 Welcome everybody back to the Martin E. Siegel Theater Center here at the Graduate Center CUNY at the City University in New York and to another edition of Siegel Talks. My name is Frank Henschka. I'm the director of the Siegel Center. Now for eight weeks, we've been hosting talks with theater artists, performance artists really from around the globe, from Egypt and Palestine and Taiwan, Hong Kong, Belgium, Germany, Italy. Brazil and Chile, from Germany also, with Remini protocol. And it is still a dangerous time in the world. We hear the devastating accounts from Brazil. We had just Brazilian artists here with us last week. And still in America also, we do not know what the future holds close to 100,000 deaths. And shops still are not open in New York City for another month. Everything will be closed. The country is slowly opening up and we do not know what it really means. Nobody knows fully what's right and wrong is a time of uncertainty. And something artists often had to deal with, artists who had their ears close to the ground but also to the future, anticipating the future and the sense of, oh, yeah, what he always teaches us. And they have been on the right side of progress of justice. And this is why it is important for us to listen to them now, to hear what they go through and to ask them to share experiences. We have a very special guest today, which is Thomas Oberenda from Berlin, who is at the Berlin Festspieler, where he overlooks the great museum, the modern museum, the Kropius Baal, actually done by Walter Kropius' father, the great Baalhaus architect. And he creates the Immersion Festival, which is looking to find new forms, how to present intermedia, transmedia. And anyway, in the big idea that Berlin Festspieler is always looking for new formats for performance, literature, cultural programs. And he creates what he calls time-based exhibitions. This theme of our talks here at this legal in this moment of real crisis. And Milo Rao said, it's a tragedy. Richard Schechner said, it's a farce because at least in a tragedy, you have great leaders, great opponents. This farcical tragedy, although it was it, we need new forms. And Brecht was the one who said, new times, need new forms of theater. And this is a time where we are looking for them, finding them together and to Thomas, I think it has his eyes and ears close to what's happening in Germany, also in Europe. Yesterday, we had Richard Foreman, who talked about his work over the decades and how he felt that his work already had an impact that had answers for a creation of work that helps us perhaps to find meaning in this complicated time. So now we go to Thomas, who was also a playwright. He's also a playwright, a writer. He's a thinker, an essayist, maybe also atheist, I don't know, and Thomas Yacht. And so he really is one of the leading figures, curators in Europe, especially of course, in Berlin, where he has the great Berlin Festspieler, they do the Theater Treffen, the Theater Meetings, the Film Festspieler, the Jazz Festival, and of course the Kropus Festival. So Thomas, after my long introduction, welcome. Where are you right now and what time is it? It's six o'clock in the evening and I'm sitting in my living room and I'm really happy to be connected with you in New York and yes, it's a great pleasure and honor that you invited me. Well, thanks, thanks for having you. You were the director of the drama, the Salzburg Festspieler, you are a great Berlin Festspieler. How does it feel for you to be in a home, in your apartment? Today is a holiday, so nobody is working except people with running restaurants and cafes because they could open since this week. And also our exhibition hall is opened in this week. But for me, it feels fine, it feels like in all the days of the lockdown, this six or seven weeks, we have been, yes, most of us have been locked in our homes. It was, from the professional perspective, a very sometimes sad time because many projects we did have to cancel. Our festival for contemporary music, maths music, the Corona crisis was so early before we start the festival that we had no chance to change the program to go into the internet or to do something alternative. So it was just, yeah, it was just postponed for the next year, more or less. And of course, also some exhibitions, we cannot open under these circumstances and they are also postponed. So of course, it's a lot of trouble but I think the biggest trouble is the situation of the artists themselves, that's something different from us who are in an institution that is, I would say, a stabber situation for all the employees but if you are freelance artist or technician, then it's a hard time. Yeah, so but can you go out now? Can you, you said the restaurants are open, six or seven weeks you had to be at home and now it's open again or everybody can go out? Open except theaters. They also started the soccer, League, yeah. League again, but without audience. Also the concert halls are locked down, the opera houses are locked down but the exhibition houses and the museums are open, strictly regulated by the law. So every visitor has to have a space for 50 square meters for himself. You have to wear masks. So there's a lot of regulation about it but it feels like the restart of, let's say, the normal life, more or less. Also on the street, the air was so clean. There was no pollution. There was a long time of, let's say, not so much noise in the city, empty streets. This was sometimes depressing. Sometimes