 | Open Ups
herbst Academy
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Open Up I: The Burden of the Beast
Gary Winters / Lone Twin (GB)
Gary Winters, one half of the British performance duo Lone Twin, who featured at herbst 2006 with their commissioned work “Nine Years”, presents the status of the in-depth research for their most ambitious project to date: “Beastie”, a veritably self-empowering live experience for children. The lecture explores the relationship between this work and the company’s previous productions for adults and describes the next steps for “Beastie”, which premičres next year, co-produced by steirischer herbst.
Open Up II: The Long Memory of Cocaine
John Barker (GB) & Jorge Hurtado (BOL)
There is a connection between pre- and post-industrial working conditions that can be illustrated by the difference between coca and cocaine: Today’s Bolivia was one of the largest silver producers in the seventeenth century; the exploitation of the indigenous peoples, however, was only possible thanks to their traditional use of analgesic, ergogenic coca leaves. The Spaniards seized the coca monopoly, selling the forced labourers that which made this forced labour possible in the first place. Jorge Hurtado, psychiatrist and founder of the coca museum in La Paz, talks about the links between coca consumption in the 17th century and the current global economy. English author John Barker in turn sees cocaine as the fuel of immaterial labour and the culture industry. The coca / cocaine difference raises a question often left unasked: Modernity can be seen as the effect of what?
Open Up III: Reclaiming Technologies
Marko Peljhan (SI)
How can we utilise strategies from military research and application for art and civilian purposes? Marko Peljhan’s works are set in the realm between art, technology and science: Since the mid-nineties he has been dealing, among other things, with advanced surveillance technologies, military and space technologies, challenging the hidden and not so hidden apparatuses of social control so as to develop counter-strategies for communication, research and art.
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