January 15, 2009
Categories: Uncategorized . . Author: mitdemoinaction . Comments: Leave a comment
Excerpt of INSTITUTET (SE) performing their demo
Excerpt of INSTITUTET (SE) performing their demo
Real Change requires Real Action or Real Action requires Real Change?
MIT DEMO Festival -08 is now in full action. This is a reflection of the first day of the festival and on how performers and audience responded to the theme of Real Action. But please, do not misread me! This is not about defining opposites, on the contrary. It is more a “Cageian” reflection that silence mean the entire range of sound, presence a state of absolute absence and so on…!
Clear/unclear
It is about the contexts. About the frameworks and structures around us.
security/danger
It is about the rules and contracts you engage in and about obeying or breaking them. Its about chance and coincidence or total control.
Meaning/emptiness
It is about expectations and opportunities and the lack or inclusion of purpose and substance.
Presence/absence
It is about the fundamental states of being. About conditions.
sound/silence
It is about time and movement. It is about nothing and everything!
Eisenächer/Harder CLAIMS (DE) have been investigating their Reality Crime Scene
Eisenächer/Harder CLAIMS (DE) have been investigating their Reality Crime Scene
What are you not allowed to do here?
This is the question that performance duo EISENHÄCHER/HARDER asked random people around commercial center Triangeln yesterday as part of their investigation/preparation for their DEMO on Saturday. Some of the answers they got were:
Have intercourse
Light a fire
Land a helicopter
Drink alcohol
Murder
Chop down the Christmas tree
If I understand this properly they will perform some of these violations and disobediances on their intervention on Saturday. Interesting indeed!
INSTITUT DES RECHERCHES MENANT A RIEN (FR) in rehearsal
INSTITUT DES RECHERCHES MENANT A RIEN (FR) in rehearsal
More arrivals and preparations
More participants have now arrived to Malmö. The latest addition to the festival is the Finnish trio RAKEL + ANTTI + ANNA. We met them briefly at their rehearsal place at Stadt Hamburgatan 1 on tuesday.
The French group INSTITUT DES RECHERCHES MENANT A RIEN is also located in one of the studios at Stadt Hamburggatan. Since they arrived on Sunday they have had a few more days of preparations and are now rehersing their “partition”. If you want to enjoy a preview of their partition follow the link below:
Attention!
The Berlin based performance art duo Eisenächer/Harder CLAIMS is looking for participants for their 4-day-workshop Reality Crime Scene during MIT DEMO 08.
Are you interested in being an artist-activist tackling social realities with artistic means? Do you feel the desire for doing actions in public spaces you’re not supposed to do? Do you want to learn artistic interview methods and how to apply them for/as interventions at one of Malmö’s central squares?
Eisenächer/Harder CLAIMS are now looking for workshop participants with whom they will commonly challenge the supposed to be-reality of Malmö. Together you will turn Triangeln into a crime scene and motivate the Swedish audience to commit the crimes they always wished for!
Please send a short text on WHY you would like to participate, personal interests and experience to: janine.eisenaecher@eatwork.de
Each participant may bring 2-3 personal objects related to the issue of CRIME, a digital photo camera (if you have one) and warm clothes for intervention in public space.
Dates: 26th – 29th November
Programme: Wed 10 am to 6 pm, Thurs-Sat 10 am to 2 pm
Intervention: Saturday 11 am to 2 pm at Triangeln
DEMO: Saturday 6 pm
The workshop is free of charge!
Joy Harder and Janine Eisenächer
“Malmö is too clean”
The first arrivals to the festival, French artists of INSTITUT DES RECHERCHES MENANT A RIEN were taken on a field trip around the port areas of Malmö on early Sunday. They are looking for metal, used electronic equipments and other garbage for their investigation of “Real Action”. As mentioned in their description they will explore the relation between “nothing”, defined by John cage in the 1950s, and “Reality”. Their name INSTITUT DES RECHERCHES MENANT A RIEN (The institute for the research of Nothing) is extracted from Cages’ “Lecture on Nothing” where Cage tells the listener that the lecture has no point and will go nowhere. “I am here and there is nothing to say. If among you are those who wish to get somewhere, let them leave at any moment”(Cage Silence 109).
At first it was difficult to come across what they were searching for. “Malmö is too clean” one of them declared. “In Marseilles there is a lot of trash lying around for anyone to take”. I told them about how Swedish law forbids you to take what other people have decided to throw away, this is why all places are gated. Once you’ve tossed something it should be lost forever. We throw things that no longer is useful or have meaning for us. If someone else wants that piece of trash it will suddenly be filled with new meaning and value and subsequently you might want it back, because you don’t want to throw away valuable things. The law in that case, basically forbids you to bring value into meaningless things. This is partly one of the points of Cages lecture: that Western thought has forced us to see value only in things that seemingly have a deep meaning or have eventual goals and aims. Therefore he imply that if you possess nothing, “Anything therefore is a delight (since we do not possess it) and thus need not fear its loss” (Cage, Silence 110)Is this what IRMAR intend to do? Bringing meaning back into meaningless things? Is it not contradictory to Cages theory? Or do they simply take meaningless stuff out of one context into another to make a meaningless point? We will for sure find out during the festival!
MIT DEMO IN ACTION 
