Frankfurter Kunstverein

We live in a time of radical upheavals whose outcomes defy estimation. But how can we cope with the uncertainties of our time? Whether we are indignant, discontent or curious, a personal talk is often very helpful. Within the framework of the exhibition Demonstrations. Making Normative Orders, the Frankfurter Kunstverein, the Excellence Cluster on The Formation of Normative Orders and the Press and Information Bureau of the City of Frankfurt (PIA) will jointly open the Office of Upheaval Mastery. With the aid of the OFFICE, the Cluster of Excellence will bring its knowledge straight to the Römer. For three days, some forty scholars will move into the offices of the PIA and offer visitors the unique opportunity to receive personal advice on coping with the upheavals of our time in twenty-minute one-on-one talks.

Consultation Hours:
Friday, January 27, 9 - 11 pm
Saturday, January 28, 3 - 7 pm
Sunday, January 29, 4 - 7 pm

Application: Counters will open one hour before the first consultation. Scholars can be booked at any time. Further information at: 069.219314-77

With: Axel Honneth, Susanne Schröter, Thomas Biebricher, Mathias Lutz Bachmann, Peter Niesen, Klaus Günther, Alexander Peukert, Peter Siller, Rainer Forst und vielen anderen

Artistic direction: Jan Deck, Fanti Baum

Free admission
Location: Frankfurter Kunstverein & Presse- und Informationsamt der Stadt Frankfurt

Friday, January 27 | 7 pm
What World are we Living in? Diagnostic Perspectives on the Society of the Present

The opening panel will bring together various perspectives on current situations of upheaval: the global consequences of the financial crisis have already long been raising questions as to our conception of democracy and the extent to which society's normative orders are of our own making. How can we describe the current transformations? What future will emerge from the present upheavals? And how can they be influenced politically, if at all?

With: Jens Friebe, Christiane Rösinger, Andreas Spechtl, Peter Siller, Thomas Meinecke, Eva Jantschitsch

Music has always been considered an important medium in the struggle for cultural hegemony within the political discourse. But what constitutes political music today? On the Long Night of the Protest Song, Jens Friebe, Christiane Rösinger (Britta/Lassie Singers), Andreas Spechtl (Ja Panik), Eva Jantschitsch (Gustav), Peter Siller and Thomas Meinecke will talk about music and politics, theory and practise, artistic strategies and social movements and will make music. The discussion will be interspersed with musical performances and enhanced by videos and sounds presented by moderators Klaus Walter and Jan Deck.

Sunday, January 29 | 7 pm
Wither the Protest? Democratic Upheavals from a Global Perspective

With: Christoph Menke, Günther Frankenberg, Mahmoud Bassiouni, Irene Weipert-Fenne, Barbara Bishay (not yet confirmed)

During the Arab Spring, courage, passion and creativity brought down numerous regimes. But people are also going out onto the streets and challenging the ruling powers in other regions and countries as well – in Stuttgart, London, Tel Aviv, Athens, Santiago de Chile, etc. A new global 1968? To what extent do these various phenomena have a common denominator? Where can we discern connections, contradictions, misunderstandings?

Yorgos Sapountzis's performances oscillate between procession and gathering: wrapped in silver emergency blankets or armed with constructions made of aluminium rods and flapping fabric, he investigates the cultural heritage of a city. He counters the monumental aesthetic of the memorials with the fragile quality of his performances. In Frankfurt, he and the Assembled will explore the public space between the Römer and the Frankfurt Paulskirche.

Saturday, February 4 and Sunday, February 5 | 8.30 pm
derline;">Anna Mendelssohn: Cry me a River

Anna Mendelssohn talks, beseeches, screams and cries. She speaks about ice as a natural habitat and the financial crisis as a complex of global interrelationships, and fights to save the world. In her forceful speech she unites various voices in a single complex figure. She skilfully changes perspectives between forms of social action and the individual sense of powerlessness: a kaleidoscope between rage and hope, revolution and inertia, doubt and legitimation.

Concept/Performance: Anna Mendelssohn; Regie: Yosi Wanunu; Music: Jorge Sánchez-Chiong;
Light design: Jan Maertens
In co-production with: Tanzquartier Wien;
Funded by: Kulturabteilung der Stadt Wien und bm:ukk.
With support from: PACT Zollverein (Essen)

Admission: 8,-/12,- (6,- for FKV members)
Location: Gallus Theater, Kleyerstraße 15, Gallusviertel Frankfurt
Tickets: 069.219314-0 (FKV) / 069.75806029 (Gallus Theater)
Held in English

Les trucs is a fully wired two-person-thing orchestra which impresses its audience with its unbridled energy, its handling of innumerable technical devices and its physical presence. In Something with Space, les trucs will explore three different spaces in Frankfurt at which the rules governing social gatherings are firmly established, and will test a new approach to the arrangement of sound in the public realm.

