Symposium »Dealing with Fear II«

Program

Thursday, October 30, 2008

8.00 pm
Welcome Remarks by Jean-Baptiste Joly, Director of the Akademie

8.15 pm
»›faire l'âme monstrueuse‹. Production Strategies of Fear in the Artistic Avant-garde«
(in German language)
Thomas Macho, Humboldt-University of Berlin

Moderation by Philip Ursprung, University of Zurich

***

Friday, October 31, 2008

Section I: »The Artist’s Fear of Her-/Himself«
Moderated by Isabel Mundry, Zurich University of the Arts,
and Philip Ursprung, University of Zurich

9.30 am
Introduction by Jean-Baptiste Joly, Director of the Akademie

9.45 – 10.30 am
»Misreading – on a Poetic Strategy to Deal with the Anxiety of Influence«
Maren Rieger, Berne University of the Arts

10.30 – 11.15 am
»Working from Inside«
Teresa Hubbard, University of Texas at Austin and the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College, New York

11.15 am Coffee Break

11.45 am – 1.00 pm
»Fear is just Another Word for Someone Left to Please«
Dennis Farber, Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore
Michael Hutter, Social Science Research Center Berlin

1.00 pm Lunch

2.30 – 3.15 pm
»Am I Victim or Offender? 3 x 3 = ∞
A Musical Theater Project on the Anxieties of the Survivors«
Tina Hartmann, librettist, Stuttgart

3.15 pm Coffee Break


Section II: »Fear of New Technologies by the Public«
Moderated by Jean-Baptiste Joly and Julia Warmers, Akademie Schloss Solitude

3.45 – 4.45 pm
»Carbon Nanotube Sensors«
Christofer Hierold, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich

4.45 – 5.45 pm
»Space Transportation and Dual Use of Aerospace Technology«
Nikolaus A. Adams, Technical University Munich

»Computing: An Indispensable Friend or Foe?«
Petros Koumoutsakos, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich

5.45 pm Final Discussion

Symposium »Dealing with Fear II«

International Symposium at Akademie Schloss Solitude
in the framework of the art, science & business program

Initiated by Petros Koumoutsakos, Ingrid Mundry, Philip Ursprung

October 30 to 31, 2008

The symposium continues the interdisciplinary work of the Akademie Schloss Solitude on the main topic »Dealing with Fear« with a discussion of two special aspects: »The Artist's Fear of Her-/Himself« and »Fear of New Technologies by the Public«. The exploration of the challenge of a subjectively perceived fear of one's existence and of a socially-grounded fear of the future is not only an experiment, in which artists, art historians, cultural scientists, and nano researchers will engage themselves, but is also an approach which will trace unexpected interdisciplinary commonalities.

The recognizability of the artistic author is precondition of the success in today’s world of culture, although or even because everything seems to be possible. Only the one who finds his own position – and is able to hold it –, will find his audience. Critique does not forgive changing lanes, and it does not bestow premature praise. Critique does not want to commemorate an ›early work‹ and has no time to wait for a ›late work‹. In addition to the type of artist who wants to be recognizable by specification, there are those artists who like to keep adapting themselves by changeability. But while the first type can no longer seek the ›other‹ in his/her work, the ›self‹ is excluded from the second type. The fear of building an artistic identity, which is too tight or too open, too easy to confuse with others or outside of conventions, is therefore always present during the careers of artists. What happens if the criteria of value change? What if their own image suddenly gets in the way? Is misconduct in the cultural field – unlike in politics and economy – irreversible?

Fear of new technologies is one of the major phobias since the 1990s, culminating in the turn of the century when the public was holding its breath in expectation of a world-wide computer breakdown. Faith in the future, which inspired people until the 1980s, has been replaced with a diffuse fear of the future and change. Besides a resistance to the use of machines, the public is afraid of engineering developments and scientific research in the fields of nano-technology, nuclear energy, genetic research, etc. and its possible manipulations and unknown invisible impacts on the everyday life and future generations. People don not look at technology as a product of the human intellect – like music, literature, philosophy, architecture – but rather as independent and from the human nature differentiated reality and, in this sense, as a constant threat. What are the causes for this cultural fear of technology? How do scientists deal with this diffuse fear? And how can one create and build trust as the opposite of fear?

The opening lecture will be held in German, the lectures on Friday are in English.

Please register with Catharina Märklin (Tel. +49-711-99619-134, cm@akademie-solitude.de).

Free admission.

