Affairs Chapter II

A project by anorak
in cooperation with HumBase, Kunstbüro der Kunststiftung Baden-Württemberg and Württembergischer Kunstverein

From August 20 to 22, 2021, artists, cultural workers, and researchers share their practice in a series of cross-genre workshops and performative interventions to explore spaces of collaborative agency, resistance and obligation that emerge from the exchange with others.

The number of participants for the workshops is limited, please register until 18 August via jule(at)anorakanorak.com.

-- The Good Bread. Sourdough workshop
WORKSHOP
Friday 20 August, 6 – 9pm
Saturday 21 August, 10 am – 6 pm
Sunday 22 August, noon – 8 pm
With Lukas Ludwig and Verlag für Handbücher (Björn Kühn, Anna Schiefer)
Language: German and English
(max. 10 participants)

The metaphor is the sourdough’s worst enemy. Beyond the comfort of petty-bourgeois vintage-baking, sourdough bread has fallen by the wayside of history. Modernity’s roadkill, it was displaced by isolated yeast cultures that more efficiently fed the newly alienated masses post 1800. Today, sourdough is fetishised as a pre-modern fantasy of self-sufficiency. This workshop will revolve around The Good Bread: starting, feeding, oven knowledge and baking. In between, meanwhile and beyond, we will touch on the societal, economic and social conditions of nutrition.

-- Second Orality and Internet Folklore
WORKSHOP
Friday 20 August, 6 – 9 pm
Saturday 21 August, 10 am –6 pm
Sunday 22 August, 10 am – 8 pm
With Florian Model and Tommaso Venturini
Language: English
(max. 15 participants)

“Radio provides a speed-up of information that also causes acceleration in other media. It […] creates insatiable village tastes for gossip, rumour, and personal malice […] Radio is […] a mighty awakener of archaic memories, forces, and animosities […]” - Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media, 1964

Once again, the prophecies of McLuhan seem to be vindicated and amplified by digital media. The Great Meme War, Pizzagate, QAnon, but also several less toxic phenomena such as LOL Cats and Flat Earthers, all seem to point to the rise of a new media genre: a weird mix of inconsistent stories, trolling jokes, hate speech and flame wars very different from previous media narratives, comparable to McLuhan’s proclaimed oral cultures. In this workshop, instead of dismissing it as fringe internet folklore, we will consider it as a twisted (yet creative) form of cultural production in a communicational environment and experiment with its strategies.

-- As if I had been there
WORKSHOP
Saturday 21 August, 10 am –6 pm
Sunday 22 August, 10 am – 8 pm
With HuM-Collective (Hannah Häußer, Max Borchert)
Language: German
(max. 10 participants)

How can we authentically reproduce what has been sensed? Does documentation have the potential to be more than just a static image – and what does design have to do with that? As if I had been there is a workshop about the design of experience and narration. Collectively, we will explore how design can combine and preserve the subjective experiences of an event. This will be tested and implemented by the example of an experimental documentation of the workshop programme Affairs.

-- The Red Light Piano
PERFORMATIVE INTERVENTION
August 20 - 22 August, 2021, sunset to sunrise
With Manuel Pessoa de Lima

In The Red Light Piano, the pianist lives in the performance space with a piano while sharing the following on hookup apps, “I am a pianist and I am looking for someone to perform for, in exchange for your audio messages about open relationships that will be broadcast during the performance.” The pianist plays the piano while the received audio messages are played in the background, but also stops once in a while to discuss alternative relationship contracts with passersby.

-- All for Nothing and Nothing for All
CLOSING EVENT
Sunday 22 August 2021, from 5pm

On the last day of Affairs, the workshop participants invite you to an open presentation and reflection on the processes and experiences of the previous days.

Kindly supported by
Ministry of Science, Research and the Arts Baden-Württtemberg, Wüstenrot Stiftung, LBBW-Stiftung, and Anorak e. V. members