 Okay. Hello from New York City. My name is Frank Henshka and I run the CETL Theatre Center here at the Graduate Center CUNY in Midtown at the City University of New York Public Institution of Learning. I am honored to have been invited by MEDO to take part in this pool of resistance where learning and unlearning is taking place and where different viewpoints coexist next to each other in a public arena. And many thanks to the Berlin Academy of the Arts for hosting this significant and meaningful event in the time of Corona. In the search of strategies of resistance, Mila Rao, the IIPM, the International Institute of Political Murder and the National Theater of Gantt founded 2020, globally networked School of Resistance as a Livestream Debate Series, a symbolic institution of the future. It has now come to the Academy of the Arts in Berlin and drawing on previous projects' examines, aesthetic practices of resistance. Artists and activists discuss art as a transformative reality, creating practice, and I hope one day this group will also come to New York City, we need that. Mila Rao and the IIPM have been working on the contradictions of global capitalism for almost 15 years through installations and political interventions. The intervening of activism in art leads to an expansion of artistic strategies and at the same time contributes to dissolving the boundaries of the concept of art. How can art react to the state of crisis? How can it contribute to strategies of resistance? Six cinematic works by Milo stay in the center of this investigation these five days. The last days of Chauketsku, the Moscow Trials, which will be today, the General Assembly, the Congo Tribunal, Orestes, Mosul, and the New Gospel, his latest work. In doing so, the School of Resistance at the Academy of the Arts examines the conditions of global art production and the strategies of IIPM itself. Planned before but during the pandemic, the School of Resistance aims to facilitate encounters for experts of change from the arts, research, and activism. A symbolic institution of the future is decentralized, networked, global, interdisciplinary, intergenerational, and intersectional by nature. Like in school, we engage in learning and probably more importantly in unlearning notions and practices. In exchanging perspectives, we put our convictions at a stake at risk and we put them on the line. Ultimately, we aim to create a growing archive and a repertoire of aesthetic strategies of resistance against the oppression and the suffering in the world. And now I would also like to welcome our great distinguished panelists next to Milo, Milo who of course does not need any introduction. We have with us Juliane Rebentisch and she's the Professor of Philosophy and Aesthetics at the Hochschule für Gestaltung in Offenbach, the School of Design in Offenbach, and she has been a member of the Faculty at the Frankfurt Institute of Social Research since 2014. She was Vice President of the HFG Offenbach from 2014 to 2020 and President of the German Society for Aesthetics from 2015 to 2018. Her most recent publications are Theories of the Present and Aesthetics of Installation. Andreas Fiel is a director and screenwriter. He's considered one of the most distinguished representatives of a political engaged art. He develops his own screenplays and films for cinema and has received over 50 national and international awards. In addition, Fiel writes and directs for the theater including Theater Basel, Schauspiel Stuttgart, Gorky Theater and the Deutsches Theater in Berlin. His plays and productions have toured to numerous places including Theater Treffen Berlin and have been translated into more than 10 languages. He's a member of the OP and has called the German Film Academy and the Academy of the Arts since 2007. And if we understand right, he is joining us right out of the hospital. He broke an arm. The theme of today is set by the great French philosopher and political scientist Jouffre. We'd like that scenery and who will actually join Milo tomorrow for an important one. We'll be moderating tomorrow at 4 p.m. So really welcome everybody and now my question to Milo. Milo, the possible art, tell us a little bit more about the idea for this panel, what Jouffre has in mind for us. This beautiful and extensive introduction and hello, Andreas again and of course Juliana together with me on the table here at the Academy of the Arts. Actually the name comes from a book that I will make it short at Jouffre de la Garnerie. So a long-term friend of mine wrote I think only some weeks ago, published some weeks ago. And I think fast as you are, Frank, you just read it in an afternoon as I know you. And actually he's tackling a dialectic contradiction that you have as a political artist that you are producing inside a system, the institutions, the rhetorics and the public and perhaps the traditions of representations of a system that you are criticizing at the same time. So you are in a kind of locked-in syndrome of political art and that's what Jouffre calls the impossible art so that there is a decent art somehow is impossible by term because you are always using the language that you are criticizing. And of course he's asking himself how can we reflect on it. And of course the first step is to understand that there is no other art than political art even if you are not engaging, you are engaged in non-engaging. So what could be an ethics and then an aesthetics and the reflective aesthetics of being locked in like this and is there a way out and if there is not a way out, how do we tackle it? How do we change institutions? And I think we will, from representation, documentary art to changing institutions to produce other ways of representing and of course distribution. What you discussed yesterday with Georg Seislin, how can you distribute films? Where does the production process start? Is it only screenwriting and directing and editing or is the distribution of a film now it is distributed? How it is produced? Also part of what you should call political. So of course we come here back to an old fantasy of I think the bourgeoisie to somehow liberate the individual from the society it is living in and liberating an art and having an independent art and I think the question we want to tackle today how resistance is possible is like let's say a postmodern clichés as resistance is impossible because even the act of resistance of revolution is iconic as a tactic and as lifestyle in neoliberalism. So as I say today to Juliane, I don't want to repeat this a bit boring sociology of criticising the impossibility of being political in neoliberalism but that's the basis on I think on which we are discussing we are trying to create solidarity we are trying to give space to voices that are unheard we try to represent the world in another way and to create new institutions and on that level of course the School of Resistance I understand as a live stream but I also understand as you said very beautifully as a way a school of bringing practice and theory together in unlearned unknown ways because you for example would connect with an actor from New York or from the hospital or from Amazonia or from other genres or from I don't know even not activists or not artists but just lawyers or and so on so mixing and creating new collective so that's what we what we try to do here even if we're also a bit locked in the Academy of the Arts at the very moment and that's I think that's the starting point so I give again the word to you dear Frank Yeah you're right it's an extraordinary undertaking you started and I think Jufra's question is quite significant he writes shouldn't we all be ashamed making art writing poems doing plays in the face of the brutality of the world he quotes Sartre who said you know what is literature in the face of a starving child what does it really mean and I think we are in a time right now where we have to ask this fundamental question there was the big shock perhaps the end of the idea of modern modernity is of Auschwitz but all of a sudden it was no longer just going forward it was back now perhaps Corona is the second big shock it says actually we are back in middle ages the virus is coming