Dictionary of War

Bang! Bang!

2008-03-20T17:12+00:00

[Albert Heta] Kosovar Pavilion Venice Biennial 2005, did not confuse only those who cannot distinguish what is an Albanian and what is a Kosovar pavilion, artist or identity but seemingly also players of the great structure of the ancient contemporary art power elite that eventually accepted apologies by the used instrument of this work (e-flux) for challenging their Biennale with a tool of their own system and continued to live on in harmony as nothing had happened in the West (Sunday, color video, 3.01 min.). These works stand and mark a time and a context that is full of Bang! Bang! (Bang! Bang!, color video, 2.20 min.).

Without Title

2008-01-31T13:56+00:00

[Muha Blackstazy] For more than 10 years, Muha writes lyrics that are very much connected with everyday life of the Roma community in Novi Sad, and turns them into hip-hop songs. In 2007 he made his first professional studio recordings; the album “Crni smo mi” (“We are Black”) was released in July and promoted at the EXIT Festival (MTV Movement campaign).

Kljuc

2008-01-31T13:38+00:00

[Teofil Pancic] A novel... The last night I slept at home was the night of December 29th, 1991. After that night I have been going to bed and been waking up in many other places, of which at least one I could , with a lifelong engrafted caution, even call my home, but no, never again after that night have I slept at home, I was never at home at all, nor I will ever be at home again, even if I would go back to that place, the place where the home was. The place, actually, still exists: it was not blown up by a grenade, bomb, dinamite or any kind of explosives, God forbid, we are all civilized people, that house, building actually, still lastingly exists in the world, there it is exactly where it has always been, now on the non-existing address...

Kosovo and corruption

2008-01-31T13:25+00:00

[Verica Barac] How did these two subjects come together, when it was perfectly clear that we have learned this lesson seven years ago - existential problems of the citizens and their families cannot be resolved by resorting to nationalism? The fact that proves that we knew this back then are the citizens who voted for democratic options in 2000 and left nationalist parties without support. Advocating for democratic changes and democratic options secured these parties a 2/3 majority in the parliament - citizens made it possible for the government to start radical changes of the society, without a serious threat of the old regime, and above all to reject the old ways of governance. The government had to change in order to be able to change the others. It couldn't transfer to the others what it did not have in the beginning. Above all, goverment couldn't fight corruption if corruption was in the foundation of its governance, and because of that the most prominent slogans of that time were about the transparency of the government, i.e., the way of governance that allowed citizens to control and waive corruption.

Thorn

2008-01-31T13:06+00:00

[Bojan Djordjev] Inscenation of the novel by Ivana Sajko "Rio Bar", which is an intimate history of the war in Croatia narrated in eight monologs of a certain girl in a wedding dress. In this quoted excerpt, described metamorphosis into a "women-thorn" represents basis of the concept THORN – practical human nature.

Vae Victis

2008-01-31T12:47+00:00

[Slavko Bogdanovic] Prologue: you are in darkness of a public room in novi sad, serbia. it is the beginning of what is called new millennium. IMAGINE a time line emerging marking origin and development of the law concepts of war, determining destiny of individuals, nowadays we call them civilians. IMAGINE you are looking into the maelstrom of humanity & civilization, detected by a plummet hanged on your mental thread, rolling off down into the depth of times immemorial, two key words you are looking for in the past: war & civilians [12 letters only]. IMAGINE you are in rome It is the year 390 BC, the future eternal city is conquered by the gallic victor brennus romans must deliver gold as set in terms of peace arrangement, they complain that gauls use excessive weights in measuring gold, then brennus added his sword among weights, exclaiming: VAE VICTIS.

NSK Garda

2008-01-31T12:21+00:00

[Irwin] NSK Garda refers to the project in which the slovenian art group Irwin collaborates with various European armies. In these actions soldiers, with Malevich's cross on their sleeves, raise and guard the flag of the NSK State in Time. In that sense it is not really a performance but more some sort of tableau vivant of the real army wearing a Malevich cross. Art society and army society are social structures that are usually totally opposite to each other and very rarely mix. With this action Irwin is organizing this encounter. As an art state NSK is in fact in parasitic relation with other, normal states and in this project this is made visible. Dusan Mandic, member of IRWIN, intoduces the recent performance in Kosovo.

Wall

2008-01-31T03:50+00:00

[Metahaven] The wall that separates 'us' from 'them', friend from enemy, organizes the opposition of imaginations. A conflict (or war) of projections, virtual placeholders, where the enemy is designed as an image that will never actualize. But the consequences of the wall are real; information which would allow us to find out whether our outrageous ideas about others hold any truth, is being managed and reduced to the level of images in emerging ‘zero friction zones’; public space, in every aspect, is being reshaped under the imagined threat from the opposite side of the wall. This lecture will describe the wall as an imaginary piece of architecture and rhetorical device from which it is possible to observe conflicts carried out through images. Those conflicts include well-known rhetorical oppositions like Team B versus the 'Soviet threat', the Neocons versus the Axis of Evil, and European 'Leitkultur' versus radical Islam. This talk will address how many simultaneous oppositions are sustained by the wall and how ultimately the wall even separates 'us' from 'us'.

