Monday 16 July 2018

Utopia Revisited/ Angeliki Avgitidou

UTOPIA REVISITED: DREAMS AND NIGHTMARES OF FUTURE PAST.
June 19th
Jameson F. – In Archeologies of the Future
Growing up in postwar Germany, I did not see Ernst Bloch’s visions of a future world so much as utopian, but rather as a search for a possible, new society of the future. Bloch wrote his ‘Prinzip Hoffnung’ in exile during WWII and after the war in the newly established GDR, the socialist, Eastern-Germany, the German Democratic Republic. It was the time after the war when people started to understand the devastating impact the fascist regime had had on the world and on their country, a time where everything was lost, the time of no words and incredible guilt in Germany where the worst things had happened and a new society needed to be built. Growing up in Western Germany, as young adults and students at the beginning of the 80th, I remember we were discussing Bloch’s interpretation of Marx and ideas of a possible structure for a humanistic society without oppression and exploitation. Shockingly however, Bloch supported the Stalinistic ‘cleansings’ which happened in Russia under the reign of Stalin, a time during which millions of political opponents were killed. The perfect society where people are all equal and non-political without any oppression and exploitation only exists on the paper. In that context Marcuse’s ideas were obviously discussed as well. 
Anti-Utopia and Dystopia: Rethinking the Generic Field
An incredible overview of films and books that describe Utopias and Dystopias, divided into 10 categories. While I read some of the books and saw some of the movies mentioned, I must admit that many of the authors mentioned are unfamiliar. 
Foucault created the term heterotopia to talk about the ‘different’ space. While an utopia is an idea that represent a perfect vision of society where everything is good and in a dystopia everything is bad, heterotopia is where things are different. 
 
Anti-Utopia and Dystopia: Rethinking the Generic Field
Anti-utopia / dystopia categories: 
Utopia: good life / society; no conflict.
Critical Utopias: 90s; utopia with faults; denial of utopian impulses, exploitation / domination.
Critical negation: “metapolitical” —corporate domination of “no alternative” — no Utopian future.
Critical dystopia: evaluations superficial; pessimism; hybrids of realism.
PostUtopian:  justice, freedom / democracy. 
 
 
June 18th
Architectural Dystopian Projections in the films Metropolis, Brazil and the Island.
I am currently discussing dystopias and utopias in contemporary painting and was just discussing artists like Michael Andrews (Dystopias) and Makiko Kudo (Utopias). 
Movies like the Blade Runner and the Hunger Games come to mind too. 
 
Metropolis, Brazil and The Island, are exemplified architectural environments, the ideological basis for the dystopian visions to comment on utopia as a vehicle bankrupts personal expression, multiplicity and difference, essential elements of life as well as of creative expression, interests of the majority in the name of equality and justice through its uniformity, determinism. 
Utopians forget that society is a “living organism” (Maria Luise Bernieri), imposing paternalistic monomania. Dsytopian fiction films demand organic flexibility and adaptability to social and political constructs. Supposedly, material and technological innovations will abolish valued ways of living.
Dystopian influences in the 19thcentury were symbolised by the faith in the machine and in the late 20thcentury were symbolized by the faith in digital technology, later in biotechnology. 
 
 
Utopia has always been a political issue, an unusual destiny for a literary form: yet just as the literary value of the form is subject to permanent doubt, so also its political status is structurally ambiguous. The fluctuations of its historical context do nothing to resolve this variability, which is also not a mater of taste or individual judgement. 
 
June 25thand July 6th
Utopia and modern architecture
An utopic vision allows us to make ourselves free and think about what would be right or ideal instead of planning into the future from today and working with the politics and the given facts of today. Of course, new architecture cannot disconnect itself from the now and of course architects have to make compromises. Obviously economics and development policies limit the capacity of architecture to be utopian. The planning for an utopia cannot start with architecture, it would need to start with a planning of a different society. Architecture can only be a part of it. 
 
