Anabases

Publication including the films Transformation Scenario, 70.001, and Faux Terrain, as well as a visual essay, a glossary and texts by Heike Geißler, Fanni Fetzer, and Franciska Zólyom.

“When I visited the Elias Canetti archive at the Zentralbibliothek Zurich, I was looking for manuscripts and sketches for his major work Crowds and Power (1960). I imagined that Canetti must have made drawings, as the behaviour of the various crowd types he identified was described in such detail. I hoped that these drawings would help me transfer the group behaviour he describes to virtual figures in an animated film.

The archive of manuscripts, arranged by Elias Canetti himself, was handed over to the Zurich library and contains the notes and sketches he completed during the development of Crowds and Power, a period of almost forty years. However, in this context I found no drawings—Canetti had only made graphic lists on various themes. So where did Canetti's precise descriptions of the scenes come from?”

Clemens von Wedemeyer (born 1974 in Göttingen, lives and works in Berlin) creates films, videos and media installations poised between reality and fiction, reflecting power structures in social relations, history and architecture.

Edited by Fanni Fetzer and Franciska Zólyom.
Texts by Heike Geißler, Fanni Fetzer, Franciska Zólyom.

A critical examination of the aesthetic, social, and political dynamics of fascism, questioning its appeal and ideological mechanisms.

Around the world, there is a glaring turn towards a sinister  form of politics. One is reluctant to name it for what all its recognizable signs point to, for fear of accepting the reality that fascism is here and it is everywhere. Amid a raging discussion about where authoritarianism ends and fascism begins, the Global Fascisms—Reader critically examines the aesthetic, social, and political dynamics of fascism, questioning its appeal and ideological mechanisms, and looking at how current authoritarian conjunctures are being condoned, contested, and resisted across the globe. The longform essays, poetry, and conversations with experts collected here accompany the eponymous exhibition at Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW), engaging with a quintessentially modern and eerily contemporary political mo(ve)ment.

Contributions by Stefan Baghiu, Thomas Biebricher, Cosmin Costinaș, Kwame Dawes, Jakob Grüner, June Jordan, Jeremy Knowles, Canberk Köktürk, Henrieke Kohpeiß, Daniel Loick, Clara E. Mattei, Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, M. NourbeSe Philip, Vanessa Rocco, Arundhati Roy, Aaron Skabelund, Quinn Slobodian, Eric Otieno Sumba, Terese Svoboda, Julia Adeney Thomas, Vanessa E. Thompson, Alberto Toscano, Maxi Wallenhorst.

A book that examines the process of performing the self, distinctive for the formation of the self in Western neoliberal societies in the 21st century. It approaches the self from a transdisciplinary angle where political and cultural anthropology, performance studies and dramaturgy intersect.

Starting from their concern with the crisis of the social, which coincides with the rise of individualism, Vujanović and Cvejić critically untangle individualist modes of performing the self, such as possessive, aesthetic, and autopoietic individualisms. However, their critique does not make for an argument for collectivism as a socially more viable alternative to individualism. Instead, it confronts them with the more fundamental problem of ontogenesis: how is that which distinguishes me as an individual formed in the first place? This question marks a turning point in the study, where it steps back into the process of individuation, prior to, and in excess of, the individual. 

The process of individuation, however, encompasses biological, social, and technological conditions of becoming whose real potential is transindividual, or more specifically, social transformation. A ‘theater of individuation’ (Gilbert Simondon) captures the dramaturgical stroke by which the authors investigate social relations (like solidarity and de-alienation) in which the self actualizes its transindividual dimension. This epistemic intervention into ontogenesis allows them to expand the horizon of transindividuation in an array of tangible social, aesthetic and political acts and practices. As with every horizon, the transindividual may not be closely at hand; however, it is certainly within reach, and the book encourages the reader to approach it.

"Towards a Transindividual Self is an ambitious and capacious effort to theorize a new way to approach collectivity for political purposes through the lens of performance. Convinced that the current neoliberal conjuncture has only heightened a form of capitalist individualism that blocks notions of the social, the authors aim to show that a "transindividual formation of the self can bring about different courses of action and a more socially driven imagination." Transindividuation, they assure us, shows how "we form ourselves on the basis of interdependence, sharing, commonality, as well as indispensability of the individual as the agent of creativity/ knowledge, freedom, and change, who 'possibilizes' their own conditions of formation." 
— Professor Janelle Reinelt (University of Warwick), co-editor of Critical Theory and Performance (University of Michigan, 2006)

"Perhaps the most striking thing about this book is the manner in which it is able to engage with multiple discourses from political theory to aesthetics. In this way it both follows the ambitious scope of Simondon’s work on individuation, and expands into areas that Simondon did not cover, most notably politics and cultural politics, which is the book’s central concern. Rather than ask the question is the individual imagined or real, an effect of social relations or their distortion, the focus on the transindividual makes it possible to grasp individuation as a process: “Instead of pondering how the passage from one to many occurs, individuation permits us to immediately trace a bidimensional process in which both individual persons and the collectivities they form are altered. Another meaning of the crisis of the social has brought about a perfect slogan of such a process of transindividuation: ‘No one will be left alone in the crisis.” (…) Towards a Transindividual Self does a brilliant job of not only arguing for the importance and relevance for the transindividual as a concept for politics, performance, and the politics of performance, but of demonstrating a bold standard for political and aesthetic inquiry."
— Professor Jason Read (University of Maine), author of The Politics of Transindividuality (Brill, 2015)

Co-published by Oslo National Academy of the Arts, Sarma and Multimedijalni institut.