it was wonderful because you see the clear sky. All the dirt was disappeared for this time. The dirt in the air, this comes back now also. So 50 square meters in the museum is about 150 square feet, so it's a huge space. So you only let in a very small amount of people in the Corpus bell, for example, or your number of people? Yeah, you have to buy a time slot for your visit. So that's the way how we can regulate the number of visitors. And yes, there's a special system of leading or guiding the visitors through the exhibition rooms. So nobody can go back his way. It's only one direction, one exit. Yeah, but I think it's also a special experience. It's not the way we want to have it all the time, but I think you come very close to the art itself. And it is silent and slow circumstances of your own visit at a counter with the art. Yeah, so it's a new choreography in a way. So linear move through an exhibition in a certain time you choose and you are alone with it and... Yeah, strange, because usually, of course, exhibitions, if you understand that, as a kind of format or ritual is a very liberal format, you are controlling your way, you are controlling the time you spend on every place. It's completely the opposite of the ritual of theater in which you can't control what's going on. The time is controlled by the action on stage. But in the exhibition, you control the time, you control your way through all this environment who are waiting, who are arranged for you. And this is, of course, now a very limited liberal situation, but still, of course, easier to handle than the theater situation. Yeah, so it's a new social choreography and reception in a way of art. Thomas, I know you're a writer, you're a thinker, you're so engaged with your essays. So how did you personally, how did you experience these six or seven weeks in your home? I have to say, I feel split. There is one half of my personality that is constantly working for my institution. And the experiences of this person are different from the other person who is, let's say, a citizen, a human being that is locked in, that is thinking about the change around me and the change inside of me. I think it, I compared for me as a period of transition like making a diet or something like this. That is always not only a physical experience, it's also a spiritual experience and change if you do something like this. And sometimes I think it's a diet for a whole society. It's locked down with all the good effects also of a diet, cleaning yourself from so many things. Who are harmful and I would say for a while you are changed by this experience. The other person on the institution is very busy, much more busy, I expected to be with troubleshooting. The whole time we have to do something like this. React on a complicated situation, all our associates and collaborators are now forced to work at home. We have to handle this situation of changing the programs of our festival, changing the programs of the exhibition hall, changing the contracts, making the negotiation with the public, with the audience, with the politicians. So it's a quite busy time in the same time if you are frozen. So personally I would say it's the first time in my life in which I feel I connected with the whole world because we are all touched from this problem. We are all dealing with the same challenge, how we can manage this dangerous situation. We are forced to improve the way we do things. We are surprised by so many things we did absolutely not expect. We are all impressed by Greta Thunberg, but suddenly the whole world did what she was asking for. Overnight, no airplanes, overnight we were forced to work at home, we were forced to work at home, we were forced to work at home, overnight we started to think about our relation to resources, our lifestyle, we asked about the future in a new way and I do it in a personal sense, but I do it in the same way as one of billions of people who have the same question. Sometimes I'm afraid of the end of the lockdown because for me it was a very precious time and I think also for the society it's a very hard and for many people a time of suffering and losing a lot of comfort and security and painful, especially on the professional level, but in the same time I think we are all changed by this experience. What changed most for you? There's also a question for me as a person. I would say it's a different answer from society or as a person I would say it changed my relation to my own body, how I use the time I have. I appreciate much more the living with the people I love and I feel close to them, especially my wife of course, but also family in general, but also really good friends. But basically I think it's a relation to myself that's a bit different from the time before. I started to practice things. I did have not time before, mostly time is an excuse for something different, but I think all the people I see on Zoom conferences are look much more healthy now, most of them. I know that there is also this problem with violence at home and so it's not everything easy in the world under these circumstances, but at the same time I feel personally it's a great offer of questioning what is normal and how we use our resources. And this is in the first line, a personal question and then it starts to become interesting how the society and how artists and I start to read different books and have another... I am appreciating much more writers or thinkers I've never so close before. So my