Thursday, February 9 | 7 pm
Discoteca Flaming Star: Actually 12-fold Alissa / Duet #(4 Body)

Present: Cristina Gómez Barrio and Wolfgang Mayer as well as four bodies with texts written on their backs. With the support of the sound sculpture Fever and embraced by the Blinky Palermo wall painting in the Kunstverein staircase and the large Stair Banner, they will talk and sing about monstrosity: we will hear a battle song, a poem about Ayn Rand and by Jacques Brel, and there will be a naked elderly lady in a fur coat. Anda Jaleo!

Admission: 2,- (free for FKV members)
Booking: post@fkv.de
Location: Frankfurter Kunstverein

Friday, February 17 (Public rehearsal) and
Saturday, February 18 (Try out) | 7 pm
Claudia Bosse: Burning Beasts

Burning Beasts goes out into the public space to investigate the boundaries and icons of violations of the public order. What are we to do in view of the global uncertainties concerning the future of politics and society? Raise our voices? Collectively refuse to speak? Or let burning beasts speak for us? Burning Beasts is a temporary performative installation in the Frankfurt public space. In cooperation with the students of the Institute of Applied Theatre Sciences of the University of Giessen.

Demonstrations of power have rarely seemed as bizarre as the grotesque appearances of the overthrown Libyan dictator Muammar al-Gaddafi before the global public. In their play King of the Kings, the theatre group Lovefuckers usurp Gaddafi's self-staging strategies and show him as a seventy-centimetre-tall hinged-mouth puppet in an absurd show consisting of power demonstration, music action, gunfire volleys and revolution.

Concept / direction: Ivana Sajeviç; performers: Anna Menzel, Annemie Twardawa, Nils Zapfe, Dennis Katzmann; Stage: Basti Valk; Puppets: Dorit Agater; Costumes: Sasha Matteucci; Music: Yujiro Akihiro; Video clips: Christoph Kube
Co-production: Freischwimmer Festival, HfS "Ernst Busch" Berlin, supported with funds from the Allianz Kulturstiftung

Admission: 15,-/12,- (10,- for FKV members)
Tickets: 069.219314-0 (FKV)
Location: Pik Dame, Elbestraße 31, Bahnhofsviertel Frankfurt

Friday, March 9 | 5.30 pm
Schwabinggrad Ballett: Beyond the Euro Zone - Πέραν της Ευρωζώνης

On February, the Greeks will prospectively have elected a new parliament. But to what end, if it has nothing more to decide? The people have meanwhile begun joining hands and organizing themselves. Nevertheless, the gatherings that have been taking place on Syntagma Square in Athens are not defined as politics, but as protest. The Schwabinggrad Ballet went to Athens to look for the κοινά-i.e. the matters affecting the commonwealth-on the streets. On the square in front of the ECB-the central location of the German Occupy movement-the Hamburg discourse and action collective will perform methods and contents of Greek-style grassroots democracy.

An After-Work Gathering in Fron t of the European Central Bank.

Marcello Maloberti invites Frankfurt to participate in the collective performance I Am The Happiness Of The World. Equipped with five black porcelain panthers, a changed flag and various everyday sculptures, Maloberti and a large number of participants will proceed through the Frankfurt Station District in what will be a mixture of parade, demonstration and happening without a political message, but nevertheless serving as a mirror of society.

Location: Performance at Frankfurter Bahnhofsviertel
Start: Frankfurter Kunstverein

Normativity. Frankfurt Perspectives

Normativity is the term for a commonplace phenomenon which at the same time defies explanation. What constitutes the force that makes us adhere to social principles, norms and rules? This question will be discussed by the professors Axel Honneth, Rainer Forst and Klaus Günther.

Free admission
Location: Goethe-University, Campus Westend / Hörsaalzentrum HZ 3, Grüneburgplatz 1, Westend / Frankfurt

Friday, January 20 | 7 pm
What happened when? Conversation with the Artists Irina Botea, Sandra Schäfer and Aalam Wassef

How are revolutionary events reflected upon in art? Taking as its starting point the three artists' diverse manners of working, the discussion is to revolve around activism, re-staging and research as artistic strategies for addressing upheavals in society. A special focus will lie on the works by these artists on view at the Frankfurter Kunstverein, which together form an interesting geopolitical triangle: Iran in 1978/79 - Romania in 1989 - Egypt in 2011.

Wednesday, March 14 | 7 pm
Caricature and Carnival. Curator's Talk on the Subversive Potential of Satirical Art

Demonstrations of power go hand in hand with an interest in controlling one's own visual representation. Particularly artworks have the capacity to expose these stagings in trenchant manner. In art, utterances are often permitted which would be taboo in everyday politics. Taking caricatures, satire and theories of the carnivalesque as examples, the discussion will examine these phenomena.

Narratives have always been used to legitimize moral and political states. With its audio-visual character, the cinema holds a special status in this context. On the basis of three film examples – Redacted, I'm Not There and Minority Report, Daniel Feige, Juliane Rebentisch and Josef Früchtl will discuss whether and how cinematic narrations contribute – or can contribute – to the legitimation and/or delegitimation of normative attitudes and orders.

