herbst academy 2007

Close Enough
Three workshops for students, artists and theorists

Close enough: that is a place that we yearn for when it is far away – and too much when we achieve it. Love, for example. “Not”, as Niklas Luhmann writes, “a mere anomaly, but rather a perfectly normal improbability”. Improbably close. Close enough. Too close: “In the communication type for intimate relationships, it is not allowed to withdraw personal matters from the communication.” Relationships are that easy. And that complicated. We start them, stumble into them, neglect, overrate, underestimate, tax them and end them.
But “Close enough is also a geopolitical topos: Europe as it grows together, Africa as it draws closer, the economic proximity of the globalised world, the streams of refugees, new poverty. Whoever makes treaties, laws or even constitutions is in constant status negotiations. This status is negotiated in the realm between the opposing poles of closeness and distance by discussing correspondences and differences, rights and obligations, the drawing and opening of borders.
And it is an aesthetic category, here again a category of contradiction: Close enough, that is a performative state, a state in time, the moment of catastrophe or fortune: Being close enough – that is yearning, movement towards and away from each other.  A process, not a product. Movement, not inertia. Participation, not explanation. Presence, not meaning. A dynamics that seeks eternity. Constantly close to fulfilment and yet further away than from anything else. “The law of touching is separation” (Jean-Luc Nancy). Art touches us when it repels or holds us, but also – perhaps coincidentally, perhaps not even nameably – when it throws us back on ourselves, on a moment, a memory, a repressed occurrence perhaps.
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This too much and too little, this never being right, this unsolvability, this happiness, this constant disappointment and unattainability, this paradox, that is, at the same time, the driving force of interpersonal, political, artistic and performative power and motivation, is the connection between the  events of herbst-academy 2007. In this context three workshops for twenty young, international artists and theorists will form a kind of backbone of the festival and follow in terms of their focus these underlying thoughts.

Workshop I (24/09 – 29/09/2007)
Kinship and other Monstrosities
By Kattrin Deufert (D) & Thomas Plischke (D)
With Jeroen Peeters (B), Katharina Pewny (A/D) & Marcus Steinweg (D)

Workshop II (01/10 – 06/10/2007)
Modes of Listening - The Alienating Feedback of Sound
By Tom Lamberty (D), Heike Schleper (D), Bernhard Schreiner (D/A)
With Philip Jeck (GB), Francisco López (E), Staalplaat Soundsystem (NL/D) and Matthias Vogel (D)

Workshop III (07/10 – 12/10/2007)
Spaces of Negotiation
By ifau (D) and Jesko Fezer (D)
With Kerstin Höger (CH), Dorit Margreiter (A), muf architecture art (GB), Riklef Rambow (D), Christian Schmid (CH)
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The workshops are limited to approx. 20 persons and the organisers will select the participants. Registrants may participate more than one of the events. The participation fee for workshop is 150 Euro each. Each workshop has 5 grants that can be applied for (including lodging & participation fee). The spoken language will be English

Deadline for applications is 31/07/2007

» Information and Application Form Download

For further information plase contact:
steirischer herbst / Doris Psenicnik
t +43 316 823 007 73
psenicnik@steirischerherbst.at