taste is also maybe a bit changed. And I feel that this period of, let's say, it's an interim, it's a very short period in which let's say the old rules are suspended and nobody knows exactly how can we go on. What is the most important thing right now? Everything is different. I was surprised how the solidarity amongst the people I think personally I'm very proud about our society how we managed to be transparent and careful with each other on the political level in Germany and maybe in Europe in general. It was not the same thing like in China that everything was impersonated and under control. It was in a way... everything was a kind of debate about every decision and I liked that very much. And you said the change that happened to you was a slight difference to look at the world which one experiences. You think also in art and society there will there be changes in Germany? Who knows, who knows. I think I'm from East Germany and I needed a very long time to appreciate the revolution we have made in 1989 because the period of the revolution was so short and all the trouble afterwards was so big and intense that it needed in my case 25 years to understand the huge gift of this period of revolution in which the old socialist country was not completely disappeared and the new western society and politics and the new state was not established. In this interim there was a huge mass of ideas and initiatives how we can change society, how we can develop different constitutional law, how we can change the law for the environment, how we can to protect the environment, how we can change our understanding of work. It was everything very important but also very let's say fragile. And I think it was a time in which I felt that people are clever, people are really, you can trust the intelligence of the people, they know what's good for them. And of course history after this very short period of revolution changed in a way and today if you ask me if the Me Too debate, if the Arabic Spring Occupy Wall Street, all these initiatives, all these movements, many people say they failed but in the end what they did is they changed completely our understanding what is normal, what is the basic understanding or rule of our time. So the relation to women, the behavior of men, the question of diversity and all this post-colonial development I think is an effect of these revolutions. And so I think we don't know on which level this very short interim of the corona Ausnahmezustand with this time of exception. There's a heuristic term for that. Nobody knows how we are changed by this experience. For me I can say it's not normal anymore to fly to New York to meet a person for three hours. Impossible. I would say also I start to rethink our system of making exhibitions. All these creators were traveling around the world and go shopping in institutions, bring something at home that will be delivered by huge transport systems just to be presented in the showcase for eight weeks or three months. All this is a very luxury behavior. I see it's necessary of course in the way how our institutions are working now. I see this is necessary for many artists to go on tour, to travel. But I think we have a second view on this phenomenon now. We remember how a bright sky looks, especially if you remember this photograph from the satellites over northern Italy when you suddenly see the landscape and not the smoke. We experienced that so many things are possible who seem to be impossible. But I think this gives us also some arguments to think about an economy under the conditions of de-growing. So I think there is a generation that will remember this break. The virus pressed the pause button. And in this pause you made so many experiences, also bad experiences about... We are not equal in the society, of course. We see it very clear, like in a catastrophe. You see who are privileged people and who are not privileged people. You see all the fragility of civilization. You see... Brutalature called the critical zone. It's this 10 meters of earth in the ground and 10 meters over the ground. This zone inhabits all the life. And this is so fragile. You understand that we cannot go on with this planet in the way we did before. I think for me this is a very deep understanding that we become more profound by this corona experience. That is something actually serious and not just a theoretical reflection, something we, with our bodies, as you mentioned, the body we experienced. Yeah, also, if you think about the experience of many artists, Florentina Holzinger, she's a dancer and choreographer. She's more a choreographer. She said... You feel, of course, how important the relation to the body on stage is for your work. And if there is no stage, if there's no audience that is locked in the situation of the classical theater, then you feel also very clear what you are missing in this corona circumstances. It's not possible to bring that kind of experience into the digital world. I think this is also a very important understanding that comes from our experience of the lockdown, that so many things cannot be transported into the virtual reality of the digital media. Also, nudity. Nudity is so important for her work, but it's so complicated in the internet. Let's say, our times, they are so regulated, and also, of course, the internet is so regulated that many artworks you can present in the theater are not possible to be broadcasted in the internet. So it's not always the liberal space. I think, in