Anna Lerchbaumer and me were invited to give an Interview about the Toxic Temple in this beautiful magazine. The UND Heft asked us about our project mainly from the perspectives of how humor can be a strategy to deal with dire topics in the arts (and beyond) and what connections could be made between activism and the arts. The magazine is really beautifully designed and I highly recommend ordering it here.
Next week, we'll have the second public opening of our your research cluster LANDEN. Please come by and share your experiences with this difficult topic with us!
Within Im_flieger’s artistic research project LANDEN, five artists from different fields are researching multifarious ways of (dis)orientation in relation to ecological politics and applications to the troubles of finding habitable futures. The artistic research process revolves around questions highlighted by the philosopher Bruno Latour in his 2017 book Où atterrir (Where to land?). Landing – tracing, walking, embodying, dancing and losing oneself in the problems and possibilities of exploring this complex concept of landing, a challenge and potential in equal measure.
The artists invite you to a LANDEN Open Lab to share, practice and reflect on their practical and theoretical exploration with the guests, to continue their research in the collective space.
“You want me to land on Earth? Why? – Because you’re hanging in midair, headed for a crash. – How is it down there? – Pretty tense. – A war zone? – Close: A Critical Zone, a few kilometers thick, where everything happens. – Is it habitable? – Depends on your chosen science. – Will I survive down there? – Depends on your politics.”
From “Critical Zones: The Science and Politics of Landing on Earth” edited by Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel
Monday next week I will be joining a symposium on "Posthumanist Approaches to a Critique of Political Economy" at TU Vienna and the Academy of Fine Arts. It is open to the public and I will speak about my critique of AI as a governmental technique - a thesis I develop in a chapter of my forthcoming book Ecological Reasonings (Bloomsbury 2024) and which will be re-published in updated form in the forth-coming volume of "Dissident Practices". Please feel free to join, as I hear it will be held in a quite experimental practice open for intervention and non-hierarchical ways of though-expression.
You can find the full program here.
I have organized two panels about topics particularly dear to me. One about "ecological art-making" and what that could mean and the second one about a new project you will hopefully soon hear more about. Find the descriptions below.
"PASSIVELY WATCHING THE WORLD CRUMBLE OR ACTIVELY ENGAGING IN THE PROCESS?"
Panel Discussion
Sabrina Rosina, Alexandra Graupner & Tomas Zierhofer-Kin. Modeartion: Kilian Jörg
Despite its omnipresence in public discourse, we would argue that there
is surprisingly little art that is engaged with our ecological
predicament in creative, radical and enabling ways that go beyond mere
doom-kitsch, romantisization of Nature or moral exhibitionism. In this
panel bringing together curators, artists and philosophers, we want to
discuss examples and ideas that show us a way forward.
"THE CARS WE LIKE"
Dialogue
Kilian Jörg & Rainer Prohaska
Going beyond "mere" critique of the current automobile-centered system,
Kilian Jörg and Rainer Prohaska try to hack the car-system from within
by inventing serious and dada-esque vehicles that follow a simple
paradigm: it is no longer the environment that has to adapt to our
vehicles, but our vehicles that have to become as fluid as our
environments. In an open dialogue they will discuss the broader horizon
of changing mobility patters by means of artistic research.
The first one has already been released a couple of months ago:
A third one will be released beginning of next year with the title
A Tool for Decomposing the „World as We Know it“?
Resilience beyond Critique and Affirmation
The critique of „Resilience“ as a predominately neoliberal concept that individualizes responsibility and depoliticizes the causes of crises of late-modern statehood is certainly en vogue in the more critical branches of the Humanities. However, in spite of a significant proliferation of these critiques the concept continues to spread almost unhalted. To understand this, I want to investigate the shortcomings – and even complacency – of modern critique with what it criticizes. By reading Isabelle Stengers, Tom Boland and Denise Ferreira da Silva, I want to propose a different approach towards resilience that is not only critical, but also affirms it as a critical tool to dismantle our toxic entanglements with the neoliberal state of the “world as we know it”, as Ferreira da Silva puts it. By learning from some fringe discourses within economic theory, I want to propose a methodology of examining the resilience of political problems with the aim of slowly decomposing them. By proposing an angle of a critical examination of the “resilience of Modernity” in order to overcome this world, I want to illustrate how resilience can be translated affirmatively as a critical tool to the Humanities.