Torture, terror, tranquility

2008-01-31T02:59+00:00

[Martha Rosler] Martha Rosler reads from her essay accompanying the re-emergence unchanged of her 1983 videotape A Simple Case for Torture, or How to Sleep at Night, accompanied by a screen saver of images on her computer.

Thanksgiving

2008-01-31T02:23+00:00

[Vesna Kesic] In early 1991, when Croatia received the first international recognitions of its statehood, the euphoria was enormous. Such were the paradoxes of the situation. While the third of the country was yet to feel the war casualties, the state television launched a trashy song "Danke Deutschland" as a mark of gratitude to the first state that gave the recognition. The author researches how the phrase Danke Deutschland changed its meaning through the time, what does it mean today in different sets of memory. The concept consists of a video clip and narration.

Terrorism

2008-01-31T02:03+00:00

[Volker Eick] The term ›terrorism‹ comes from the Latin word terrere, ›to frighten‹ via the French word terrorisme. The first use of the word ›terrorism‹ referred to state rule by terror. It was coined in the years after the French Revolution – the so-called Reign of Terror – and identified terror as an instrument of state power. Therefore, ›terrorism‹ became popular between 1793 and 1795 during the regime de la terreur. It was the French Revolution leader Robespierre who – just shortly before he himself was killed by his ›Madame Guillotine‹ – proclaimed in 1794: »Terror is nothing other than justice, prompt, severe, inflexible; it is therefore an emanation of virtue; it is not so much a special principle as it is a consequence of the general principle of democracy applied to our country's most urgent needs.« ›Terrorism‹ thus refers to state action. In the interim, with the generalization of the bourgeois national state since the eighteenth century, the power of states and of ruling class ideologies have successfully deflected and redefined terrorism as first and foremost an instrument of anti-state power. Generally speaking, the term is meant to de-legitimize any kind of resistance. A 1988 study by the US Army found 109 definitions of ›terrorism‹ that covered a total of 22 different definitional elements. As the only general characteristic generally agreed upon is that ›terrorism‹ involves violence and the threat of violence, many scholars avoid using this term – except those who are interested in using it for political, ideological and economic reasons. Among these more than hundred definitions, not all recognize the possibility of the legitimate use of violence by civilians against an invader in an occupied country or against ›their‹ government, and would thus label all resistance movements as ›terrorist‹ groups. Ultimately, the distinction is a political judgment. The paper will guide us through its controversial meanings.

Retro-Massmedia Shockwaves & Human Membranes

2008-01-31T01:42+00:00

[Hans Bernhard] Embeded Journalism vs. Self-organized Multitude of Observation. The current conflict situation in Kenya reflects once again a critical point in our retro-mass media society. The information from inside the country is not valid, the information going to the "world" is twisted to perversion through embedded journalism, dubious sources and combustion point monitoring. The conflict existed before and will exist after the mass media storm, the bloodshet happens within very limited boundaries is mapped on top of the country as a whole - and then broadcast to the world under the assumption of mass media without information. This problem is contraindicated and reflected through the project SLUM-TV - a counter-headlining empowerment of cultural selforganization. SLUM-TV documents the lives of the people in Mathare (500.000 people slum in Nairobi) and reevaluates these lives and their surroundings through the eye of the camera. The local partners film and document their own existence and the social, political and military aspects of living inside such a melting pot. The small movies (newsreels) are put together and broadcast in public places exclusively inside Mathare, reaching the local audience through a variety of self-established cinemas (pirate cinemas reaching very large audiences). Published online, the newsreels plus written reports reach the global audience. The presentation will briefly introduce SLUM-TV and will document the current situation in Kenya (Mathare-Slum) via the performance of texts written and blogged by local SLUM-TV members.

Renaming machine

2008-01-31T01:25+00:00

[Suzana Milevska] Renaming Machine is a war concept that could be interpreted as a subtle but powerful strategy for erasing ethnic, cultural or gender identity without using any aggression or causing any direct material damage. It functions as a conceptual weapon of destruction, as a kind of wage war or a contest between the old and new identity layer. However, renaming simultaneously adds and multiplies a new layer of identity each time it erases one, because the names could be neither stolen nor completely erased: the best example of accumulation by dispossession in David Harvey’s terms. Moreover, according to Jacques Derrida giving names is also an act of love. RM attempts to point to the arbitrariness and contingency of representation that accompany the use of names and to raise the discussion about the invisible ideological patterns of “desiring renaming machine” standing behind the power regimes of representation while dispossessing and giving names. In my presentation I want to focus on the exploration of this clandestine ambivalence within the renaming as a juxtaposition of various identities. It is extremely important to reflect the complex entanglements of the political and cultural processes of renaming and the urgent need for questioning how these processes and patterns influenced the construction and destabilisation of national, cultural and personal identity during the last two decades within the Balkan region. I aim to encompass various art and cultural phenomena attached to renaming in order to explore the scale to which renaming affects visual culture and transgresses cultural identities and subjectivities in the Balkans. Renaming Machine was specifically motivated by the unique and absurd outwitting between Greece and Macedonia about the right to use the name “Macedonia.” This conflict resulted with exhausting processes of negotiations that still trouble the stability of the region. Regardless all paradoxes this “war of names” became an international precedent and the best example that names are overrated as identity insignia and “omen.”

