Politics of Feelings/Economies of Love

POLITIKE OSJEĆAJA / EKONOMIJE LJUBAVI
predavanja, filmske projekcije, diskusije

18. 12. / 18.00 h- Romana Schmalisch, Robert Schlicht (POGON)
19.12. / 18.00 h- Bureau of Melodramatic Research & Florin Flueras (Galerija KARAS)

organizacija/organization: k.r.u.z.o.k.

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Detaljniji program, sažetke i biografije umjetnika preuzmite s linka:
http://kruzok.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/politike-osjec487aja-ekonomije-ljubavi2.pdf

As we have witnessed over the past few decades, the mass politics of passion can often be a major driving force in the contemporary political arena. The “politics of emotions” represents the core of identity politics. To paraphrase Vjeran Katunarić in his article “The politics of memory”, the rulers of societal emotions are ideologies and their instruments of mass politics, primarily the media. Consequently, it can be said that our social and emotional capacities often limit our cognitive horizons. With respect to ideological speech, we are interested in its representation in language and image. According to Susan Sontag, the utopian aesthetics deployed in Nazi propaganda (i.e., identity as a biological given) implies an ideal eroticism (sexuality transformed into the magnetism of a leader and his joyful followers). The transformation of sexual energy into a spiritual force for the benefit of the community is the fascist ideal. Our interest is twofold: firstly, we are interested in the politics of emotions within the dominant political discourse, including the sexuality/sexualisation of ideological speech, and secondly, in its relation to the emotional community of two or more individuals.

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This was (more or less) the message we have emailed to a number of artists, theorists and cultural workers. We have chosen those practices/proposals which demonstrated a certain divergence, as well as a shift in form, i.e. interdisciplinary presentations, artistic explorations, lecture performances or film research. Our guests – the Bureau of Melodramatic Research (BMR) and Florin Flueras from Bucharest, and Romana Schmalisch and Robert Schlicht from Berlin – operate on the intersection of cultural practices, film theory and performance. Their preoccupation with emotions is expressed in the form, without abstaining from theatralisation and fictionalization, in addition to an analytical and reflexive approach.

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about the organiser
k.r.u.z.o.k. is a platform directed primarily towards knowledge exchange and communication within the sphere of contemporary culture, art and theory, rather then towards their production and presentation. So far the work of k.r.u.z.o.k. was realised in different public and private locations throughout Zagreb (Pogon, SC, AKC Medika, private locations…). It was of closed character, in the sense that the meetings were organised via a mailing list. The reason for this was that we wanted the direction of the platform’s activities to be self-determined, in accordance with the wishes and needs of the participants, rather then to be set in advance, which is common in project-based practices.
Together with some guest participants, k.r.u.z.o.k. (whose number of participants constantly varies) is, for the first time, organizing a public programme: lecture-performances, presentations, projections and discussions under the common title ”Politics of Emotions / Economies of Love”.

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At present, k.r.u.z.o.k. includes: Fokus Group, Slobodne veze/Loose Associations and Irena Borić.
More information on k.r.u.z.o.k is available on the blog: http://kruzok.wordpress.com/

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The project is supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Croatia and the Zagreb City Office of Education, Culture and Sports. It is realised in cooperation with the KARAS/HDLU Gallery through the MEET THE ARTIST programme, and with the Zagreb Centre for Independent Culture and Youth (POGON).

programme: 18. 12. 2012. in Pogon, Kneza Mislava 11/1, Zagreb
6:00 pm
Nation and Negation
presentation of the research project by the artist duo
Romana Schmalisch, Robert Schlicht
Break
(with tea and cookies)
7:30 pm
Preliminaries
(movie 48min + discussion)
Romana Schmalisch, Robert Schlicht
Mingling
(with wine and grappa)

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programme: 19. 12. 2012 Karas gallery space
6:00 pm
Protect Your Heart at Work
(lecture performance)
Bureau of Melodramatic Research
Break
(with tea and cookies)
7:30 pm
Biosorcery
(lecture performance)
Florin Flueras i Alina Popa
Mingling
(with wine and grappa)

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Romana Schmalisch, Robert Schlicht

Nation and Negation
(abstract)
Nations exist. Or do they? What constitutes a nation? Passport? Language? Traditions? Or the political interests behind nation-states? The notion of the nation, as common-place as it seems, remains a subject of constant negotiation, be it between states or within the community that imagines itself as a “nation”.
In our research project, “Nation and Negation”, we intend to investigate the notion of the nation – case study: Armenia – by means of a cinematographic research. Our conceptual starting point is the presumption of a parallelism between the constitution of a nation and that of a film: in both cases the individuals – the performers of a film; the subjects of a nation – are integrated within, and by way of, an overarching narrative that predates them and that creates an abstract communality between them. The progress of our artistic research will be part of the final work and turned into a filmic installation..