DIE RÖMER IV

Angst und Hoffnung in zerbrechlichen Zeiten
Eine Kooperation der Akademie Schloss Solitude und der Kunststiftung Baden-Württemberg

Bani Abidi, Heike Aumüller, Lisa Biedlingmaier, Corinne May Botz, Julien Diehn, Ragani Haas, Iassen Markov, Matthias Megyeri, Olof Olsson, Jasmeen Patheja und Patricia Thoma

Die Akademie Schloss Solitude und die Kunststiftung Baden-Württemberg haben am Samstag den 10. November 2007 zum vierten Mal zu einem gemeinsamen Ausstellungsabend eingeladen. Für einen weiteren Abend traten die Werke der Stuttgarter und der internationalen Künstlerinnen und Künstler im Solitude-Projektraum in der Innenstadt in einen spannenden und fruchtbaren Dialog. Neben permanent installierten Arbeiten fand über den Abend verteilt ein Programm statt, dass sich aus drei Performances von Olof Olsson (ca. 20.30), Iassen Markov (ca. 21.15) und Ragani Haas (ca. 22.00) sowie der Präsentation der Videoarbeit "Blindlings" von Heike Aumüller am Anfang und am Ende des Abends zusammensetzt.

Die Römer IV. Angst und Hoffnung in zerbrechlichen Zeiten.

(Fear and Hope in Fragile Times)
Saturday, November 10, 8 pm
Projektraum Römerstr. 2, Stuttgart

For the fourth time, the Baden-Württemberg Art Foundation and the Akademie Schloss Solitude invite you to a collaborative exhibition evening in the Römerstrasse. The focus of the program – which includes installations, video presentations and performances – is the question of how young artists deal with fear and hope in an increasingly vulnerable society. Inspired by the topic »dealing with fear,« an issue that will guide the Akademie’s interdisciplinary work for the next two years, art coordination fellows Ramona Dengel (Kunststiftung Baden-Württemberg) and Antonia Lotz (Akademie Schloss Solitude) have curated the evening’s work with a focus on the question of balance and withdrawal and action in trouble times.

A cooperation between Akademie Schloss Solitude and the Kunststiftung Baden-Württemberg.

Since When and Why Are We Afraid of the Future?

Abstract of the Lecture
»Since When and Why Are We Afraid of the Future?«
by Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht
held on October 18, 2007

0) In its starting point, this lecture is in agreement with the basic premise of the colloquium, i.e. that a profound transformation in our (Western cultures’?) relation to the future, took place between the end of World War II and our present. But the question that this lecture will ask is not the question of the (larger or smaller) »reasons« / »objects of reference« for this fear (such as demographic growth, global warming, etc.); its main thesis is to see the condition for our new, increasingly fearful relationship to the future in a transformation of the »chronotope« of the »construction of time« that surrounds us, within which the future is an unattainable position, different from the position that it used to have in the »historicist« chronotope as it had emerged and institutionalized itself during the 19th and early 20th centuries.

1) The historical argument will be introduced by a brief survey of subsequent »chronotopes« since the Middle Ages, showing how the (mostly) intellectual »price« attached to the claim (illusion?) that predicting the future has grown dramatically—up to a point where, in our present, this price is beyond reach.

2) For the reconstruction of the emergence of the »historicist chronotope« (the chronotope that ended up being so successful that Western culture tended to confuse it with »time, as such«), we go back to the early 19th century. We see the emergence of this chronotope as a response to (as a solution to the problem posed by) a specific concept of the historical »emergence of the second-order observer« (what Michel Foucault called »la crise de la représentation«), i.e. the insight that every phenomenon of reference in the world, according to the observer’s point of view, is capable of producing (of being represented by) an infinity of interpretations / renditions. The historicist chronotope that emerged as a »solution« to this problem will be described (mainly) following the theses of Reinhart Koselleck; i.e. we will emphasize its implicit promise of historical prognostication largely explored by Hegel and Marx, and the less obvious implication that the specific »present« of this chronotope is the idea of the habitat of the Cartesian Subject.

3) Why was the historicist chronotope so overwhelmingly successful in its institutionalization? One could argue that, in opposite (almost paradoxically opposite) ways, it was capable of serving the two dominant ideologies (and Economies) of the 20th century. In very different ways, and to very different degrees, both Capitalism and Socialism (Communism) rely on our being able to anticipate the future—a possibility that, based on reflection and other intellectual work, the historicist chronotope offers. In this sense, it is significant that Fascist ideologies tried to depart from the historicist chronotope (e.g. the Nazis’ »Empire of A Thousand Years«).

4) We will read the debate of the late 1970s and early 1980s on the »competition« between Modernity and Post-Modernity as a symptom of a transformation (replacement) of the historicist chronotope by another chronotope, for which we have not yet found an adequate description. This transformation certainly cannot be presented as a »victory« of either the »modern« or of the »post-modern« paradigm. Rather, I see this new (and yet nameless) chronotope as being characterized by three features: a past that almost aggressively invades the present (»Memoria-kultur«); an unattainable future that produces fear; and, between this future and that past, an ever-broadening present. An ever-broadening present, however, that can no longer be the present of the Cartesian Subject, i.e. of the »rationally choosing« Subject.