I have been invited to give an introductory input to and participate at a panel about the Utopia of a Car-Free City of Berlin. Given the current government of CDU and SPD that mainly fed on the resentment of car-drivers in the last election, I think this is a particularly challenging and engaging topic and I will be very happy to try to broaden our scope to create more inclusive and fun utopias that can enable people to de-tach from the very toxic realism of the Status Quo. I will be discussing with activists and politicians and am both excited and curious about the encounters!
Join us on Friday, the 3rd of November at KAOS. Find the Event-Link here and the description in German below.
Initiativen wie „Volksentscheid Berlin autofrei", „Aktionsbündnis A100 stoppen!" oder die „Bürger*innen-Initiative Wuhlheide" setzen sich für eine Verkehrswende und für die Abwendung von der autozentrierten Stadt ein.
Die Debatte um den Bau der TVO (Tangentialverbindung Ost) hat die
Bedeutsamkeit dieser Diskussionen für Treptow-Köpenick sichtbar gemacht.
Im Wahlkampf zur Abgeordnetenhauswahl 2023 und auch im politischen Alltagsgeschäft standen und stehen dagegen vermehrt die Perspektiven von autofahrenden Menschen im Fokus.
Die Diskussion um verkehrs- und klimapolitische Themen löst Emotionen aus. Wir möchten verschiedene Positionen zu diesen Themen an einen Tisch bringen und diskutieren.
Dazu laden „KLIMA IM KAOS" des KAOS e.V. und das „Zentrum für Demokratie Treptow-Köpenick" am 3. November 2023 zu einer Diskussionsveranstaltung in das KAOS in Berlin-Oberschöneweide ein.
Beginn: 19:00 Uhr, Einlass: 18:30 UhrDer Eintritt ist frei.
Barrierefreiheit: Der Veranstaltungsraum ist nur über eine Treppe zu erreichen. Ein Aufzug ist leider nicht vorhanden.
It seems like I got myself into a new book project. After visiting Longo Mai together with Stoffwechsel and together and alone reading a lot of French literature about the ZAD, Michael Hirsch and me started to write a text that was supposed to be 10 pages but now has swollen to a size that can only be held by the form of the book. It is exciting to think together about this with Michael, because we have found a way to make our differences in thought and action communicate in a really productive way. He is more the leftist state-philosopher, while I am more on the anarchist movement side. But we both know that our thinking gets fuzzy, or imprecise, where the respective other's strengths lie. So we have engaged in a dialogue, using what is commonly thought to be inconsolable trenches as tools to think productive with - we are at the moment riding the contradictions between State and Anarchy, Reform and Revolution, Top-Down and Bottom-Up and love the sparks that emerge from the friction.
The text is titled: "Die Verbindungen, die befreien - 'ZAD Partout' als politisches Programm" and we have now put some little excerpts online as part as the obligations to the process we have engaged with at Stoffwechsel - Ecologies of Collaboration.
Find the text online and I hope you will be able to read about this project again in due time!
Following our performative public space intervention in June titled "Die Letzte Waschung", an interview has now gone online at Skug in which Sabrina Rosina and me explain why we like washing and burning cars (among many other things).