general, it's not. It's over since a long time. But for many people in the art world, it's also no alternative to their work. Florentino Hoetsinger, for example, said, I don't like that you come by and go how you want. I love it that theater is such a vintage medium. And if you want to make an experience, if you want to have this encounter with a production, you're locked in the situation. You can't have it just for a moment. You stay in the situation for a long time, and this is the ritual. And I'm personally also missing this situation. I love to observe performers and their physical reality on stage. And very often I have the feeling in the internet, if I see a recording of a performance, the things I don't like so much, even in a bigger scale. And sometimes also the things I love, but mostly I think I appreciate more the shared experience. Yeah, it kind of forces us to really confront or see what's there and what is not there we cannot choose. It's no longer something we can do and something one of our Amir from Yaffa in Palestine who said that perhaps for the Western world, it's one of the first times that you experience an uncertainty and that it is not clear what will happen, that it is not safe, that the world is not safe, something that is for our fellow artists in Chile or in Lebanon, in Africa where 400,000 people die of malaria each year where you can catch malaria every day. And most of the time you get it, you don't die from it, everybody has it. So it is a new factor that has been... You say again? That is only new for us. A very good friend of mine said, you, Ibu Diop, he said for many people in Africa, it's quite normal that they can't go from one country to another, that they don't get a visa and this is not easy for them and now we experience the same situation that it's not easy to go from one country to another, maybe first time in our life. For me it was when I grew up in East Germany, it was quite an ordinary experience to be locked down behind the iron curtain. So you see connections between the lockdown now and you're growing up and cheering them? I see a connection, but more let's say in the period of the interim, let's say in the period of revolution and the lockdown, there is this openness and this situation of uncertainty. The other level would be to say, okay now all the Germans make the same experiences. We did last time in 1989 when everybody is dealing with the same issue, now it's the corona and 30 years ago it was the opening of the wall and everything was changed by that for most of the Germans, especially of course the East Germans, but if I think about the living behind the walls, I would say you get another understanding of the control systems. That's why we think so much about data security now and of course in East Germany, behind the wall in all these Eastern countries, the public was not a safe space. The public was always observed, was always dangerous, was always something that is observing you and you learn to be careful. So it's the same what you learn now if you go into the internet, you learn to be careful. You know you are observed, you know you are, let's say, we are feeding the platforms, we are feeding the artificial intelligence with our behavior. We are, let's say, the teachers for the artificial intelligence. That's everything we do. If we speak right now, they listen to us and they become a better, the machines become better in understanding in the literary sense. And so we are teaching now the system in the same way how we did teach in East Germany the secret service with every book we wrote, with every conversation we had and there was a microphone nearby. It's a sinister comparison but there is one. That is quite interesting. And what other artists do you follow? Do you think at the moment, like the choreographer you mentioned, who do you feel is making observations in the Berlin European context? Who do you follow at the moment in this time of Corona? There are some things very successful. Christopher Rüping is an interesting director who produced the Internet serial of monologues, according to a film of Kislovsky, Decalogue. This was a huge success, I would say in the Internet community from the Schauspielhaus Zürich. And I think this was one of the few examples of what you can do on a regular state theater with your ensemble. If you have a director who is able to improvise under the circumstances with actors and all the security circumstances then you can use an interesting artwork also in a new way because the audience is involved in the process of the piece. It can make a decision in the end of the production and the actor will react on the vote of the audience. So this was something that surprised me and honestly there are more the writers I'm interested in right now or the history. Julian Beck is interesting for me right now, the Living Theater. I did read his essays or poems or thoughts again. I'm of course very involved in this whole Bruno Latour cosmos. This is the next project we are developing. Tell us a bit about it, if you can. Tino Segal and the team of the immersion program and also of course myself. We have been very impressed by a book of Bruno Latour. The English title is Down to Earth. In Germany it's The Terrestrial Manifest. This is a book that is at the same time let's say a theoretical statement or manifesto and at the same time a political initiative. It was written in 1917 and I think Bruno Latour wanted to give a political or let's say a tool for a