An artistic exploration of the political and emotional stakes of translation in the context of asylum law, through the lens of rarely heard testimonies: those of interpreters.

The Interpreter Dis/appears stems from an investigation conducted between 2019 and 2023 by curator, editor, and translator Virginie Bobin, focusing on both professional and volunteer interpreters and translators, as well as representatives from the state and organizations working with exiled individuals navigating asylum application procedures in France. By redirecting attention to the voices of interpreters—rarely visible figures in this ecosystem—the project delves into the ambiguous role of translation at the intersection of those who govern and those governed by asylum law. Within such a controlled environment, can the act of translation, with all its complexities, still express fleeting gestures of solidarity or even resistance? Through the exchanges prompted by these questions, the book seeks to reframe the prevailing public and political discourse on asylum, harnessing the embodied experiences of a small group of interpreters as an alternative lens to reveal the underlying power dynamics at play. It also probes the ethical and political potential of translation. The Interpreter Dis/appears unfolds across a variety of theatrical, artistic, and theoretical writing, alongside insightful contributions from artists and researchers who open up different perspectives for understanding and activating these issues.

The reader series Scriptings: Political Scenarios, edited by Achim Lengerer, publishes carefully selected scripts and texts by artists that refer neither to academic forms nor to purely literary forms of writing, but rather embed "text" as a fully integral part of contemporary political and visual art practice.

Contributions by Alix Eynaudi, Vir Andres Hera, Mihret Kebede, Franck Leibovici, Serena Lee, Marianne Mispelaëre, Eliana Otta, Rester. Étranger, Olia Sosnovskaya, Myriam Suchet, TOGETHER UNTIL _ __ (what)* ?

Afghanistan is my father’s homeland. He was born in Kabul in 1945 and later moved first to France, then to Switzerland in the 1970s. In my mind, Afghanistan exists as a geography with blurred edges, something I feel the need to reconcile with. It’s a place I’ve only ever known through stories, a source of memories that, over time, have shifted and become distorted.

Contributors: Luca Cerizza, Farid Rahimi, Said Rahimi, Susanna Ravelli, Francesca Recchia, Zafar Sayan, and Dawood Tawana

“Today is the day with the letter,” Celan writes to Bachmann on October 30, 1957. Theadora Walsh’s essay-poem, The Almond concerns, for I hesitate to write “about” or “is in relation to”, the love between Paul Celan and Ingeborg Bachmann. Two Austrian writers flung across Europe by the atrocities of the Holocaust, excavating the narrows of a language not theirs, or taken from them. An almond is the closest two people can be, and becomes the binding structural conceit of the book, two segments reaching across the blank page to each other, across history, time and language.

A critical exploration of the values and qualities inherent in independent educational organizations and the hurdles in the way of remaining "alternative" with the passing of time.

Anna Colin is programme director of the MFA Curating and co-director of the Centre for Art and Ecology, Goldsmiths, London. Besides Open School East, Anna worked as associate curator at Lafayette Anticipations, Paris (2014–20), associate director at Bétonsalon, Paris (2011–12), and curator at Gasworks, London (2007–10). She co-curated Chaleur Humaine, the 2nd Dunkirk Art & Industry Triennale (2023–24) on the relationship between energy and the arts since 1973. She holds a PhD in cultural geography and has a training in arboriculture.

Edited by Céline Chazalviel, Alice Dusapin, Sophie Orlando.
Texts by Anna Colin and Catherine Quéloz.

In the tradition of poets such as Charles Olsen, Alice Notley and Sappho, Allison Grimaldi Donahues poetry connects the history of breath and language with narratives about the discovery and loss of our own voice.

The Etruscan language knew no blank spaces, no breaks between words—its texture resembled an uninterrupted flow of speech; more singing than speaking, form rather than content. Only in the dictum of the pause, the meaningful fragmentation of the breath and the staccato of the Atemwende (Paul Celan) does language become comprehensible rhythmic expression.

In a world full of slogans and catchphrases, Allison Grimaldi Donahue defends the poetological demand of Sound over Content! The History of Breathing weaves linguistics and poetry, verse and song, meaning and sound into a dense narrative about breathing, rhythm, and the gaps in language that allow words to take on meaning in the first place.

Allison Grimaldi Donahue (born 1984 in Middletown, Connecticut, USA, lives and works in Bologna, Italy) works in text and performance exploring modes in which language and text can move between individual and collective experience. She is author of Body to Mineral and On Endings, and translator of Blown Away by vito m. bonito and Self-portrait by Carla Lonzi. She has given performances at Short Theatre, Almanac Turin, MACRO, MAMbo, Fondazione Giuliani, Kunsthalle Bern, Hangar Biccoca, and Flip Napoli.