 
June 27th
 
The Story of Utopia, by Lewis Mumford Chapter 9, 4-5
When I read sentences like ‘work is given freely and the proceeds of work exchanged freely’, or ‘as far as man can be satisfied and happy in a good environment, this community is satisfied and happy’ I was reminded of a documentation I saw recently about the  Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh cult and their years in Oregon in the US. They established Rajneeshpuram in 1981, but due to many legal issues Bhagwan left about 1985 and the place was abandoned. An incredibly interesting story though, with thousands of people following their guru and wanting to establish a utopic place of happiness together. 
 
 
June 29th
It is more than understandable that an utopian impulse, with the idea of planning ideal cities and societies came up during the time of the European encounter with the Americas. While this new world seemed to offer the potential of creating perfect cities and places, in today’s world and reality a realistic development of a new society would look very different.
 
More than 65 million people are refugees at the moment, people who have to leave everything behind hoping to find a place to live and take refuge. Every place on earth will be impacted by global warming. Societies need to go back and simplify life, not waste energy and pollute the planet. The energy will need to come from the wind and the sun, there can’t be plastic pollution anymore. The oceans will need to be cleaned. Resources will come to an end and a realistic dream of a perfect new world would probably talk about small socialist communities in which everybody has his chores and where everything to eat is cultivated. The diet would come merely from the local area. Globalization was the biggest mistake of human society, the rich got richer and the poor countries are being exploited and polluted more. 
 
 
June 26thand July 10th,11th
M. Tafuri 
In Architecture and Utopia: Design and Capitalist Development, 2. Form as Regressive Utopia
 
Cities (Piranesi: “absurd machine”) through industrialization, bourgeois post 18c, lost its urban dimension. Eclecticism, technological progress produced open structured cities that sought utopian solutions. Urban morphology combined rational / irrational ideology; ambiguity: critical value. Through commercialism, the city lost authenticity. 
Art lost coherence of forms.
Marxist criticism diminished bourgeoise ethics. Social utopianism became profit acquisition. 
Mid 19c – 1931: Art avantgarde individualization addresses “unsatisfied needs”. Architectural ideology becomes “ideology of the plan”, supplanted after 1929 by national capital reorganisation.
 “Utopia as a project.” 
19th c “. Utopian Weimar domination. Ideology became utopia; intellectual work, “unproductive.”
Nietzsche: freedom from value, an impediment. Science is “self-control”, able to evaluate reality. 
Wertfreiheit: the irrational Is negative, inseparable from the positive (capitalist vs working class work). Rational future eliminates risk. 
Mannheim: utopia was realizable. Revolutionary moment: utopia. Conservative thought must be criticized.
Utopia: rational project. Negative utopia is rejected, political control becomes scientific evaluation.  
Relations between intellectual, capitalism, avant-garde social behaviour transformed traditional ideology into utopia, global rationalization.
Post 1917 Utopia becomes extinct.  Capitalism contradictions exist (Europe, America). 1920s: The avant-guard as social redemptionists, political interventionists.
Intellectuals, artists manipulated: “historic tasks’, ideology production. Both help to recover Totality. Democratic capitalism: (Germany 1918-1921). Voluntary domination is achieved. 
 
Obstacles to prejudices allow human mythology – cynical and regressive mythology, serve to break only weak resistance. 






Utopia as a political issue is considered structurally ambiguous. Historical contexts, taste and judgement cannot resolve this.

Stalinism, synonymous with Utopia betrayed humanity. Ideal purity, the perfect system was domination, identified with aesthetic modernism, counterrevolutionary; the political right lost interest. “Difference”, became an anti-state, anarchist, centralizing, authoritarian (Marxism influence).  Bolsheviks denounced Utopian concepts. Socialism and Utopia relationships are still unresolved. The “post-globalization Left” exists because communist and socialist parties are discredited. The emergent world market consolidation will allow new forms of political agency.

