Jacob Scholz

What is it?

Art-based interventions into the everyday have been a common genre of performance art and of activism since the 1970s. They can become a set-up for Participatory Art Based Research, if intervention and observation, action and reflection are put into relation and context around the intervention as such. Art-based interventions into the everyday can therefore be thought of as a format of action research (Lewin 1946), or as a “Reallabor” (Groß/Hoffmann-Riem/Krohn 2015), a more recent format of participatory research that has emerged in the context of green technology and its implementation.

Rather than aiming at public attention, as for instance the Viennese Actionists did with their art interventions in the 1960s, this art-based research often serves a supporting function in local transformations. In proximity to intervention research (Kratochwill et al. 2012), this research set-up gives new impulses to a given field that can then be evaluated. The involvement might take up an activist position or follow an impetus to share and explore an alternative perspective on general social questions. The intervention can also facilitate the emergence of new practical solutions, which can then also be seen as research outcomes. The format offers a possibility to understand how unique conditions shape social transformation. From this perspective, struggles resulting in social transformation can also be seen, analysed and valued as research. Social transformations can be supported, facilitated and presented through artistic means, as in Michael Ziehl’s research project Building Symposia Gängeviertel (2015), which was located within the social and political transformations in the Hamburg neighbourhood Gängeviertel (Ziehl 2018).

Intervention into the Real can also have a more ethnographic, less activist approach, in which the intervention aims at changing practices in a public experiment for the sake of researching the performativity of the everyday, as in the research project by Sebastian Matthias (groove space series 2014-2016), who intervened in the choreography of club dancing in Berlin to investigate figurations of groove (Matthias 2018).1

What is researched?

Interventions into the Real can include research on all questions of everyday life and of contemporary forms of living together. Generally, growing insights from the humanities into the performativity of the everyday build an important basis to understand, develop and set up performative interventions as research. Though related to knowledge and theory from ethnography, sociology, psychology, performance studies and other disciplines, this research format is in radical conflict with older scientific concepts of research, where research is expected to take the form of an observation or reading that is not interfering with its object. Intervention into the Real, in contrast, research transformation and change – precisely by being a part of these processes. Hence, Interventions into the Real as a format intentionally combines academic knowledge and interventionist art with other forms of knowledge crucial for the everyday: practical or strategic, problem-driven (Yes No Maybe 2013), but also tacit or bodily knowledge. The research set-up treats these different forms of knowledge as equal and therefore creates outcomes on different levels.

Interventions into the Real often take a social phenomenon as a starting point for defining a possible research question or practical knowledge gap. Contemporary key challenges can often be identified in a condensed version in the practical engagement with specific local problems (Schneidewind/Singer-Brodowski 2015: 12). The social phenomenon contains stable, ongoing or repeating activities in which the performative set-up can be tested. The format also aims at exceptional local situations that present a specific challenge that needs solving.

As the research question often relates to a distinct challenge, the format requires precise inside knowledge of the practice, which can only be obtained by being an active part in the researched field. This enables the researcher to connect to other actors and to initiate a participatory research process. As a research format, Intervention into the Real produces knowledge of the local system, including knowledge of performative protocols in their spatial, temporal and bodily dimensions, knowledge of power relations, of the competences of local actors, of the distribution and usage of resources, as well as of legal/political frameworks. It also produces knowledge of subject positions, of goals and orientations, needs, desires and wishes of actors. Furthermore, transformation knowledge combines an understanding of the possibility and reasons for the success/failure of the intervention and its transferability into different contexts. Transformation knowledge connects with motivations, personal histories and values. (Ziehl 2020, Schneidewind/Singer-Brodowski 2015: 12) Hence, there are different degrees of engagement in an Intervention into the Real: The researchers lead the intervention, the co-researchers are actors explicitly taking part in the intervention and finding a solution for the given challenge, and the participants are either actors in the field who do not engage explicitly in the participatory research, but live and act inside the context, or who come to the intervention as an audience and as witnesses.

Artistic means

As dramaturgies and stagings of situations are the prime expertise of the performing arts, they provide the required knowledge for setting up events that intervene into the everyday.

As a research format, Interventions into the Real will enter into a dialogue with a given field instead of replacing it with a spectacle. Only in the interaction with the field in question will the research set-up provide insights into the performativity of the field, as well as into alternative solutions and strategies for the field.

Based on lived experience of the co-researchers, the artistic event is implemented in relation to problems, conditions or practices imbedded in the specific social space. Thorough pre-analysis is the basis for a prognosis on rules, behaviour, practical problems that need solving, etcetera, on which the planning of the intervention can be based. Often, interventions are designed or devised by modulating observed rules, ways of working or choreographies to be found in the field. Objects or ideas ( Laboratory Report 2017) can be inserted into the social process. Situations can be relocated, restaged and actors or other practices can be added to the process in question. These interventions often rely on art discourse and artistic composing techniques such as choreography and their respective aesthetics. However, surprise is an important characteristic of this format as interactions within emergent processes always include factors with unforeseeable outcomes (Groß et al. 2005: 12). Acts of modulation, refiguration, and translation need to be conducted from the discursive, but also from the actual physical perspective to develop the artistic intervention further. As in a rehearsal process, trying out things is the most effective way to proceed. At the same time, the intervention creates analytical distance and self-reflection with regard to standardised processes. As in a rehearsal process, observation and intervention, action and reflection have to be brought into a feedback loop to move the research forward. Documentation has to be interwoven into this process and should itself be process-based. Generally, the use of artistic interventions enables discussion and imagination of what is possible; it interacts with the collective imaginary.

Potentials, problems and outcomes

The use of artistic composition tools provides a useful and unexpected range of instruments for a critical engagement with a situation. Artistic tools are designed to develop and produce events that have the potential to come up with surprising suggestions for transforming a given situation.