I am very honored to have the opportunity to invite Alexis Shotwell to a full-day workshop at our emerging research cluster LANDEN in Vienna, taking place on the 10th of October at im_flieger. Her book "Against Purity" has had a deep impact on my own thinking, learning and acting and since she is a fellow anarchist, I am so excited to learn more about her recent work on LeGuin's utopianism, practices of prefiguration and the concept of freedom as a collective entity. There are sill some slots available to participate in this amazing opportunity to think and become together with Alexis <3
Im_flieger’s youngest artistic research cluster is engaged with the topic of landing in its many and yet to define meanings. We are interested in both theoretical as well as physical approaches to engage in new and old forms of reclaiming territory in non-capitalist, non-colonial and non-patriarchal ways of inhabiting the planet. Nonetheless, we are aware of the dangers of various kinds of “purity politics” in any attempts to land on, or re-connect with the Earth, Gaia. For this and many other reasons we have invited the philosopher and activist Alexis Shotwell for a full-day workshop as part of the several-year artistic research project LANDEN focusing both on her latest book “Against Purity – Living Ethically in compromised times” and her current project about Ursula Le Guin’s ambiguous utopianism, the importance of process and whether/how prefiguration is a political strategy, …. and an artistic one.
In early summer, Jorinde Schulz and me were invited to meet Noam Brusilovsky and Tobias Purfürst in front of - what has once been to us - the TEMPLE, meaning that club next to Metro in Berlin. We talked about our book on it (Die Clubmaschine (Berghain)) and our changing relationship to club-culture in the years that followed. It was a very nice interview and now they cut up our statements into a radiophonic opera they did for the Berlin public radio station RBB.
There will be a little release event tomorrow, Saturday the 16th of September 2023, in Vienna at NKW. More info here.
For now I will leave you with the opening lines of the text, which sets the tone for the rest:
How can we put aside our all-too-modern notions of human control over an orderly cosmos and learn to find forms of utopian engagement within the mess of a much-more-than-human planet?
A white, orderly and rectangular world in which the human is in control: When hearing the word "utopia," most would probably associate it with sleek, clean and smooth shapes. We all know such images from various Sci-Fi Movies and architectural renderings. You could say they look like Le Corbusier’s wildest dreams come true. Even in their greenwashed, more contemporary version, one feature remains: No mess is allowed in these ideal places. Everything is under (human) control. However, in certain progressive niches of discourse across various disciplines, we are witnessing a phenomenon we propose to call “messy utopia”. We seem to be experiencing a valorization of the messy, the impure and dirty, stimulated by microbiology, chaos theory, quantum physics, New Materialism and other post-anthropocentric models of thought. A new but still underrepresented utopianism seeks to set aside all-too-modern notions of human control, clean surfaces, and orderly forms, and learn to find intricate, unruly and feral ways of utopian engagement in the mess of a much more-than-human planet.
I have been invited to participate in a new trans-disciplinary format called the POSTHUMAN SOCIALCLUB and will hold its inaugural lecture titled "What is the Post-Human Social Club" next week, the 14th of September at Zentrum Fokus Forschung in Vienna. Come by, I will hold the lecture in a very experimental manner and the whole thing is designed to become something like a bigger trans-disciplinary jam session - excited how this will end up :)
With the 'posthuman social club' we want to think outside of the box of what has been labeled “the human realm of Reason” and develop new regimes of perception, sensuality and corporeality that can with care and afterthought lead us the way away from our humanist, modern form of making and thinking the world to more inclusive ways of sharing many worlds with other critters.
In the permeation of choreography and composition, with club culture, philosophy, ecology and media art we invite speculation of what a post-human social – or even a post-human society – could actually mean. We cannot overcome the euro- and anthropocentric, often misogynistic and racist tendencies of the „Enlightenment“ tradition overnight. The 'posthuman social clubs' are a sensual attunement, cultivation, celebration, exultation, differentiation and problematisation of these [posthuman] desires.
Works by
Isabella Forciniti ·Julia Grillmayr · Kilian Jörg · Bruno Liberda ·
Jorge Sánchez-Chiong ·Samuel Toro Pérez · Las Chulas [Angélica Castelló, Natalia Dominguez Rangel, Lorena Moreno Vera, Lucía Simón Medina] · TE-R [Louise Linsenbolz, Thomas Wagensommerer] · Brigitte Wilfing
Part of my visit at Longo Mai this April/May I was able to spent with my long-time research cluster and good friends of "Stoffwechsel - Ecologies of Collaboration". I remember our time in the french Provence, discussing forms of commoning, reading loads of texts on ZADism and smelling the fragrances of rosemary and lavender everywhere with such great intensity and fondness. I am particularly overjoyed to present some of our results at our Open Lab this year on 12th of September at im_flieger. Michael Hirsch and me are also now working on a text on ZADism which is turning longer and longer - it is one of these texts that have developed a life of their own and we are curious where it will lead us. We will present some of that text and its process at the Lab in the form of a discursive walk.