political movement that is helpful to overbridge traditional conflicts to unify the people for the aim of changing let's say the structure of our society basically and the structure of the system of the sciences of our time. I think he has a deep understanding of the great turn we are in right now. For him the climate change is something that is crucial. We know if we fail to slow down this whole process and to hold it under this tool degree level the next generations have a big problem and we will damage seriously the whole system of Gaia and our project is to develop let's say an exhibition but it's not only an exhibition it's also a kind of camp in the corpus ball in which we say okay it's all about climate change but usually we collect artworks and we hang them on the wall or we present them as a kind of film and we trust in the narration of the objects and so on but we never asking about the system behind the making of the exhibition that's what I mentioned before we are never asking about the system of our own institution what kind of electricity we are using where does it come from why do we have this 20 grad Celsius temperature in every room why it's not allowed to open windows in a museum why it's not possible to bring living earth into a museum I don't know if you know that earth in the museum is always three days cooked before you can bring it in they kill everything that is alive on earth if you want to bring earth in a museum so if you are starting to envisioning all the circumstances who are the basic level of producing exhibitions it becomes very interesting if you make the opposite decisions so we are starting now to prepare an exhibition in which we bring nothing that is related to electricity there is no beamer, no microphone no loudspeaker no spot there is only the daylight there are only analog instruments we are inviting experts experts of change also the experts of their own institution Tino Seigal and all my other colleagues we made a great research about our own climate system why it's necessary is it really necessary? so what we change is the whole situation in which we experience art and let's say the situation of a group of people on the same place so we did this a long time before corona we decided to we started to prepare this exhibition one and a half year ago and now we have had to postpone it to August but it's interesting that we really try for some weeks to offer a completely different awareness of how can the situation in an institution like an exhibition hall be constructed if you slow down everything if you don't amplify anything if you can have an encounter with real people who are experts, who are shamans who are people who make urban gardening or who develop different concepts for housing and of course we invited artists who give concerts or performances who are dealing with this climate change issue but not in a way that they give explanations they invite us to join let's say a situation that is created for us in a very intimate way we wanted to do that to change the way things are and to find new ways do you feel that then the art world or the visual art world or step ahead of theater and performance is that also thinkable to slow down will that be an effect on the theater and performance scene in Berlin or in Europe do you think there will be changes we will see for me it's a big nobody knows that I think we always in a way that artists can have the way of presentation they are already used to in Berlin right now very soon in the same time I think we all know there is a good way of globalization and there is a bad way of globalization and I think we appreciate much more the resources we have I think we start to understand how important it is that we use what we have it's also the question for example how important is it that everything is original the whole exhibition system is based on this idea of original thing what does it mean to question we start to ask about this kind of parameter and in the same time of course it's a big it's very dangerous to build up new walls and to say okay we are going strictly local because there are so many artists if you think about the situation in Hungary or in Poland they have a really big fear that we don't invite them anymore and that many countries say okay we don't have anymore the resources to invite other artists and companies and orchestras as we did it before the crisis but also sometimes it's maybe for ideological reasons so we have to take care that this effect that we avoid this effect of a new kind of blockade and at the same time we have to change our awareness of the resources who are nearby I know you think a lot also about spaces or public spaces or spaces for art in the 21st century to redefine them you think about planetariums or new halls new ways of course we have the shed in New York with other people trying to create spaces what do you see is happening in Berlin and what would you dream about what do you think would really work to present the work in the hybrid forms of art you present theater, you present film exhibitions, music Richard Foreman said last night that he appreciates the low-scale scale events so I think there is so much true about that at the same time our tradition is the big hall, the big stage in Germany and I think we have to we have to open the use of these infrastructures for things we never invited before there is no theater in Germany that invites contemporary circus there is no there is no structure to help the circus people