florian schneider on Sat, 20 May 2006 12:32:41 +0200 (CEST) |
[Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]
<nettime> dictionary of war |
Dear nettimers, may I take the liberty to invite you with a rather lengthy and detailled posting to join a project we are currently setting up in the tradition of a series of events that started with the makeworld festival in 2001 <http://www.makeworlds.org/1/index.html> went on with NEURO--networking europe in 2004 <http://neuro.kein.org> and also included last years Fadaiat*/Borderlineacademy. During the latter event in the old castle of the city of Tarifa in the very south of Spain, at the Straits of Gibraltar, while meeting with about two hundred artists, activists, theorists in a dedicated open space environment it happened that we were realizing that although we might sort of share some basic beliefs, convictions or attitudes there is a certain lack of understanding since specific keywords or buzzwords were conceived in tremendously different ways and notions. Not that I would consider this a bug or a problem one should fix and get rid of, but sitting together and thinking about what is to be done next we thought that there might appear an enormous potential for the creation of further and possibly very productive understandings and/or misunderstandings: Spontaneously we organized an almost six hour long session in which various different people entered the stage and presented in alphabetical order one term or terminology that seemed crucial to them. It partly failed entirely and partly worked terrificly well. But in the following weeks and months we tried to develop this rather off-handed performance idea further on and decided to look for funding. In two weeks from now, on June 2 and 3, 2006, the first edition of DICTIONARY OF WAR will take place as a collaborative platform for creating concepts on the issue of war. At four public, two-day events over the next few months in Frankfurt, Munich, Graz and Berlin altogether 100 concepts will be invented, arranged and presented by scientists, artists, theorists and activists. The aim of DICTIONARY OF WAR is to make the creation or revaluation of concepts transparent into more or less open processes in which we can and need to intervene; at the same time, the aim is to develop models that redefine the creation of concepts on the basis not of interdisciplinary but rather undisciplined, not co-operative but rather collaborative processes. Such platform is explicitely not meant as a sort of specialized wikipedia with a focus on war. We are looking for concurrent versions, divergencies, critical debate and discussions rather than identifying a common understanding and imposing so called "definitions". There are no limits except a certain time frame for the actual performances; every contributor or concept person is free to choose whatever medium, format or genre in order to present the concept. The DICTIONARY OF WAR is an experimental project and entirely under construction. It will be generated at least on three levels: First of all it will be produced concept by concept in alphabetical order during four performance sessions at different places: an art school, a concert hall, a theatre and a museum. Every contribution is going to be properly video recorded and then made available near on real time on the website where it can get further elaborated, enriched with additional material and discussed. After the first four sessions a book will be published that collects 100 concepts. Participation on this project is not limited to those who can actually make it to one of the four events we are planning so far. You are invited to register at the platform and use this customized multi-user weblog system (based on the excellent code of drupal4.7) in order to participate, contribute a concept, compile your own versions, pick up the RSS-feeds, remix them etc. http://dictionaryofwar.org In times of war this mailinglist has repeatedly turned out as a very particular and valuable communication channel: I remember the NATO bombing of Serbia in 1999, but also of course the subsequent debates after 9-11 or before and during the latest Iraq war. The "new war", "post-modern war", "global war" -- almost every major military operation over the last years has evoked a new debate about the new character of war and this discussion has not been restricted to a few specialists but heavily affected political activists as well as cultural producers. Lastest after 2001 state of war has turned into a normality. Five years of global war have turned the world upside down, in a way that the extent of the ongoing changes cannot be fully conceived yet. DICTIONARY OF WAR is about polemics in various respects: It seeks confrontation with a reality that is characterised by the concealment of power relations the more that one talks about war and peace. But it is also about finding out to what extent war may function as an "analyzer of power relations" that constitutes current changes. Changes that have been producing ever new wordings and all sorts of labels that indicate that the juridical model of sovereignty would seem to have had its day: war as an armed confrontation between sovereign nation states is supposed to be a thing of the past. While this still refers to conflict between different interest groups that are defined by the degree of their intensity and extension, unlike in the past war serves to regulate rather than destroy or renew existing power relations. War is a "constitutive form of a new order" (Negri et al.) that no longer knows an inside or outside, that not only destroys but also produces life. In this new world order there is no difference between war and non-war: war is perpetual, everywhere and nowhere. So like so many other things these days, war too seems to be subject to a de- and re-regulation process that radically challenges old certainties and replaces them with new premises that shall not be questioned. DICTIONARY OF WAR sets out to oppose war and, at the same time, calls for "desertion" from a war of words in which facts are created with such force in their communication and propaganda that they can no longer be challenged. "At least, when we create concepts, we are doing something." The = idea of DICTIONARY OF WAR refers to the theory of creating concepts proposed by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari: Concepts do not fall from heaven but must be invented, created, produced; concepts refer to problems without which they would be meaningless. It is not about definitions, anecdotes, original opinions or entertainment, but rather about developing the tools with which to attain new ideas. The Frankfurt edition of DICTIONARY OF WAR features contributions by: The artist group "Apsolutno" from Novi Sad; the sound artists "Battery Operated from Montreal; the Taiwanese artist Shu Lea Cheang; the London based architect Celine Condorelli; writer Dietmar Dath from "Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung"; choreographers Kattrin Deufert & Thomas Plischke aka "Frankfurter K=FCche"; filmmaker Azza El-Hassan from Ramallah; = Berlin based curator Anselm Franke; the swedish artist duo Carl Michael von Hausswolff and Thomas Nordanstad; the artist group "International Festival" from Brussels and Stockholm; Beirut based media activist Manse Jacobi; the austrian musician Christof Kurzmann; filmmaker Angela Melitopolous from Cologne; military researcher Simon Naveh from Tel Aviv; DJ Hans Nieswandt from Cologne; John Palmesino, co-founder of the "Multiplicity" group; dutch theater director Jan Ritsema; art theorist Irit Rogoff, professor at Goldsmith College London; Saskia Sassen, professor for sociology in Chicago and London; author Nicolas Siepen from Berlin; Paris based filmmaker Eyal Sivan; Rob Stone, London based therorist; the Frankfurt based philosopher Matthias Vogel; New York based architect Srdjan Jovanovic Weiss; London based architect Eyal Weizman; architect Ines Weizman from London; Berlin based writer Raul Zelik; filmmaker Zelimir Zilnik from Novi Sad... The concepts are introduced in alphabetical order by their conceptual personae in half-hour long presentations or performances. The event starts on Friday, June 2 at 4 p.m. in Staedelschule Frankfurt am Main, Doererstrasse 10 and will be continued on Saturday from 3 p.m. on. Stay tuned: http://www.dictionaryofwar.org DICTIONARY OF WAR is a project by Multitude e.V. and Unfriendly Takeover, supported by the Federal Culture Foundation, Germany. # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net