Social processes are investigated and transformed, tested beyond language, through corporal interaction with local dynamics. The artistic interventions or performative acts can be performed in everyday situations or as an event that is specifically staged and framed as an experiment. If the intervention is executed as a special event, it has to be prepared carefully as there is only one chance to get results. In particular, the engagement of the (local) participants as well as the methods of documenting the event are crucial components in capturing the results of the intervention. If participatory research is framed as such, the format can initiate a learning and empowerment process for all participants. However, each member, especially when taking an activist position, will have certain interests and expectations regarding the challenges in question. This proximity of the participants to the research subject has been problematised by traditional research institutions (Strohschneider 2014).

A single intervention might be sufficient for testing a hypothesis, but a series of interventions might strengthen the argument, create more awareness and impulses in the field. Of course, results will change as soon as actors in the field adjust and get used to the intervention.

If the intervention is embedded in an everyday situation it needs to be integrated into quotidian processes to enter into a dialogue with them. The intervention needs to be clearly performed and carried out as planned to ensure comparable results. Therefore, the researcher needs to inform co-researchers such as performers and make them aware of their role and their required performance. Under certain conditions, the interventions have to be short-lived so the space is not turned into an art space. If the local visitors approach the action as they would an art space, their reaction and behaviour will resemble that of an audience, and local participants might shift from the position of active participants into that of passive observers (especially in public space). Participants then might want to meet the expectations of artists/researchers and established rules might be suspended not as a transformation of the everyday but in response to a perceived artistic intention.

Generally, Interventions into the Real tend to produce a critical awareness of the distinct line between art and reality, which can be crossed and re-established several times. This can sometimes become a cause for conflict – especially when an intervention was successful but its actual implementation into reality fails (because it is politically or financially not possible). In cases like this, the artistic proposal might create disappointment and produce an alienation with the social process. This may influence ongoing processes in that social space and can have negative consequences for some actors. The Intervention into the Real is placed in real world situations and does not create a protected space. Researchers need to handle the modulations and interactions with care. There might be severe real-life consequences for people if the intervention is not done respectfully and with caution.

Sebastian Matthias, Kathrin Wildner

 

response by Michael Ziehl

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1 Further references can be found in Weingart/Carrier/Krohn 2007, Ziemer/Reimers 2014, de Certeau 1984, or in the Charta for Advanced Practices that was launched by the European Forum for Advanced Practices (EFAP 2019).

 

References

de Certeau, Michel (1984): The Practice of Everyday life. Berkeley: University of California Press.

EFAP (2019): A Charter for Advanced Practices. Available online: https://advancedpractices.net

Groß, Matthias/Hoffmann-Riem, Holger/Krohn, Wolfgang (2015): “Einleitung“, in: Groß, Matthias/Hoffmann-Riem, Holger/Krohn, Wolfgang (eds): Realexperimente – Ökologische Gestaltungsprozesse in der Wissensgesellschaft. Bielefeld: transkript, pp. 11 – 26.

Kratochwill, Thomas R./Hitchcock, John H./Horner, Robert H./ Levin, Joel R. Odom/Samuel L./. Rindskopf, David M/ Shadish, William R. (2012): “Single-Case Intervention Research Design Standards”, in: Remedial and Special Education. Hammill Institute on Disabilities. 34(1), pp. 26 – 38.

Lewin, Kurt (1946): “Action Research and Minority Problems“, in: Journal of Social Issues. vol. 2, no. 4, pp. 34 – 46.

Matthias, Sebastian (2018): Gefühlter Groove – Kollektivität zwischen Dancefloor und Bühne, Bielefeld: transcript.

Reimers, Inga/Ziemer, Gesa (2014): “Wer erforscht wen? Kulturwissenschaften im Dialog mit der Kunst”, in: Sibylle Peters (ed): Das Forschen Aller – Artistic Research als Wissensproduktion zwischen Kunst, Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft. Bielefeld: transcript, pp. 47 – 61.

Schneidewind, Uwe/Singer-Brodowski, Mandy (2015): “Vom experimentellen Lernen zum transformativen Experimentieren – Reallabore als Katalysator für eine lernende Gesellschaft auf dem Weg zu einer nachhaltigen Entwicklung“, in: Hollstein, Bettina/ Tänzer, Sandra/Thumfart, Alexander (eds): Schlüsselelemente einer nachhaltigen Entwicklung: Haltungen, Bildung, Netzwerke. Zeitschrift für Wirtschaft- und Unternehmensethik. 16/1, pp. 10 – 23

Weingart, Peter/ Carrier, Martin, Krohn, Wolfgang (2007, eds): Nachrichten aus der Wissensgesellschaft – Analysen zur Veränderung von Wissenschaft. Weilerswist: Velbrück Wissenschaft.

Ziehl, Michael (2018): A real world laboratory for urban resilience Dissertation. Available at: www.experimentalcities.com.

Ziehl, Michael (2020): Koproduktion Urbaner Resilienz – Das Gängeviertel in Hamburg als Reallabor für eine zukunftsfähige Stadtentwicklung von Zivilgesellschaft, Politik und Verwaltung. Berlin: Jovis.

Works / Projects

Kowalski Hannah, Yes No Maybe (2013), Hamburg.

Matthias, Sebastian, groove space series, 2014-16, Berlin/Zurich/Freiburg/Jakarta/Düsseldorf/ Tokyo.

Ziehl, Michael, Building Symposia Gängeviertel, 2016, Hamburg.

Michael Ziehl, Future Viability through Cooperation: the Renovation of the Gängeviertel/Laboratory Report, 2017, Hamburg.

What is it?

Societies know many different forms and formats of assembling, gathering, coming together. In traditional celebrations, official conferences, institutionalised bodies, political demonstrations and (subversive) social movements societies perform, create and confirm the social collectively. The arts have been experimenting with many different forms of (improbable) assemblies during the dissolution of the artistic genres since the 1960s.1 Assemblies and Participation was the name of the first postgraduate programme (2012-2014) that worked with and on PABR. Within this frame, as well as in the subsequent postgraduate programme Performing Citizenship (2015-2017), different assemblies were not just researched on but at the same time developed as a basic format of Participatory Art Based Research.