Free admission
Location: Goethe University, Campus Westend / Hörsaalzentrum HZ 9, Grüneburgplatz 1, Westend / Frankfur

Thursday, Januar 26 | 4.15 pm
Daniel Feige: Media Autopsy of War – Autopsy of the Media War. Brian De Palma's Redacted
(R: Brian De Palme; USA/Kanada 2007)

Thursday, February 2 | 4.15 pm
Juliane Rebentisch: I'm Not There – On the Critique of Narration and Justification in the Biopic
(R: Todd Haynes; USA/ Deutschland 2007

Thursday, February 9 | 4.15 pm
Josef Früchtl: "For there is no Place that Doesn't See You" – on Minority Report
(R: Steven Spielberg; USA 2002)

Monday, February 30 and Tuesday February 31 | 7.15 pm
Philip Pettit: "Republican Justice and Democracy"

For the Frankfurt Lectures programme, an internationally outstanding researcher has been invited to investigate a certain aspect of the formation of normative orders in a theoretically innovative and diagnostically trenchant manner in two consecutive lectures. The guest lecturer in January will be the Irish philosopher and political scientist Philip Pettit.

Free admission
Location: Goethe Universität, Campus Westend / Hörsaalzentrum HZ 3, Grüneburgplatz 1, Westend / Frankfurt
Held in English

Saturday, February 4 | 5 pm
Frankfurter Stadtgespräch: Democracy in Crisis? The Intervention Demanded by the Current Upheavals

Klaus Günther in conversation with Joachim Gauck

Moderation: Thomas Biebricher

Joachim Gauck is a pastor, politician and writer. During the peaceful revolution in the German Democratic Republic he was a leading member of the New Forum in Rostock, and after the first and only People's Parliament elections in 1990 a representative of the people. From 1990 to 2000, Gauck was the head of the Stasi Archives, the department in charge of the records of the East German Ministry for State Security and responsible for making them accessible. Gauck has received numerous distinctions for his services to society and his publications. His candidacy for Federal President in 2010 met with a wide response. Klaus Günther is a co-peaker of the Cluster of Excellence Normative Orders of the Frankfurt Goethe University and professor of legal theory, criminal law and criminal trial law. He specializes in the philosophy of law, the discourse theory of law, the theory of forensic argumentation, the concept and theories of responsibility, the legal theory of globalization and legal sociology.

Free admission
Location: Frankfurter Kunstverein

Monday, February 6 | 2-10 pm
Arrangement Arts. People Formations in front of Art, in Art, as Art

Lecture series of HfG Offenbach a.M.; part II hosted by the Frankfurter Kunstverein

We often refer to arrangements in artworks as compositions. But what about the arrangements of the viewers in front of the artworks? What groupings, isolations, formations are we-as participants in participative art practices-confronted with? The question can also be posed as to the extent to which-through its manner of arrangement-the audience of a performance bears an authorizing influence on the event for whose sake it has gathered. After all, whether in artistic or political projects, formations themselves can have a meaningful function, i.e. form the ‘work‘ themselves.

With contributions by: Karl-Siegbert Rehberg (Dresden), Kai Buchholz (Dessau), Britt Schlehahn (Leipzig), Lars Blunck (Berlin), Franz Erhard Walther (Fulda) & Alexander Koch (Berlin) u.a.
Concept, moderation and introduction: Christian Janecke (Offenbach)

Free admission
Location: Frankfurter Kunstverein

Further information (lecturers / lecture times / abstracts): www.Anordnungskuenste.de

Thursday, March 8 | 8 pm
Frankfurter Stadtgespräch: What's Art Doing. Art's Contribution to Understanding the Current Crises

Christoph Menke in conversation with Carl Hegemann

Carl Hegemann is a writer, theatre practitioner and professor of dramatic theory at the University of Music and Theater Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy Leipzig has served as dramaturge at the Thalia-Theater in Hamburg and at the Recklinghausen Ruhrfestspiele, the Stadttheater in Freiburg, the Schauspielhaus Bochum, the Berliner Ensemble and the Volksbühne on Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz in Berlin. Hegemann worked regularly with Christoph Schlingensief for many years. Christoph Menke is a professor of practical philosophy in the Cluster of Excellence The Formation of Normative Orders at the Goethe University in Frankfurt. There he heads the research project on normativity and freedom, which investigates how freedom is substantiated as social normativity and why freedom is always also freedom from social participation and thus from normativity.

Free Admission
Location: Frankfurter Kunstverein

Wednesday, March 14 | 7 pm
Caricature and Carnival. Curator's Talk on the Subversive Potential of Satirical Art

Please register two weeks in advance
Phone: +49 (0) 69 219314-40 
post@fkv.de
Fee: 40 €, weekends 50 €  Free of charge for school groups (but discounted entry / 3 € per schoolchild)
(Maximum group size 25 people)

Thursday, January 26, 2012 | 7:30 pm
Geekas and Geekushas. Collective, Feminist Artistic Practices
Lecture of the event series "DIY Active Art" by Stefanie Wuschitz