5) While we will largely refrain from postulating »historical reasons« for the transformations and reconstructions of time that we are trying to trace, the lecture will conclude with one speculation on this level. Could we say that, rather than reacting to »objective« transformations and points of reference in our environment (once again: demography, global warming, etc.), the transformation of our chronotope is a consequence of another transformation, a transformation of the dominant human self-reference that, under conditions of latency, has been taking place since the end of the Second World War? It would be a new type of human self-reference, which, after the first experience of mass destruction on a new scale, could no longer afford to remain purely Cartesian (i.e. purely »spiritual«). If, then, our dominant figure of self-reference today is decreasingly Cartesian, could this at least partly explain why our construction of time—and within our new construction of time: the way we experience the future—has undergone such a profound transformation?

Die Another Day

Contribution »Die Another Day: Dealing with Fear«
by Gerald Siegmund
held on October 19, 2007

»The first thirty seconds of a performance are the most important, because it is in the first thirty seconds that you have the opportunity to establish a rapport with the audience.« The performer who has entered the small stage begins his monologue. A band of red tinder sticks are wrapped around his naked torso like a suicide bomb waiting to explode any minute. The clock attached to it is ticking away the real time of the performance we are about to watch. Winning the audience over may be a demeaning process. »It’s a good idea to put a joke into the first 30 seconds, or perhaps a visual gag.« Lowdon certainly does not tell a joke. Rather, his whole appearance is a joke. As if he wanted to excuse himself for his literally striking appearance, he apologetically looks down at his waistband of dynamite sticks, which, if nothing else, is at least a visual gag.

Richard Lowdon talks about the do’s and don’ts of a performance. He is one of five actors who next to director Tim Etchells make up the core of the British theatre group Forced Entertainment from Sheffield. The piece is called Showtime. It premiered in 1996. The performance we watch has already started, while we get the feeling that he has been send on stage to kill time because some catastrophe has happened backstage that prevents the actual show to begin. It is a self-referential performance about the right way of doing a performance. Of course, he does it all wrong. It’s a performance before the performance which creates an in-between situation combining rehearsal and improvisation on the one side and the scripted show on the other. The show we see hovers on the fringes of a proper show. This limbo situation that can be found in almost every Forced Entertainment piece, is a crisis situation. Although nothing actually happens in the traditional sense of the word, as no plot evolves, anything could happen any time. It is a time for anticipation where indeed the actor’s fear of losing the plot makes itself felt.

Looking for help, he turns around looking for is colleagues every time he has run out of things to say or do. But nobody is forthcoming to step in and help him out. The performance is about the failure of a performance. Nervously the actor fiddles with his hands, looking shyly into the audience as if to say »I don’t know either«. The tone of his voice is almost private as if he were talking to us personally, and not as a character in a play. »Within every performance«, he tells us, »there is always a kind of tension. The private person might not want to go on. They may have things on their mind. Troubles perhaps. When the lights go down you have to go on and get things done. You have to be professional.« We pity him because he clearly did not want to go on. But surely we are in the theatre and he is on stage. His performer persona is carefully constructed to keep the balance between privacy and stage persona. It, too, hovers on the fringes of a proper stage character.

The failure we witness and he is so afraid of is condensed in the dream which, according to Lowdon, every performer has had at some point: »The performer is on stage alone, generally naked, while the writer or director or perhaps one of your colleagues (meaning a member of the audience) is in the wings busily writing the script. Of course, they are whispering it to you. But you cannot hear them.« Being up there, exposed, he is at the mercy of the audience who are described as a voyeuristic crowd coming to the theatre to sit in the dark and watching »other people do it«. On the other side of the telescope he is at the mercy of authors and directors who make him to degrading and silly things and without whom he is reduced to a deaf and mute puppet. The performer the performer Richard Lowdon performs is like a gladiator in a Roman arena. One false move and the lions will rip him to shreds.

But the failure of the performance highlights the fear of the performer. The limbo the show creates out of the self-referential doubling of the performance situation unearths some of the energies that drive the performance on. It thrives on the fear of the performer. That is why Lowdon and Forced Entertainment win almost every time they perform. Of course, he has brought us on his side form the very first moment. Like Forced Entertainment, other groups or artists such as choreographers and dancers Pina Bausch and William Forsythe, or theatre director Jürgen Gosch aim at including the excluded, i.e. fear, into their performances by drawing attention to the framing and doubling of the performance situation. I will refer to some of their work in the course of my paper. They create a performance situation that thrives on the fear of the performer and the audience’s scopic desire to see him fail doing his tight rope walk so that some kind of reality behind the fictional world of the show. Fear in the theatre creates a social situation that keeps fear at bay by sharing it.

