Alex Head

Saturday 11 January 2014

Video Art at Midnight Presents: MILITANTE UNTERSUCHUNG SEMINAR 17.2.14 FREE

The seminar 'Militant Investigation' of the Masters course Spatial Strategies, Berlin Weißensee School of Art will take place on
Friday the 17th of January, at 24:00 hrs in Kino Babylon

The term Militant Investigation refers to a method of research that came into use in context of the wildcat strikes and the Autonomist Operaist movement of the 60s in Northern Italy. As part of the Autonomous Left movement, the term encompasses a vital departure from the dogmatism of the Communist Party.

From that point onwards, Militant Investigation has emerged again and again in countless political movements and discussions -- as a mythos, as an epistemology, and as a collective form of knowledge. It stands for a theoretical engagement that rejects scientific objectivity and instead demands the involvement of the author in a collective political praxis. In this seminar we would like to use the concept 'Militant Investigation' to critically reflect on the concept of 'Artistic Research'. What does Militant Investigation have to do with artistic practice?

'Militant Investigation is not a type of research in which you find truth. You find an amalgam of your own subjectivity, your own truths, which perhaps might intermingle with your experiences but which naturally never offer total access to the Other.'

Detlev Hartmann, ExArgentina Catalogue, Cologne 2004

Sonja Hornung, Selina Lampe, Yukiko Nagakura, Laura Engelhardt, Alex Head, Eva Pandulova, Jenny Marlene Vollmer, Erkin Go, Lerato Shadi, Eva Giannakopoulou, Alejandro Strus, Julia Masagão, Imma Harms, Alice Creischer and Andreas Siekmann.