07.12.2014 | 15:00

Eine Performance unter anderem mit Studierenden der Akademie: Johannes Stoll, Monika Ehret, Michael Schramm, Florian Model, Lene Vollhardt, Lukas Ludwig, Grażyna Roguski (HfG Karlsruhe), Szerencsés Rita (HfG Karlsruhe) und Katya Khakhulina (HfG Karlsruhe)

The multi-disciplinary practice of Karen Mirza and Brad Butler confronts expectations for social participation and collaboration. Their work forms as a critique of neo-liberal working life and its politics of power. For many years, the duo has used various iterations of film and photographic mediums to speak to urgent social conditions and reflect on pervasive everyday realities. In 2004, Mirza and Butler formed no.w.here, an artist-run organization that combines film production with critical dialogue about contemporary image making. Their more recent work takes the form of actions that challenge the traditional roles of artist as producer and audience as recipient, activating a collective process of inquiry entitled the Museum of Non-Participation. The artists assert that „nonparticipation“, rather than a position of negation or denial, is a powerful state to speak from.

For the performance work The Game of Power (2014), Mirza and Butler hand authorship over to participants to demonstrate through arrangements of objects and the positioning of the body a relationship to power. The work is inspired by an exercise from Augusto Boal’s Games for Actors and Non-Actors, which analyses the movement and gestural use of the body and speech for the purpose of resistance. Inviting staff and visitors to play the „game“, a forum is opened up for localized power-relations to be attended to and potentially destabilized. CA2M Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo, Spanien