A whole range of symbolic codes and conventions regulates the exchange between audience and stage. »I think it’s good to remember«, Richard Lowdon from Forced Entertainment says in his monologue, »There are more of you than there are of us. So if it comes to a fight, you will undoubtedly win. Hopefully that won’t be necessary.« The theatrical situation at least since the bourgeois theatre of late 18th century has been devised for »that« not to be necessary. It requires a code of behaviour to channel fear. Actors as well as performers have to be in the theatre at a certain time. They both go through a little rite of passage on their way to their respective places the code has assigned them. In the theatre you know your place. Which is reassuring and, for once, not fearful. But in order to occupy it, you will have to undergo transformation. Past the doorman, a Cerberus who guards the entrance to another world, into the long and winding aisles of the theatre building, the bowls of a leviathan, the labyrinths that will eventually lead you like Theseus in Greek mythology to the Minotaur waiting to eat you alive, a labyrinth where in the end you can easily get swallowed up and lost if you don’t know your way out, into the dressing rooms. The gradual transition from the outside world into the theatrical world makes audiences and actors alike shed some of their every day behaviour.

Although they are a constituent element of the event we call theatre, audience members must not climb onto the stage. They must not touch or get in the way of the acting or dancing. They are supposed to sit in their very often very confined und uncomfortable seats and be attentive. Getting up is not part of the deal. Talking to your neighbour while the performance is running, neither. Shut up, listen und watch. Theatre restricts my freedom to act in order to make me see and hear better. We accept that they behave »as if« it were real what they are doing. That is one of the main paradoxes of the theatre as we know it: although it is only play, it nevertheless is a real physical act. Although the meaning that is produced is »as if«, the performance is for real. Here is where fear sets in. Those codes or conventions which transform the theatre event into a symbolic form are there to channel fear and to safeguard an atmosphere of mutual respect and acknowledgement. Where you can drop your guard without being swallowed up either by the Leviathan or by the Minotaur.

Every time these codes of behaviour are broken, the theatre draws attention to itself and its rules. That which is supposed to be kept at bay, in the wings, in the aisles that lead up to the stage, in the dressing rooms, slowly creeps in to take possession of the stage. Fear sets in. Fear of failure. Fear of not being accepted. Fear of not being recognised by the audience. Fear that the proposition the actor and dancers make is rejected. Fear on the part of the audience to be called onto the stage. To be used and abused and exposed in the spotlight. To be interpellated by someone you don’t know, someone who ascribes a visible identity to you by calling you up. What are you supposed to do? Accept it for the time being? Will you be the same after you have sat down again? The symbolic order of the performance guided by contractual rules and regulations threatens to collapse and the underlying energies, the nervous costume of the performance takes over. Nerves are exposed. The theatre comes alive.

It is after all, a live situation. The imaginary »as if« the performers have offered to us and asked us to accept, vanishes to make way for the Real, for that which has to be kept out in order for the representation to close and to function. The abject returns threatening the limits of the stage world we accept as real. Fear has to do with risk. What do we risk during a performance? Performers risk themselves. Like Richard Lowdon in Forced Entertainment’s Showtime. They are suicide bombers waiting for the bomb to go off. They sacrifice themselves for us.

Pina Bausch’s whole work of the 1970s and 1980s seems to be based on fear and her dancers’ individual ways of dealing with it. They deal with fear by talking about it and dancing together in front of the audience. In Nelken from1982 in a scene before the intermission every dancer of the production steps forward to the microphone to speak publicly about his or her reasons to have become a dancer. Why did you become a dancer? »I was schoolteacher«, a dancer begins to tell her story. And every day was a struggle for her although she could not tell why. Until somebody told her that it was because she was afraid of her kids. »It was true«, she says. »That’s why I became a dancer.« Standing in a field of pink carnations, arms over their heads in a classical ballet port de bras, their dresses loosely hung over their bodies, the dancers then pose for a group photograph.

Fear is moving. It makes them move! Because they move, we are being moved. Perhaps we move because we want to overcome fear and to recreate retrospectively an utopian childlike sate where there was no fear, a state that has always already been lost. »Bewegung als Wiederherstellunsgversuch«, as I have called it elsewhere. »Du kommst auf mich zu. Du hebst mich. Du lässt mich nicht fallen.« You come towards me. You lift me up. You won’t drop me. In William Forsythe’s first major production Gänge in 1983 at the Frankfurt Opera House, a ballerina talks about the fear she has every time she and her partner have to perform a big lift in a classical pas de deux. What if he really just dropped her? That would surely be the end of the performance. But it may easily also be the end of her career.

These two examples share with Forced Entertainment’s Showtime a process of filtering real life experiences, fears, hopes and dreams through the rehearsal process of a dance company and its members and repeating it on stage during the actual performance thus opening up its frames. The social roles you have to play as a woman or a man in real life are rehearsed in the pieces. They are clearly marked as theatrical situations. Because they are theatrical situations they may, however, reflect back to the performative inscription of gender roles in societies.

