live art. prevent war
"heritage day 2023" at "The Pit / Die Grube"
Sunday, September 24, 2023 / Opening hours: 10:00 am to ~6.30 pm
"live art. prevent war" is the theme of the "heritage day 2023" in "The Pit / Die Grube". Even if only for a moment, it is especially important now and on this occasion to give space to the voice of Art.
An unmistakable statement/manifesto in this regard is the large-scale sculpture "Die Waffen nieder !" (Lay down your arms !) by Zenita Komad, which was erected especially for this purpose. Through the use of a drone, the text of the artwork is both visible to visitors on site and globally available at the same time via livestream.
Die Waffen nieder! by Zenita Komad
Planning and implementation by Basilis Neururer
and Florian Altenburg
with friendly support from Hubertus Orsini-Rosenberg
Intervention „Die Waffen nieder! / Lay Down Your Arms !" in „The Pit / Die Grube“ on the occassion of "live art. prevent war / Heritage Day 2023".
„Die Waffen nieder!“ is a quote by the peace activist Bertha von Suttner, who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1905. This intervention is one of 3 public space installations on the same topic by the artist Zenita Komad: MMKK, Klagenfurt „Der Krieg ist aus!“ (feb 7 - may 19, 2024). KULTUM, Graz „Nie wieder Krieg!“ (feb 3 - may 24, 2024).
Zenita Komad - Die Waffen nieder! from Studio Zenita Komad
"Heritage Day 2023" at "The Pit / Die Grube"
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Pocketbook "live art. prevent war"
99x147mm, 44 pages, ISBN 978-3-200-09389-8, protection fee € 10,-
With statements of selected selected artists and philosophers as well as a map and the program.
The manifestos in the pocketbook "live art. prevent war" are published in english and german. All manifestos written in german are presented here as English translations.
Preface by Regina Haslinger / Peter Noever:
On the radicality of thought "I wish to be regarded only as a humble scientist and in no other way" Sigmund Freud wrote to Israel Cohen in 1938 before his trip to England. With this appeal, he firmly demarcated himself from any attempt of appropriation and inadequacy of false expectations. Art claims the same right for itself. Its task is not to represent anyone's interest or ideology. Its power and meaning lies in the radicality of thinking and questioning. Since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, this freedom and independence has been in danger. Belonging is the supreme principle. The reason for this lies in an opinion dictate led by the media that leaves no room for discussable mutual truths. War is presented as a controllable instrument to which there is no alter- native. Scientists and artists who stand up for the confrontation of free thoughts and other points of view are defamed or hushed up. This happened to the initiators and signatories of the first Manifesto Against War, and also and especially to artists of Russian descent. They are pilloried in the media and subjected to exclusion and performance bans if they do not take the "right side".
It may be assumed as very improbable that such blackmailed truths served any truth-finding. It is more likely that the critics are not really concerned with the Netrebko or the Gergiyev, but rather with what these artists represent. In their outstanding role as recognized artists, they are instrumentalized and used as a symbolic weapon against the enemy in the field of culture.
What must not be forgotten is that in this public discourse the only basis for persecution and condemnation is morality. Which brings us back to art. Which has nothing to do with it. Let us recall the thinker and author of the Critique of Cynical Reason, Peter Sloterdijk, for whom morality is the expression of a depressive attitude and comes "from the spirit of self-rejection.
With the project live art. prevent war we let the artists speak - and in this context we commemorate two artists who in times of war did not distinguish between doom or victory.
Donald Judd saw war solely as an expression of failure, and for Peter Weibel, death and war were terrible and impossible.They both wrote against war and for peace.
It may be assumed as very improbable that such blackmailed truths served any truth-finding. It is more likely that the critics are not really concerned with the Netrebko or the Gergiyev, but rather with what these artists represent. In their outstanding role as recognized artists, they are instrumentalized and used as a symbolic weapon against the enemy in the field of culture.
What must not be forgotten is that in this public discourse the only basis for persecution and condemnation is morality. Which brings us back to art. Which has nothing to do with it. Let us recall the thinker and author of the Critique of Cynical Reason, Peter Sloterdijk, for whom morality is the expression of a depressive attitude and comes "from the spirit of self-rejection.