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Preliminaries
(abstract)
The film “Preliminaries” traces the history of the statue “Worker and Kolkhoz Woman” by Vera Mukhina. This statue was originally designed for the Soviet pavilion at the 1937 World Exhibition in Paris, where it stood opposite the pavilion of Nazi Germany, enacting an antagonism that would result in a catastrophic war. It was later moved to Moscow and erected in front of the Exhibition of National Achievements of the Economy, which to the contemporaries appeared as a promise of a radiant future. After World War II, the statue became the emblem of the biggest film company of the Soviet Union, Mosfilm, and is shown at the beginning of every Mosfilm movie since 1947.
In deciphering the statue’s diverse symbolisms and connections to the historical contexts, the film investigates into the notion of future as a central topic in the politics and culture of the Stalinist era.

~~BIO:~~

Romana Schmalisch (1974 born and based in Berlin) studied Fine Arts at the University of the Arts (Universität der Künste) in Berlin. She was a resident artist in several stipend programs, among others as a researcher at the Fine Art Department of the Jan Van Eyck Academy, Maastricht, and in the Berlin Senate’s stipend program in collaboration with Whitechapel Gallery and Studio Voltaire, London.
Robert Schlicht (1975 born and based in Berlin) studied Philosophy at Humboldt University Berlin. His thesis with the title “Passage au Cinéma” examined the relations of Walter Benjamin’s film theory and his theory of history and historiography.
Together they develop projects at the interface of theory and film, investigating cinematic representations and the representability of historical processes and social structures.

film still, cinematography by Michal Stajniak and Declan Clarke

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The Bureau of Melodramatic Research
Protect Your Heart at Work
(abstract)
In the postindustrial economy the commodities are intangible: a feeling of well-being, the personal satisfaction, a sense of uniqueness and individuality, connectedness and protection. We produce emotions, trade in knowledge, invest on the market of ideas, speculate on compassion and monopolize happiness. Buy for a smile, sell for a laught. Affectivity, knowledge, communication, social skills, kinship, creativity, human contact, proximity, forms of life are at the heart of the mechanisms of production and valorization today.
Under the present conditions, there is a high need to update the protection rules at the workplace. Since the workplace is everywhere and we embody the work, these rules become more and more important. What are the ergonomics of contemporary emotional work? How to avoid the repetitive strain injuries caused by recurrent smiling, compassionate inflections of the voice, endless nodding? We need new protection today because we no longer have a job, we are the job.

*Protect Your Heart at Work was developed and first presented as a dialogue with the Glass Lady in the Warsaw Technical Museum, with the support of Anna Ptak.

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Florin Flueras, Alina Popa
Biosorcery
(abstract)
Without necessary knowing we are embedded in an economic logic that works as a religion, creating the forms of life that we are and that we experience around us. How to escape the mechanisms that are creating only one possible world, that are confining the virtual to an extent that any potential of variation is exhausted?
How can we place ourselves in a position of self-fragilization, which allows a power to affect and a power to be affected?
Sorcery was always the last resort for resisting this kind of religious take over of reality with its total organization of perceptions, behaviours and affects. Biosorcery is about production of new life from the precarious, bare life that inhabits us. It is about exhausting the spectacle potential, about achieving a affective bio- attention as opposed to the current marketization of distracted affection and non-empathic attentiveness.

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~~BIO:~~

The Bureau of Melodramatic Research (BMR) is a dependent institution which actualizes itself through social and political realities, always facing the implosion of the possibility for panacea-art today. BMR examines the way in which key elements of melodrama are currently at work on the political scene. Irina Gheorghe and Alina Popa founded BMR in 2009 and are contributing to several collective projects, such as ArtLeaks, Presidential Candidacy, Bezna zine. http://thebureauofmelodramaticresearch.blogspot.com/

Florin Flueras is author and coauthor of projects like: Postspectacle Trilogy, Presidential Candidacy, Romanian Dance History, A brave search of the ultimate reality, Cooperativa Performativa, etc. His projects operate somewhere at the borders of contemporary art, performance, activism and political theory. He explores, investigates and criticizes the political component of art and the aesthetic component of politics – the power of Spectacle and the spectacle of Power.

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~~PHOTOS~~