through us through our skin and we have no way to defend it we were not prepared I remember seeing a graffiti in Paris after a yellow west protest it was beautiful it said the spectacular it finished so the show is over what I think sprayed on the supermarket actually or some office building and so in a way it's just about doing theater after the end of theater or when we back at Heinemuller taught us they know that we are have reached a certain point of the end but still of course we go on we renegotiate and reinterpret so my question to Juliane is is art impossible is it impossible to do practice art well I guess it's a bit too fast to say the spectacle is over because it presupposes that there is no such thing like a politics of the aesthetic and yesterday there were a lot of strands in the discussion where you know the potential of aesthetics was stressed where the spectacle actually the theater has the potential to expose the logic of law for example so I'm a bit hesitant to throw out the baby with the bath water here maybe one can distinguish like two main paradigms one would be along the line of the avant-garde tradition let's get out of the frame of art let's end the spectacle and let's become something other than art namely politics and that's a very I don't know hegemonic even a dominant idea of what art should be doing right now so art then should become something like a creative ally or something of activism and become something like I would say design obviously when I used the word design I don't mean design as in producing pretty surfaces or something but more like on the deep level the design is always involved in also forming or constituting the uses the usages the ones and the life forms in which design intervenes so it's also and of course in the more progressive field of design that's taken up politically so that means and some of your work can be understood in this direction I think let's produce something that is not in the world but should be like a tribunal, a parliament well parliament or something like that and produce a model that then can be taken up and should become part of reality and can go into serial production as it were so that's kind of a design approach and that obviously has some function and productivity to it but I think it's somehow doing away with the art thing and also presupposes and I would like to talk about that too that there is something like an avant-garde and that is the creative class that we someone could ask of course isn't that a chauvinistic and outdated idea that we must look at artists slash designers to learn something about what is to be changed in the world so everything I think then hinges on how we think the relation of activists and artists here but coming back to my I don't know a defence of the spectacle in that regard I would say in Milos' work and the whole debate yesterday I don't know to those who were attending the discussions yesterday on the last days of the Torchescos what we have here is a work that is realist in a totally different way and where art's relation to reality is also thought of differently namely that nothing in reality stays the same once it's injected into the frame of art so reality changes when it becomes art and what's in the middle is of course representation so you give a realist artist what does he do he gives an image of reality but I would say he gives an image in the better cases in such a way that the reality of representation itself comes into the picture as well so what you do I guess in the film on the person harvesting tomatoes in south Italy as a new Jesus is that you are not only telling another story but you're also referencing ways of representation of famous Jesus stories so I think it's also and I wouldn't underestimate the political potential of that reflection on the ways in which we imagine or in which we represent reality I think that's an important point and that's a potential of spectacle a potential nevertheless that from the perspective of politics might look like a weakness that everything once it's injected into the frame of art somehow is tinged by the as if character of art so even people who are lawyers in real life once they're on stage with Milo they're also becoming actors of their own life of their own position but this kind of distancing that happens also has a specific politics to it and I think these two lines are somehow sometimes running up against each other sometimes in an interesting relation to each other so that's my longish answer to your very big question that is important and I do agree we do need the idea of the spectacle of the theatre or the performance or the intervention or something appearing on a space what people are watching András you are a filmmaker your films also re-stage or create in a documentary style a discussion on ecology on the big question of our time how do you see Milo's work what does it mean to you? Well, there are a lot of parallels in a way because the way he intervenes is very familiar in terms of let's see the example tonight the Moscow Trials are just in a way stage trial something what will happen in the future across side Germany is sued by 31 nations 2034 because of the negligence of climate targets and the way how they blocked climate targets in the last 20 years so by giving something like an example like a modelling reality something like an inducement or an impulse is in the world we just show by modelling reality by giving many people a chance to create something which has this kind of impact something will happen so I'm a strongly believer so in the impossibility of possible art when I think back of my very first experience I was a student in psychology I went to the psychiatry in prison just for an internship and I just asked to do something creative with these people and they were locked in for 24 hours in small cells and so I just observed them and suddenly they started something they were painting and some were doing extinguishing secrets on the hands of the other inmates very cool things and I just created something with these people and suddenly there was such an energy and when you read all the reports you read a lot about the lack what the people are incapable they're aggressive, they're dangerous and I just tried to find out what is the potential and that's a question of the human being if we believe in the potential of human beings if we don't believe in the lack and all the incapabilities then we have a starting point so we empower people to think about their own situation we empower people to create an expression of themselves we empower people to go beyond their own way of thinking so in a way we are just more or less like a medium for empowerment and this was such a strong experience because I was 25 I didn't believe in art at all I just did something and then the ward came all the doctors said you do horrible things people get so excited so we have to give more pills to calm them down and I knew ok, that's it, that's resistance we start just with empowerment and of course the system strikes back by giving more pills, by calming them down but it was the first step and it was for me something like a clue of experience I said ok, this is the way it's a question of believing in the capabilities of people believing in the possibility of change and the institutions, of course they are as they are and it takes years and I knew after two years they killed me and they killed me in a way they threw me out and I was sacked but anyway, I had two years to do something and after me someone else is coming changing something that is an important notion of the possibility I think if I remember right, Juliana wrote in her book that there should be an understanding of art in the light of its very best possibilities what it could and can do so my question to Milo to bring back the idea to Milo because the idea when I say modeling what Milo did in the Moscow Trials I only could watch the first 30 minutes because of the wifi in the hospital it's quite low, anyway, institution but even watching the first 30 minutes what I saw is in a way a process of healing he showed something which could be the right way to deal with it it's not reality, we know it and in a