With the project live art. prevent war we let the artists speak - and in this context we commemorate two artists who in times of war did not distinguish between doom or victory.
Donald Judd saw war solely as an expression of failure, and for Peter Weibel, death and war were terrible and impossible.They both wrote against war and for peace.
Herbert Lachmayer
War as ultima ratio of politics since the beginning of the 1920s proves to be a ritual of weak sense. The decision to go to war, as an apo- theosis of collective self-destruction, may suggest necessity on the face of it, but nevertheless presents itself as the ultimate reason.
Bazon Brock
World history christened Wagner
A useful hint in the cultural summer 2023
For a given occasion I point out that the Wagner Festival 2023 is already in full swing, since the most important present Wagner connoisseur and director Prigozhin transferred the Wagner ideology to the Ukrainian-Russian battlefield at the beginning of June. In doing so, he sensibly followed Hitler's "Unternehmen Walküre" as did Coppola, who in his monumental "Apocalypse Now" had helicopter attacks on Vietnamese flown accompanied by Wagnerian Valkyrie music. For the time being, the Wagner Festival will not take place in Bayreuth, but in Ukraine and in some African countries. But we are left with the duty of heavy de-Germanization: https://bazonbrock.de/werke/detail/?id=4058
Konrad Paul Liessmann
A composer of the hour would therefore be Dmitri Shostakovich...
The war in Ukraine kills people, it destroys cities and villages, power plants and hospitals. And it wreaks havoc in people's minds. Any military aggression implies that the defenders must also submit to the logic of war. This also applies to those states and organizations that impose sanctions on the aggressor and ensure that the latter finds no opportunities in Western countries to pursue its cause and do its business. In this respect, it is consistent that hitherto revered and idolized Russian state artists are banned and freedom of opinion can no longer apply to the Kremlin's propaganda media. It is a bitter lesson of this war that the values of the West, which are supposed to be defended, must be partially suspended. This may be politically opportune, but it is no reason to cheer. In contrast to state-controlled news portals and political journalism that pursue a clear agenda, the question of the right approach to artists in such a dramatic situation is somewhat different. To expect partisanship from art and to award prizes not for works or achievements but for the right attitude is a wrong approach.
The quality of works of art cannot be reduced to the attitude of their creators or interpreters, nor does it depend on clients and financiers. On the other side, it would be pointless to deny that powerful people like to make use of art and do not always meet heroic resistance. However, it is difficult for us to accept that there may arise a contradiction between an artist's ethos and the expressive power of his or her work. We like to dream of artists who, by virtue of their aesthetic sensibility, are always on the right side of history. As problematic as it is when authoritarian politics and art enter into an intimate union, so precarious is the tendency to judge art primarily in terms of political and moral considerations. Strength of character is as little a guarantee of aesthetic dignity as the right ideological position. Above all, we must not forget that art can be resistant even when it is appropriated. Therein lies its tragic greatness.
A composer of the hour would therefore be Dmitri Shostakovich, who suffered under Stalin and, despite everything, represented the inhuman Soviet system. His example illustrates this fatal interweaving of political entanglement and creative obstinacy as it happens today. But who still wants to hear such sounds today?
From: Konrad Paul Liessmann LAUTER LÜGEN. Zsolnay Verlag. 2023. p. 229f
Peter Weibel
This war cannot continue indefinitely.The longer the war goes on, the greater the toll in blood. So one has to ask the question: Are we really defending Western values in Ukraine, such as freedom, democracy, etc.?
Wolf dPrix
War is the crown of absolute stupidity.
Johannes Huber
You should forgive!
