School of Emergencies at HFBK Hamburg
Time: 24 July till 6 August 2023
Where: HFBK Hamburg
Condition of participation: daily 11 am till 6 pm(except weekends)
Mentors: Tsaplya Olga Egorova, Vera Shelkina and Dmitry Vilensky (Chto Delat collective)
Invited guests and presenters: Alexander Klose, Oxana Timofeeva, Angelina Davydova, Roland Schaeffer and Pjotr Zherebtsov
Methods of teaching: collective work on the learning film, shadow theater
Music: Die Deutsche Postpunk (Alexander Michalsky, Lion Frenster, Nikita Kotliar - HFBK students)
The demands to abandon the energy of burning natural fossil materials - coal, oil, gas - and switch to new sources of renewable energy is getting more and more urgent. The future of life on the planet depends on the possibilities of this transition.
The end of petromodernity was once foreshadowed by the development of nuclear power, but after a series of disasters, nuclear power futurists were forced to scale back their programs everywhere due to unpredictable catastrophic dangers and under the onslaught of renewable green energy development.
In our summer school, we will learn about different visions of energy development opportunities (and their implications for humanity) and consider these processes as struggles of different elements: fire, water, wind, nuclear particles and even mystical creatures like a dragons - all of them appear as metaphors for different visions of our future. And we will try through the individual stories of the participants to figure out what we are afraid of, what we are willing to strive for, and how this can affect the way we envision and make art.
About the Learning film method:
The learning film method comes from the development of the practices of Lehrstuecke, whose theoretical foundations were laid by Bertolt Brecht and which later developed widely in various practices of forum theater. This method consists of taking a position in dialogue and conflict with other positions that deal with a particular problem. We propose the use of video documentation and the editing as an important part of the educational process. We also suggest not relying only on verbal articulation, but to try to find one's position through body language, its movements and interactions together with other bodies. We also suggest that summer school participants practice the medium of shadow theater.
Our educational film will be made on creative common license, and each participant can realize her own version of the film based on the footage. The collective “Chto Delat”’ version of the film will be premiered at the exhibition Petromelancholia at Brutus, Rotterdam (opening on 30 August 2023).
Public events
Talk: Extinguish all fires! by Alexander Klose
When: 24 July 2023, 7pm
Where: Room 214 (former Living Room)
The detection and exploitation of fossil components, namely the developments in coal and petro chemistry, have been the crucial economical factor for more than a century. With the ecological crisis and the subsequent advent of the end of fossil modernity and the unavoidable necessity to extinguish all fires, the question of the elements as the ‘elementaries’ of our energy system has returned. Wind and water have become opponents to fire, and the sun as the main energy source for all natural dynamics has started to take up a new fundamental role in different ‚solarities‘, seemingly not unlike its fundamental role in cosmologies that were in place before – or parallel and despite of – fossil modernity.
In following this thread of elemental thought for their summer school ‚Clash of the Elements‘, Chto Delat is bringing traditional and new elements back into the picture: “fire, water, wind, atoms”. I’d like to add earth to complete the components of the traditional doctrine of the four elements, and plastics, the new prima materia of petromodernity. How are these materials conceived of today, and what qualifies them as an element? Starting from some of the myths and artistic renderings of their dynamics, my talk tackles the question if we are facing a renaissance of elemental thought and tries to reconstruct some of the aspects and means that may have led to it.
More information and biography of the speaker can be found here.
Talk: Oil and War: A Geophilosophical Approach by Oxana Timofeeva
When: 31 July 2023, 7pm
Where: Raum 214 (former Living Room)
In this talk, Oxana Timofeeva discusses the question of the role played by oil in today's warfare, and analyses the destructive elements of petropolitics in the context of elemental metaphysics. Addressing geophilosophical aspects of colonization and extractive economy, she will attempt to deconstruct Russia's pertroimperialism not only as a political formation, but also as a state of mind, as well as a specific ontological disposition.
Contact
- Stefan Aue, Referent für künstlerische Forschung
- Room:141
- Phone: +49 40 42 89 89-312
- Mail:stefan.aue@hfbk.hamburg.de