Contents:

1. Monday – Artist Discussion -- Peter Zorn -- 09.15.03 @ 7:30
2. some links and info on Peter Zorn/Werkleitz:
3. The last Werkleitz Biennal "Zugewinngemeinschaft":

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1. Monday – Artist Discussion -- Peter Zorn -- 09.15.03 @ 7:30

Peter Zorn
is film maker and media art curator. He founded the Werkleitz Society, the
Centre for Artistic Visual Media in Saxony-Anhalt, from 1994 to 2000 he
headed the Werkleitz Biennal

He will be talking about the Werkleitz collective as well as other media
projects he's involved with.

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2. some links and info on Peter Zorn/Werkleitz:

The Wild East: An Interview with Peter Zorn, Chair of the Werkleitz
Gesellschaft
(copy and paste the following link, if does not take you automatically)

http://mfj-online.org/journalPages/MFJ30,31/PChodorovWild.html

general info on werkleitz:
http://www.werkleitz.de/zkb/index_e.html

'work' & werkleitz
http://www.werkleitz.de/events/biennale2000/E/texte/zorn.html

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3. The last Werkleitz Biennal "Zugewinngemeinschaft":

Curated by a team of 12 artists and executives this years biennial is set to
focus on the roots of apartheid as a broad-based and subtle phenomenon and
to look at how separate identities are coined culturally, socially and
politically, be it on the basis of colour, sex and class, or on the basis of
education, wealth and profession. How do such factors define and reinforce
the notion of 'they' on the one hand, and 'we' on the other? A
confrontation with the architecture of divisiveness and its possible
antidotes, even if these be utopian in nature, will be at the heart of the
5th Werkleitz Biennial....

The point of departure and focus for the curatorial conception of the 5th
Werkleitz Biennial is the observation of a large number of conflict lines
concomitant with practices of insulation, stigmatization or dissociation.
These conflicts show clearly how social differences continue to be measured
in terms of skin color, national affiliation and language, gender and
sexuality, levels of education and affluence, and profession. Individuals
are made to feel these differences in various ways: for example, as racially
motivated physical assaults; as deportation resulting from state immigration
policies; as the sycophancy of multi-cultural capitalism; or as inferior
working conditions.

Where do such hierarchically organized social formations come from? Is
oppression perhaps something that is also desired - as Rainer Werner
Fassbinder seems to suggest in his film "Whity" (1970), using the example of
a non-white domestic servant - or does it rather arise as a result of
externally imposed role ascriptions: i.e., as cultural constructions of a
dominant group? And in what way do these ascriptions correspond to the
political and economic interests of neo-liberal politics? The 5th Werkleitz
Biennial aims to thematize state architecture, cultural constructs,
capitalistic economy, and desire as social powers that, in these politics of
difference, partly contradict, and partly reinforce one another. On the one
hand, the productivity and the consequences of these differences will be
closely examined, and, on the other, an attempt will be made, in a test
situation, to annul them by means of contrary models.

The name selected for the 5th Werkleitz Biennial, >Zugewinngemeinschaft<
("Community of Surplus"), has a number of various connotations related to
the field of insulations, interests, and desires. In German marital law,
"Zugewinngemeinschaft" firstly means the separation of property: if a
marital partnership is dissolved, only the material assets obtained as added
value in the course of the alliance are divided up beween the parties
involved - previous assets and debts remain tied to the respective person
concerned. This legislation assumed that in each family there is, on the one
hand, a bread-winner and, on the other, a partner who looks after the
household and raises the children in an unpaid capacity, and is thus
financially dependent.