Even when it comes to undisputed justice, medical professionals have greater problems with killing than perhaps the majority of opinion leaders. The unnecessary deaths of countless people - day after day - should not make us forget the old ethical question of whether the end really justifies all means.As an obstetrician who deals with the new sciences of epigenetics from a clinical perspective, we are left speechless by Jörg Himmelreich's comments, which he published in the NZZ on August 30, 2022in the NZZ on August 30, 2022, possibly explaining why bashing and exclusion do not even stop at artists of Russian nationality. The author speaks of a "historical bias" from which the "overwhelming majority of the Russian population" still suffers, as they still carry the brutality of Mongol rule in their hearts, which has remained formative for many characteristics of today's Russian political culture. He quotes Aristotle, who said that "Asians tolerate despotic rule better" even though neither Russia nor their ancestors existed at the time of Aristotle. This opinion is racism at its worst - and if this were the reason for the exclusion of Russian artists, then it would have to be discussed - above all because it is also biologically wrong. Imprints are fluid and disappear after several generations.Instead, what I miss in the discussion is the spirituality that updated European thinking in the most difficult political times and which the philosopher Rudolf Burger once combined with the 11th commandment: Thou shall forgive.
Julius Deutschbauer
Here we have to think ahead - further assuming that edge and center correspond to each other more deeply than first appearances reveal. On the surface, the lifestyle of the punks and that of the establishment may appear to be unmediated extremes. But at the core, they touch. The cynical eruptions are hurled out of the catastrophic mass of civilization. Therefore, the philosophical, the understanding approach to the phenomena must not stop at the subjective excesses, but begin with the objective ones. The objective excess is nothing else than the excess of structural unpeacefulness which characterizes our way of life - even in its saturated phases and in the intervals of war. At the end of the Second World War, the world's weapons potentials were barely sufficient to exterminate every citizen of the earth several times over; in the run-up to the Third, the extermination factor has increased a hundredfold, even a thousandfold. The overkill atmosphere is constantly condensing. The factor grows monthly, and its growth is the ultimately decisive agent of our history. The overkill structures have become the real subject of the current development. A tremendous amount of social labor is flowing into them in both the first and second worlds. At the moment the course is being set for a renewed escalation, but that is not our subject. It is the task of philosophy, in the face of these "hard facts," to ask children questions like this: Why don't people get along? What forces them to prepare for mutual atomization? The philosopher is that person who can set aside the hardened, accustomed and cynically adept contemporary in him, who can easily demonstrate with two or three sentences why all this is so and why one does not change it with good intentions. The philosopher must give a chance to the child in himself who "does not yet understand" all this. The one who "does not yet understand" can perhaps ask the right questions. From: Peter Sloterdijk CRITICS OF CYNICAL CONNUNCTION. Suhrkamp Verlag. 1983. p. 252f
Peter Sloterdijk
Here we have to think ahead - further assuming that edge and center correspond to each other more deeply than first appearances reveal. On the surface, the lifestyle of the punks and that of the establishment may appear to be unmediated extremes. But at the core, they touch. The cynical eruptions are hurled out of the catastrophic mass of civilization. Therefore, the philosophical, the understanding approach to the phenomena must not stop at the subjective excesses, but begin with the objective ones. The objective excess is nothing else than the excess of structural unpeacefulness which characterizes our way of life - even in its saturated phases and in the intervals of war. At the end of the Second World War, the world's weapons potentials were barely sufficient to exterminate every citizen of the earth several times over; in the run-up to the Third, the extermination factor has increased a hundredfold, even a thousandfold. The overkill atmosphere is constantly condensing. The factor grows monthly, and its growth is the ultimately decisive agent of our history. The overkill structures have become the real subject of the current development. A tremendous amount of social labor is flowing into them in both the first and second worlds. At the moment the course is being set for a renewed escalation, but that is not our subject. It is the task of philosophy, in the face of these "hard facts," to ask children questions like this: Why don't people get along? What forces them to prepare for mutual atomization? The philosopher is that person who can set aside the hardened, accustomed and cynically adept contemporary in him, who can easily demonstrate with two or three sentences why all this is so and why one does not change it with good intentions. The philosopher must give a chance to the child in himself who "does not yet understand" all this. The one who "does not yet understand" can perhaps ask the right questions.
From: Peter Sloterdijk CRITICS OF CYNICAL CONNUNCTION. Suhrkamp Verlag. 1983. p. 252f