way, my model in the last film this trial in the future Germany is sued by 31 nations is a model which now many people, I get so many notions so many comments that's the way we have to deal with it so many people in the law sector in the legal system just went and called me and said okay, you described a model which could be not in 14 years but maybe in one or two years we will go for it so it's in the world, we have to bring something into some oxygen into the world and if we are lucky and we are not always lucky I fade many, many times we have maybe to talk a little bit more about the failure, not about the success but in this case I can say it is a success because the idea is in the world and some people grab it and develop it so art is this little oxygen in the engine you're doubting it? no, I think there's more to it my question for you of course art is in the imaginary in this symbolic but also in the real the school of resistance, your work is it symbolic? is it symbolic or is it intending to real change? no, I think the first try is always symbolizing a normalization or kind of introducing or designing a possible normalization of the act that is only possible in an artificial framework on a stage where the first parliament is staged and then it becomes normalized and then you would vote all four years and it becomes part of social life a ritual that you wouldn't question anymore and even not remembering as an introduced and a kind of invented ritual so this is quite interesting and that's why for me let's say an artwork that is interesting for me has two sides there's even failure and failure but I think it's important that you show the process how it was produced in the work itself so for me that's a netical point that you could see the making of while you see the framework and you even see at the same time what this framework, this design produces but you see all the failures by doing it perhaps even the pressure you have to do on some people that says but no, no, I don't want to be take part in this design more interested in this one or that one the difficulties of solidarity to make a kind of a frame together to function in a symbolic space which is very, very difficult for example the Jesus film for me was the biggest difficulties was not to make a Jesus film because everybody who is not completely brain dead can do a Jesus film of course to give costumes to people and then you have the Bible and that's it but the difficult thing is to bring together 42 groups of different people that is kind of programmed to fight one against the other to not change the situation because I mean one thing I learned and it's a sad truth that the slave doesn't want to make revolution, he want to be master you know, so to bring together people to say let's do revolution or we could call it now to make more simple art together engaged art together is normally 50% at least against what is logical to do in the system they find themselves or I find myself as an artist too, so it's kind of it's contraintuitive and it's intuitive what we do and I think to show these difficulties of this process to have a solidarity act of art is one point and the other point for me is really the reproductive thing we don't represent and duplicate reality but we create a place where things become real and reality is produced sometimes violent reality sometimes reality of descent but sometimes also utopic realities and that's what I mean with symbolizing I mean there is in Goethe perhaps you know that better than me Julianne as a professor but Goethe has an idea of the symbol for example in the theory of Goethe it's not a symbol in the way how we understand it in common language that it is something that is somehow not real it's something that is at the moment when it appears it's real but it's symbolizing reality and it is reality and this for me is the double face of documentary art, you know and I would call the documentary that Andres is doing and that I am trying to do too you topic documentaries so kind of inventing a situation and then filming that situation as you would documenting it so a very strange and perhaps that's all about art that you would kind of the the different regimes of fiction and documentary art all the time try to bring together to find a place where fiction changed into reality and reality is refictionalized and is open and this is a process to the future but it's also a process to the past you can have also a topic few on the past when we are talking about resistance we have so many examples of resistance against capitalist society that are forgotten, that is untold that is, you know and if you go in history books of 19th century 18th century, 17th century of other cultures you will find so many past things that are not revealed so the past is unwritten the future is unwritten and I think art is a kind of totalization of the present moment where past and future I mean now it becomes a bit a mystic meet somehow but in reality and not just because we are talking about it or writing a beautiful poetry but as a as a nect of common creation I mean if I may step in I think I'm just interested in asking back to both you and Andres about the relation of the participatory work you are doing with people that has empowering potential maybe theoretical potential healing potential that's what something brought up yesterday in reenactment for example but also empowering people to be creative, to unfold or express their potentialities but this is only one side so you can invent forms for this but then there is a secondary audience to whom this is documented and then this is a show and I'm wondering also with regard especially to your work in Belgium and your work in the Congo like how the whole ethical point for the second audience is how do they come into the picture how do you prevent them from just consuming politicality to come back to our initial question how do we prevent like is pretty obvious that we are living in a time in which bourgeois society comrade is pretty eager to have art be political and this has a whole set of not so nice ideas can come to mind like is it delegation from the political realm to the cultural realm that art shall be political right now has it a compensational function and all these kinds of questions come up so I have somehow I'm a bit nervous with the second audience and I think with the two politics I described in my first statement the second one namely the one that questions representation the reality of representation the means of making the audience reflect on their own habits of what they had in the bourgeois institution of theatre so I guess my question to both of you back is how do you think of these first participatory audience and then the second one too which is the first production is played back you want to start yeah so many items you mentioned I tried to be short first of all with my last play we tried something which was for me was a new approach because we invited scientists 13 scientists of different fields economy environment and to develop with the audience in workshops like scenarios for the next 10 years we just said we will have financial crisis we have a crisis of course of the environment and develop with the participants together with the scientists scenarios it was a very interesting day because a lot of very different old young I don't know from all over and Germany people came and many many more people were interested to come and to join and there is a necessity to create something and to think about science but not in terms of science which is a loo far away to grab it and to integrate it into forms of art and so it was a common process of writing in a way so you could say the artists are lazy we are using scientists we are using all the people who joined us to create something but it was a common experience and I was very euphoric in a way because out of this material we developed something and out of the symbol it became real because after the show we invited politicians in a very concrete way and said what are the functional ideas so not a vicious circle but a circle in terms of production from science to the audience with the audience into the theater from the theater into politics to