As a research format, the Improbable Assembly is a situation that is envisioned and set up to assemble people who would not otherwise come together. What is more, it is a set-up intended to let different kinds of knowledge emerge and be recognized – to create a mode for the different researchers, co-researchers and participants to “know” (Peters 2014) within the act of assembling. Furthermore, an Improbable Assembly can constitute, be or become (part of) a body that claims its own knowledge – a knowledge that goes beyond established and proven forms, brought about through procedures of sharing, confirming, recording, representing, speaking for others, or speaking in the name of something. In this sense, the Improbable Assembly is a tool to produce and curate new and improbable publics.

What is researched?

Assemblies are collective performances that can be analysed by employing categories of performance analysis: the space and time of the assembly, the roles, rights and rules of the assembly, the ways people can participate, communicate, mediate and take part in decision-making. Assemblies create community, conflict, plans for collective action and subject positions to be embodied and performed.

The postgraduate programme Assemblies and Participation was inspired by new practices of assembling in the Occupy and the Real Democracy movements. Looking at different forms of protest, Judith Butler describes assembling as a fundamental political and social action. Butler is pushing against Hannah Arendt’s conception of the “space of appearance” (Arendt 1998) as the appearance of the subject to others (Butler 2015).2 She suggests to rethink Arendt’ s view, “so that the body, and its requirements, becomes part of the action and aim of the political”, which in turn would allow us to “start to approach a notion of plurality that is thought together with both performativity and interdependency” (Butler 2015: 151). This notion of plurality includes thinking of those who do not and cannot appear (as subjects) within established forms of assembling.

Within the postgraduate programme Assemblies and Participation, the members’ basic assumption of research with and on assemblies was to work more explicitly on the performance of assembling in order to create different, more inclusive publics and, in consequence, different, more horizontal politics.

The aim of the research was identifying ways to assemble that would counteract hierarchical forms of representation and organisation governed by unity, identity and determining common enemies. Curating alternative assemblies also means producing a counterpublic that confronts the idea of a homogeneous, overarching public. How would this new public be called?  Who should be addressed as this public? How to assemble ‘the many’, the most heterogeneous of groups, and find new ways of being together through new ways of gathering (Tsomou/Tsianos 2016, Tsomou 2018)? Research was done along questions such as: How do media tools format assemblies and how could new media practices format them differently? Can the performance of decision-making in public planning be devised in a way that includes voices unheard before? The research project Yes No Maybe by Hannah Kowalski (2013) explored the desires and proposals of children for planning the outdoor area of the Gängeviertel and devised an assembly that allowed for alternative performances of collective decision-making that included the children. The Young Institute for Future Research by Eva Plischke (2013) assembled children, politicians, activists, and other citizens of Hamburg to explore alternative ways of future research, empowering kids to create forecast scenarios. The project The Class Exchange by Esther Pilkington and Sibylle Peters (2015) first invited students of two primary schools in very different districts of Hamburg (one poor, one rich) to switch their everyday lives for one school day and then, a few days later, to assemble in the FUNDUS THEATER/Theatre of Research to meet and share their experiences and views on the everyday of the other class in an urban context they had not previously known. The Megaphone Choir by Sylvi Kretzschmar (AMPLIFICATION! A Collective Invocation, 2013) assembled inhabitants, performers and activists to mourn the Esso Houses of St. Pauli in the context of the ongoing process of gentrification in this neighbourhood and at the same time investigated how “bodily, spatial and electronic amplification of voice(s) can create an acoustic space of assembly” (Kretzschmar 2014: 165 translated by the author]; see also Kretzschmar/Wildner 2016). The Welcome City Group by Paula Hildebrandt assembled new inhabitants of Hamburg with and without a legal status to explore the practice of arriving and settling in a new place (2016). The Art of Being Many by geheimagentur (2014) assembled performers, researchers and activists to investigate the practice of assembling as a democratic act within the Real Democracy movements as well as in participatory theatre, performance and live art. Furthermore, the research project Tactfulness (Reimers 2013) assembled people for devised dinners to research how different senses participate in the act of assembling. The metroZones’  – School of Urban Action is a further example for a curated assembly, in this case in the serial form of political education units creating debates on urban issues and activism (2016). In all these projects, the assembly is created and researched as an open process to look at the assembly’s modes of exchange and collective knowledge production.

Artistic means

Researching established and new forms of assembling means focusing on their frames, protocols, practices, authorisations and their politics of representation; it also means questioning these and suggesting future forms. When, where, why and how do people come together? Which formats, structures, interactions, which practices and constellations of assembling do we know, do we reject, do we propose? All this can be asked, tested and performed in a (theatre) performance situation that is always also a public assembly. Every constellation of audiences and performers has to constitute itself anew as an assembly. Thus, the public assembly is no longer only the precondition but a possible subject of investigation of performance (Peters 2012: 131, Plischke 2020: 128)

Furthermore, assemblies are a basic format of knowledge production: Learning and researching are fundamentally based on different forms of assembling. Academia provides well-established forms and formats such as conferences, discussions or workshops. Most of these established forms are wilfully and highly exclusive and perform learning and research as privilege. If the performance of assembling is impacting the content produced by assemblies, this also applies to knowledge created by and emerging within assemblies. Therefore, Participatory Art Based Research aims to assemble in a way that activates, recognises, creates and brings together other forms of knowledge and expertise beyond established frames of academia. Research projects aim not only to assemble artists and scientists, but also experts of everyday life, including those whose expertise is not yet established or acknowledged by social institutions and publics: To invite and assemble people as experts within a research project means creating a frame that addresses them in a way that recognises and values their expertise. The Improbable Assembly offers the unique possibility of providing a public forum for different concerns and forms of expertise. In this forum, different kinds of knowledge can emerge or be produced, they can enter into a dialogue and be shared on equal terms.

