15/3/2013
We play
NGBK, Berlin
A series of events concerned with the topic of "we". Together with Amelia Bande, Interflugs, Rubia Salgado, with members of NGBK and YES! Association/Foreningen JA!, all artists and activists with experience in collective ways of working and organising.
WIR SPIELEN (WE PLAY) is a series of events concerned with the topic of “we”, an inescapable utterance in the formation of collectivities, two letters that involve alignment, affects, bodies, spatial boundaries and political realities.
The events are taking place at NGBK, once a month, between March and July 2013, together with Amelia Bande, Interflugs, Rubia Salgado, with members of NGBK and YES! Association/Föreningen JA!, all artists and activists with experience in collective ways of working and organising. Every event will result in a text, conceived as the act of a theater play. At the end of the series in December 2013, a theater play in five acts will be published and staged in cooperation with akademie der autodidakten (Ballhaus Naunynstraße).
The form of the play is inspired by “THE PEOPLEMOVER – A Demonstration Poem (1968)”, written by Mary Ellen Solt. THE PEOPLEMOVER is a collage of quotations from a variety of sources, reaching from historical records and political speeches to eyewitness accounts of demonstrations. The text brings up issues of political frustration, mistrust in institutions and the failure of democracy’s fundamental principles. WIR SPIELEN (WE PLAY) is inspired by the plurality of voices and their conflictive demands contained in the poem, as well as provoked by its patriotic belief in the US-American dream.
Which are the demands nowadays; who are the ones that will express them, who are the ones that will be heard the most and why? What are our possibilities for change and how are they shaped by our desires and personal interactions? Is collective work still a political standpoint? A marketing strategy? A failed project or a necessity for our survival?
A book accompanying the project will be published.
Until then read here news and progress of the project: wirspielen.net
Project group: Freja Bäckman, Merja Hannikainen, Annika Högner, Vappu Jalonen, Johanna Karlsson, Clara Lopez
Foto: Merja Hannikainen
Press contact:
Benita Piechaczek Tel. ++49 (0)30 616513-13 presse@ngbk.de
NGBK Neue Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst
Oranienstraße 25 10999 Berlin