June 17th

June 22nd and July 7th
Introduction : Utopia Now
Very interesting was Marcuse’s annunciation of the end of utopia. Utopia was not utopic anymore with the realization that at any time humans could ‘make the world into hell’ . This is from his lecture in Berlin
Ich muß zunächst mit einer Binsenwahrheit anfangen, ich meine damit, daß heute jede Form der Lebenswelt, jede Verwandlung der technischen und der natürlichen Umwelt eine reale Möglichkeit ist und daß ihr Topos ein geschichtlicher ist. Wir können heute die Welt zur Hölle machen, wir sind auf dem besten Wege dazu, wie Sie wissen. Wir können sie auch in das Gegenteil verwandeln. Dieses Ende der Utopie, das heißt die Widerlegung jener Ideen und Theorien, denen der Begriff der Utopie zur Denunziation von geschichtlich-gesellschaftlichen Möglichkeiten gedient hat, kann nun auch in einem sehr bestimmten Sinn als »Ende der Geschichte« gefaßt werden, nämlich in dem Sinne, daß die neuen Möglichkeiten einer menschlichen Gesellschaft und ihrer Umwelt, daß diese neuen Möglichkeiten nicht mehr als Fortsetzung der alten, nicht mehr im selben historischen Kontinuum vorgestellt werden können, daß sie vielmehr einen Bruch mit dem geschichtlichen Kontinuum voraussetzen, jene qualitative Differenzen zwischen einer freien Gesellschaft und den noch unfreien Gesellschaften, die nach Marx in der Tat alle bisherige Geschichte zur Vorgeschichte der Menschheit macht. 

In this chapter, utopia is envisioned through the hypothetic dream state of William Morris, in England’s Thames Valley.  
The protagonist transports to a world without landmarks where grass covers irretrievable ruins. A collector that values money, he as a “guest” in a “Guest House”, where the community administers to his needs. The community members are of optimal health available through “busy work.” Other guests are crafts people, workers. Because of simplified standard of living, release from the pressure of artificially stimulated wants, making a living is uncomplicated and easily performed, done in pleasant conditions. Handicrafts, manual skills are valued above technology. Industry produced goods are in disuse. Simplicity through making, an immediacy, direct supply and interchange of goods out of local production replace commodity exchange of the earlier imperialistic world.
Community concentrations are architecture, arts. Most people are neither scholars nor scientists. 
 Big cities have disappeared. London is now rural. Although shops exist, no money is involved. Ideal common halls are community convening places for eating, conversation. Economic pressure is absent. Leisure is dignified, also known as the life of the artist. The instinct of workmanship, the creative impulse creates comradeship, beauty.


Chapter 10, Mumford, July 5th
The English Country House culture is considered an utopia. Its history, drawbacks are noted through literary references. 
Originally an aristocratic institution, it’s culture is now widespread. Contrary to Plato’s desirable good community, its perpetuation is aimed at owners’ happiness, based on privilege, not work. Power, wealth is required for its exclusive and limitless possession, passive enjoyment in multiple houses.
Historically, force and fraud obtained ownership. Therefore, no congenial associations existed between neighbours, communities and houses /owners. Functionaries administered to this utopia, a desirable vacuity. 
Literature and fine arts flourished but as monetary objects, not creative elements in communities. A corrupting influence, object features are derivative, stolen, purchased or basely copied. Culture came to mean not participation in creative activities but acquisition. 

The Utopian Impulse
The “utopian impulse” is rooted in Plato, Herodotus and Vesuvius. “Utopia” was coined by T. More (16th c). “Rebirth” of ancient ideas throughout the Italian Renaissance included city / society planning, a humanistic interest through Europe. Because of “New World” settlements, creation of ideal communities with religious freedom seemed possible. 
 Renaissance architects utilised Plato’s physical / ethical ideal society and Vitruvius’ perfect geometric shapes as universal order, designed based on patterns of human proportion and harmonious geometric order to give structure physically and morally harmonious society.  
Thomas More wrote “Utopia” (1516) about socio‐political reform through a fictionalize society. Translations of Utopiawere adjusted to fit different cultures and societies. 

Bad Performing for shy artists/ Susanne Martin

June 11th

Bad Performing

Viewpoints and Composition/ what are they

While I was a student in Munich I discovered Pina Bausch many years ago, it was a summer festival in the English garden and I had tickets for several days to watch experimental dance. It was like a revolution in the 1980s. I was thrilled to see her choreography and compositions. I would love to learn more about contemporary artists that are working in this field today.

 

Viewpoints, composition are explained although they are “timeless”, “natural principals of movement”,  language for performances, points of awareness experienced in time and space.

