Affirmative sustainability

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Program
10 am - 1 pm: Responsive Talk
1 pm - 2 pm: Music Lunch
2 pm - 4 pm: Workshop

With contributions from
SIGNA (Signa & Arthur Köstler)
Maren Haffke
Vera Tollmann
Lynn T. Musiol
Christian Tschirner
Katharina Alsen
Benjamin Sprick
Cello-Manifesto

Yeah, let's re-use this!
The symposium "Affirmative Sustainability" asks how renunciation and resource conservation in the arts can be experienced as an affirmation and creative opportunity. The focus is on ecological and social aspects of sustainability, which are reflected in artistic practices and call for possible alternative futures. In this way, it is possible to discover how reduction is transformed from a supposed deficit into a productive aesthetic strategy - from minimalist stage sets to low-energy work processes.

In political and media debates, the sustainable use of resources is usually portrayed negatively and associated with loss and restriction. The arts and their history show an alternative perspective: practices such as moderation, reduction or conscious omission can be productive and positive. This understanding is referred to as "affirmative sustainability". The symposium would therefore like to examine how artistic approaches affirmatively shape renunciation and the moderate use of resources and thus open up a productive 'epistemology of scarcity'. The focus here is on the ecological and social dimensions of sustainability. This is understood above all as relational work - between people, materials, resources, institutions and aesthetic forms. This perspective ties in with cultural theory, sociological and philosophical positions of the 21st century.
In the face of climate change, biodiversity loss and social inequality, technical or political solutions often dominate the discourse. Less attention is paid to the power of cultural imagination in the concert of opinions and positions: what images of the future can we create and how do our actions influence the register of artistic utopias? Sustainability can be thought of as a productive practice that has its own aesthetic and social qualities. The performative arts in particular offer a suitable field of research for this. They are processual and ephemeral, work with living bodies and are based on the relationship between performers and audience. This allows relationships to be redesigned, materials to be reused and resources to be used more consciously.
In the practice of performative arts, renunciation - for example of large stage sets or energy-intensive processes - can become a source of aesthetic innovation. Minimalism, repurposing and openness do not appear as deficiencies, but as creative challenges that give rise to new forms of experiencing space, body, material and audience, which we want to address at the symposium.

Eintritt frei

A online participation is possible.

Further information on registration will follow shortly.