Doing research within an assembly means framing it in a way that authorises its participants to know, to speak or to act and to invent roles and rules that allow the assembled to access that “specific mode in which we know” (Peters 2014: 221 [translated by the author]). Sibylle Peters points out the importance of how the public is addressed in this context. “Who is called to assemble?” (Peters 2016: 36), Peters asks. “Who assembles whom?” (Reimers 2014), Inga Reimers asks. As Michael Warner argues in his book Publics and Counterpublics, by addressing a public we presuppose its existence at the same time as calling it into being (Warner 2010, Peters 2016: 37). Here, the artistic mode of the ‘as if’ can work as a catalyst to practice assemblies differently, to perform Improbable Assemblies. The mode of the ‘as if’– as if children were experts for the future, for example – can be used to maintain “a fictional or utopian (or even legal) distance towards social reality and at the same time work within this reality temporarily” (Plischke 2020: 142). Improbable Assemblies that are situated on the threshold between fiction and reality can operate with “their uncertain status in a productive way” (Plischke 2020: 141) – using the resources of art to turn the fiction, the alternative, into the real. They can be set up on the line between art and social reality to expand or cross it and thus blur their respective status (Plischke 2020: 141-142). The act of addressing a public as if it already existed, as if it was authorised and recognised, creates a “real fiction” (Peters 2016: 37).

The performing arts provide a wide range of means and procedures for calling, addressing, structuring, designing and staging an Improbable Assembly, to create frames and set-ups that allow the Improbable Assembly to function as an act of emancipative representation. This includes new forms of speaking for one another (Bernstorff, The Last Judgement – An Extrajudicial Hearing, 2014) and forms of interaction that are beyond language, such as movement, ritual, music and play (Kowalski, Yes No Maybe, 2013; Kretzschmar, AMPLIFICATION! A Collective Invocation, 2013).

Potentials, problems and outcomes

An Improbable Assembly is setting up an alternative proposal for how to assemble, how to act, how to know together, that in itself can be enacted, and thereby tested and tried out. As a format of Participatory Art Based Research,  an Improbable Assembly investigates and tests procedures and models of coming and acting together in the very moment of assembling and hence produces knowledge performatively.

Many Improbable Assemblies are involved in the constitutive process of a civic body. The moment an assembly starts to speak for itself, the moment the assembled start to say “we, the assembled”, always refers to the constitutive moment of the political subject – the performative act of saying “we, the people”. The performance of self-empowerment can be enjoyed as easily as it can be abused and turned into exclusivity and entitlement. The role and the degree of engagement of the participants might be diverse and manifold. This has to be taken into account especially if the Improbable Assembly in question is the main format of a given Participatory Art Based Research project such as The Art of Being Many.

For the research, it is important to counter a simple differentiation between representation on the one hand and authenticity of direct action on the other. The assembling as if we had the authority to do so, to decide, for instance, on the future, is enacted and therefore becomes real. Research therefore will ask how representation is and can be performed in many different ways, instead of trying to avoid representational modes entirely.

As for most of the research formats, the question of documentation relates to the research questions that determine the type of assembly. It is helpful to start documenting with the call to assemble and the specific (spatial) set-up of the upcoming assembly to reflect the dynamics of the assembling process. Who actually responded to the call? How did the participants interact in the assembly? What was their experience? Participatory Art Based Research requires the researcher to find adequate as well as, possibly, supplemental forms of documentation. For example, in order to also grasp aspects of the experience of an assembly that cannot be seen on video recordings, these could be complemented by interviews, questionnaires, images, drawings, or diaries. The research will therefore in part deal with the question how different forms of documentation can complement each other to leave as few blind spots as possible.

Within larger research projects, Improbable Assemblies are regularly called to mark or coincide with certain key moments of the process, such as foundation ceremonies or moments of key decisions. In these cases, assemblies are often part of other improbable entities such as Try-Out-Institutions or Heterotopian Zones. However, assemblies like these also bring heterogeneous participants together. As parts of a larger research project, assemblies are meant to structure the process, to focus on certain moments within to test and share results, to evaluate and document events and statements and to make collective decisions for future action. To manage all that, to focus on and share earlier moments of the process during the assembly, to prepare proceedings for testing, evaluating, documenting and decision-making in a way that allows a heterogeneous group of citizens and non-citizens to participate, Improbable Assemblies will often follow a clear structure. However, assemblies ultimately have to remain open in order to allow for spontaneous participation and unforeseen outcomes.

Maike Gunsilius, Sibylle Peters

 

response by Inga Reimers

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1 From the 1980s on, Suzanne Lacy staged numerous performances in which she assembled citizens of different social contexts in order for them to speak and act together in different settings and to explore alternative forms of gathering as a community, such as Whisper, the Waves, the Wind (1984), The Roof is on Fire (1994), Between the Door and the Street (2013) and many others. She labelled these works »new genre public art« (Lacy 1995, 2010). Different hybrid forms between social, political and theatrical practice have emerged over the last two decades, such as works by Rimini Protokoll (World climate conference«, 2014, 100 % City, 2008-ongoing), Milo Rau/IIPM (The Kongo Tribunal, 2015) or geheimagentur (The Art of Being Many, 2014).

2 Butler conceptualizes the assembly as constitutive for the public: “[…]this space of appearance is not a location that can be separated from the plural action that brings it about; it is not there outside of the action that invokes and constitutes it. And yet, if we are to accept this view, we have to understand how the plurality that acts is itself constituted. How does the plurality form, and what material supports are necessary for that formation? Who enters the plurality, and who does not, and how are such matters decided?” (Butler 2015: 77)

References

Arendt, Hannah (1998): The Human Condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Butler, Judith (2015): Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.

Kretzschmar, Sylvi (2014): “VERSTÄRKUNG – Public Address Systems als Choreografien politischer Versammlungen”, in: Burri, Regula V./Evert, Kerstin/Peters, Sibylle/Pilkington, Esther/Ziemer, Gesa (eds): Versammlung und Teilhabe: Urbane Öffentlichkeiten und performative Künste. Bielefeld: transcript, pp. 143–172.

Kretzschmar, Sylvi/Wildner, Kathrin (2016): “Amplification and Assembly”, in: geheimagentur/Schäfer, Martin/Tsianos, Vassilis. S. (eds): The Art of Being Many. Bielefeld: transcript, pp. 169–182.