have this kind of empowerment in a very practical way of thinking and so it was just one example and of course it's just a little drop in the ocean but again it's something I felt this strongness of capability, the strongness of empowerment and it was something like a first little trace to go on in terms of participating experience with science and with politics I'm not naive, we have to think about power structures, we have to think about many many things that art can do many things and we all know we are discussing it in the very beginning, we are doing impossible art in a way because they just embrace us and kiss us and say thank you and that was it but anyway it was like this little gemstone and we have to take care about it and develop it and I think Milo you do also very strong work and maybe it's very good to have this kind of schools to say okay there are many many people all over the world doing something, how can we bring it together that it's not just the drop in the ocean I think to answer your question for the second what you call the second public which would be on the screens etc I think there is there are very simple movements I mean what you describe that you would have in the second public kind of people that is already empowered and that can change and that are for example politicians or managers of enterprises and etc and you address these people more generally you can also address the consumer society which is consuming a film and the next as an example from the new gospel which is consuming tomatoes because one beautiful thing about capitalism is that capitalism is immoral so if everybody buys sustainable tomatoes capitalism will only produce sustainable tomatoes and if everybody buys tomatoes that are made under the law of mafia they will only produce this kind of tomatoes and if you make or if you think an artwork as a whole circle of distribution that distributes the dignity that you show in the film as something that you could buy later in the supermarket as a tomato brand and as a visitor of the film you can buy these tomatoes and you are informed and perhaps even with the ticket you buy or already the ticket you buy you can support cinemas that are closed and you don't buy your ticket on Netflix etc so these are things we are trying out at the moment very simple things to kind of introduce in distribution not only watching everything as a process of distributing and in the end of the day to put it on a more theoretical level I think it's the old question of how to bring what bourgeois artwork tells you knowledge, emotion together with practice how to link in the process of distributing art a new practice or an artistic practice of the public together with what the artwork is telling you how do you can become as a visitor of the artwork part of what is happening in the artwork of the revolt of dignity for example or in the Congo Tribunal that you could then what we did with this film we used this film as a tool to then with a thousand copies perhaps you talked with Arne Pieckenschock about it that we sent because we had our last discussion after I think the Congo Tribunal that we then sent to to many together with the assembly of the lawyer's assembly of Congo we sent to villages that there they are used as a tool to organize trials completely then independent from even I don't know being included in any way of distributing art in Europe it's really kind of a tool and that's how the book and very beautifully of by the way ends he said in bourgeois art and in the art circuit the art as a methodology as an example as a pedagogy of how you should act is very bad scene it's not real art you know and he said perhaps we should reestablish this value of art that art is as cool that you can learn from art how to live better you know so this seems very very humanist now but indeed and what about the negativity of art I mean absolutely the deconstruction of everything yeah Milo my my question to you speak about the audience as Juliana mentioned a brush said he wrote for the children of the technological age now we could say we have the children of the digital age you call this the school of resistance this is the tradition of the German building start of the educational theater and as impressed in the way you call out that idea of a good and children Juliana argues actually also and are you part of that building started do you think of the future of engagement the future of resisting is performing knowledge is it a pedagogical institution yeah it's a part of institution I mean this idea to call it school of resistance came from the land less movement we were collaborating for Antigone and what they do they have their own I don't know agriculture they have their own schools so they made where you learn different thing you can read the Bible for example you have you have courses in religion but in another way you have courses in agriculture but in a sustainable way etc etc and then we started dreaming about another humanist topic but we are here and we talk from where we are from school of resistance to bring together knowledge and how knowledge is connected to practice in different cultures in different parts of the world together to for example understand that if you want if you if you need land you can occupy land if this land is not used by the land owner it is allowed by the constitution of Brazil that's what the land less movement is doing million of times but it would also be allowed in Germany you could also occupy here occupation is legal you know so and this is something you can learn in a kind of a global school of resistance which you didn't know before and something very shocking by the way of a global school of resistance is that you have structural similarities of structural violence that are extremely the same everywhere you go in the world you will understand quite fast that was for me the I mean the outcome of all this that we are really living in one world and everything is connected everything is really connected there is no there is a little bit of disconnection everywhere but it's a big one big I mean I'm not paranoic but it's one big economical cultural system we are living in and perhaps as the first generation ever you know I'm a bit concerned with the knowledge paradigm for art I must say and often talks like that you know art produces knowledge like all other fields but just in its own way or something like that and I think that somehow jumping over a potential that art has in its negativity namely not producing knowledge or more knowledge or better knowledge why should the artist be better than a theoretician or a journalist or people who are doing work or in the beginning you say just lawyers why shouldn't they produce the knowledge that we need so why art for that but art can do something very specific namely put us in a certain relation to our knowledge production which I find where something like below me decolonize the spectacle with the decolonization of the theater can happen in really playing back the problematic knowledge production that the Bildungsanstalten of the bourgeois theater have constituted or co-constituted and sustained for a very long time and of course this is also connected with new forms of postcolonial work that's been done both on the practical and the theoretical and the critical level but the relation of art is not to top them all to say okay they're postcolonial theorists and activists and so on but our knowledge is the knowledge that we need I think it's not like that it's more like also the difficulties in which that harmful kind of knowledge production sits in the very apparatus of the European theater and to address that and in a way that is where critical work and aesthetic work and artistic work come together but I think the negativity you are addressing I was addressing a bit too naively of course and my artworks are extremely negative but I think these two sides coming together then it's something interesting happening because I just read yesterday by Fandis the long summer of theory where you have all this Adorno chapter and everything is negative and it's impossible to make in this system it's no way out etc I know that's a different negativity or even