This is what The Present in Drag looks like this week: we are visited by Johannes Paul Raether’s Schwarmwesen. The civil secret service DISCREET, founded as part of the 9th Berlin Biennale, launches its activities, and the Army of Love makes a case for all-inclusive sensual love. BOAT RAGE #3 with Misanthrope CA and Christoph de Babalon will be mournful and dark. The performance Red Devil by producer and performer ANGEL-HO hosted by Nguni Arts International and CUSS Group takes place on Wednesday and get fit at the Open Workout this Saturday with Sabine Gottfried.
Schwarmwesen | (geopathologos) | Prussian Chronostrophy [ 6.1.5 ]
Schwarmwesen or Swarm-Being is an anti-essential creature, a “combing pet” and inhabitant of “toxic swales,” which is what it calls the tourist traps where it appears and carries out its research. Within “identitecture”—a cross-linked system of being and sites — Schwarmwesen explores the catastrophic timing of a global circulation of bodies, which it describes as “chronostrophy.” It traces the epicenter of this phenomenon in the reconstructed, Prussianmolded symbolic center of Berlin. Maneuvering across Pariser Platz, with its Fanmeile and beer-bikes, the Schwarmwesen counters the geopathological spectacle of this tourist hell-hole with its own unfinished and inadequate identity, its stumbling and linguistically estranged fabulation, and absorbs into its “potentiality” those people who, together with the being, want to forget to piece together a self for themselves.
Schwarmwesen | (geopathologos) | Prussian Chronostrophy [ 6.1.5 ]
Performance by Johannes Paul Raether, in English
Thursday, 23.6.2016, 4, 5, 6 pm, Ticket 5 €, Akademie der Künste
DISCREET Insecurity Counseling
Conspiracy theories are a mode of both thinking and acting. Where they take hold, imagination is threatened. Instead of distinguishing “true” from “false” conspiracies DISCREET takes a closer look at the epistemology of conspiracy theories that can be described as overcoherent and self-immunizing (since they anticipate their counterarguments). But how to constrain loud gestures of denunciation while amplifying voices promoting smaller speculative tactics and improbable moves within the scope of the possible, instead of taking the eerie and somehow sublime bait of affirming an outsized enemy? During the Insecurity Counseling individual strategies will be discussed for keeping our thinking open—whether political, philosophical, technical, or strategic.
DISCREET Insecurity Counselling #1
Plots & Complots: Conspiracy as Epistemology
With Armen Avanessian/Alexander Martos, DISCREET fellows, and special guests Eva Horn (Literary scholar, research focus on secret war, treason, espionage, and Modern Fiction) and Frank Rieger (hacker, author, internet activist, and spokesperson of the Chaos Computer Club), in English
Thursday, 23.6.2016, 7 pm, Ticket 5 €, Akademie der Künste
Supergroup Army of Love
A supergroup is a way of naming the possibility of activating our strengths and also our lacunas of ignorance so that we will be able to
generate a force, a pulse, a vibration, a movement able to challenge the melody of history. The Army of Love is a supergroup that offers
encompassing sensual love—care, desire, sex, and respect—to all those who need it. A conversation with filmmaker Alexa Karolinski,
curator Chus Martínez, novelist Ingo Niermann, sex activist Matthias Vernaldi, and the Army of Love.
Supergroup Army of Love
Fun, joy, and laughter—all in one evening with Alexa Karolinski, Chus Martínez, Ingo Niermann, Matthias Vernaldi, and more, in English
Friday, 24.6.2016, 7 pm, admission free, KW Institute for Contemporary Art
BOAT RAGE #3 – Deathbridge
Misanthrope CA is a Black Metal influenced formation consisting of David Lieske and photographer Robert Kulisek. Following their first limited tape edition Amerika (2015), Deathbridge is a full-length album that was released this spring in collaboration with the Norwegian gallery VI, VII. The duo’s focus on grim, improvisational orchestrations, gloomy drumming, and hints of ambient dungeon form the musical core of their debut—a true representation of their musical objectives: primitive and personal, mournful and dark. For this evening Misantrophe CA have invited Christoph de Babalon along for the evening as a special guest.
BOAT RAGE #3 – Deathbridge
Live performance by Misanthrope CA and Christoph de Babalon
Saturday, 25.6.2016, 8–10 pm, Ticket 10 €, Blue-Star sightseeing boat