Utopian Pulse – Flares in the Darkroom

SALONS

Salon Klimbim
More information about the program will be published soon

Salon Fluchthilfe
Utopia is often imagined as an elusive yet desirable place. In the Salon Fluchthilfe, it is imagined not so much as a place but as a way of relating defined by a radical openness to the other. The German word Fluchthilfe has no easy English translation—it is a positive term used to describe those who help others cross borders to avoid persecution (whereas English has only derogatory translations, such as people smugglers or human traffickers). Fluchthilfe eludes a neat connection to any specific identity by encompassing both refugees and their supporters, who form an underground web of knowledge and support that allows bodies to move. Salon Fluchthilfe (Salon Escape Aid) will explore the potencia of relationships based on hospitality, solidarity, and reciprocity, where all are changed and enriched by their engagement with, and dependence on, others.
One of the projects planned for Stuttgart involves asylum seekers and is devoted to the medium of drawing.
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Curator: Zanny Begg
With: Barat Ali Batoor, Pilar Mata Dupont, Mindj Panther, The Silent University, Undrawing the Line, Katarzyna Winiecka and others

Cuartos de Utopía (Spaces of Utopia)
Flamenco people are a remainder rather than a multitude, having hardly aspired to emancipation or any other political project. And yet, there they are: on the one hand, they inspire many forms of life that are today considered utopian—nomadism, community, the right to idleness—and on the other, they contribute poiesis to the new forms of political imagination—playfulness, camouflage, resistant forms of life. Cuartos de Utopía introduces a case study of the present political situation in Spain: the role of the flamenco imagination in the fight. Alongside this, in the form of an open archive, the exhibition project Living Machines: Flamenco and Architecture in the Squatting and Evacuation of Spaces, curated with María García Ruis and Antonio Marín Márquez, will be presented at the Wittgenstein House, the current cultural headquarters of the Bulgarian Embassy in Vienna.
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Curators: Pedro G. Romero / Máquina P.H., Assistenz / Assistance: María García Ruíz
With: 4taxis, Marco de Ana / Javiera de la Fuente / Rudolf Rostas, Constant / PIE flamenco, Israel Galván / Manuel Soler, María García Ruiz, Isaías Griñolo / Los Flamencos, Antonio Marín Márquez, Rocío Márquez / Jorge Martínez, Charo Martín, Tomás de Perrate / Amador Gabarri, Stefan Voglsinger and others

Salon Public Happiness
Recent struggles over public space have managed to create resistance on slippery post-Fordist ground. Salon Public Happiness extends an invitation to people who are active with artistic means in urban struggles in Istanbul and Hamburg. Videoccupy is part of the multifaceted Gezi-Taksim movement. The groups from Hamburg support the inhabitants of the ESSO-Häuser and struggle for social urban transformation. They develop new ways of recording, distributing, and working with private experience, with the imagination that jumps forth from everyday life. The Salon’s title brings back a phrase used by the American revolutionaries of the eighteenth century. According to Hannah Arendt, the phrase “the Pursuit of Happiness” in the preamble to the Declaration of Independence originally referred not to an individual right, but to “public happiness.”
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Curator: Christoph Schäfer
With: Irene Bude / Steffen Jörg / Olaf Sobczak, Margit Czenki / Renée Tribble, Katharina Duve / Ted Gaier / Timo Schierhorn & Die Goldenen Zitronen, Echohäuser, Megafonchor (Svenja Baumgart, Sylvi Kretzschmar), Videoccupy (Özge Celikaslan) and others