William Forsythe’s Three Atmospheric Studies deals with world catastrophes like the Tsunami in Thailand, Bush’s Iraq war, and the violence in the Middle East. These topics all deal with fear. And yet, the first part is a pure and abstract dance piece. What is striking in the context of a Forsythe piece is that the six female and six male dancers fall into poses forming smaller groups. Full of fear they direct their gazes upwards or to their partners before they start to move again, pushing, pulling, sliding, twisting and turning, arms and legs jarred out of centre. »Composition One«, Jone San Martin claims at the very beginning if the piece. »My son was arrested.« She points towards another dancer whose body is bent over backwards with an expression on his face as if invisible hands are strangling him. After this short introduction she leaves the stage and the dancing begins. After about half an hour the audience has to turn around. This turn does not only mean that it now faces the other side of the hall. It also implies a change of perspective at the same time linking and separating the first two parts of the piece. What happens now retroactively gives meaning to the abstract dance of the first section without explaining everything. Jone San Martin, now in a pink dress, sits on a chair and starts telling the story of her son, who was arrested because he wanted to help her daughter and her two friends, whose life was in danger after a bomb attack on a house. Slowly she spells out the story word by word, sentence by sentence, as if she herself wants to come to terms with the unspeakable that has happened. She thus underlines the fact that she is engaged in an exercise of understanding what cannot be understood and integrated into the normal way of things. Another dancer sits in front of a full clothes rack taken from the storerooms of the theatre. Matter-of-factly, Amancio Gonzales translates her words into Arabic, always changing her words slightly, subtly correcting her, so that what she says is not what he makes of it. What we hear are versions of what has happened, versions that make what has really happened impenetrable. With his hands a third dancer describes small details from five compositions. Although he regularly announces their numbers, we never get to see them, having to deduce the content from the pantomime he uses. He moves in what looks like a spider’s web of small ropes, which might just as well be the lines of perspective from the paintings made visible on stage.

The solution comes towards the end of act two when the audience leave the auditorium for the intermission. Two pictures are hung on a black wall. One is a reproduction of Lucas Cranach’s painting. The other is an enlarged press photo. Four men can be seen dragging a man away from a house that is ablaze with fire. His body is bent backwards, his face distorted in pain. In the upper right hand corner of Cranach’s painting an ominous dark formation of clouds can be seen. In the same spot on the press photo smoke curls up into the air. Five centuries after the clouds of Cranach, they have become signs of destruction caused by bomb explosions.

Dance, theatre and visual arts, movement, spoken word, gesture, and image, Forsythe works with various genres of art and their specific means. He separates them in time, giving each its own space to communicate. And yet the three sections meet in the space that separates them from each other, in the absence opening up between them. In this absence violence, pain, loss, and suffering are not represented but atmospherically suggested to us, because ultimately they are unrepresentable. They are that monstrous thing that we cannot accommodate. The insistence during the performance that everything we see or hear is a translation and thus not the thing itself, which is forever lost in the process of translation, prevents the piece from taking on a cynical or patronising attitude towards the victims of bombings, floods or earthquakes to whom the third act of Three Atmospheric Studies alludes. Once again, catastrophes are not enacted on stage. They are not mimetically reproduced by character and plot, pretending that it were possible to understand them by acting as if the pain were real. Rather than depicting people who are afraid on stage like Sasha Waltz at the Schaubühne in Berlin did in her horrible piece Gezeiten, Forsythe, however, makes the topics undergo a complicated process of translation. This translation process between photographs of violence, abstract dance movement, and spoken word always threatens to lose the actual violent act in the process. Between images, movement and language the actual events are mediatised in the double sense of the word: We in the West only hear from them via media and, they are covered up in various media formats thus becoming inaccessible maybe even to those who have actually undergone the traumatic experiences. Forsythe stages a process of not knowing, of denial and of not being able to understand rather than pretending to feel sorry for the word’s misery. Three Atmospheric Studies is a self-referential piece of dance and yet, because it reflects on its own point of view and its own materials of expression, it opens up to a world of fear.

While Forced Entertainment created a play out of foreplay, Jürgen Gosch’s production of Berlin playwright Roland Schimmelpfennig Das Reich der Tiere puts the dressing room on stage. The play deals with fear. Schimmelpfennig uses the old device of the animal fable to comment on human behaviour in globalised consumer societies and markets where employment situations become precarious, careers contingent and life in general a bumpy ride. The characters of the animals represent specific traits of human behaviour. A cast of three actors and two actresses perform in a play called Das Reich der Tiere, Animal Kingdom. For six years six or seven times a week they undergo a transformation into animals in order to perform a zebra, which is the current leader of the kingdom of animals, a lion, which wants to become king, a cat with a lot of nervous energy, a clever antelope and a Marabou Stork whose stoic character makes him the laughing stock of others. The play marks the transition of leadership from a benevolent leader like the zebra which is king because it does not kill other animals but only eats grass, to a leader like the lion which becomes king by cunning, manipulation, sexual exploitation of the antelope and sheer force. A fire breaks out and destroys most of the land. The animals have to cross the river to safe their lives. The zebra offers to take the lion across. Once on their way, they get attacked by a crocodile which gets killed by the lion. On the other side a fight ensues. The lion insists that he becomes king because he killed the crocodile. The zebra insists it remains king because it was the zebra which carried the lion across. The lion is elected leader. A fight ensues and the lion kills the zebra.