The term "Zugewinngemeinschaft" can, however, also be understood in a much
more far-reaching sense: if it is applied to a society that in many regards
defines itself through added value (or is focused on it) and tends to want
to exclude any other obligations, other political circumstances come into
view. One could call a society a "Zugewinngemeinschaft" if its immigration
policies favor immigration that promises gain: in other words, more people
"who are of use to us, and fewer who use us." "Zugewinngemeinschaft" can
also mean - very much in the spirit of its legal meaning in marital law - a
society that, by signing a new contract, fixes a "zero base" and, in so
doing, disencumbers itself of its previous history. The term
"Zugewinngemeinschaft" could also be used for a society that claims to be
multi-cultural as long as its own culture is being enriched in the fields of
business, cinema or literature by the outstanding efforts of people - mostly
men - of non-German descent, but behaves repressively as soon as its own
culture and this culture's predominance are called into question. This was
shown in the autumn of 2000 by the calls for a German "Leitkultur"
("dominant culture"), and in the debates that soon followed about the
integration of non-German people. Those people who call for more xenophilia,
while emphasizing the exoticism of the "others" instead of granting them
normality, would also seem to be intent on added value.

A curating team of 12 artists and executives began the work of organizing
the 5th Werkleitz Biennial >Zugewinngemeinschaft< in July, 2001: Jochen
Becker (Berlin), Reinhild Benning (Berlin), Robin Curtis (Berlin), Micz Flor
(Berlin), Stephan Geene (Berlin), Merle Kröger (Berlin), Brigitta Kuster
(Berlin/Basel), Renate Lorenz (Berlin), Philip Scheffner (Berlin), Dierk
Schmidt (Berlin), Stefanie Sembill (Rostock) and Gerhard Wissner (Kassel).
This team has chosen three 'objects' that will be used to create a
metaphorical frame of reference for the 5th Werkleitz Biennial: a
structuring field to which people can react. The 'objects' act as a source
of impetus and materials for reflecting on culture and history - it may be
that various Biennial contributions in the summer of 2002 will be readable
as cover versions or reinterpretations of particular elements or motifs
coming from these 'objects'.

The first object chosen was the relatively unknown film "Whity" by Rainer
Werner Fassbinder (Germany, 1970, 95 min.) - a sort of "Western with
weltschmerz" (Chuck Stephens), which is described as follows by the "Lexikon
des internationalen Films (200/2001)":

"1878, somewhere in the West of the United States. In a mausoleum-like
mansion resides the Nicholson family: the landowner Ben Nicholson (Ron
Randell), his nymphomaniac second wife Katherine (Katrin Schaake), and two
sons from his first marriage, the homosexual Frank (Ulli Lommel) and the
mentally ill Davy (Harry Baer). The Nicholson's obsequious servant is the
negro Whity (Günther Kaufmann), an illegitimate son of Ben. He only gains
self-confidence when, one after the other, several members of the family ask
him to kill other family members. Whity carries out the sentence that the
Nicholsons have long since pronounced on themselves."

Although the servant of the Nicholson family - in the film his real name is
Samuel King - is the (unacknowledged) son of the head of the household, and
thus also a Nicholson, he is not a "white," but merely a "whity." His
mother, who is also employed in the house as a cook, uses his name with
contempt, feeling he is someone who is currying favor with his very
oppressors. Whity is an object of desire for all members of the family
(female and male), not only in a sexual regard, but also as a potential
killer. Nevertheless, Whity loves his family - in his submission, he seems
to be the only "normal character."

Fassbinder's films clearly show the nearly unlimited autonomy of filmmakers
back then, something today's "German film" can only dream of. Productions
like this were only possible in those days because the basic mood of the
1970s demanded independent, political films - also in the service of an
enlightened West German identity. Fassbinder exploited this demand (and the
associated acceptance of the filmmaker's autonomy) to an extreme, touching
upon themes ignored up to then, such as the repression of homosexuality.
Many of Fassbinder's films, including "Whity", not only show a skeptical
attitude towards the politicization of 1968, but also have a natural way of
either leaving sexual clichés behind them, or pushing them to the limit.
They also show Fassbinder's preoccupation with the then virulent "German
question" - in an indirect and inoffensive fashion, however. At the 5th
Werkleitz Biennial >Zugewinngemeinschaft< one of the questions raised will
be about how these aspects of the 70s can be read in relation to today's
circumstances, and how things stood with the contemporaneous gestures of
East German dissidents.

