the art of being many

an assembly of assemblies

Collective preparation of the assembly: Septembre 25th and 26th

PUBLIC DAYS OF THE ASSEMBLY: SEPTEMBRE 27th and 28th

In the end of September 2014 artists, activists, researchers, and participants from all over Europe and beyond will gather in Hamburg for an assembly of assemblies. Sharing experiences from real-democracy- movements and artistic experimentation they want to explore new ways of coming together: collective insights into the materiality, the timing, the agenda, the desires and the catastrophes of being many. Many of us will meet for the first time, but we all have something in common: We witnessed moments of assembling which made the word ‚democracy’ sound important again. The square-squattings and neighbourhood-assemblies of the real-democracy-movement may not have brought the political changes we hoped for. But they have been the catalyst for a new art of being many.

At Kampnagel Internationale Kulturfabrik, geheimagentur, WAV and other artists from Gängeviertel Hamburg, FREIFUNK, Showcase Beat le Mot and the PHD-Program ‚Assemblies and Participation’ will build an assembly hall and a camp to host the many. Here, the assembly will become a laboratory of itself: a collective of friends and strangers with many voices and bodies including those of ghosts and things. Before the public assembly starts about 120 people will meet in groups in order to focus on the art of being many from different angles:materiality and decision, timing and breaks, blockades and panic, vogue and voodoo, sound, systems and voices, affects and documents, real fictions. (see the headers on the left for more information). Together, they will prepare an assembly for about 400 people which is going to last for two days from noon to midnight. In a second step, the assembly hall will be opened to the public. As an assembly of assemblies the conference is not meant to be a series of individual presentations. It is meant to focus on what can be done together. There is no audience, no performers, only those, who par- ticipate in the assembly for these two days. Just two days. Not the most important days in the history of anything or the break-trough of a new aesthetics. No. We might just be sad together – remembering lost battles. We might be very tired. But we will try to have an assembly just the way we like, for two days or for as long as it takes.