An educational programme in the context of the exhibition Gods Moving in Places. The Day Reader
Guest: Club Real
Location: Organisms Democracy, Osloer Str. 107/108, 13359 Berlin
The second reading in the series takes us to a disused space voergrown by trees between the numbers 107 and 108 in Berlin’s Osloer Strasse, where the artists’ group Club Real founded the city’s first Organisms Democracy in 2019. Since then, all residents and regular users of the area have been given the same political rights and their positions and issues are represented in the Parliament of Organisms.
Reading Session II explores Édouard Glissant’s concept of archipelagic thinking from the perspective of some of the Organisms Democracy’s citizens, like the Asian Mud Dauber Wasp or the Pilewort sclerotium cup fungus. n the context of a multisensory parcours with different species acting as guides to their sovereign territory participants are introduced to Glissant’s professed poetry in the detail and vitality seen in the constant interaction and interpenetration of the most diverse living models.
The ideas and literary work of Édouard Glissant, eminent French-speaking Caribbean author and pioneer of postcolonial theory, are a central reference point of the current ifa-Galerie Berlin exhibition Gods Moving in Places. In three collective readings, participants will approach selected texts and poetic fragments of Glissant’s writings and, by applying experimental physical formats that challenge and question typical reading habits, open up new perspectives on the exhibition.
The artists group Club Real develops participative, site-specific projects, and since 2018 it has been working on the participatory political experiment titled Organisms Democracy. Equal rights for all living beings, that is the radical idea being implemented within the framework of its individual projects. In 2019, Club Real was invited to the Impulse Theater Festival to present the project “Beyond Nature – Democracy in the Garden”. The Organisms Democracy in Berlin has existed since 2019 and is now in its fifth legislature period – in its fourth legislature period it was part of the ARCH+ cohabitation project. This series of works is documented on organismendemokratie.org.
Annika Niemann is an art educator, a cultural practitioner for creative schools across Berlin and currently administrative professor for art education at the Institute of Performing Arts and Education at the HBK Braunschweig.
The reading texts are only available in German.
To register, please send an email to ifa-galerie-berlin@ifa.de