The second object chosen was the '10th World Festival of Youth and Students'
in Berlin (1973). This was originally a meeting for the young East Germans
who had rebuilt the stadium in Chauseestrasse in Berlin. The third and then
the tenth 'World Festival' were once described by Andreas Hoffmann as
follows:

"Two million visitors from 104 countries have stopped by in Berlin in these
two weeks in August. The forests of flags, the posters, cheers and
march-pasts in front of the gentlemen on the VIP rostrum gave some idea of
what sort of festivities still awaited the citizens. And, nonetheless, these
were festive, cheerful days: a success for East Germany, whose charisma in
those days Germany's sober West could do little to match. How the picture
had changed 22 years later, at the end of July and beginning of August,
1973: the World Festival of Youth, this time the 10th, was held again;
again, it began on the oval in Chausseestrasse, renamed the "Stadium of
World Youth" (the former namesake, the head of state, died during the
Festival). Where did the participants come from? From Poland, where martial
law prevailed, from Czechoslovakia, the country of the faded spring,
probably from defoliated Vietnam as well, and Chile, but not from the gulags
of Sibiria. Those people who were not allowed to enter Berlin during the
Festival were also excluded. And just behind the stadium ran the Wall,
barely an anti-fascist protective wall, but rather an avalanche barrier
against the prosperity divide." (from: Verschwundene Orte, TRANSIT Verlag).

From today's point of view, the photos and documents from the '10th World
Festival of Youth and Students' convey an astonishing picture in many
regards. For example, they show Erich Honecker standing on the stage next to
the Black Panther activist and auratic pop resistance icon Angela Davis.
Both of them gave speeches that must have barely differed from one another
in content, and sent the same messages of greeting to all freedom movements
in the world. And yet these two figures were diametrically opposed to one
another, one standing for "internationalism from below" and the other for
"internationalism from above." The World Festival of 1973 was an exciting
spectacle and, above all, one full of contrasts: on the one hand, there were
disciplined mass acrobatics in the sports arena in uniform costumes - groups
of people turned into a figure, a body or a machine that allowed no trace of
difference. On the other, at the fringes of the event, thousands of people
from very different countries met up in a hippy-like, unregulated
atmosphere. Formalized, state-organized internationalism was thus
accompanied by an informal, transnational get-together that could perhaps be
called a quasi-revolutionary state of emergency. Many participants in the
World Festival at that time probably still sincerely believed in the
development of a form of communism that would differ both from a
capitalistic society, and the existing socialism of East Germany.

What emerges from the associative combination of Fassbinder's "Whity" and
this World Festival? The early seventies were a time in which foreign
workers were still able to be localized as the proletariat of neighboring
countries, and the socialist countries and their political aims still
offered an alternative to the West in many regards - economically as well.
Whereas the World Festival stood for the state-organized version of
internationalism and proclaimed this as a gesture of all-encompassing mass
support, "Whity" gives a retrospective and basically pessimistic view of
political attempts at emancipation. Fassbinder's films stood above all for
the impossibility of identificational speech; that is, for cinematic
utterances concerning the inability to find an appropriate language with
regard to political context. Would it be possible to reactivate these two
sides of a mood prevalent in the 1970s in order to create new political
utopias (or aims)? At the 5th Werkleitz Biennial >Zugewinngemeinschaft< the
question will also be posed about how the relationship used to be between
the belief in internationalism and the wall separating the two Germanies (or
other borders, non-geographical ones as well) - and what it is like today.
In contrast to the other two 'objects', the third point of reference chosen
- the statement or question "Open Borders?" - is an indirect element, one
that may bring to mind concrete political contexts of the present day: the
borders between "Germans" and immigrants, the anti-Islamism that is to be
feared following September 2001, the tightening of domestic policy that has
occurred since then, xenophobia, or the perspective of a new awareness of
nationality perhaps becoming the focus of the election campaign in 2002,
something which, it is to be feared, could mean the exclusion of
non-Germans. "Open Borders?" can refer to national borders, but also to
borders between different milieus, sexes, national affiliations, languages,
levels of education and affluence, and profession. Where did the history of
each of these borders begin? Within the context of the presentation of the
5th Werkleitz Biennial >Zugewinngemeinschaft<, this 'object' could also mean
the borders of a cultural intervention.