Viewpoints is determined a philosophy that becomes a technique for training, movement development and ensemble building. Physical viewpoints are explained. 

Viewpoints of time are: 1) tempo, 2) duration, 3) kinesthetic response, 4) repetition. 

Tempo: movement speed.

Duration: extent of movement or sequence before a change occurs.

Kinesthetic response: spontaneous reaction to motion – response to external events of movement or sound. An impulsive movement because of sensory stimulation. 

Repetition: recurrence of onstage movement.

Internal repetition – repeating movement within own body.

External repetition – repeating shape, tempo, gesture outside of body.

Viewpoints of space are: 5) shape, 6) gesture, which delineates into behavioural gesture and expressive gesture. 

Vocal Viewpoints, pertaining to sound are discussed in another chapter. Physical and Vocal Viewpoints are said to overlap, change in “relative value” depending on the user / style of production.

Shape: contour or outline a body or bodies makes in space.

Shapes are composed of lines, curves or a combination of curves and lines. They are round or angular, stationary or moving through space.

Gesture: considered a movement of part or parts of the body, also forms a shape. May or may not be motivated consciously, with or without intention.

Gestures are supposed to be shapes with beginning, middle and end. Perhaps this could be explained as a narrative? 

 

 

 

 

June 12th

Geoff Colman interviews Keith Johnstone

 

For me, the most important part of this conversation is when Keith Johnstone reveals that he asks the actors not to do their best and explains why and this makes so much sense. 


A recognised authority of improvisation, Johnstone’s techniques were developed to foster spontaneity and narrative skills. He demonstrated techniques to colleges and through a performance company called the Theatre Machine. Books authored to explain improvisation techniques are complemented by his master classes.

 

Johnstone explained that his work has been modified over time by dealing with fear. He said, “it (fear) ruins everybody”. He was not convinced teaching processes had changed, but because he was required to be accountable, his fear of responsibility impacted how he worked. 

He explained that achieving the best result from a pupil was to encourage them to be “average”, rather than encouraging them to be the best they can. 

Johnson described that value from an audience being their feedback, only possible when the audience is comprised of strangers. Friends or colleagues ‘overcheer’ and give a false feedback. This is definitely the same in all mediums of art. 

 

June 13th

Postdramatic Theatre by Hans-Thies Lehmann

 

I have no experience at all with performance and besides Pina Bausch’s work I hardly have any knowledge or experience when it comes to performance art. In my video which I produced for my MFA, however, I have started to experiment with my body. I wanted to use it as a tool of investigation to reactivate memory. My voice recites text by Nietzsche, Foucault and my own writings, included as a voice-over to the imagery. My hand is captured working on a painting. I pour tar onto the canvas and rub it into the surface. In one scene, I walk on train tracks. I project my grandfather's portrait onto my body. 

 

Postdramatic theatre theatrical staging levels involves signifying elements that connect and interweave to form a “whole” that can be viewed and although consequential significance of individual parts that contribute meaning. Performance text are texts divided into categories: “linguistic text, text of staging and mise en scene and performance texts (concept)” are relational to each other and to the spectator. All text elements and their relation to each other, performers, staging, concept etc. are reducible, expandable, changeable. Place (location), time (duration) are elements that signify, are signs that structurally change the theatre experience.  The experience becomes a “presence”. This experience is recognised as the theatre of possibility, fearsome, akin to the sublime.

 

Actors thwart their ability to interpret, manifesting a new humanity. Bodies are mediums, processes occur between bodies.  Bodies are mediums to articulate pure emotion rather than respond to an idea with emotion or act emotional. 

 

Dancers are cited to explain how the performer articulates discontinuity, through “tera incognita” or being a stranger to the self. Costumes are used ironically, only. Slow motion is recognised as an omnipresent sign of this “Gestalt” where members take precedence over the totality of the body.

“New” dance articulates energy rather than meaning, actions rather than illustrations of ideas.  Dancers expose what is extreme to the body. It is not entirely clear of the “members” refers to body parts, the “whole” is one person’s body or the members are members of the company, and individual dancers together are the “whole.”

