of the silent green Kulturquartier in Wedding, where the Harun Farocki Institut is also located, plays a significant role as a setting in Peter Weiss’s novel The Aesthetics of Resistance. Not only do the protagonists in Berlin featured in volume 1 of the trilogy move between the Oranienburger Vorstadt and Wedding districts, for Weiss Barricades in Wedding, Klaus Neukrantz’s “little agitational book” about the so-called Blood May of 1929 (published in 1931) represents a form of complementary novel to Kafka’s The Castle. “The search and the defensive struggle were two sides of one and the same act of taking up positions.” Julia Lazarus’s guided tour will address this and other aspects of the topography of The Aesthetics of Resistance.

Julia Lazarus is a curator, artist and film maker from Berlin. Since 2012 she been engaged in an exploration of the novel The Aesthetics of Resistance from Peter Weiss. The exhibition Undisciplinary Learning. Remapping. The Aesthetics of Resistance which she has curated together with Suza Husse and Janine Halka is currently on display at District Berlin until 19/11/2016. In 2013/4 she initiated the exhibition Die Ästhetik des Widerstands together with Moira Zoitl und Naomi Hennig in the Galerie im Turm (Berlin) and the IG Bildende Kunst Vienna.

** Harun Farocki, concept paper about On Display: Peter Weiss (1979), first published in: Harun Farocki: On Display: Peter Weiss, HaFI 003, by the Harun Farocki Institut, 2016

7:30 to 9:30 pm
Harun Farocki and Gunilla Palmstierna-Weiss on Peter Weiss and The Aesthetics of Resistance
Video interviews with Carles Guerra from 2011 (screening) followed by a talk with Carles Guerra and Bert Rebhandl (in English)
Kuppelhalle
silent green Kulturquartier

In the context of the research conducted for his exhibition 1979, a Monument to Radical Moments at the Virreina Centre de la Imatge in Barcelona, the curator and artist Carles Guerra conducted interviews with Harun Farocki and the stage-designer and artist Gunilla Palmstierna-Weiss in 2011 which were recorded on video. Guerra’s exhibition, centred around 1979, addressed a political aesthetic from different perspectives and was essentially organised around motifs from The Aesthetics of Resistance, and in particular, the question of a documentary visual praxis under conditions of biopolitics and neoliberalism. Via Peter Weiss and the problem of the historical memory of acts and gestures of both political and aesthetic radicalism, Farocki and Guerra entered into an intensive dialog, which also continued after Farocki’s death. Together with Antje Ehmann, Guerra curated exhibitions on Harun Farocki in Valencia and Barcelona in 2015 and 2016, which, in 2017, will be followed by a further exhibition at the Neuen Berliner Kunstverein (n.b.k.) within the context of the planned Harun Farocki retrospective in Berlin.

Carles Guerra (Amposta, 1965) is a curator, critic, visual producer and scientist. His special interest is the relationship between artistic praxis and cultural politics under post-Fordism. Guerra was Director of the Virreina Centre de la Imatge and Head Curator at the Museu d’Art Conternporani de Barcelona (MACBA), before being appointed Director of the Fundació Antoni Tàpies in Barcelona in 2015. Most recently (with Antje Ehmann) he curated the exhibition Harun Farocki. Empathy at the Fundació Antoni Tàpies.

Bert Rebhandl (Kirchdorf an der Krems, 1964) is a freelance film journalist for, amongst others, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Der Standard, Frieze, Zitty, author (amongst others Orson Welles. Genie im Labyrinth, 2005) and co-founder and editor of the magazine Cargo. Film/Medien/Kultur.