Lacy, Suzanne (ed) (1995): Mapping the Terrain: New Genre Public Art. Seattle, Wash: Bay Press.

Lacy, Suzanne (2010): Leaving Art: Writings on Performance, Politics, and Publics, 1974 – 2007. Durham, NewYork: Duke University Press.

Peters, Sibylle (2012): “Unwahrscheinliche Ansprachen”, in: Dod, Katrin/Hehmeyer, Kirsten/Pees, Mathias (eds): Theater der Zeit: Arbeitsbuch zum HAU Berlin. … Import Export. Berlin: Theater der Zeit, pp. 130–133.

Peters, Sibylle (2014): “Das Wissen der Versammlung. Versammeln als Forschungsverfahren einer beteiligten Wissenschaft”, in: Burri, Regula V./Evert, Kerstin/Peters, Sibylle/Pilkington, Esther/Ziemer, Gesa (eds): Versammlung und Teilhabe: Urbane Öffentlichkeiten und performative Künste. Bielefeld: transcript, pp. 275–229.

Peters, Sibylle (2016): “Calling Assemblies. The Many as a Real Fiction”, in: geheimagentur/Schäfer, Martin/Tsianos, Vassilis. S. (eds): The Art of Being Many. Bielefeld: transcript, pp. 35–50.

Pilkington, Esther. (2014): “Coming Together, Coming Apart: Wege zur Versammlung”, in: Burri, Regula V./Evert, Kerstin/Peters, Sibylle/Pilkington, Esther/Ziemer, Gesa (eds): Versammlung und Teilhabe: Urbane Öffentlichkeiten und performative Künste. Bielefeld: transcript, pp. 21–35.

Plischke, Eva (2020): Zukunft auf Probe. Verhältnisse von szenischer Kunst und Zukunftsforschung. HafenCity University Hamburg. Available at: https://edoc.sub.uni-hamburg.de/hcu/frontdoor.php?source_opus=519&la=de

Reimers, Inga (2014): “Wer versammelt wen? Die Forschungsversammlung als ethnografisches Experiment”, in: Burri, Regula V./Evert, Kerstin/Peters, Sibylle/Pilkington, Esther/Ziemer, Gesa (eds): Versammlung und Teilhabe: Urbane Öffentlichkeiten und performative Künste. Bielefeld: transcript, pp. 197–214.

Tsomou, Margarita (2018): Zwischen Repräsentationskritik, Selbstrepräsentation und nicht-repräsentativen Politiken: die Aktionsformen der Aganaktismenoi auf dem Syntagma-Platz, Athen 2011. HafenCity University. Available at: https://edoc.sub.uni-hamburg.de//hcu/volltexte/2018/417/

Tsomou, Margarita/Tsianos, Vassilis S. (2016): “Assembling Bodies in New Ecologies of Existence. The Real Democracy Experience as Politics Beyond Representation”, in: geheimagentur/Schäfer, Martin. J./Tsianos, Vassilis S. (eds): The Art of Being Many. Bielefeld: transcript, pp. 77–93.

Warner, Michael (2010): Publics and Counterpublics. New York: Zone Books.

Works / Projects

Bernstorff, Elise von, The Last Judgement, 2014, Hamburg

geheimagentur, The Art of Being Many, 2014, Hamburg

Hildebrandt, Paula, Welcome City Group, 2016, Hamburg

Kowalski, Hannah, Yes No Maybe, 2013, Hamburg

Kretzschmar, Sylvi, AMPLIFICATION! A Collective Invocation, 2013, Hamburg

Lacy, Suzanne, Whisper, the Waves, the Wind, 1984, San Diego, https://www.suzannelacy.com/early-works

Lacy, Suzanne, The Roof is on Fire, 1994, Oakland, https://www.suzannelacy.com/early-works

Lacy, Suzanne, Between the Door and the Street, 2013, New York, https://www.suzannelacy.com/early-works

metroZones, School of Urban Acting, 2016, Hamburg

Pilkington, Esther / Peters, Sibylle/FUNDUS THEATER/Theatre of Research, Class Exchange, 2015, Hamburg

Plischke, Eva, Young Institute for Future Research, 2013, Hamburg

Rau, Milo/IIPM, The Kongo Tribunal (2015), http://international-institute.de/projekte/

Reimers, Inga, Taktsinn, 2013, Hamburg

Rimini Protokoll, World Climate Conference, 2014, Hamburg, https://www.rimini-protokoll.de/website/de/projects

Rimini Protokoll, 100 % City (2008-ongoing), Berlin, etc., https://www.rimini-protokoll.de/website/de/projects

 

 

 

What is it?

The institution is a civic body, a representation with performative power, that can create what it speaks of. Some of the most basic performance acts (Austin 1972) are of institutional decent (marriage, heritage, etc.). The institution, as a body of law, embodies and reproduces normed social frames and defines actions of individuals, of groups, of societies (Mohren and Herbordt 2017, Bernstorff forthcoming; Bernstorff 2018: 220). The institution is built around the performative act of speaking in the name of – (the institution or what is represented by it, e.g. ‘the people’). The institution does not necessarily have closed spatial borders, it is not always clear where it ends or begins (see Schatzmann/Strauss 1973 after Bernstorff 2018: 220). To stabilize itself, it refers to other institutions.

Founding an institution is an act of legitimization and representation: It often embodies a claim for a specific right and interest to be performed through and within the institution. Researching institutions and their conditions means to investigate the social, cultural, political norms and processes that govern them. As an artistic gesture an alternative Try-out institution enacts performatively different protocols. At the same time it looks critically at existing institutions from a different perspective, questioning their processes and conditions. Within the PhD programs Assemblies and Participation and Performing Citizenship some research projects used the act of instituting to try out alternative legitimizations, representations and protocols for action: TheLastJudgement (Elise von Bernstorff, The Last Judgement , 2014) The Young Institute for Future-Research (Eva Plischke, The Young Institute for Future-Research, 2013), The School of Girls (Maike Gunsilius, The School of Girls I, 2016), The Archive of the Institute for Falsification (Thari Jungen, The Archive of the Institute for Falsification, 2016), (Moritz Frischkorn, The Institute of Choreologistics, 2017) and further KAPUTT – The Academy of Destruction (FUNDUS THEATER/Theatre of Research, KAPUTT – The Academy of Destruction, 2017) All these were Try-out Institutions, »hybrid bodies in themselves, in which all members constantly experienced, what it means to speak on behalf of different bodies and to switch between them« (Peters, forthcoming).