 

 

June 14th

A Choreographer’s handbook

The text is a very good exploration into how to prepare for a performance. There is always the thought about the audience and how the work might be perceived. This is very different from painting work or my work in general. I would not be able to paint if I thought about what someone else might think about my work. My process is disconnected from the viewer or an audience, the process of the creating completely belongs to me. I step back and make changes only because I want the composition to work not with the thought of a possible audience. In my recent work the work was not even about composition. It was about the mere process of interacting with the surface. Is it so important for the performer how the work will be perceived? It seems like it is one of the main elements of the work. 

 

Jonathan Burrows poses questions to show how to question is a model for creation, choreography specifically. He demonstrates how orientation to point of view (place) is useful and problematic. What an artist / choreographer needs might result in unexpected options or, “Maybe what you need is everything?”

Discussion of what makes what is being done “work” begins with the role of the creator and the audience, both subjective viewpoints. He explains the role of an objective opinion (friend), time – space between creation and critical analysis. 

Burrows explains that minimal changes can be effective and recording of the changes is useful to avoid confusion, keep track of attempted alterations, changes in amended work.  

He discusses role of “showings”, the readiness for feedback through the showings (performances).  He counters this discussion with about a solo work he made with 2 versions, one improvised and one choreographed. The improvisation was deemed more visceral, the choreography an “immaculate doily” meaning perfection can be ornamental, overly decorative and without meaning. In this case, the feedback was from a friend. However, the position taken regarding this feedback was the next step in the process would be to visualise possibilities rendered from the overt criticism. 


The role of relations with the audience, with the self are articulated. The reason for performing, how a performer is also an audience member, the process of relating to a performance is discussed. Communication with the audience includes multiple physical options, Burrows shows, but best is to allow gentle consciousness of purpose of the work. This is a circular reciprocity between artist and audience, a contract, an invitation and act to “suspend doubt” to create “magic.”




Walking Practices: Cyclic Journey / Herman Bashiron Mendolicchio

June 9  and June 23rdWalking

 

WALKING PRACTICES: CYCLIC JOURNEY   |   Herman Bashiron Mendolicchio(S12) MFA

Friluftsliv as Slow and Peak Experiences in the Transmodern Socienty by

Dr. Hans Gelter

 

 

I was able to place myself into the group of ‘genuine Friluftliv’. The description of the different generations and their respective focus was extremely interesting since I see myself shift from that workaholic with 80 hour weeks and no time to encounter nature in my thirties, living in a big city Hamburg, to moving to the Pacific North West coast of Canada in my fourties, living on an island in the Pacific rain forest, walking the old growth forest every day. 

 

Erfahrung stands indeed in contrast to Erlebnis, which both are translated into experience in English but one always needs to explain precisely what kind of experience it is and that indeed 

they are experienced differently by our two brain hemispheres. 

 

Friluftsliv is the essence of environmental philosophy and ethics and the goal of environmental education. Genuine friluftsliv develops strong emotional and spiritual experiences from the immersion in natural settings, forms a personal connectedness to nature. Accordingly, this closeness to the landscape and non-human beings significantly differ from outdoor activities that range from sports, entertainment, gathering and painting, educational endeavours. 

 

The need for friluftsliv is compared to experiential industries in sociological contexts. The concept of transmodernity, meaning taking active action towards sustainability and interconnectedness, especially with nature and other cultures is thought may contribute to a revival of the genuine friluftsliv concept as a segue to sustainability action, existential reflection and restoration from stress.

 

June 10th

Effect of forest bathing trips on human immune function

 

From my own experience I know how healing the daily walk through the old growth cedar forest can be. The air is wonderful and besides the physical daily activity, walking about 3.5 km in an hour, the mind clears and I get a distance to all the things that worry me and keep my mind busy. I can focus more on the things that are really important. I was happy to read about the healthy impact of such a walk and the studies show that the cells that kill cancer cells are more active during and after such a walk.

