The Divided States Tour
Saturday
and Sunday 02.19.05 – The Divided States Tour (Denmark Section)
1. About the Divided States Tour
2. (DV Dinner) Saturday, February 19th.
3. (DV Walk and DV Talk) Sunday, February 20th
4. A selection of videos (installation)
5. About our host (rum46)
6. About16 Beaver
http://www.16beavergroup.org/denmark
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1. About the Divided States Tour
What: special events / workshop
Where: Århus, Denmark (directions below)
When: Sat. + Sun. Feb. 19+20, 2005.
Who: All are invited "The Divided States Tour" is a new ongoing
project by 16 Beaver. This particular segment of the project is designed
for "Solidarity UNLIMITED? Liberty, Equality, Fraternity” an
exhibition held in Denmark at rum46 <http://www.rum46.dk>
During the weekend, three members of 16 Beaver AA, PL, RG will organize
sessions of cookings, interviews, screenings, walks, and other social
events that focus on the notion of "division" as a tension point
with the exhibition's subject matter, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.
We would like to concentrate and explore what calls for a revolution or
its equivalent in our times. The war that the US government is launching
on the Iraqi people as well as on its OWN population is one location where
this division is evident, first world vs third world, western world vs
Arab world etc. then first class vs. second class vs. third class citizens
and so on...
In out project in Denmark we would like to discuss such issues of division
and try to find them in the regional Danish and the European context.
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2. Saturday, February 19th. At rum46.
5:30pm – DV Dinner -- an interactive video introduction + discussion.
At 5:30pm we will start by collecting the ingredients everyone has brought
for the dinner we’ll be cooking together at 7:30pm (see below).
After collecting the ingredients, 16Beaver members AA, PL, and RG will
provide a short introduction about what 16Beaver is and how it works.
We will then immediately get to practice.
DV-Dinner (Divided Vision Dinner) is an open interview format we’ve
developed based on a simple set of short questions that are asked to individual
members of the local community. The format plays on the situation of TV
production/consumption, while enabling a contradictory mobility and reciprocity
unavailable to that medium, especially in its current stage of corporate
consolidation. The responses to the questions are elaborated by individuals
in a separate room on-site, while the rest of the group watches the video
projection in an adjacent room. Interviewees circulate in a fast pace,
while roles are quickly and constantly exchanged between “speaker”
and “audience.” We would like to invite everyone in Arhus
who has an interest in socially engaged art, collective practice, politics,
and activism to come and participate in the interview. You don’t
have to prepare anything. Just come ready to speak very briefly in response
to a question we will give you that same night. Once we’ve gone
through a set of questions and answers, we will open up the situation
to a brief discussion on the issues that came up, and we will start preparations
for our dinner.
7:30pm The Dinner. At rum46.
Please bring one of your favourite foods (ingredients) and we will all
cook it together, as we familiarize ourselves with the Ärhus context
and start to develop a map of the city to pursue the following day’s
walk. (see below)
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3. Sunday, February 20th
1:00pm-4:00pm -- DV Walk (Divided Vision Walk) - at rum46 and Arhus.
At 1:00pm we will meet at rum46 and draw a root on a map of Arhus. Between
1:30pm and 4pm we will walk around the town and visit the locations we’ve
marked on our map.
The walk will concentrate on sites where “divided states”
are experienced. Whether “divided states” is given a social,
architectural, political, geographical, or any other interpretation, we
will let that be determined by our guests.
If you already know locations you think we should visit together, send
us an email to others@16beavergroup.org
5:30pm–7:30pm – DV Talk (Divided Vision Talk) – at rum46
16 Beaver members Rene Gabri, Ayreen Anastas, and Peter Lasch will each
present a short selection of projects they made for the journal “Rethinking
Marxism.” These individual presentations will highlight the common
thread established by the context of the publication and the artists’
long-term participation in the 16Beaver collective. They will also become
the springboard for a group discussion on the balance between individual
and collective art practice, a topic that we would love to engage in the
Danish context, specifically within the topics of this exhibition: solidarity,
liberty, equality, and fraternity.
________________________________________
4. A selection of videos
This segment consists of a video installation that brings together a selection
of works compiled by 16Beaver.
click here
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5. rum46 and "Solidarity UNLIMITED?"
Solidarity UNLIMITED?