This play is framed by the actors of the animals, Frankie, Peter, Isabel, Sandra and Dirk who discuss their current situation. The production company wants to close the show and the actors, who like Frankie, the zebra, where part of the company from the very beginning, are threatened with unemployment. »They will negotiate« is one of the recurrent phrases on this level of the play. What is apparently being negotiated is not only wages but the continuation of the current show. For the theatre wants to replace it by a play called The Garden of Things, Der Garten der Dinge, which ironically looks like a McDonald’s fast food restaurant. Performing a slice of toast, a ketch-up bottle, an egg or a pepper mill for sure is no good prospect for any actor who takes him- or herself seriously. Only the zebra is clever enough to trick the agent Chris into casting him for commercials in New York, whereas the other four have to accept their new contracts in the new production. The benevolent zebra broke up solidarity with the others, stabbed them in the back, took the money and ran. The play is also a comment on the commercial theatre world of musicals like Cats or The Lion King and of economical changes that make commercial or television work for actors financially more attractive than work in serious theatre productions.

From human being to actor to animal to thing – on the scale of degradation, it seems, humanity in our current social and economical climate can sink no lower. Human beings reduced to ridiculous objects like a slice of toast become commodified objects themselves. What is then left of the human being when both the limits to animal behaviour – dog eat dog, the survival of the fittest – and thingness have become permeable? What distinguishes man from animal, a cultural divide that was fought over ever since the Middle Ages and perhaps even more so since the 18th century science freed the notion of the hybrid monster from its religious and moral context? The erectness of human beings that enables them to see the face of God, reason, the ability to control their instincts and to use them for higher social and cultural aims, consciousness or the use of language as a system of sings – the reasons very according to your profession. But is the difference really so great when over 99 percent of the human genes are the same as that of a mouse?

The play is not only a play within the play. It is also a play within a play within a theatre situation. Director Jürgen Gosch filters the meta-theatrical structure through the actual theatre situation the two plays are performed in. At the beginning, the six actors enter the auditorium and take their seats in the first row. One by one they climb the four steps onto the stage, where they take off their clothes and start to paint their naked bodies with paint. In a mixture of childlike lust and professional attitude they transform themselves into animals in front of our eyes which watch the whole thing with an increasing mixture of disgust and lust. The whole ritual takes almost half an hour. In the end, the four remaining actors bring showers on stage and wash the animals off their skins. Because they are not using animal costumes – after all, we are not watching The Lion King – but inscribe the animal nature onto their naked skins, our attention shifts. Gosch brings the dressing room, the area of retreat and security on stage to make us witnesses of the transformation. The effect is twofold. Firstly, we watch them putting on their masks as in certain Indian theatre forms, which exposes the theatrical situation. Look, we are only playing. It underlines the contract of the »as if«. Secondly, the nakedness, the time the transformation takes, as well as their stepping in and out of the stage picture from the first row actually breaks the »as if« and turns in into a real process. While on the one level we participate in the actors’ degradation by even laughing at them – after all, they are not a pretty sight with their sagging bums and beer gut bellies and look ridiculous –, on another level, we share this uneasy situation with them. They are not only an image in front of our eyes. What the staging thus does is to draw attention to the social situation which is the theatre. We are asked to share the fear both Schimmelpfennig’s play talks about and the fear the actors Ernst Stötzner, Falk Rockstroh, Wolfgang Michael and Kathrin Wehlisch may have to expose and ridicule themselves in such a way. It costs them.

There is one conclusion I would draw from my discussion of Jürgen Gosch’s production. Perhaps the theatre is also the place where we can rehearse dealing with fear and, ultimately, dying. Again and again and again. Die another day. Death is evoked and postponed with every performance. Fear is channelled, for however real the situation is, by sharing it. The actors and dancers return every night at the scene of crime to speak of the dead. There is no solution to either the play or the theatre situation. We are not told how to deal with fear. Yet, the fear that becomes exposed with the Return of the Real that makes the symbolic order collapse is at the same time transformed, because we are asked repeat it like a child playing a game, asked to repeat it in order to acknowledge it in all its disruptive and ambivalent force. We testify of it.

But – and this is my last example – what if human beings were indeed only needed to testify? In Heiner Goebbel’s most recent stage production Stifters Dinge, Stifter’s Things, which premiered at the Théâre Vidy in Lausanne in September there are no actors at all. For 70 minutes the composer and director explores a world almost entirely devoid of human beings. Where Jürgen Gosch makes us participate in the transformation of actors into animals that literally risk their skins, Goebbel’s world has no need neither for animals nor for human beings anymore. Nature as in earth and water, as in rocks and mountains, ice and tropical forests, has taken over completely. We gaze into a world where man is absent, where only things move. The atmosphere is uncanny and spooky. There are no images we can narcissistically mirror ourselves in. This is a world without men. Post human. And it looks great.

