The architectural collective raumlaborberlin, in cooperation with Hebbel am Ufer, create a counter proposal to the format of the “Expo.” Under the title The World is Not Fair – The Great World’s Fair 2012, a tour with 15 pavilions will be set up for exploration on the grounds of the former airport in Tempelhof from June 1–24, 2012.

These pavilions are not to be understood as state agents for national branding, but instead as places of highly subjective artistic and political reflection. Beyond the boundaries of cultural disciplines, architects, theater artists, performers, and visual artists will seek to examine ideas, systems, and phenomena by which even the most outlying cultures are now globally connected with each other. What will be exhibited is not the world as it is or should be, but how we perceive, understand, and interpret it. Can it still be represented and negotiated as a totality at all?

Five projects that will be seen in the framework of The World is Not Fair – The Great World’s Fair 2012 should be named here:

In an architectural structure reminiscent of the damaged reactor blocks in Fukushima, the director Toshiki Okada, who comes from Yokohama, together with his theater troupe chelfitsch, will examine the abstraction and immeasurability of the catastrophic events in a language of reduced gestures and limited words.

Hans-Werner Kroesinger, one of the earliest representatives of contemporary documentary theater, is conceiving a living sound installation in an antenna building, focused on the military use and history of forced labor at the former Tempelhof Airport.

The video artist, performer, and activist Tracey Rose, with the help of non-professional actors, will put on a soap opera stretched out over the whole span of the exhibition. As a stage, she will use an oversized reconstruction of a black-and-white Blaupunkt television, which had provided her family in South Africa with access to world events during the Apartheid period.

Berlin-based filmmaker Harun Farocki will show the first part of a long research project with the title Parallele, which examines the role of computer animation for simulation systems and prognostic services. It addresses the global circulation of air, fire, and water—and the demand to control a world that is marked by a growing instability in relation to the predictability of systematically defined events.

The Stuttgart architecture collective Umschichten will build a festival center from found materials. For three weeks, a hybrid cultural space will emerge. It is meant to serve as a place of meeting and exchange for the visitors to The World Is Not Fair – The Great World’s Fair 2012, but also as a venue for events. A comprehensive program of lectures, discussions, and film screenings will be presented here.

The World Is Not Fair – The Great World’s Fair 2012 is one of two large-scale projects organized by the Hebbel am Ufer at the end of the directorship of Matthias Lilienthal. As such, it is also a contribution to a debate that has been ongoing since the fall of the Berlin Wall about the cultural use of buildings that have lost their originally planned definitions over the course of history.

Raumlaborberlin has been working at the boundaries of architecture, art, and urbanism since 1999. Strategies for urban restructuring are examined in interdisciplinary working teams. As opposed to a city of inclusion and exclusion, Raumlabor is on the lookout for a city of possibilities. In terms of its practice, architecture is a labor for experimental, collaborative, passionate action in urban space. Construction is thus not so much to be understood as working on an object, but as developing a narrative that becomes part of a place.

With: andcompany&Co., Dellbrügge & de Moll, Lukas Feireiss, Harun Farocki, Erik Göngrich, Institut für Raumexperimente, Hans-Werner Kroesinger, machina eX, Rabih Mroué, Toshiki Okada, Willem de Rooij, Tracey Rose, Umschichten, Dries Verhoeven, Tamer Yigit/Branka Prlic.

A production by HAU and raumlaborberlin. Sponsored with funds from the Hauptstadtkulturfonds, Stiftung Deutsche Klassenlotterie Berlin and Schering Stiftung. A cooperation with Grün Berlin GmbH and IGA 2017.

*Image above:
Model of the pavilion of Toshiki Okada, “Unable to see.” 
Copyright raumlaborberlin

with:
b_books, John Blue/Daniel Hendrickson, Gavin Butt, Frederico Coelho, Douglas Crimp, Vaginal Davis, Diedrich Diederichsen, Foodgasm, Max Jorge Hinderer Cruz, Jakob Lena Knebl / Hans Scheirl, Bruce LaBruce, Elisabeth Lebovici, Heather Love, Taylor Mead (by Skype), Richard Move, José Muñoz, Narcissister, Nguyen Tan Hoang, Juliane Rebentisch, RG_Faleiros, Juan A. Suárez, Tangowerk, Tenderloin, The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black, Voodoo Chanel Altar Bar, Holly Woodlawn

For some, camp is a lie that tells the truth. For others, it’s an unexpectedly intense commitment to the seemingly trivial. Some say that camp is so bad that it’s good. For others, it’s so good that it calls into question dominant value systems. Camp is a relatively established if difficult to pin down term in popular discourse and academic scholarship that has its origins in queer subcultural practice and slang. It refers both to a perverse and productive perspective on cultural products and to a flamboyant lifestyle. Moreover, camp provides new ways of looking at popular culture, cinema, performance and stars, as well as aesthetics, consumer-capitalism, gender identity and community.

“Camp/Anti-Camp” will interogate camp discourse by confronting it with a variety of cultural practices, including those typically described as camp and those seemingly unrelated to it. What if we juxtapose this discourse with hybrid international practices that tap into cultural, ethnic and historical traditions that are beyond the confines of queer culture? With exemplary performances and films, as well as with presentations by scholars and artists, the festival intends to question the explanatory power of camp discourse for a multitude of underrated cultural practices.

Following Mae West’s credo that “too much is not enough,” the festival offers nothing but highlights, including an intimate evening with queer icon and Warhol superstar Holly Woodlawn and a concert-event by the sexually-transgressive cult performer Kembra Pfahler with her band “The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black.” There will also be performances by New York downtown legend Carmelita Tropicana, the young mysterious club act Narcissister and the notorious Austrian artist-duo Jakob Lena Knebl/Hans Scheirl. Moreover the festival will feature presentations by international scholars such as Douglas Crimp, Diedrich Diederichsen, Elizabeth Lebovici, José Muñoz and Juliane Rebentisch, and by artists such as Bruce LaBruce and Richard Move. Every evening the award-winning homo-core queen Vaginal Davis will bring festival guests and figures from Berlin’s cultural scene together for her talk-show performance “Vaginal Davis is Speaking from the Diaphragm.” Scholar Max Jorge Hinderer Cruz curated a section of the festival that explores the concept of tropicamp and focuses on tropicalism and internationalism in the avant-garde, Brazilian singer and Hollywood film star Carmen Miranda and contemporary performance impulses from Brazil. Tropicamp is a term coined by Brazilian artist Hélio Oiticica as a means of expressing his fascination for the anti-commercial tendencies within the 1960s US underground film scene (primarily the work of Mario Montez and Jack Smith). This section will offer an internationalist critique of camp discourse. Festival events will be complemented by films (by Hélio Oiticica and Jack Smith, among others), food performances (Foodgasm) and book and DVD-offers by b_books. Feel-good substances from the Voodoo Chanel Altar Bar will guarantee “Camp/Anti-Camp: A Queer Guide to Everyday Life” its uppers and downers.

A CHEAP production, in co-production with HAU and in co-operation with Arsenal – Institut für Film und Videokunst, e.V. (Berlin), Künstlerhaus Mousonturm (Frankfurt am Main), and Microscope Gallery (New York). Sponsored with funds from the Hauptstadtkulturfonds.