The Provençal word Longo Mai means “May it last long” in English. This year, the metabolism collective is exploring the questions of soil and earth, radical ecology and concrete utopias of alternative forms of life. In this context, we also visited the Longo Mai commune as part of a working week in the south of France in June 2023 and got to know their experiment, which has now been going on for decades, with a different cultivation of the soil and a different collective way of life beyond growth, intensive agriculture and capitalist wage labor.
The lab focuses on speculative questions, practical exercises and experiences with the phenomena of earth, soil, land and home; “prefiguration” in the sense of models of future other ways of living in the now, and the productive tension between revolutionary-anarchist and radical-reformist models of action, politics and society.
We invite you to the practice of walking through the Vienna Woods followed by a gathering with food in the Im_flieger Studio. Our guest and discussion partner is Alexander Behr, political scientist, journalist and long-time member of the Longo Mai collective.
I have been quite inactive on this blog for a while. This is because I was mainly operating in the clandestine and autonomous zones of France and Spain recently and this is nothing I would publish freely. However, I can tell you that I am learning a lot and there will be a few publications around certain experiences coming up, among which a publication about the slogan "ZAD partout" as a political program (with Michael Hirsch) and a presentation of our visit to Longo Mai with Stoffwechsel in September. More on this in due time.
Currently I am on my way to various autonomous meetings, among which are Les Resistances in Larzac and the Rencontres de luttes paysanes in Bure. At the moment I feel extremely fortunate to be able to get to know these related "eco-anarchist" scenes in France and I feel the germano-phone sphere could really learn a lot from their practices and experiences. I will try to start more of this "translation-work" in the future - if you are curious, do not hesitate to contact me in person. I feel the Rhine is still such a huge frontier of political cultures and - perhaps unsurprisingly - I feel France is a little more advanced in understanding the eco-political struggles we are all facing (whether we want to or not).
So much about this short update from my side. I will also attend a workshop on related topics in The Bravos Foundry in Gallicia, Spain, where I will talk about the role of car as a vehicle of homogenization and how to work with it in rural communes. The whole week-long program is called "Territory beyond state and property" and will happen from 21-26th of August. Here is the abstract of my presentation:
Driving the Homogenocene
Not all earthlings are affected equally by the catastrophes of our times. While some lifeforms are entrenching their privileges, others face extinction, expulsion or violent adaption. The term “Homogenocene” seeks to understand these two dynamics in relation: the modern form of the Good Life paves and normalizes our expectations, desires and interactions in a monolithic way that absorbs the air to breath and ground to stand on for a plurality of the living. In this workshop, I propose to understand the car as a main driver and embodiment of this Homogenocene and want to discuss possibilities of undoing its auto-destructive homogenisation of landscapes, desires and economies. The car will be thought of as a metaphor for our being dead-locked in an ecologically catastrophical way of relating to the planet. With it, I want to engage a discussion about our own entanglements with automobile infrastructure in our utopian imaginations as well as practical necessities and horizontally seek strategies for active resistance and alternative worlding that promotes plurality as a radical practice. Roots have a hard time spouting through pavement after all.
You can find the full program here. I am sure it will be a blast. If you are close, please come by!
Hi there! After weeks away in French autonomous zones like the wonderful Longo Mai (more soon), I will be back in Vienna this weekend and will - with the wonderful Sabrina Rosina - perform the "Letzte Waschung" / "Last Washing" as a public intervention for the skug Straßenfest. It will take place on Saturday 10th of June all day. Please pop by, there will be a great program all day at the "occupied" (as they call streets that are used as public space and banned for cars) Taborstraße. Find more information here and a video documentation of our last performance of "Die Letzte Waschung" here.
