“Reports to an Academy”
A non-academic symposium, performative or otherwise
17–19 October 2014
Academy of the Arts of the World
Im Mediapark 7
50670 Cologne
Germany
Concept & presentation: Ekaterina Degot & David Riff
With Haig Aivazian, Yochai Avrahami, Christian von Borries, Keti Chukhrov, Gabriel Dharmoo, Fadlabi & Lars Cuzner, Hu Fang, Tom Holert, Felix Klopotek, Uriel Orlow, Our Literal Speed, Manuel Pelmuş, Alexandra Pirici, Milo Rau, Naomi Rincón Gallardo, Jalal Toufic, Stefan Weidner, and others
“Reports to an Academy” is a non-academic and emphatically theatrical three-day symposium of performative talks, visionary presentations, stand-up dialogues, musical pieces, and special conference choreographies. It challenges academic formats of representation, their showcasing of identity, and their framing of global conditions. Its title refers to a short story by Franz Kafka (performed at the symposium by Uriel Orlow) about an ape who delivers a report on his own humanization to an academic commission. Artists, musicians, filmmakers, writers, and dancers today find themselves often in a similar position to Kafka’s ape, faced with a choice between the cage of a zoo and satisfying the expectations of an audience in a music hall. Like Kafka’s character, they tend towards the performative option, and their “reports” on the complexity of human circumstance in a contemporary planetary world tell a story of their own post-identitarian condition, as well as holding promise for a very different, pluralistic, and non-oppressive Academy, which creates a space of debate with the audience.
Over the course of the symposium, we will explore the phenomenon of the human zoo from the 19th century to the present. Fictitious and documentary narratives transport us from the formerly Jewish Lviv to the formerly Palestinian East Jerusalem and back again; from the New York hotel room where Dominique Strauss-Kahn had his grotesque episode to a much smaller room in Hong Kong where Edward Snowden, or someone who looks very much like him, was hiding. We might meet “not even” refugees who try to survive in a war zone, or even find ourselves in the middle of a dictionary of lies.
The symposium’s working language is English. The detailed program is available at www.academycologne.org.
Venue: Kölnischer Kunstverein, Hahnenstraße 6, 50667 Cologne and other locations
“Reports to an Academy” is part of the first edition of PLURIVERSALE, the Academy of the Arts of the World’s new biannual constellation of intercultural and interdisciplinary events, which started on October 3 and will run until November 29. Other highlights include the 20th-anniversary event of the international sound art collective Ultra-red, URXX – Ultra-red 1994–2014: Second Encounter (October 10–14), and the site-specific installation The Mount of Herculesby Yochai Avrahami (October 16–20), critically examining the culture of state-sponsored memorials. Naomi Rincón Gallardo will present Ocotepec Odyssey,sci-fi folk tales in the form of an installation, a performance, and a retrospective of Mexican sci-fi films of the ’60s (October 25–28), and a project by Ruanne Abou-Rahme and Basel Abbas will be on view in November: The Incidental Insurgents Pt. 2: Unforgiving Years (November 4–29). Finally, Pedro Neves Marques will present his book The Forest and The School: Where to sit at the dinner table? The concept of antropofagia in Brazilian thought and its philosophical, ecological, and cosmopolitical influence, accompanied by a panel discussion and film program (November 27–29).
The detailed program of PLURIVERSALE I is available at www.academycologne.org
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