What is researched?

Some of these Try-out Institutions did research on other established institutions like the Court (Elise von Bernstorff, The Last Judgement, 2014) or the public school (Maike Gunsilius, The School of Girls I (2016) and II, (2016). In The Last Judgement (Elise von Bernstorff, The Youngest Court, 2014), which could also be translated in The Youngest Court, students investigated the court as a civic institution; its rooms, protocols, its bureaucracy, its performativity. Later the kids formed an alternative court of students that was concerned with ‘lost cases’, cases, which were not authorised by the official court, however real cases brought to the court by real people. Hence, they investigated the performativity of the established institutions and their protocols and instituted an alternative framing to try out other acts of legitimization and representation, as well as alternative protocols. Try-out Institutions might be the format of choice, when it comes to research regarding a right to be claimed (in the sense of the right to have rights), or when research is meant to focus on given institutional procedures and effects and wants to suggest a specific alternative scenario. The more specific the better.

Similar strategies were employed by researching on an alternative future-research in the The Young Institute for Future-Research (Eva Plischke, The Young Institute for Future-Research, 2013), on the relation between logistics and choreography in the Institute of Choreologistics I (Moritz Frischkorn, The Institute of Choreologistics, 2017) or on the Act of Falsification as a social and artistic practice in relation to citizenship concepts and struggles (Thari Jungen, The Institute for Falsification, 2016). All of them can be understood as ‘What-if’-explorations: ‘What if’ children were empowered to make judgements? ‘What if’ choreography and logistics were conceived as the same or as connected practices? ‘What if’ the act of falsification of a passport was used to claim the right to get one – or better to claim the rights attached to this document? ‘What if’ children were respected as experts on questions of their own future?

Artistic Means  

The performativity of the institution – the ability of institutions to create the reality they speak of – is slightly twisted in a Try-out Institution. The act of instituting takes its power partially from the performativity of art, which can call something into being just in the name of art. By making use of this artistic power, and at the same time possibly by the resources rendered available to and by art, the Try-out Institution becomes a hybrid body, which is in between reality and fiction. A delicate and not entirely controllable act of balance, that can fail and create failure. As such it undermines and highlights the construction of hegemonial rules.

Especially the performing arts are able to pick up the manifold performative aspects of established institutions, to intervene in them and to turn them around. They can also have the expertise to invent new institutions and their protocols and perform them.

To create a Try-out Institution is comparatively simple, which is why it has grown to be a rather common format of performance art. It often comprises putting up a website, writing letters and emails in the name of the institution, design logos and letterheads for it, name tags, accessories and uniforms. It also includes the design of procedures and protocols and their performance.

Furthermore, the institution as such suggests to think of people involved as either members of administration, other members (like in a club) or clients, which use the institution as a service. To perform Try-out Institutions possibly includes on the one hand all kinds of one-on-one-interactions, service encounters etc., on the other hand events in which the institution comes to live in a more complete and public scenario involving assemblies and presentations, possibly collective decision making. To perform a Try-out Institution is mostly a longer process including a variety of formats, in which presentation and research process go hand in hand and evolve together, rather than postponing presentation to the very end of the research process.

Try-out Institutions are well equipped for collective and inclusive research, because they turn theoretical assumptions about the institution in question and the alternative scenario that is tried out, into action to be experienced and roles to be embodied and protocols to be performed, by asking ‘what if’…? They can address and empower people as experts and researchers and can help define their roles within this collaborative process: To be a member of an institution and to have authority to speak in its name, is empowering all members of the research group and allows them to address each other on eye level and in light of the common cause represented by the institution. Individuals can claim the power to speak in its name, where they would not have been heard otherwise, just by the authority of the Try-out Institution. The Young Institute for Future-Research (Eva Plischke, The Young Institute for Future-Research, 2013) constituted itself by its practice. Having a name for the institution, having a costume, a logo for it, knowing the role they had within it, the children and Eva Plischke started their research by asking around the neighbourhood what questions people had concerning the future. Acting in the name of the institution, performing their roles, gave the children the authority to walk into stores and talking to politicians. A main moment of performing it was the public presentation in which the act of institution, the practice, the roles within and the results of the research were presented in front of an invited public.

To be a client and experience a new kind of service possibly confronts people involved with their wishes, fears, needs, and expectations.

Potentials, Problems & Outcomes

Try-out Institutions have a potential for collective research, because research questions can partially be translated into the purpose of the institution in question. Therefore, the research process can be broken down – on its most accessible and inclusive level – into questions about, if or if not the Try-out Institution reached its goals. These questions can and should be answered by all people involved, members as co-researchers and clients as participants, as a heterogeneous collective. Try-out Institutions can be forums for citizen’s research.

However, there also might be another level of research and observation established beside the Try-out Institution itself. It could be an experiment within a more complex research design, that might include researching institutional practices within an academic approach. Try-out Institutions can be created and designed by heterogeneous research collectives. More often though, the design and setup of the Try-out Institution is done by a head researcher or head research collective. In these cases the founder(s) of the institution make a strong statement before other people get involved, and have to hope that participants will take the opportunity and find the alternative scenario proposed in the research setup appealing and worthy of their embodiment and enactment. If, or if not, this happens, will then already be a big part of the experimental outcome.

Another important measure of the outcome of a Try-out Institution will be, if the alternative scenario stays true to its implicit promise: Is the alternative reality created by the institution actually desirable? Does the reality brought about by the try-out indicate certain unexpected problems? Where and when does the alternative reality created by the try-out collide with given protocols of power and practice in unforeseen ways? Lots of the results from this kind of research will take the form of answers to those questions. Try-out Institutions therefore should always be conceived with a specific protocol of archiving, of documentation and memory, to render these answers available to future evaluation.