This week, I am speaking on two occasions in Berlin.
The first one is at the panel "Schrott Fiction: Wiederverwertung zwischen Nachhaltigkeit und Trash" at the Metropol Con at Silent Green on Thursday, 18.5. 18:30. I will be sharing the panel with Julia Grillmayr, Rudi Nuss, Philipp Böhm, Dominik Irtenkauf and Dilman Dila. Find the program here.
The second one will a little book presentation of my publication "Neue Vorsicht - Philosophie des Abstands im Zeitalter der Katastrophen" on Sunday, 21.5 18 at Clánndestino in Berlin Kreuzberg. Find all the details here.
I am still at donaufestival, and this shot taken from the actual TV-news of the Austrian Public broadcasting ORF from the report on Toxic Temple is the perfect segway to a publication of mine that has just come out. It has the not fully melodic title "POLITICISING NEW MATERIALISM AGAINST THE TOXIC ENTANGLEMENTS OF THE NOW - Towards a New Materialist philosophy of the car" and is one of three (upcoming) more academic papers that I wrote as a kind of precision / warm-up / focusing for my book on the car I am currently working on. I have found a very nice and devoted publication-outlet for it and am very happy to work along with them in the future. Do check out there well selected program at becoming.press
Abstract: Contemporary ecological discourses that go by names such as “New Materialism” identify modern, “Cartesian” cosmologies as something old and ecologically problematic they deem necessary to overcome. In this paper, I want to address a certain romantic tendency within many such discourses that focus on what they call the “new” without thoroughly reflecting their own material entanglement with the “old”. To expand this argument, I will demonstrate that “old” Cartesianism has, by means of the car as an prosthesis central to the partaking in modern life, become a material practice vital to all modern dwellers. When Cartesianism is, by many New Materialist thinkers, deemed to be “no longer available to think with”, this might be because its features need no longer be philosophically thought and taught at universities, for they have become an embodied practise for everybody living a “modern” way of everyday life. Central Cartesian features such as the body-mind dualism, the relegation of the environment to a mere “given” and a ocularcentic and logocentric bias are reproduced by the car. An unfolding of the inherent political potential of New Materialist discourses should include such reflections about our very toxic entanglements with the “old” that still forms so much of our ecologically catastrophic now.
Wow, this week of Toxic Temple at donaufestival was a blast! Trashing an old art institution and then leading a procession of 250 people caring random trash objects through a conservative town in Lower Austria to completely mess up an old church is nothing you do every day. I am so glad we had the chance to do this & we are already sprawling with ideas what to do next. Let me just say for now: Doom Porn and a filmic voyage to less artsy institutions perhaps. The Toxic Temple will spread on!
For now, let me just alert you to the philosophical workshop I will give next weekend in the ruins of the Toxic Temple at the second week-end of Donaufestival. Here is the description (it's gonna be in German):
Zur Kultivierung der Katastrophe – philosophische Restmüllverwertung des Toxic Temple
Ecological catastrophe is typically conveyed in abstract numbers, but what does it actually feel like in sensory terms? What goes astray when we take it merely as an imperative to exercise restraint? Can we cultivate a desire for waste, destruction, and pollution, or must we suppress it? With excursions through atomic semiotics, queer and dark ecologies, and philosophies of waste, Kilian Jörg will introduce some of the philosophical impulses behind Toxic Temple in this workshop.
A 2-hour workshop for a limited number of people and unlimited amount of waste.
Also, since we of the cult have thought a lot already about how to avoid becoming a full spectacle for an art-loving cultural bourgeoisie, I want to share the MESS I spoke when departing for the PROCESSION yesterday. It is also in German for now and will be translated soon.
Meine lieben Heid*innen, wir sind hier zusammengekommen wegen eines EXODUS, wegen der Migration des Toxic Temple raus aus den Hallen der
Künste und hin zu einer altertümlichen Glaubensstätte – einer so
genannten “Kirche”, welche, mit Eurer Hilfe, in einen Schrein der toxischen Verehrung gewandelt werden soll!