there is for a long time no dance theater that is based in a regular theater system I think this old way of presenting things from above to down to the silent audience should be open for offers of feedback for let's say different art forms and for yeah open for other actors of performing arts and I think what Bruno Latour is doing he is developing theater formats in which he teaches, he gave speeches and at the same time it is what Frederick is directing it is a kind of epic theater for me it is very close to the expert theater I think we should open for this other fields of competences and bring them much more often into the theaters and I think also we should exchange much more between the theaters we have this original, this thinking of original based in one place production and I think we should open that for more exchange in the system in general I think we are in the middle of something I would say that is the turn from the analog to the digital age and it doesn't mean that we have to bring theater into the internet but the internet is for a long time in the theater world the digital culture that is culture of feedback it is a culture of real time it is so important for the younger generation and they are all used to play games they have a completely different understanding of the material of a character or a figure, the way of narration contemporary ways of narration their understanding of what is real or what is reality is so different from this old tradition of literal theater I think this is the beginning of something that is nobody knows to what kind of aesthetic it will lead she is very impressed by the work of Susanna Kennedy she is one of the directors I am learning so much from every production every production of her is going one step one radical step into something that is new that is an encounter of the digital world and the old the spiritual world and I think this is also something that the corona time made clear that there is another world beside that modern enlightened world there is a world of different concepts of the world there is another kind of philosophy of different medicine everything that is not so appreciated by the established system but is not so toxic as the established ways of our economy and our lifestyle so you think that we will be able to encounter worlds that were there but we were not able to see where are the animals on stage where are the plants on stage there are only rare artists who gave the other species a voice or a representation if you remember this theater of landscapes of Robert Wilson who is from St. Petersburg or this huge yes, how he produced art with landscape, with the sky, with the rocks with the light, with the environment long time ago in the 70s this is for me still promising I think there is a new generation that brings this other forces on stage I see that in the work of Max Stuart I see that in the work of Maria Skaroni I see it in so many contemporary artists work but I don't see it in the, sometimes I see it also in play in plays not so often but sometimes so I start to become very interested in writers who find narrations, who find constellations in text that bring these other forces on stage it's not only the dead it's also really the non-human species what writers do you follow you said so it's a return to writing perhaps the original time forces us to to reading and writing or as Bart said, reading is writing because you read it and you create it but who are you following when you say the writers also you mentioned that earlier, you read a lot there is a, there are many plays or some plays, not so many Carol Churchill wrote a play a war between the species, between the wind and the trees and the bees and the grass and the humans I'll never forget it I saw it 20 years ago I would say right now there are plays by Roland Schimbefinich who wrote about animals or humans as animals who brought the gods back on stage in his Iliad's play or last really big discovery of the corona time are the short stories of Paul Bones he brings me to New York he's a New York guy who went in the 30s to Tangier in Morocco and he is really a very interesting character in this time because he was so interested in let's say the native culture not to say the indigenous but the native culture of the people of the Moroccan people who hasn't been so acknowledged and appreciated in this time in the end of his lifetime he was he collected also their stories he paid for that and he organized field recordings he went to the villages and the mountains to collect their music and stories and at the same time in his own stories it's a bit close to William Borrows he's very open to let's say drug-based experiences who are really close to the beliefs of the people there about the different rationality different power of plans and holy persons and he wrote very good stories about the conflict or the blindness of the western people who are surrounded by this culture and have no really contact and no really develop no understanding of their different coordinates so he was a composer he wrote music for theater for Tennessee Williams he wrote opera he wrote an opera and also opera music it's a huge continent it's a person who steps out of the western world in a very interesting way and at the same time he was of course a legendary writer by the way he's a writer about distance if he say so much about social distancing he's a very good example for a good use of distance distancing is also something that is a very old