melancholy or depression of the intellectual which is very modern and very postmodern and then you have another way of saying okay if you create I don't know, decolonized frameworks of collectives producing knowledge there will be produced something that is hyper positive you know is not only saying we don't want to have racist violence and again we don't want to have patriarchal violence again but that would produce storytelling stories by accident of people coming together and processes of production that was unforeseen and this is the kind of knowledge perhaps you could even not call it knowledge because what about would this knowledge be because this knowledge is aimed to the future is to producing reality, it's not knowledge about a reality that is better than a scientist would have and I think for me it's a competition of producing knowledge I would say because many other institution who all the time from morning to night produce so called knowledge we know they fail it's just the way in cliches it's repeated and we are fed up with it so I think it's our necessity to deal with knowledge and not only to show how it is produced but even to produce better aesthetical knowledge to go beyond the common production of knowledge and by maybe sometimes a naive curiosity by asking questions by listening going into the system of thinking, of talking of just observing this system and analyzing it and grabbing the substance out of it and transferring it on another level and I think we can be very successful because we have a better way of production we have a better way of research we have more time than journalists we have even more time than scientists we are much more free to bring rivals and layer together and so I won't neglect the power of producing knowledge and I would relate to that and also to what Julianne said that today by accident I had a discussion with a journalist about Basolini and we were asking ourselves why do we like Basolini, the filmmaker and what is in his iconography and his way of filming that we like and for example then we found out that we like that the over shoulder shot is not existing in Basolini, that you have the one and then you have the other and there is not always this dramaturgy of the space who is where or you have for example a face watching something and you see everything that this face watches and you don't even see what this face sees you know, so that there is a kind of a deconstruction or a totalization of images in an archaic way that kind of escapes to this way of capitalism to have an economic of telling a story you know, perhaps it's boring, perhaps it's a bit too much catholic art, whatever but it can also lie in this you know, that you make pictures in another way that you don't have this kind of Schuß-Gegen-Schuß over shoulder all this bullshit from television they just say no to that I mean that's what I mean work on on conventions of representation right, so that's I think as I said, an enormously important aspect of it, yeah, not just look at the contents and say okay, hey here's another story and we might be really like good in researching it and so on but content is an alibi in art, no? it's content is not exist, for me content exactly, so yeah, that's the problem if you know people concentrate on that so, yeah, exactly Frank as people present, what Volini said is that we should throw our bodies into life and it's their life is dangerous and I think what Mido's art also shows that he puts himself also at risk in dangerous, dangerous art what he does, the Moscow trial if we see this today, you will say there was dangerous the Congo tribunal, they are dangerous territory he moves in and why I think his work is important and his school of resistance is that capitalism and the neo-capitalism actually normally uses now the artist as an example why capitalism works, the artist is the model, you know, look at the artist, he has no money and he applies the actor is rejected all the time but he believes in himself and then he becomes a star and gets, comes to Hollywood and becomes an Oscar and if he goes to the frame and he never asks for health insurance you know, and for wages and also Hannah Munna said, theater why we have to keep in mind is against the machine of theater, real theater actually sees the representation of the state of the system in this theater itself and we have to resist we have to fight against it, it's not the goal to be part of it we have to become the master as Milo said to get also on Broadway, he in America especially all is about the success but to say no, these are different models of producing, they are different values and it is about inclusion and kind of as he says global conscious, you know to keep in mind the tensions between the reality and of course the vision and we have so I think this resistance is of significance so Milo your dangerous approach in a way is it calculated is it thought after, is it natural that it comes to you or is it intentional this brings me to a question that is projected here in the Academy of the Arts because we have the questions of the public and it's completely related to what you say because there it's a question because of course we don't only put ourselves as the artists into into danger but also everybody who is working with us and what is the ethical standing point about this because of course when I can say I put me in danger so I don't care and then whatever happens it's up to me so that's a I think this only depends from the psychology of everybody how he likes to work more in panic or more in a quiet way so that's really you are born like this or like that but I think what is interesting is what happens with and for me the biggest danger of people is not that there is a real danger and it could be a bomb in a car or I don't know or the Russian secret service could kill us all for me the danger is the danger of the representation and especially when you do documentary work that you put somebody in a film and you say this is the real person, this is the real life that's how he is and I could talk long about this ethical problem how long you can discuss with people until you find the way of editing because you say you have this role in the film but at the same time I know it's not the whole story and I had it now when I was working in Geneva for this opera where we presented 18 people on stage so what are your 4 sentences, your 10 sentences and I know it very well when you give for example an interview and then you say okay they cut it down but when is it still real what you said you know and how do you deal I would like to ask this Andres because you are somehow even more a real let's say documentary filmmaker especially in your earlier work than I ever was how do you deal with the you know what I mean with this yeah of course in my first film I had a lot of fight with the actress with the main actress she was attacking me and it's all in the film but at the same time I was staging this scene so it's we were playing with this different layers of representation and I think if this is part of it or if at least the contradiction of my way of representation by for example in addicted to acting when the actress said we are fed up with the way you ask questions we are fed up with the way you are trying to direct us we are in a documentary we don't get paid so this kind of reflection of the process I think it's always a necessity to show it's of course my story in the very end I am sitting in the editing room as you do with Katja you make your film and so this is a power we have and I think we are the storytellers in the very end but we are liable to it did we just use it? I think he has a problem with the stream huh? I can tell you the most the most challenging work for me in a documentary is not preparing the film is not researching the film is not shooting is not editing the most challenging work is when the film is finished because then I pay for it then I have to deal with the protagonist and tell him look sorry and you are part of it so do you accept it? you fight me? you hate me? till the end of your life and it happened and that's his failure and we have to talk also about failure because I failed a lot I really used