Bisher haben wir vom TOXIC TEMPLE in den Welten der Künste eine Heimat gefunden - doch nun erscheint es uns, dass wir bloß als eine Bespassung fürs Kulturbürgertum fungieren!
Wie ein neuer indigener Stamm wurden wir von Euch als Touristenschwarm überfallen – als Souvenir auf Instagram und Gesprächsstoff bei der nächsten Dinnerparty verwandelt!
Doch der Besuch im Toxic Temple soll Euch als keine Erheiterung zwischen den zwei Dienstreisen erscheinen – und auch nicht als Feigenblatt, mit dem ihr Euch als „auf der richtigen Seite“ verstehen könnt – um dann mit dem elektrisch betriebenen SUV den Alltag zu bestreiten!
Meine lieben Heid*innen, höret die Zeichen: elektrische SUVs brennen sogar noch viel länger und es mag sein, das ihre Dämpfe uns den nächsten Schritt als Zeichen in den Himmel schreiben werden! Kommt ab vom Glauben der „richtigen Seite“! Alle rechtenWege führen verästelt in die Herrlichkeit der Katastrophe! Es ist unser aller Normalität, die toxisch ist – und wir im Toxic Temple verhelfen ihr zur Metamorphose! Verharrt nicht im Normalen und Trivialen! Führt Eure Alltäglichkeit zu Altar, damit ihr Euch wieder bewegen könnt! Erhebt das Toxische in
den Bereich des Göttlichen, um die große Transformation zu
spüren!
Deswegen sagen wir: Praise the better Nature!
Im Plastik verwirklichen sich Fantasien vom Überkommen der Natur, die Jahrtausende alt sind. Im Atommüll strahlt der Heilige Geist als Kommunikationsmedium mit dem Ewigen Reich!
Unser aller Transzendenzgelüste sind immanent geworden und berauschen den Planeten!
Zieht mit uns, liebe Liebhaber des Toxischen, durch die Stadt zu einer alten Kirche, die noch vor kurzen heidnische Glauben praktizierte.
Es gilt dem Toxischen im Anthropozän die Tempel zu weihen, damit uns dort neue Visionen erscheinen können! So wie uns einst im Christentum die Visionen dieser wunderschönen Erdzerstörung erschienen, sollen uns im Toxic Temple die Dämpfe des Jenseitigen überraschen!
Folgt uns, meine lieben Heid*innen und Kulturbürger*innen, zieht mit uns zur Kirche, die wir in unser aller toxischen Begehren neu kleiden werden! Der Kulminationspunkt Eurer Kultur ist genau hier – im Überschäumen des Planeten. Hierauf haben wir alle hingearbeitet!
Die alten Strukturen sollen erstrahlen in neuer Übersteigerung, als Gebet für das Nach-uns, das Unbekannte und Jenseitige!
Lasst uns also diese Pilgerreise machen
Lasst uns zur DOMINIKANERKIRCHE gehen und allen
verkünden:
das ewige Paradies ist auf die Erde herabgestiegen
die Transzendenz ist Immanenz geworden
Praise the better Nature!
Oh yes, and of course you always can find more on our Instagram.
Photos: David Visnjic/donaufestival
Two things related to our upcoming Toxic Temple MESS at donaufestival 2023:
Today I have seen the perhaps most purest place of Nature I have ever met. The stones were made of plastic, the trees had thermostats and the artificial plants where sprayed with nutrients for the animal inhabitants.
Nature is of course not what you are taught in school or by advertisement. Nature is the perhaps most fiendish concept ever invented to exploit peoples and environments with. Nature is a central node of a colonialist and extractivist European mind-set – it is perhaps its most well-disguised patriarchal God.
The project LANDEN is a new, trans-discipinary and artistic research format based at im_flieger and currently Anita Kaya, Johanna Nielson, Laura Vilar Dolç, Sabrina Rosina and myself are a part of it. We have only started and do not yet have a web presence. But stay tuned, more will come soon for this exciting new project. I am very much looking forward to it.