cultural technique if you remember the French culture the 19th or the 18th century or the 17th century distance is the condition that makes it possible to come closer to each other Peter Huntke said he doesn't want to touch his characters if he's writing stories about them and I think this is one of the reasons why he can go so far in the introspective of these people because in a way he keeps distance to some aspects of their life and existence and so social distancing is very meaningful for me in this different sense there's of course this German tradition of Neuesachlichkeit this early Brecht attitude of being distanced and this is why it is so intense how interesting that you point to balls who stepped out as you said in the western world was open to see what was the addition or spiritual way that you say that the distancing, what we're experiencing is actually also bringing us closer and ways of bringing us these kind of paradoxes of our existence which we experience and acknowledge in this time did you have a vision, an idea or something that you might try this out I know you run all these places you have the possibility to create things that become real by the imaginary and the symbolic in a way becomes a real representation in rooms whether or not with air conditioning but is something forming in your head that comes out of this time that might be an interest I'm really interested in techniques of transformation I can say it only in this very general way I'm not finished with this whole topic of immersion immersion is for me this is also the connection to Bruno Latour it's a metaphor for the end of dialectic relations it's not this old game of subject and object and thesis and anti-teses and reason and effect all these linear concepts I don't believe in anymore and I think I'm interested in this metaphor of immersion because it's a way of thinking and at the same time a way of practice who is very old and very new at the same time very old because immersion the end of being the opposite is to be in love if you fell in love you stop to be separated you are in the other it's like breathing and also this whole feeling of living in a constant feedback situation in which everything is fluid in which everything is a kind of construction Thomas Metzinger is a very important author for me right now who is a researcher about the way how we create reality so by thinking with our brains and how this is a very old concept also in the oldest religions and in the understanding of the world of the people in the Amazonas forest not only a western fashion it's something that is very deep and at the same time of course the economy goes this way of to immerse us to offer us ourselves by this YouTube feedback and consuming structures in which we all not only on one side we are on both sides all the time that's the condition of our time I would say and how can we use this understanding of this situation to emancipative project for healing for something that is not rude in the old way that is not so formed by male thinking of consuming and ex-carving and destroying and I feel that I'm really much in this topic of immersion and it brings me to a completely new field of activism so I'm started to become very interested in artists who are activists basically who don't feel that they are do objects or productions they don't want to create things we can consume it's not about what they do so I think I'm more open to that in the last time and I hope to empower people with this concept in our institutions which artist do you follow who you feel is an activism as art as part of a transformation and immersion I met a woman from Russia Julia Strauss she is organizing a worldwide indigenous assembly she founded an academy program in Athens so education as a kind of art form and she's really involved in projects that help migrants in Greece as an artist and without producing art you could bring into the market but at the same time it's the oldest practice of singing, of making texts and of making structures in which people can meet and articulate their understanding of their place in the world and their feelings and yeah this is one example and it's a part of our project down to earth and I think it's not easy to bridge the field of the institutions to the field of the activists so this is something I'm starting to explore and I think rightfully so your point that art as activism and activism as art can have a complete refusal of this kind of neo-capitalist market whether it's in performance this is perhaps something we all have to be more open to support also in theater and performance as well as in the visual arts so this is truly truly fascinating and significant to be inside your mind really for sharing what you carry with you invisibly and invisibly with these new mindsets and ways to look at the world as we all have our own VR sets we experience the world, we dream the world how it is and we think this is how it is but we fail often to really understand that already it is a construction that art is one of the few ways for us to experience and understand becoming a bit closer and maybe we should talk one day with unlimited time this is significant and I wish we had someone like you in New York to who is as you say over-bridging that beautiful world you create and that is bridging between the theater and music and literature and the visual arts the performance of installation what you actually do in Berlin is so brilliantly I don't experience that in that way