my power I used my strength and I made my film and I paid for it and the protagonist paid for it and so it's a high price because the actor has the protection of the role and the protagonist normally they don't get paid and they don't have protection yeah so there is a price to pay if art has a value it has a price there because there is the market Julianne a question for you as someone who really monitors contemporary art across the fields what is the art we do need? what do you think at the moment what we are in the time guys as you said the invention we come to the hell of the time we happen to be in what do you think are the marks what are the things you talk about the open art work what do you think is contemporary art what do we need most that's for Julianne well I don't know whether I can answer this question there are still so many different things happening at the same time that I think it is worth doing something like we are doing now namely take a close look on what we are doing in the fields of practices that aim at the full weight of art at look at its own social and political dimension and look at the different models there are and the different strands that run up even in one single piece as to my mind is often the case in your work and discuss them so I wouldn't say I think that would be a false role if a critic came up with a to-do list or something but I think you know to come back to the question of form of representation to the violence of representation you were talking about that yesterday and also Andres was just talking about that of course making cuts in a film and to cut away certain bits and pieces of the material is also a violent process you have to stand up for your decision and the question is how do we deal with that and what kind of ethical so that's for me already a whole big book that we are opening up here so what's this relation of camera towards the person being on camera what do we aim for are we aiming for the true moment and is the true moment also the person stays opaque where the opacity of the person is part of the truthfulness for example I think that's also in the the way that the camera is not overseeing the scene is not producing a transparent image but something that somehow is not so easily consumable because there is an opacity of the kind of vis-a-vis the so this whole theme to describe that in detail for me is already a big question of course the ones that we had before what's the relation of art and knowledge of course I didn't want to play off the production of different stories against the negativity of reflecting on the conventions of such stories I think they go hand in hand but I think it's more like from my observation also of the art discourse that I feel I have to stress the second aspect so much because people feel like art is about knowledge projection it should become something like criticism and in the content it has to be research and so on and so forth should be like another form of knowledge then I would say okay we are losing a lot if we are subscribing to this unbalanced stress of this aspect so that's why I'm always saying okay there's something like a politics not only a form but also of negativity that is there also and I would defend that normatively since you're asking of normative judgments in my case pretty much committed to this negative side as well and if we lose that I would say okay then maybe you know something that is of course super important work educational work etc but that's not specific to art so that's also a question that always is with me when do we call something art or not yeah yeah because I see another question from the public we have some comments and I think it's very closely linked to it the question is I sum it up a bit because it's quite long is it possible to produce in the distribution production systems VR where there is an artist from Europe for example and people that has no regularization in south Italy without even papers or names can they work together in a way that it is not only post-colonial but decolonial in a way that they would be really empowered in a structural way can art bring structural change when people with structural power and people with that are structurally powerless come together and these questions and it said no I think it's impossible this commentator says and I think it's an expression I can very well understand it's perhaps the melancholy of Western Europe somehow to make this statement what I made many times the experience in art that you can change structurally and only in bits and that's what I call the positivism of art and where I insist even if I completely follow you Juliana in what I like as an artist and what I mainly do even if I only add 1% of positivism 99% I would edit and think about the light and about the reality of the emotion and the Brechtian level and whatever so I mean that's my work but still to take again the new gospel what happened hundreds of people now have papers they have a house because we invested in it we want to change the laws we want to have a tribunal for serious we want to change and I think it's a necessity that the people with structural power like everybody who is in this panel united as in the education apparatus like you with an institution like you as a very known director Andres we have to use these possibilities we have to change to decolonize I think it's really this is very serious I think it's really important this positive power of art that doesn't mean that we completely forget what is the I don't know the complexity of the and we have to reflect on and we try in my way in my funny way perhaps doing it in the new gospel that you see that when activists and artists come together what sometimes happen that it doesn't work for both sides it's a failure but still we have to try we have to believe in it and we have structurally to use the production money and the production power we have to change structurally the situation of the people that is at least included in our films or in our projects and it never really works out perhaps it's 10 people perhaps it's 20 people but we did it and we do it and we continue doing it and I just want to underline it because this is it possible that somebody from western Europe would ever not only really repeat the exploitation system but change it I think it is possible to change it we see it in the history of I don't know even of our own continent what happened I mean the liberation of all minorities etc etc you know what I'm talking about I don't go in these details but it happens all the time and it's really possible and I think what you say maybe we are just not more than journalists so in the very beginning we create something like the symbol of our work it becomes some sort of reality and then it's transferred what I call the oxygen and sometimes very small I remember a crucial scene for me I showed a play in the province of Brandenburg and we had a debate afterwards and in the beginning it was about the play but then it was suddenly switched nobody was interested in me anymore in me as an artist I was totally unimportant the play was unimportant but the people in the audience hall were talking about their situation about the situation of experience of right extreme terror everyday terror by violence by people getting beaten up etc etc and people in the very end exchanging emails they built a group and I was standing aside nobody was talking anymore to me nobody was asking for autographs nobody was just saying bravo what you did I was just totally unimportant and it was the best experience I tell you because I am somebody who needs success and who needs good critics sometimes and I want to get love all the time but this experience I was just unimportant it was so great I knew that's the way we have to be catalysts in the very beginning then the process the symbol becomes reality and we are out of the game we take over not us as we took over so many times I think I took over so many times everything I am doing in my films was made by somebody else I am kind of collecting the symbols of others and the practices of others you know so it's passing through that's true and then we go to the next spot and doing the same