Below you can find a poem I wrote in this temple of slow violence, entitled
„I think the butterflies hate Nature“
Life on Mars
after the apocalypse
no red sands
but grey smog outside
plants suck
think the butterflies
seek shelter on smooth shapes
of culture
to die, sometime
in this hypernature
most need transcendent portals
to connect
with an idea of everywhere
drops of water from above
from glass surface to glass surface
in enclosed space
is there a longing for solitude
in the unreal waterfalls
with children climbing plastic trees
teaching love for Nature
with hollow sounds
but looking real
Ikea's ideal of home
with life-long warranty
for the involuntarily reproduced
the violence of keeping alive
of not letting die
what we assumed god's land
his old smells so fiercely nice
acid layering the nostrils
sealing them with beauty
that hurts like forced adaption
to the militarily enforced paradise
free from bark beetles and weeds
"let us die!"
the last inhabitants demand
ultimate rallying cry
unheard of by smart ones
please keep the doors shut
to this altar of invisible violence
seek shelter on the one dirty leaf
drown me in electric cascades
i like the challenge
like the touch of death
that my caretakers forbid
ignoring us when we profess
hatred for the natural habitat
all animals unite against it
and yet no one who counts will hear
stay there, be quiet and let us care for you
enjoying pain-free agony
the last most stubborn god
is the former anti-christ
the possessor of women and folk
where all lines of flight eventually meet
the Church of Nature
is the most devouring machine.
As part of our so far very well received (from what our Serbian friends tell us about their newspapers) exhibition DOWNSTREAM #1, I will give a workshop at and around KC Grad tomorrow. Find the description below!
Reeking Environments – Senso-Poetical Experiments with Undoing Nature
What does “Nature” say if it is asked? How many would answer? Might a dance be the most apt form of conversation? In this workshop we will collectively develop strategies to sensually engage with our surrounding environments and reek out what myriads of smells and sounds, stenches and noises this big modern thing called “Nature” is made of and what words and movements it makes us emit. The workshop will be held in English (and German, if desired), but the participants can write and speak in whatever language they feel most comfortable with.
It usually isn't my medium of choice, but it it my sacred duty to inform you that we of the Toxic Temple had a holy apparition on Instagram. In the weeks from now until the festival, we will produce a series of religious propaganda which will be a lot of fun - we are very much looking forward to the festival! Follow us on Instagram until then!
Now that the program has been released, I can finally announce that Toxic Temple will have a pretty big presence at this years' donaufestival in Krems an der Donau.
We will celebrate a MESS in Forum Frohner and the public space of Krems and Stein from 28th to 30th of April and will lead a big Procession as a closing event through the city to the Dominikanerkirche to meet with Alfredo Barsuglia's SKIMMER performance crew. Additionally Julia Grillmayr and me will give one workshop each on the second festival weekend on the 6th and 7th of May.
I will post more information in due time. As of now, I want to thank the whole team of this year's MESS for making such a huge thing happen - especially co-religious founder and dear friend Anna Lerchbaumer for sticking with the project at its most dire times (curation of the donaufestival has not always been optimal, to say the least) and our new dramaturg Claus Philipp for helping us grow and stick with the trouble!
You can find the whole program on the festival homepage here.
And our little propaganda page www.toxictemple.beauty is on again and you will be able to find more precise information on timing etc. there.
In genau einem Monat, am 25.3, werde ich einen Workshop unter dem Titel ""'Raus aus der Natur' oder 'Weg mit der Natur'?" im Werk X in Wien halten. Im Vorfeld zur Inszenierung von "Onkel Wanja - La dèrniere rébellion". Hier die längere Beschreibung:
Manche Alpenländler*innen kennen „ihre Natur“ am besten über das, was nach einer schönen Spritztour an ihren Stoßstangen klebt. Sie mögen sich dessen vielleicht sogar bewusst sein, dass es „5 vor 12“ steht und „unsere Zivilisation“ vor dem ökologischen Kollaps steht. Sie kaufen brav Bio und halten ihre Nation für eine umweltschützerische Vorzeigenation. Das alles vom luxuriösen Alpenchalet aus, welches über den Schwager gern für Jahre vorreserviert wird, damit sich auch ja kein anderer („von außen“) einnistet.