in Manhattan I think it's something where perhaps we are behind so in silos next to each other and it is a way corona shows us now we have to experience the world in a different perhaps also in a whole way in the in the back of the minds what would you say so our listeners what do you feel at this time of corona how to use it best so keep in mind what should we keep with us as you said so 25 years later the time of transition from the opening of the world but part of a revolution but you were part of you were one of them demonstrating out there talking creating appointments of course afterwards but what do you feel is of real importance now resist to go back to the things you know too early this is an advice to myself I think a good advice is this idea of taking it taking this whole corona time as a kind of diet a diet that helps us to clean ourselves a diet that is not only physically it's also mentally and it's also social it's not only evil to be isolated sometimes circumstances help us to go a step in the direction you never would go without this force and I think because sometimes there is another option it's good to do useless things in this helpless time what else can you do so you do something you can't do under the regular circumstances you read you are close to people you feel close and you learn how easy it is to be not this this kind of consumer and I think this break in all our relations is very very important and Alexei Schipenko said to me not to me he wrote a short text on the web side of the Berliner Schaubühne he said the world does not change you have changed and I think this is a very important conclusion the world really did not change we changed hopefully and to take this massive interruption as a chance for a personal change this could be something very valuable for the future reading listening to music learning to ride bicycles with free hands all this is helpful for the future these are really great recommendations to look at the space between the useful and the useless how can that be combined and that is what makes life life but to look at the time as a preparation to think about once we read again and to read and to be present we have to throw our bodies into the lives we have to be part of the change we want to see and this kind of activism these are really significant heads and hints you give us to think about and you also back up with your work at the Berlin Festival and it does show how significant the role the arts plays in the representational space is and what you do we have to think about why do we do what what can be done it stands for something much bigger and this is also why it is so important and critically important that we also react to a world that perhaps is very different from the way we have seen it it is a brilliant contribution and the beginning of the opening up of the seagull talk to curators, philosophers, thinkers and observers of the world thank you for taking the time and we all admire what you do in Berlin and hopefully maybe one day you come to New York and do something or take over an institution or occupy one or restage the palace of the republic in New York, who knows what it will be for so thank you so much and to our audience also thank you for listening and this is a significant time and it's also a time where we listen closer than perhaps normally we listen also closer to what Thomas says and it is all very serious and it can save our lives and the society, the town, the community so it is all part of healing but we also have to really listen and this is important what we do so thank you for being part of that community it's all about you also you at the very end how you read it and how it transfers into some kind of an action or change and it's a privilege to have you guys and how busy our days are as Thomas says he's surprised how fast the days go and I can only imagine how it means to run the Berlin festival out of your home and with a computer in Zoom without becoming a zombie so listening tomorrow we have New York playwright performance artist Philip Howsey and Jordan Adela Cruz from the Jack Art Space and they will talk how it feels how it is for New Yorkers for them to deal with it, what ideas they have and what is of significance I still remember Philip's great show and performance he did at our prelude festival so there will be of interest and tune in for next week where we will have a new list of artists that will be with us from Barcelona and Bogart from Hong Kong again and other places so thank you for staying with us thanks to HowlRound for hosting a CIVJ and Travis the Seagull team Andy and Sanyang and again Thomas thank you for coming and how wonderful to hear this perspective of an arts institution that in a way is run by artists and curated and administered by it so it's a fantastic contribution you made and so thoughtful and sensible and I think also very very much close to that feeling of corona and what possibilities it opens us of course we don't have the existential crisis as our African colleagues or what we heard from Brazil or Chile and others but also this is our reality and everyone experiences this moment in a way and we're showing the facets of it so thank you again and thanks for listening and Thomas I hope to see you back in Berlin soon and come to New York one day maybe more than for the three hours for one talk as a curator but maybe your festival can dream up a collaboration with New York institutions all the best and I can't wait to release more