thing and then we are unimportant out of the window boys it's a quotation of boys throw my piece of art out of the window and that's very good so no museums no installations for the end of the society and civilization no we just do it in this very moment and then we do it and then it's over and it's gone and we have to go to another place and try again yeah well I think it's obviously one demands of progressive art making that it has an eye of the materialistic preconditions of this and to turn that not let your production just be determined by it from the back but turn it into material itself and somehow expose it and work on it but of course the productions within for example theater are connected to larger structures that you you can show but not change alone so this is where an individual artwork runs up against larger structures where you need a political movement or where you need something else than art and that's I think also important to have a mind and I come more in my reflection from the visual arts and in that field there is also a problem with you know we insert our little bombs and then we move on to the next space that's been the structure of the biannuals and so on where somehow the question of time and sustainability is totally key so I think that's not trivial to think of this relation of of course aiming at what you can what you can control and to turn that also into something that can be discussed and turn that into something that informs the artwork on the deep level but also to be very clear about what art somehow cannot do where the institution of art is surrounded where this is also on the materialist level often something that's not been taken into account as much as it should be and then it's really about how are the structures that take up what's been begun I mean in the case of the houses of dignity it's the Catholic Church which is interesting but also this is a question on so many levels and how we translate these fleeting moments of our interventions where a symbol becomes reality into something that mightling up with a political movement and with other forces that lay outside art I think perhaps what we should learn from the creators of this event Kasia Wojcik, she gave me a book I think it was called Against Purity that we have to learn that purity is not possible so we can for example create houses of dignity to house people that they get papers and go out of this circle of not having paper, not having a house etc. so that they can be legalized but you only can do it together with the Catholic Church because they have to pay for it somehow and then you are linked to an institution that you perhaps criticize partly and I think what I learned many times by working as an artist that purity is not existing and that we have a lot of criticism in our times I think kind of measuring what we do with a dogma of purity that is not existing that is just in reality in real practice is not existing and this makes me sometimes very very tired very disappointed it produces self-hatred somehow because you say you should do this act pure you should do this act without depending from everything without any negativity somehow but it's impossible and how can you act with this I think you know it's something I deal with it from the very first day of my work and I can really feel the doubts and the pain by doing compromises when you work with an institution or a TV channel or whatever and I think the only thing we can do is be liable say okay this is the structure we work with partner so this is the impact and because of this I had to do this so I'm not a slave I'm still an artist but to make it transparent and to show this kind of transparency what by money if it's a catholic church if it's a TV station if it's a producer in all these structures from morning to night and I would say two-thirds of my energy is trying to deal with these structures and to get the money and to make the decision okay I work for TV and I know the rules and they're different in TV and they're different in a theater of course but if I want to reach a lot of people in a theater I reach maybe one thousand one evening and TV I reach whatever five million and it's another institution of course and so let's talk about the structures and talk about our fights and talk about failure absolutely I know for me the thing that produces the most depression and self-hatred and then sleepless nights is less the TV station and the institution because I can accept I can accept this kind of contradiction on the meta level I'm not really concerned because I really can change it or only partly but I inside the team for example inside how you work with people as you say you make kind of a deal and you say okay this is how you will be in that film and you try to find together a way but perhaps it's not for you and not for the other person you are sometimes you are exploding and you have five hundred points and you are only two people and sometimes you are two and you have even not one point you know so this kind of impurity of there is not always the flow and the symbolic space because to make a symbolic action you need a lot of bureaucratic shit to do or editing a film to have in the end this kind of reflective realism that you want to have but it's completely constructed so I mean and so on and so on so it's there are so many sustainability it's impossible it's somehow possible but not and so on so I I would like to say it's also a connected side to what it produces and the innocence of the viewer the spectator the audience also is no longer there the purity and that's a good thing I think Heinrich Müller once said when he came to west Germany he said when I go through the Prusskengauk zone of the Waukesund and Gelsenkirchen everybody looks so innocent I could scream I cannot accept it they're not innocent of course and I think what you do in your work that's the description of the violence of the Moscow trial what about the viewer himself or herself is all this something that you can accept is a participatory element of it is someone who has to question herself what am I watching what am I doing the muzzle play you know these things you did they also you know so you went there shortly after the war and so you also produce something that no longer request the purity of the Broadway show we have here in New York when nobody wants you to think about anything you know it's the exact opposite so I think your work with all the complications and nightmares you have because of the internal struggles but also producer that the audience member has to question himself or herself and is part of that and perhaps that is what the modern contemporary art also produces in a contrast to what there was before where you were consuming one artwork one painting one sculpture one film and now it is something where one is involved I don't know if you see the signal Frank so we have the signal from our curators that we have I guess now 15 minutes left and we should come smoothly and slowly to the end so I am sure you prepared you prepared a kind of round up 15 or 5 minutes 15 15 so it's not 15 no maybe we should go to some audience questions no I have not round up I don't know anything more than anyone else I'm just learning with you guys maybe we should go to some audience questions yeah we can do that there was one I remember asking about the difference and I was when I was thinking about impurity and the impossible of being innocent as an artist working in representation there was something with Lacan that you have kind of reality always is the real you know that reality always is something and for example if you describe violence or you produce violence together with your actors it's a violent moment you can't be in the moment of producing and filming violence you can't be in a Brechtian distanciation you can add this distanciation later but not in the very moment I mean it's just like one little contradiction that I think in the current times is for many people let's take the trick of warnings and everything a real problem that they can't take violence indirectly and there's something true in it and if you're in the representative arts as we all are we are tackling with this kind of