Try-out Institutions are fictions, which in every step of their performance try to become real. In this process the founders and head researchers of a Try-out Institution can find themselves in situations where the institution in its attempt to become as real as possible, creates unexpected pressure on professional and on personal resources.

The latin term instituere also means beginning, starting, setting up (Plischke forthcoming: 132). The setup, the act of instituting is often the strongest side of a Try-out Institution. To keep a Try-out Institution going will prove to be more challenging, than to create it. And it seems to be even more difficult, to make a successful Try-out Institution sustainable, to make it last and spread. Try-out Institutions can eventually tour through different cities – just like theatre productions –, but when it comes to real implementation, it seems that, as of now, there is no funding instrument or field of cultural or social service ready to take the outcomes of this kind of research serious enough to establish something like The Youngest Court (Elise von Bernstorff, The Youngest Court, 2014) on a wider societal basis. As long as this situation lasts, Try-out Institutions can create insights and experiences, but they will necessarily make proposals and claims for the beginning of social or political processes, which they then can’t see through. This can create friction between founders, members, and clients, between researchers, co-researchers, participants, and users because the latter might expect continuity as a part of the wider institutional claim that then can’t be guaranteed.  

 

What is it?

The institution is a civic body, a representation with performative power, that can create what it speaks of. Some of the most basic performative acts (Austin 1972) are institutional in nature (marriage, inheritance, etcetera). The institution, as a body of law, embodies and reproduces normative social frames and defines actions of individuals, of groups, and of societies (Mohren/Herbordt 2017, Bernstorff 2020, Bernstorff 2018: 220). The institution is built around the performative act of speaking in the name of (in the name of the institution or what it represents, for example ‘the people’). The institution does not necessarily have closed spatial borders, it is not always clear where it ends or begins. To stabilise and perpetuate itself, the institution relies on other institutions.

Founding an institution is an act of legitimisation and representation: It often embodies a claim for a specific right and interest to be performed by and within the institution. Researching institutions and their conditions means investigating the social, cultural, and political norms and processes that govern them. As an artistic gesture, an alternative Try-out Institution performatively enacts protocols different from those of established institutions. At the same time, it looks critically at existing institutions from a different perspective, questioning the processes and conditions that govern them. Within the PhD programmes Assemblies and Participation and Performing Citizenship, some research projects used the act of instituting to try out alternative legitimisations, representations and protocols for action: The Last Judgement II – An Extrajudicial Hearing (Bernstorff, 2014), Young Institute for Future Research (Plischke, 2013), The School of Girls I – Urban Experts (Gunsilius, 2016), The Archive of the Institute for Falsification (Jungen, 2016) and KAPUTT – The Academy of Destruction (FUNDUS THEATER/Theatre of Research, 2017) All these were Try-out Institutions, “hybrid bodies in themselves, in which all members constantly experienced what it means to speak on behalf of different bodies and to switch between them” (Peters forthcoming).

What is researched?

Some of these Try-out Institutions did research on other established institutions, such as the court (The Last Judgement) or the public school (The School of Girls I and II). In The Last Judgment – A Staged Tour of the Civil Justice Building, students investigated the court as a civic institution; its rooms, its protocols, its bureaucracy, its performativity. Later, the kids formed an alternative court of students that was concerned with what it referred to as ‘lost cases’, cases that were not authorised by the official court, but that were nevertheless real cases brought to the court by real people. Hence, they investigated the performativity of the established institutions and their protocols and instituted an alternative framing to try out other acts of legitimisation and representation, as well as alternative protocols. Try-out Institutions might be the format of choice when it comes to research regarding a right to be claimed (in the sense of the “right to have rights” (Arendt 1951), or when research is meant to focus on given institutional procedures and effects and aims to suggest a specific alternative scenario.

Similar strategies were employed by investigating alternative future research in the Young Institute for Future Research, or the act of falsification as a social and artistic practice in relation to citizenship concepts and struggles (The Archive of the Institute for Falsification). All of these projects can be understood as explorations into different what-ifs: What if children were empowered to administer justice?

Artistic means

The performativity of the institution – the ability of institutions to create the reality they speak of – is slightly twisted in a Try-out Institution. Here, the act of instituting takes its power partially from the performativity of art, which can call something into being. By making use of this capacity, the Try-out Institution becomes a hybrid body that is situated in between reality and fiction. Producing a Try-out Institution is a delicate and not entirely controllable act of balance that can also fail. As such, it undermines and highlights the construction of hegemonial rules.

The performing arts are particularly qualified to engage with the manifold performative aspects of established institutions, to intervene into them and to subvert them. Theatre and performance provide the expertise of fabricating the ‘as if’ that can be used by researchers, co-researchers and participants to invent new institutions and their protocols and to perform them.

To create a Try-out Institution is comparatively simple, which is why it has grown to be an established format within the contexts of live art and performance. The process often consists of putting up a website, writing letters and emails in the name of the institution, and designing logos, letterheads, name tags, accessories and uniforms. It also includes the design of procedures and protocols and their performance.

Furthermore, the institution as such suggests thinking of the people involved as either members of the administration, other kinds of members (members of a club, for instance), or clients, which use services provided by the institution. Performing Try-out Institutions might include, on the one hand, all kinds of one-on-one interactions, service encounters, etcetera, and, on the other hand, events in which the institution comes to live in a more complete and public scenario, involving assemblies and presentations, and possibly instances of collective decision-making. Performing a Try-out Institution is mostly a longer process including a variety of formats, in which presentation and research process go hand in hand and evolve together, rather than leaving the presentation until the very end of the research process.

