Tanzquartier Wien

Can we still talk about alienation today? Outlining theories of post-, trans- and anti-humanism, this talk attempts to defend the usefulness of a concept of alienation, while simultaneously acknowledging the distance between us and Feuerbach and Marx’s nineteenth century use of the term.

Michael Hirsch: Emancipatory Alienation Critique. Reflections From the Perspective of a Humanist-Feminist Neo-Marxism

The lecture questions the relevance of the concept of alienation today. The intention is both socio-philosophical and political. First classical notions of alienation will be sketched out departing from the early writings of Marx. In a second step, positions of twentieth century Neo-Marxism (Marcuse and Adorno) will be discussed. In conclusion the supposed abolition of alienation in contemporary labour regimes will be addressed.

Andreas Rumpfhuber: The Incorporation of Dissent. Office Landscaping and its Contemporary Legacy

Currently we witness a revival of contemporary interpretations and variations of office-landscaping: Be it SANAA’s literal landscape for the Rolex Learning Center in Lausanne, Switzerland, be it Frank Gehry’s Facebook open plan office in Paolo Alto/California, USA, or OMA’s Springer Campus design in Berlin, to name just a few, most prominent examples. This new wave of office landscape-like projects makes it worth revisiting the initial concept of “Bürolandschaft”. Which other vision of work does it expose to the diagnosis of alienated labour?

On 6 October, Claudia Bosse and the participants present the results of the lab each ought to move away from himself. otherwise the element of terror necessary to all recognition is lacking*. on aesthetic strategies of defamiliarisation, which is held from 2 to 6 October.

The lab opens up a space between artists and thinkers on artistic methods of defamiliarisation. Defamiliarisation as a strategy of shifting perspectives and constellations by means of specific aesthetic practices. Defamiliarisation as a (trans)acting recollection of phenomena, social realities or norms concerning art, politics, the body, the economy, knowledge, society. Defamiliarisation versus alienation: at the same time, we negotiated in the lab our roles as artists vis-à-vis institutions and politics, their modes of operation, their utilisation logics, their value creation.

*Bertolt Brecht

Marina Vishmidt: Relatable Alienation – The Logic and History of an Idea

This presentation will intervene on the hypothesis that the role of the artist is distinguished by unalienated labour. This will proceed in three stages and a coda: 1. Outlining the difference between alienation and objectification; 2. What is alienated and what is not alienated about artistic labour?; 3. What is the role of exceptionality in the rule of the capitalist form of value more generally?

Kerstin Stakemeier: The Aesthetic Properties of Alienation

In (aesthetic) theories of the twentieth century alienation is thought of as the modern subject’s original sin: it signifies it’s separation from the world it capitalized. But alienation is much more than that: our alienation is our self-property. Kerstin Stakemeier investigates historical and contemporary lineages of aesthetic praxis which expose this self-property to dynamisms of self-expropriation, treating alienation not so much as an original sin but rather as a constitutive privilege.

Angela Dimitrakaki: Left with TINA – Alienation and Anti-communism

A number of movements and struggles take as the crux of their politics an “anti” stance, the most visible perhaps among them figured and configured as “anti-capitalism”; contemporary struggles on the left often self-identify as anti-capitalist. This paper will seek to problematise the ideological space (and time) of this “anti” stance by linking it to capitalism’s most successful ideological campaign, itself headed by another“anti”: anti-communism.