 

Shinrinyoku is a Japanese word for a forest situated experience that has a positive effect on the human immune function. This experience, akin to “natural” aromatherapy is called forest bathing. Breathing in the antimicrobial phytoncides, a biological substance comprised of volatile organic compounds found in essential wood oils that inhibits and prevents the development of bacteria, fungi and protozoa was proposed in 1982 by the Forest Agency of Japan. A recongised relaxation and / or stress management activity in Japan, forest bathing is now been scientifically demonstrated to significantly increase vigor and decrease anxiety, depression and anger, psychosocial stress-related diseases.


Invitrio studies to calculate the effects of phytoncides on the human natural killer (NK) cell activity, the lymphocytes that destroy and protect the body from antigens and negative intercellular responses like tumors or virus infections result in in a significant increase in mitigation of destructive cell activity. Also, the phytoncides contribute to the restoration of decreased human NK activity, prevent pesticide-induced inhibition of NK activity. The conclusion was that phytoncides significantly enhance human NK activity, partially but significantly restore pesticide affected NK and intracellular perforin (a protein emitted by NK cells), GrA (regulates immune function) and GRN (gene regulation). 

 

It would be interesting to know if comparable tests have since been done. 


 

Metassemblage/ Michael Bowdidge

METASSEMBLAGE: COLLAGING THEORY AND PRACTICE

Michael Bowdidge

From Aesthetics to the Abstract Machine: Deleuze, Guattari and Contemporary Art Practice

Simon O’Sullivan

The author names artists like Wilke to demonstrate that there is a new movement in contemporary art. Art is presented in unfamiliar, different and surprising compositions.

I wish Simon O’Sullivan would show more examples of work or name specific art pieces that I would be able to look up online. So the reader must take the authors word for what seems to be the upcoming of a new post post-modernist movement which is different from so far known contemporary art which involves the recasting of signifying material from elsewhere.

 

The essay is in 3 interrelated parts that is the author’s investigation of what contemporary art is and does. Utilizing Deleuze and Guattari’s writing, he explores art’s future orientation and function. 

The D & G idea of the rhizome that is between, interbeing shows these practices to be an “immanent utopia”, inherently existing and connected to the possible present.  The virtual is art of the possible. Unfamiliar is cultivated using film and new media that actualises “different” spatiality and temporality.

 

The author Simon O’Sullivan mentions here particularly the manner in which contemporary art references previous art and that art is involved in multiple regimes of signs. If I was to bring my work into this context then I could name, for example, my painting

 

Wo Moral auftaucht, haben die Menschen die Zustaendigkeit ueber den Zusammenhang ihrer Handlungen verloren’

Tar, acrylic, oil, pastel and charcoal on canvas

 8’x11.5’, 96 x 138 inches, 244 x 351 cm,

2017



 

 

This is a quote from Marx which translates to something like ‘Wherever morality emerges as the absolute societal ideal, it means people have lost touch with their inner conscience and have abdicated or lost a sense of personal responsibility for their actions; they become vulnerable to surrendering their volition to the ideological power that presents itself as the authority and arbiter of morality.’

 

The cloud in my painting references the cloud in Anselm Kiefer’s painting Aschenblume


 

 


 

Another sign, would be for example, a piece of wood, a stick, which I am burning and painting with tar and which I will attach to my painting making reference to Wotan’s sword and to Kiefer’s painting The World-Ashfrom 1982. Black straw and ashes in Kiefer’s landscape paintings stand for the ruinous and dreary state of the German landscape after the war. Kiefer includes a burnt piece of wood, the burnt sword of Wotan from Germanic mythology, and uses it as a metaphor for the loss and the ruin. Nothing was left, but guilt, ruin and ashes. 


I refer to Kiefer in my work. He spoke openly about what he thought was essential to German healing and vital for the German nation’s psychological well-being in the process of going through its ‘Vergangenheitsbewaeltigung’, its coming to terms with, and thinking about and accepting the past, instead of rejecting or forgetting it. 


But yes, the article is about the different and not about the art which references previous art.

Artists which I have found in this different context were:

 

Sarah Rahbar, 

Pepo Salazar, 2015

Jumana Manna – Aftercinema , Beirut Art Center, Lebanon, 2015

Thea Djordjadze – Historical Mood, 2010

A good example might be Tatiana Trouve’s work

 

 

Saturday 2 June 2018

Advisor meeting Jean Marie on May 24th

Advisor meeting Jean Marie , May 24th

Jean Marie and I talked about the videos. Jean Marie will look at the two videos side by side during the next two weeks and will let me know if she thinks they can be showed side by side.

