Bound to perform - theater, work, performance mania

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With lectures by
Prof. Dr. Katja Diefenbach (European University, Frankfurt/Oder)
Lisa Jopt (President of the Genossenschaft Deutscher Bühnenangehöriger)
Prof. Dr. Philipp Staab (Humboldt University, Berlin)
Prof. Dr. Jule Govrin (Free University, Berlin)
and
Live performances by HfMT students
Relaxation and Gathering
Participation and quiet space
and much more.

How do we want to work /in the theater/ in the future? Which artistic work ethics will be applied? To what extent can work-fighting attitudes be developed that resist an increasing management of the sign orders emitted by the theater?

Not far from the starting point of the 'Barmbek Uprising' almost exactly 100 years ago, the Theater Academy of the HfMT Hamburg will be the venue for a symposium that addresses these artistic, academic and indeed 'trade union' questions. In view of the never-ending crises of globalized capitalism and their tangible consequences in the current theater landscape, the symposium will discuss theoretical and practical concepts of artistic work in order to link them with aspects of performance. In doing so, the symposium creates spaces for exchange, research and action that allow the levels of theoretical reflection, theatrical performance and art-affine spatial design to intertwine.

Program Small Stage, 11 a.m. - 6 p.m.

11.00 Welcome
Welcoming by the students of TAH
Greeting by Prof. Sabina Dhein (Director of the Theaterakdemie)
Introduction by Dr. Benjamin Sprick (HfMT Hamburg): "The method of dramatization - Barmbek, work, delusion"

11.30 "Adaptation: self-preservation work in the Anthropocene "
Prof. Dr. Philipp Staab, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
For the longest time in human history, work was primarily a means of self-preservation. Only in modern society did it also become a place of self-development. For decades, the material pacification of class conflict was a means of successfully stabilizing political rule: social advancement and growing scope for the individual ensured mass loyalty. Not only has this formula become increasingly fragile over the last 40 years in the face of growing precarity and social inequality. Today, the promise of self-development that was central to modernity has itself become a source of self-endangerment in the context of the ecological crisis, planetary risks and excessive individual demands. With the return of self-preservation problems, work as a source of social conflict and political legitimacy is coming into focus in a new way. Using the example of various forms of self-preservation work, the lecture discusses the question of what role work plays in the Anthropocene for the stabilization of political rule.
Philipp Staab is Professor of Sociology of the Future of Work at Humboldt University, Berlin.

12.30 Marx low-threshold! （上岸必备）-Freely based on Marx and Kafka
Scenic-musical performance with Rongji Liao, Zerui Quan, Benjamin Sprick and Lucas Zach
Sergej Rachmaninov - Piano Sonata No. 2, op. 36,
1st movement Allegro agitato, Joanna Sielicka, piano

13.00 "Performativity of superstructures - Althusser and decolonial legal theory"
Prof. Dr. Katja Diefenbach, European University Frankfurt (Oder)
The lecture introduces Althusser's theory of ideology and discusses its blind spots, especially concerning the colonial arguments of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, their war and labor logic narratives of wolves and lions, anti-will and impersonalities, which Althusser was so interested in without considering their connection to Atlantic trade, land grabbing and enslavement. Therefore, the lecture will focus on the colonial dimensions of the ideologems of labor, sovereignty, war and punishment in early modern philosophy in order to better understand the contemporary transformations of these ideologems. Although the critical study of modern political philosophy represented a "royal road to Marx" for Althusser, he "forgot" to examine its colonial grammar, thereby reinforcing the rupture between structuralist Marxism, anti-colonial theorizing and the Black Radical tradition. In order to reduce this rupture, we will read Althusser through his "forgetting", through what he did not talk about, namely a complex theory of ideology that analyses the dimensions of adapted subjectivation and total dispossession, the internalization of norms and escalatory violence, voluntary obedience and the production of (post)colonial "human waste" in their constitutive entanglements. To this end, we go back to the ideological formation phase of racial capitalism between late scholasticism and rational natural law, in which a new nexus of rule emerges that links legal personality, labor, property and sovereignty along the figure of self-willful self-preservation and self-disposition. Who is excluded and included from this nexus? And in what way? What ideas of cheap nature, instrumental bodies, exploitable labor and 'ownerless' land are created in the process?
Katja Diefenbach is Professor of Philosophy of Culture at the European University
Viadrina, Frankfurt (Oder).

14.00 Break

15.00 "Working Bodies. Economy as body economy in times of unbounded work"
Discussion with Prof. Dr. Jule Govrin, Freie Universität, Berlin
Work stress, pressure to perform, exhaustion - in terms of work, the capitalist economy reveals itself as a body economy. How is the affective and aesthetic body work of the present determined by the artistic dispositive of creativity? Or has the neoliberal guiding figure of the creative, self-optimized self long since given way to the fundamentally exhausted self? In light of these contemporary diagnostic questions, the discussion will circle around the connections between exploitation and work that is not recognized as such, and explore the political potential of new trade union structures and transversal forms of strike. The joint discussion will be framed by short inputs from Jule Govrin.
JuleGovrin is a visiting professor of philosophy in the field of gender and diversity
at Freie Universität, Berlin.

16.00 Felicia Zeller: X-Freunde - Ein Speed-Reading
Performance with Till Gedack, Elisabeth Hoppe, Marlene Reiter, edited by Margit Pötzsch

16.30 "Getting jobs, negotiating jobs: Reality-Check Sprechtheater"
Lisa Jopt, President of the Genossenschaft Deutscher Bühnen-Angehöriger (GBDA)
"The narrative 'There's just no money!' corrodes our strength. This narrative is poison. It damages our negotiating position and our self-confidence: Because, if there's no money and the theater goes bust because we demand too much, then it's our fault that the theater goes bust. So this narrative plays with guilt. Blame that is shifted onto the individual, e.g. in salary negotiations. Blame that is also shifted onto the union, which of course does NOT want to be to blame for theaters having to close. This narrative is emotional blackmail. But we must not allow ourselves to be emotionally blackmailed, because demanding a lot has always been the role of a trade union. It is even a necessary strategy on the way to realistic implementation." (Lisa Jopt)
Lisa Jopt is an actress and managing president of the Genossenschaft Deutscher Bühnen-Angehöriger (GDBA).

17:30 Closing delusion: Auction of drama(turg)ic working time and joint transition into the participation space
Performance by students of the HfMT
Followed by: Get Togather(ing), Happening, union brainstorming

Participation Room (Control Room 3)
Relaxed Performance
Reflection
Reading
Conversation Starters
Speed-Dating
Workload-Management
(Detailed Program TBA)
Quiet-Room 'Bartleby' (Opera Studio)
Audio version of Melville's story
Opportunity to rest
Relaxation-Space
Contemplation
Sleeping
(Detailed program TBA)

Eintritt frei

With the kind support of the Thörl Foundation