Symposium's Introduction

Introduction to the symposium
by Jean-Baptiste Joly
held on October 18, 2007

Meine Damen und Herren,

ich begrüße Sie zum Auftakt unseres Symposiums »Das Handeln mit der Angst / Dealing with Fear« und heiße Sie alle herzlich willkommen; besonders herzlich begrüße ich den Vortragenden des heutigen Abends, Prof. Dr. Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, der in seinem Festvortrag zur Eröffnung unseres Symposiums auf die Frage »Seit wann und warum fürchten wir uns vor der Zukunft?« eingehen wird. Begrüßen möchte ich auch den Juryvorsitzenden der Akademie Prof. Dr. Philip Ursprung, dem wir das Thema dieses Symposiums verdanken, die Juroren der Akademie, die mit ihrer Teilnahme an dieser Veranstaltung den Beginn eines neuen Stipendiatenjahrgangs begleiten, die Experten, die unserer Einladung gefolgt sind und morgen referieren werden, wie auch die Stipendiatinnen und Stipendiaten, die sich auf unser Thema eingelassen haben und über die Ergebnisse ihrer Arbeit unter dem Aspekt der Angst und des Umgangs mit der Angst sprechen werden.

Diese Veranstaltung ist Teil des Programms art, science & business der Akademie Schloss Solitude, das sich seit fünf Jahren vornimmt, den Dialog zwischen Wissenschaft, Wirtschaft und Kunst zu fördern. An dieser Stelle möchte ich der Landesstiftung Baden-Württemberg, der Stiftung für Kunst und Kultur der LBBW und der Landeshauptstadt Stuttgart danken, die uns bei diesem schwierigen Unterfangen vertrauen und dieses Programm finanziell großzügig unterstützen.

Vor anderthalb Jahren saßen wir zusammen, Philip Ursprung und ich, in einem Züricher Restaurant und sprachen über die Personen, die er für die Solitude-Jury berufen wollte. Die Jurorinnen und Juroren, die nun den elften Jahrgang der Akademie ausgesucht haben, werden Sie morgen als Referentinnen und Referenten erleben können, einige der Stipendiaten, die sie ausgewählt haben, werden Sie am Samstag hören. Bei unserem Gespräch ging es hauptsächlich um die Frage, die als Leitfaden die Stipendiaten und Juroren der Akademie zwei Jahre lang beschäftigen würde. Mit der Idee einer Frage an Künstler und Wissenschaftler sieht sich die Akademie Schloss Solitude in der aufklärerischen Tradition der Akademien des 18. Jahrhunderts. Damit möchte sie Debatten auslösen, die sich nicht mit der unmittelbaren Beantwortung praktischer Fragen befassen, sondern einen Raum für Reflexionen schaffen, deren Ergebnisse weder unmittelbar effizient noch spektakulär sein wollen. Dieses Symposium zum Thema »Handeln mit der Angst« gibt den Auftakt für eine Reihe von Aktivitäten, die sich in den nächsten zwei Jahren im Haus ergeben werden. Ausgehend von den Erfahrungen dieser drei Tage bis Samstagabend können dann in naher Zukunft Teilaspekte vertieft, Besonderheiten interdisziplinär angegangen werden, können Gedanken ihre eigene Form in der einen oder der anderen Disziplin finden. Dieser Prozess ist neu und es ist uns damit auch klar, dass wir hier ein gewisses Risiko eingehen. Aber es ist der Preis, den wir für die gewonnenen Erkenntnisse und ästhetischen Erfahrungen bereit sind zu zahlen.

Im Gegensatz zur Furcht, die sich artikulieren kann, weil sie sich auf definierte Bedrohungen bezieht, versteht man in der deutschen Sprache unter Angst ein diffuses Gefühl des Bedrohtseins und des Verlorenseins. Das Phänomen der Angst betrachten Psychologen als ein vegetativ-animalisches Symptom, das Tiere und Menschen vor Gefahren warnt. Dieses Bedroht- und Verlorensein, das die Angst ausmacht, besteht im Gefühl der Gefährdung des eigenen Selbst. Aber dieses Gefühl der Angst kann sich nie ganz mitteilen. Pascal hat dieses Phänomen in dem berühmten Satz ausgedrückt: »Le silence éternel de ces espaces infinis m’effraie« (das ewige Schweigen dieser unendlichen Räume erschrickt mich). Damit beschreibt er das Herumirren des Menschen in einer Welt, deren Gesetze er weder kennt noch versteht, solange er darin Gott nicht erkannt hat.

