at the LAB12 ASFA, Athens School of Fine Arts, Kolokotroni 4, Athens
The title “Welt ohne Außen”, which was invented for an exhibition developed in Berlin’s Gropiusbau, refers to a concept and an experience of a situation that is not characterized by distance and juxtaposition, but by an experience of immersion and a situation at the center of the action. Immersive art concepts often take the place of dialectical mediation concepts that shape our logic of viewing through the classical institutions because they subdivide the world into objects and subjects, a concept of inclusion, feedback, and reciprocal interpenetration. What happens when things in an exhibition are no longer certain, when the theater is no longer about conflict and resolution, cause and effect, but the discovery of a landscape of simultaneously existing possibilities and particles of a narrative scattered in space? What does the concept of immersion mean for the format of the exhibition and performance? How does it change the way an institution works and the demands on its infrastructure? How does it change the relationship between work and format? And what comes into view when the phenomenon “immersion” is understood not only as an aesthetic, but also as a social and spiritual phenomenon and is artistically examined?
The workshop focuses on the term “immersion” and the exhibition projects “Gropiusbau 2018″ by Philippe Parreno and “Welt ohne Außen”, curated by Tino Sehgal and Thomas Oberender. In addition, the workshop gives an overview of the concept and development of the project over four years. “Immersion” is a larger project that has been investigating the theme of limiting dissolution in new concepts for the forms of presentation and visual arts for three years and exploring social and spiritual movements as well. In recent years the project has organized large immersive theater productions, exhibitions and congresses and developed some new formats. The project “The New Infinity” was founded to develop the planetary infrastructure of the world for the work of contemporary artists, who get commissioned for 2 years to develop new works for the Fulldome. The artists are supported technically in cooperation with the Planetarium Hamburg and coached by experts. Our belief is that planetariums are the most appropriate places to collectively experience the immersive artwork of the digital age.
Thomas Oberender, born in 1966 in Jena, is an author and curator. Since 2011 he has been the Artistic and Managing Director of Berliner Festspiele / Gropiusbau. He was the founder of several new formats for perfomance, literature and cultural programmes, and created timebased exhibitions. From 2006–2011 he was Director of Drama at the Salzburg Festival, after that he was leading dramaturg of the Schauspiel Bochum and Co-Director of the Schauspielhaus in Zurich. He submitted his doctoral thesis on Botho Strauß and co-founded and named the author’s collective Theater Neuen Typs. He has written essays, theater and literature reviews and is currently working as Artistic Director of the transmedial programme “Immersion“, that also opens planetariums as spaces for artists of the digital age.