Liberty, Equality, Fraternity
Exhibition space rum46
Studsgade 46
8000 Århus C
Tlf:86208625
E-mail:rum46@rum46.dk
www.rum46.dk
More on the exhibition/project:
The exhibition space rum46 presents the art project "Solidarity Unlimited?
Liberty, Equality, Fraternity". This interdisciplinary art project
should be seen as a thematic follow-up to last year's international project
Gæstebud - feast/hospitality. With new angles on human relations,
we invite a number of international artists, participants and lecturers
to place Liberty, Equality, Fraternity on the agenda in the current social
and political everyday life in Denmark.
With the new liberal stream from the 1980's and 1990's we have experienced
an extreme growth of individualistic liberty - maybe at the cost of both
equality and fraternity. In Denmark this tendency has led to give and
take politics and a give and take community where there is no place, on
the face of it, for solidarity in political thinking or in (and between)
human actions (Solidarity: A sense of connection and sympathy with, and
will to help or support, others = cohesiveness).
This is a political tendency/development which we see not only limited
to Denmark, but also one which occurs in a long list of other Western
countries. "Solidarity Unlimited? Liberty, Equality, Fraternity"
is an attempt to establish a counter-representation or a counter-publicity
to the new liberal tendencies: meaning an opposition to the current, dominant
political situation.
The democratic society is originally based on the principals of liberty,
equality and fraternity (solidarity) - however difficult they may be to
unite. Without the democratic community, democracy will break down. With
a ruling give and take politics and a give and take community, the spontaneous[1]
liberty or the spontaneous community disappears; one becomes included
or excluded in a community dependant on what one, as a human, has to offer,
or from which cultural, ethnic, religious and social background one comes.
With the project Solidarity Unlimited? Liberty, Equality, Fraternity rum46
aims to make the notion of community topical and discuss the possibilities
of a more spontaneous and open community which is based on diversity and
acceptance of both (dis)unity and non-identical equality.
We wish to reestablish, reflect on and constantly challenge the distribution
of the Trinity of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity,in a dynamic and attentive
co-existence, where contrast and differences can be a supplement to equality
and a possible breeding ground for a more spontaneous community.[2]
The art project is an expression for the understanding of art as social
communication. It is not the form which is relevant in this connection,
but a practice which can put societal problems in play. The artists, participants,
and debaters involved show new spaces and possibilities of action, alternatives
in relation to the society we ourselves are part of, via exchanging and
interaction in social, political and cultural fields - with a starting
point, amongst others, in the aesthetic.
With the understanding that the open, public space is the optimal meeting
place for exchange/communication between partners and opponents in society,
we have decided that Solidarity Unlimited? Liberty, Equality, Fraternity
will unfold in the city space of Århus as well as in the premises
of rum46, which will throughout the period function as Space of Remarks
and Comments, where anyone with an interest in these matters can contribute
texts, works, expressions. Artists invited to take part:
Jakob Ørsted ( Denmark )
Brett Bloom ( USA )
Section8 ( USA )
Lana Lin & Lan Thao Lam ( Vietnam, New York )
16Beaver Group ( USA )
Marie Markmann, Nis Rømer Poulsen, Jesper Dyrhauge ( Denmark )
People invited to give talks:
Anne Sofie Fogtmann ( political science and architecture ) ( Denmark )
Anders Lundkvist ( political economi ) ( Denmark )
Anne Marie Helger ( comedian, social critic ) ( Denmark )[1] The spontaneous
liberty or the spontaneous community should be understood as unconditional
liberty or unconditional community, where there is no talk of proviso
- as in the unconditional hospitality (Derrida). A thought based on a
form of Utopia.
[2] "... it is concerned with constituting a relation which is not
based on identity, and attempting to comprehend the possibility of a community
which is based on non-identical equality; that is, where difference is
a non-threatening supplement to equality" IN: "Hæfter
for Gæstfrihed" (Pamphlets on Hospitality) by Mikkel Bolt Rasmussen.
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6. About16 Beaver
16Beaver is the address of a space initiated/run by artists to create
and maintain an ongoing platform for the presentation, production, and
discussion of a variety of artistic/cultural/economic/political projects.
It is the point of many departures/arrivals.
For more information on our various projects and activities go to:
http://www.16beavergroup.org