Angstsituationen oder -zustände entstehen deshalb, weil der Verängstigte nicht weiß, wovor er sich fürchten soll. Die Angst drückt in paradoxer Weise einerseits das Gefühl aus, dass da etwas ist, was einer wissen sollte und ihn bedroht; andererseits genügt diese Ahnung nicht, um sich dagegen zu wehren. Ks unaussprechbare Angst in Kafkas Prozess entsteht deshalb, weil er nicht weiß, welcher Prozess – oder gar ob überhaupt ein Prozess – gegen ihn geführt wird. Gelingt es dem Verängstigten, die Gefahr zu identifizieren, die ihn bedroht, so tritt die Furcht an die Stelle der Angst. Die Unterscheidung zwischen Angst und Furcht geht auf Kierkegaard zurück. Für ihn fallen Unwissenheit und Unschuld zusammen und produzieren nicht nur Frieden und Ruhe, sondern auch Angst. Im Gegensatz zur Angst kann die Furcht vor einer Bedrohung identifiziert werden, so dass dagegen entsprechend reagiert werden kann. Wer Angst empfindet, kann auch das fehlende Wissen über das, was da sein und ihn bedrohen könnte, durch Fantasiebilder ersetzen. Diese Bilder sind in der Regel, wie wir wissen, eher Schreckens- als Heilsvisionen. Das Schüren der Angst mit Bildern und Metaphern ist ein beliebtes Spiel der Literatur und des Films, auch der Medien übrigens.

Mit diesen wenigen Sätzen zur Frage der Angst möchte ich weniger eine Definition geben als vielmehr die Felder skizzieren, innerhalb derer sich die Teilnehmer dieses Symposiums in den nächsten zwei Tagen bewegen werden: Ob die Wahrnehmung von Risiken einer begründbaren Realität entspricht oder ob sie nicht viel eher ihre eigenen Realitäten schafft, dieses ist die Frage, auf die Prof. Dr. Ortwin Renn von der Universität Stuttgart eingehen wird. Wie kann man rational mit Bedrohungen umgehen und sie als Risiken quantifizieren, steht als Frage im Mittelpunkt der Aktivitäten einer Versicherungsgesellschaft wie der Swiss Re, deren Vertreter Dr. David N. Bresch morgen sprechen wird. Angstmomente prägen sich besonders in das Gedächtnis und drängen ins Unterbewusste, möglicherweise lässt sich das vegetativ-animalische Phänomen der Angst genetisch bedingen, so die These von Prof. Dr. Vadim Bolshakov, der morgen Nachmittag über die jüngsten Erkenntnisse der Genforschung berichten wird. Ferner: Wie werden Angstphänomene in Architektur, Film, Kunst, Design und Theater wahrgenommen, verhindert oder ausgelöst oder verstärkt? Wie nehmen sie Bezug auf die Realität, die uns umgibt? An Beispielen aus den verschiedenen Künsten, der Geschichte, der Politik und den Wissenschaften werden die Teilnehmer des Symposiums am Freitag und am Samstag in englischer Sprache referieren und diskutieren.

Heute Abend geht es mit dem Vortrag von Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht weniger um Ursachen, Bedingungen oder Mechanismen der Angst als um die Veränderung unserer Auffassung von Zeit seit dem Zweiten Weltkrieg. In der westlichen Welt wirkt sich diese veränderte Zeitauffassung drastisch auf die Vorstellung der Zukunft aus: Der Forstschrittsglaube, der Drang nach Utopie und der Wille, die Welt zu verändern und in Besitz zu nehmen, haben in der westlichen Kultur stark nachgelassen. Was übrig geblieben ist, ist eine unaussprechbare Angst vor einer Zukunft, die nur katastrophal sein kann. Mit diesem Vortrag über die Frage der Zeitlichkeit knüpft Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht an die Reihe von Symposien an, die die Akademie in den neunziger Jahren mit der Universität Stuttgart (IZKT, Prof. Dr. Gerhart Schröder) und dem Collège international de philosophie in Paris über die Metamorphosen der Zeit am Anfang der Moderne durchgeführt hat.

Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht ist sicherlich einer der meist zitierten und berühmtesten Literaturwissenschaftler unserer Zeit, Autor zahlreicher Publikationen zur Geschichte der französischen, der spanischen und der italienischen Literaturen vom Mittelalter bis zur ersten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts. Zu seinen Publikationen gehören Standardwerke für das Literaturstudium, fachspezifische Werke über die Literatur und das Theater des Mittelalters wie auch Bestseller (»Die Macht der Philologie«, 2003). Zu den Publikationen, die sich auf die Frage von Zeitkonstruktionen beziehen, zählen u. a.: »In 1926. Living on the Edge of Time« (1997), »Production of Presence« (2004). Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht ist Professor für Literatur an der Stanford University, Professeur Associé an der Université de Montreal in Kanada, Directeur associé an der EHESS in Paris, Professeur attaché au Collège de France (für mich als Franzose bleibt dies das Mekka des Denkens ...), ebenfalls in Paris. Herr Prof. Gumbrecht, es ist uns eine große Freude und auch eine Ehre, Sie als Vortragenden heute Abend in der Akademie Schloss Solitude hören zu dürfen. Sie haben das Wort.