Try-out Institutions are well equipped for collective and inclusive research, because they translate theoretical assumptions about the institution in question and the alternative scenario that is tried out into actions to be experienced, roles to be embodied, and protocols to be performed. By asking “what if?”, they can address and empower people as experts and researchers and help to define their roles within this collaborative process: To be considered a member of an institution and to be given the authority to speak in its name is empowering all members of the research group and allows them to address each other as equals and in light of the common cause represented by the institution. Individuals can claim the power to speak in its name where they would not have been heard otherwise, just by the authority of the Try-out Institution. The Young Institute for Future Research constituted itself through its practice. Having a name for the institution, a costume, a logo, and knowing the role they had within it, the children and Eva Plischke started their research by asking around the neighbourhood what questions people had concerning the future. Acting in the name of the institution, performing their roles, gave the children the authority to, for example, walk into stores or to talk to politicians. A main moment of performing the institution was the public presentation in which the act of instituting, the practice, the roles within and the results of the research were presented in front of an invited public.

Founding an institution and speaking and acting in its name is empowering for its members. Being a client, in turn, and experiencing a new kind of service may confront people involved with their desires, fears, needs, and expectations.

Potentials, problems and outcomes

Try-out Institutions have a potential for collective research because research questions can partially be translated into objectives for the institution in question. Therefore, the research process can be broken down – on its most accessible and inclusive level – into questions about whether the Try-out Institution has reached its goals or not. These questions can and should be answered by everyone involved, by members and clients of the Try-out Institution, by researchers, co-researchers and participants of the specific research project, as a heterogeneous collective. Try-out Institutions can be forums for citizens’ research.

However, there also might be another level of research and observation established beside the Try-out Institution itself. The Try-out Institution could be an experiment within a more complex research design that might include researching institutional practices within an academic approach.

Try-out Institutions can be created and designed by heterogeneous research collectives. More often, though, the design and set-up of the Try-out Institution is done by a head researcher or head research collective. In these cases, the founder(s) of the institution make a strong statement before other people get involved and have to hope that participants will take the opportunity and find the alternative scenario proposed in the research set-up appealing and worthy of embodiment and enactment. Whether this happens or not will then already be a big part of the experimental outcome.

Another important measure of the outcome of a Try-out Institution will be whether the alternative scenario stays true to its implicit promise: Is the alternative reality created by the institution actually desirable? Does the reality brought about by the try-out indicate certain unexpected problems? Where and when does the alternative reality created by the try-out collide with given protocols of power and practice in unforeseen ways? Many of the results from this kind of research will take the form of answers to those questions. Try-out Institutions therefore should always be conceived with a specific method of archiving in mind, of documentation and memory, to render these answers available for future evaluation.

Try-out Institutions are fictions that try to become real in every step of their performance. In this process, the founders and head researchers of a Try-out Institution can find themselves in situations where the institution, in its attempt to become as real as possible, creates unexpected pressure on professional and on personal resources.

The latin term instituere also means beginning, starting, setting up (Plischke 2020: 132). The set-up, the act of instituting is often the most clearly projectable and most impactful aspect of building a Try-out Institution. Keeping a Try-out Institution going will in many cases prove to be more challenging than creating it. And it seems to be even more difficult to make a successful Try-out Institution sustainable, to make it last and spread. Try-out Institutions can eventually tour through different cities – just like theatre productions, but when it comes to real implementation, it seems that, as of now, there is no funding instrument or social/cultural context ready to take the outcomes of this kind of research serious enough to establish something like The Last Judgement on a wider societal basis. As long as this situation lasts, Try-out Institutions can create insights and experiences, but they will necessarily make proposals and claims for the beginning of social or political processes that then cannot be seen through. This can create friction between founders, members and clients of the institution, between researchers, co-researchers, participants and users of the research. Some of them might expect continuity as a part of the wider institutional claim that then cannot be guaranteed.

References

Arendt, Hannah (1951): The Origins of Totalitarianism. New York: Harvest.

Austin, John L. (1972): Zur Theorie der Sprechakte: (How to Do Things with Words). Stuttgart: Reclam.

Bernstorff, Elise von (2020): Die Performance des Gerichts. Zwei künstlerische Forschungen mit Kindern. HafenCity University. Available at: https://edoc.sub.uni-hamburg.de//hcu/volltexte/2020/539/

Bernstorff, Elise von (2018): “Institution und Instituierung. Das Theater des Gerichts mit Kindern erforschen”, in: Hinz, Melanie/Kranixfeld, Michael/Köhler, Norma/Scheurle, Christoph (eds): Forschendes Theater in Sozialen Feldern. Theater als Soziale Kunst III. München: kopaed, pp. 219–229.

Mohren, Melanie/Herbordt, Bernhard. (2017): Die Institution. Berlin: Alexander Verlag.

Peters, Sibylle (forthcoming): “How to Relate Differently: Scenes of Shared Research from the Programs ‘Performing Citizenship’ and ‘Assemblies & Participation’”, in: Haas, Annika/Haas, Maximilian/Magauer, Hanna/Pohl, Dennis (eds): How to Relate: Wissen der Künste und relationale Praktiken/ Knowledge, Arts, Practices. Paderborn: fink, pp. 34–44.

Peters, Sibylle (2017): “Performing Citizenship. Beobachtungen zur Praxis performativer Forschung”, in: Klein, Gabriele/Göbel, Hannah. K. (eds): Performance und Praxis: praxeologische Erkundungen in Tanz, Theater, Sport und Alltag. Bielefeld: transcript, pp. 339–360.

Plischke, Eva (2020): Zukunft auf Probe. Verhältnisse von szenischer Kunst und Zukunftsforschung. HafenCity Universität Hamburg.

Works / Projects

Bernstorff, Elise von The Last Judgement – A Staged Tour of the Civil Justice Building, 2013, Hamburg.

Bernstorff, Elise von The Last Judgement – An Extrajudicial Hearing, 2014, Hamburg.

Gunsilius, Maike The School of Girls I, 2016, Hamburg.

Thari Jungen, The Institute for Falsification, 2016, Hamburg.

FUNDUS THEATER/Theatre of Research, KAPUTT – The Academy of Destruction, 2017, London.

Plischke, Eva Young Institute for Future Research, 2013, Hamburg.

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