She recommended I find a special place at the exhibition place, a more obscure place to show the videos, as they demand intimacy. Also she recommended I rent two monitors and do not show the videos on computer monitors. 

Jean Marie says she is happy with the first video, it feels honest, but her concern is that the pacing of the second one does not work with the first one and will swallow the first one. 

They might compete with each other!

Artists she recommended for me to look at : Gustav Metzger, Nina Katchadourian, and Peter Welz for combinations of projections and constructed projections. 

Monday 7 May 2018

Full documentation project

Here is my studio work since August 2017, the work of my second MFA year:

Was ich haette sagen sollen (What I should have said)
Tar, acrylic, oil, pastel, soil and charcoal on canvas
 8’x11.5’, 96 x 138 inches, 244 x 351 cm,
2018



She must find a way to preserve a sense of trust in people who are untrustworthy, safety in a situation that is unsafe, control in a situation that is terrifyingly unpredictable, power in a situation of helplessness

Tar, acrylic, oil, pastel and charcoal on canvas
 8’x11.5’, 96 x 138 inches, 244 x 351 cm,
2018





The painting’s title is ‘Remembering and telling the truth about terrible events are prerequisites both for the restoration of the social order and for the healing of individual victims’.

The text in stencils says: ‘To speak is to invite the stigma that attaches to victims’.
Tar, acrylic, oil, pastel and charcoal on canvas, 
54 by 108 inches, 137 cm x 274 cm, 
2017





Wo Moral auftaucht, haben die Menschen die Zustaendigkeit ueber den Zusammenhang ihrer Handlungen verloren’

Tar, acrylic, oil, pastel and charcoal on canvas
 8’x11.5’, 96 x 138 inches, 244 x 351 cm,
2017







Allgegenwart der Macht(Omnipresence of power)

Tar, acrylic, oil, charcoal and pastel on canvas
54 x 108 inches, 137 x 274 cm
2017





The ordinary response to atrocities is to banish them from consciousness. Certain violations of the social compact are too terrible to utter aloud: this is the meaning of the word unspeakable
Tar, acrylic, oil, pastel and charcoal on canvas 
54 by 108 inches, 137 x 274 cm
2017




We need to understand the past in order to reclaim the present and the future. An understanding of psychological trauma begins with rediscovering history
8’x11.5’, 96 x 138 inches, 244 x 351 cm 
Tar, acrylic, oil, pastel, soil and charcoal on canvas
2017





The conflict between the will to deny horrible events and the will to proclaim them aloud is the central dialectic of psychological trauma
Tar, acrylic, oil, pastel, soil and charcoal on canvas
8’x11.5’, 96 x 138 inches, 244 x 351 cm
2018




Die Machtbeziehungen sind gleichzeitig intentional und nicht subjektiv
Tar, acrylic, oil, charcoal and pastel on canvas
54 x 108 inches, 137 x 274 cm 
2017







Die Frage lautet nicht wie Macht sich manifestiert, sondern wie sie ausgeübt wird
Tar, acrylic, oil, charcoal and pastel on canvas
54 x 108 inches, 137 x 274 cm 
2017





Sometimes the child is silenced by violence or by a direct threat of murder
Tar, acrylic, oil, pastel and charcoal on canvas 
8’x11.5’, 96 x 138 inches, 244 x 351 cm
2018







Then I created three videos:
1. History as Personal Memory 
The Vimeo link to my video in German: https://vimeo.com/241878832
And with English voice-over: https://vimeo.com/257923730
Length: 8:51 min

2. What is Memory
A video to accompany my whole body of work, which is to be played side by side to History as Personal Memory https://vimeo.com/266882501, Length: 8:51 min

3. A la recherche de Michel Foucault is a 7:56 min short film: https://vimeo.com/233722820
by Ira Hoffecker in collaboration with Regine Forster, Farid Abdulbaki and Lara Hoffecker



Please find a detailed information about my work in the project report M506

Let me know if you have any questions