how could we call it with this kind of sadism of representation that we shoot on the innocence of the of the spectator that is not used to see let's say the miserable is not used to see the structure of violence, the racism etc. for example I had with Arte a very long discussion before we made the film the new gospel because there is a that's a very good question I will come to it later there's just another one we have always projections of questions and there is a moment when in a casting one actor coming to the casting is kind of torturing a chair for 5 minutes and from a moment that you are understanding that this guy is taken by structure racism and yet you are kind of impressed that he knows all this and you understand that I also would know all these words and all these violence when I would have to play a kind of a racist culture because our culture knows so he knows and I know it's not him individually but at one point this scene getting longer and longer falls into something else which is kind of an aesthetic sadism and then you are asking yourself would you go there or wouldn't you go there and I think that's a question we wouldn't have asked 20 years ago so it's a question of now you know yes, voila it's not really let's be concrete precise what was your decision in this very moment my decision was I had to decide no it was a bit because they were asking me to cut it so I didn't it was more a kind of father son behavior so of course then you are getting retent when you should edit but then you don't but I mean I completely understood this argument but I wanted to bring the structural racism to that point that it gets questionable as my act somehow or as an act, a scene in the film that is quite fast edited but here is the scene, it's the longest scene three minutes and everybody who watched the film... for me the crucial point is who has the right of the last decision you can do it, you can provoke it and who has in the very end decides it's in the film or it's not in the film so it's you that's what I call transparency you can be humble and say no I see it's a provocation, I don't do it but in the very end it's you and it's me and I think there is no democracy in art in the very end because in this very last decision if there is no institution, no catholic church no TV station it's you and it's me, we tell Katja to cut it out or to bring it in right? yeah, but we are not pure no, no, no, that's impossible that's impossible, that's true at one moment you need the decision and it depends from what you actually decide of course that's why we are liable you go into a kind of a middle way I would say because it's collective and then we would kind of find a way that everybody is decor so that's the can we go to the last maybe also that I find this kind of discussion that would be a very productive way of taking the current moment with the trigger warnings and so on for up, namely in asking ourselves how we invested in a history of violence that has always also been a history of aesthetic what you call aesthetic violence how are we still informed by it and to make that the kernel of the debate instead of sometimes it's done with the trigger warnings instead of purifying the aesthetic realm as if that's a bit to me as if bourgeois society would now create conditions under which it doesn't have to be confronted with its own history of violence violence, absolutely it's only the elites that want to be in a structural violent position without watching the face of these violence actions exactly and so this micro decisions of how do we bring that in that we are really informed by that history is I think super important to stress that so that one question for Julianne I guess at what point does the detecticism of this Leerstück produced by companies like IAPM drift into the pastoral somebody is asking so when is art to perhaps translate it in the terms we used, when is the positivism of art really ripping out the negative craziness of it what is the tipping point for you that you say okay that it's not art anymore that's kind of pure education of the masses I can there to you stand or not yeah I would say if it's like one can just ask the question if there's nothing to appease and I think that somehow the Brechtchen aesthetics is a good I always forgot is it point in case in point whatever obviously there's more to it than the deducticism and that one could even say that these ideas if something coming together that in an instant you can understand the conditions of society that this somehow multiplied in the self deconstructed in the way that Brechts place were received produced over and over again and so on so that's a point just structurally in the moment when there is a production that would achieve the aim of just delivering a message it would cease to be out unfortunately Brecht never achieved that he wasn't Brecht enough so there are different strands in the Brecht maybe at the very end since the Moscow trial film is coming up maybe say a few words to our viewers and to people who want to see who might not know about it also the people you encountered part of the news so tell us a little bit about the work yeah I mean the Moscow trials that's a film or a performance we did in 2012-2013 in Moscow and it was not a reenactment but a kind of restaging of three trials with the people involved so trials against artists from the government of Putin at that time and still under the let's say under the alibi of offence to the religious feelings of people he tried to whip out dissident artists or dissident exhibitions namely in the Sakhov centre so we restaged these trials for example against Pussy Riot as the most known this trial was only coming up during the preparation so I knew them before that and then it was created into a show trial and we restaged these trials with an open ending with an independent jury but following the Russian law and we filmed everything that happened during, before and after these artistic show trials now I have to announce that at 7 this movie is not on Facebook like for example this discussion because then it seems that then we lose the rights to Facebook there so that's problematic so if you want to see the film at 7 now you have to go on www.addk.de www.addk.de www.addk.de the internet page of the Academy of the Arts in Berlin and there the film is streamed and of course on the pages of all our friends like for example the page of the Siegel centre and so on and so on Schaubühne after the film we will have a discussion with a Victoria Lomasco a Russian artist which was in the film with Thomas Ostamer we invited Kirill Seribrennikov he has other problems now Thomas Ostamer will somehow take his position as his very close collaborator and friend from the Schaubühne also a collaborator of this film and Sandra Frimmel an art historian which was included in the film as one of the dramaturgs of the film and the researchers will be here too, it will be moderated by Florian Malzacher a very good friend and one of the most interesting theatre critiques and writers and dramaturgs and curators of Europe at that moment yeah wonderful, thank you all thanks for the Academy of the Arts for hosting us again Miedl coming up with the idea of having the idea of putting it into motion and having also an entire support system creating also to support your support system with the support system so it is remarkable, it is truly I think a symbol and representation of what theatre at the moment contemporary theatre, it is what it can be and perhaps what it should be and what is mostly that it comes up now it appears on the stage what you are doing so it is truly connected to what we have and yes I think also it is part of a healing of the world and towards the healing of the world and the global conscious you have truly is so significant including the participatory aspect of the artist there is something that really should be taken very very serious for everybody who studies theatre who produces theatre and who goes to the theatre so thank you all and thanks Andres and everybody involved the entire crew a good healing take care of your yeah thank you very much and have a really good evening the fight goes on thank you Frank bye