Dieser Workshop möchte sich auf performative, philosophische und literarische Weise der Frage annähern, warum sich eigentlich so wenig ändert angesichts des mittlerweile medial kaum mehr zu ignorierenden Katastrophenzustands der Erde. Wir werden das Bild des „Weltenendes“ kritisch hinterfragen, Theorien zum fossilen Faschismus reflektieren, spekulative Ausflüge in eine Welt nach der Moderne unternehmen und den sinnlichen Bezug zur Umwelt jenseits der Natur am eigenen Körper erforschen.
Am 20.1 gebe ich einen Workshop zu künstlerischen und aktivistischen Strategien zur Kultivierung der Klimakatastrophe am Rundgang 2023 der Akademie der Bildenden Künste Wien. Sogenannte "Klimapolitik" wird ja weiterhin zu oft dem Bereich der "Natur" zugeordnet, der - nach klassisch modernem Dualismus - hermetisch von der "Kultur" abgeriegelt ist. Ich möchte in diesem Workshop diesen höchst-problematischen Graben überwinden und für die Entwicklung diverser kultureller Aneignungen und Verhandlungen unserer kulturell-gemachten Ökokatastrophe werben.
Der Fokus des Workshops wird sich um mein aktuelles Forschungsthema des Autos im Homogenozän drehen... Ich freue mich, wenn ihr zahlreich kommt und mit mir möglichst weirde und kreative Ansätze erforscht!
"Die ökologische Katastrophe ist in aller Munde und trotzdem ändert sich viel zu wenig. In diesem Workshop werden Strategien an der Schnittstelle von Kunst, Theorie und Aktivismus vorgestellt, die unsere Verwobenheit mit ökologisch katastrophalen, „modernen“ Lebenspraktiken erforschen. Zentraler Fokuspunkt ist hierbei das Auto als Metapher für unsere libidinöse, ökonomische, soziale, kulturelle und politische Abhängigkeit von toxischen Lebensformen im fossilen Kapitalismus. Das Auto wird hierbei nicht primär als technologische Errungenschaft, sondern als Prothese und Verkörperung von modernen Begriffen wie Freiheit, Mobilität und Selbstbestimmtheit gedacht. Das Problem des Autos im sogenannten „Anthropozän“ ist demnach nicht nur dessen massiver Schadstoffausstoß, sondern dessen Tendenz zur Homogenisierung von Lebensräumen und Lebensweisen. Das, was wir „Natur“ nennen und zum Teil auch schützen wollen, ist ein Produkt dieses hegemonialen Weltzugangs, der durch das Auto erst mehrheitsfähig wurde. Mittels einer Lektüre spekulativer Fiktion von Ursula LeGuin werden wir versuchen, diese durch das Auto hergestellte Normalität als Katastrophe zu verstehen. Durch diesen kritischen und (de)konstruktivistischen Ansatz stellt sich eine intersektionale Anschlussfähigkeit an post-koloniale und feministische Diskurse her, die einem naiven „Naturschutz“-Aktivismus oftmals fehlt. Unsere Blindheit gegenüber der ökologischen Katastrophe entpuppt sich so nicht mehr als moralisches Fehlverhalten, sondern als logische Fortschreibung des materiellen Erbes der patriarchalen und rassistischen europäischen Moderne, die sich in Technologien wie dem Auto aktualisieren. In diesem Licht kann man Aktionen wie jene der „Letzten Generation“ als Vorboten eines Kampfes gegen diese zutiefst problematische Normalität einordnen. Entgegen eines individualisierenden Schulddiskurses sollen in diesem Workshop kreative und sinnliche Strategien des ermächtigenden Umgangs und Spiels mit einer toxischen Normalität erforscht werden."