Reconstruction

2008-01-31T00:47+00:00

[Andrea Kuluncic] Reconstruction will consist of screening of two videos: “A Reconstruction of an Unimportant Day in Our History” and “A Reconstruction of an Important Day in Our History”, by the artist. First video shows a day in a life of Josip Broz Tito during his stay in country side, in the castle. Castle is also known under the name of „Tito's Castle“. Tito as passionate hunter, often stayed in the Castle hunting wild animals, alone, with his wife Jovanka (who was as well passionate hunter) or with eminent foreign statesmen. Second video reconstructs the meeting of the two presidents: Croatian, Franjo Tuđman and Serbian, Slobodan Milošević. The meeting was held on April 15th, 1991 in Tikveš Castle. First armed conflicts broke out in the region of Slavonia in the beginning of May, 15 to 20 days after that meeting. War reached Tikveš in the beginning of June. For a period of time Castle was used as a headquarters of Arkan's paramilitary group.

Performing Posses

2008-01-31T00:22+00:00

[Gini Mueller] Politics, Activism and not at least performative potentials meet in the term “Posse“ as conflictive spaces of emancipatory wars against border- and bio-regimes. In their well known analyses of “Empire“ Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt describe “Posse“ from the latin term as a verb of power, an activity, which refers to the political power and subjectivity of the multitude: Posse is what a mind and a body can do. In a wider context the word also expresses in english the branding of a gang or clique, and in german it's also the theatre-term for a scetch or form of comedy. In the spectacular fields of staged WTO/WEF/G8 Summits, many protest forms of Activism develop techniques of resistance, using Media, Theatre, and Art-tools, and lots of performative and subversive “Posse-Actors“ can be found in the last years: like the Rebel Clown Army, PublixTheatreCaravan, Tutte Bianche, Pink Block, noborder-Activism etc. Their methods of acting provoced in special moments of summit-spectacles the governmental techniques of repressive (police-)representations. Performing Posses refer in this sense more to Slogans like „Another war is possible!“ (noborderlab2003). Their forms of „wargames“ link struggles of social movements with a post-Brechtian and “minor“-acting gestures together.

National Mythomania

2008-01-30T23:32+00:00

[Zelimir Zilnik] Screening of the inserts from Žilnik's movies: OLD TIMER (1988), TITO'S SECOND TIME AMONG THE SERBS (1994), EUROPE NEXT DOOR (2005) and WILD CAPITALISM (2008). Inserts are illustrating thesis how former Yugoslav political elite since the middle of the 1980s, after longterm conflict around Tito's inheritor and heritage, dismissed internationalism and self-management as axioms of the state's foundaments. Engineering of tribalizing of people was put in motion, together with ideology of nationalistic mythomanie and re-sentiments. In difference to the other former socialistic states, this enabled ten more years of plunder of the common goods, to the feudalized and comminuted governing elites of Yugoslavia. Newly produced class posses goods, but it ruined the state and economy, and the people are getting poor, unemployed, sick or leaving the country. New capitalists trends, especially through the example of Serbia, Macedonia, Bosnia and Montenegro, are bringing over again the spirit of fatalism to the Balkan, which reminds us to the last decades of reign of Ottoman Empire. Political and cultural discourse in Serbia is drowned in the Kosovo myth. It is substitution for both past and the future, including the real state. Does in 2008 political class teleports Serbia to year 1808?

Na tragu mitologije

2008-01-30T23:04+00:00

[Jovan Divjak] Remotely contributed concept by Jovan Divjak, former general in the Bosnian army during the 1992-1995 Bosnian War. He was the highest ranking ethnic Serb in the army and one of its most educated and experienced officers. On April 8th, 1992, Divjak became Deputy Commander of BiH's Territorial Defense forces and a month later oversaw the defence of Sarajevo from a major JNA attack. In the video, he first explains that the reason why he can not be physically present at the DICTIONARY OF WAR is that government of Republika Srpska (Serbian territory in Bosnia) finds him, among ten other people, responsible for the events on May the 3rd 1992 in Sarajevo. He is found responsible by the government of Republika Srpska for deaths of the soldiers when the units of Territorial Defense of city of Sarajevo attacked one unit of JNA-Yugoslav army. Jovan Divjak talks about constant mythologization as a tool for hegemony of one nationality over the others, which according to him, could lead and led to a bloodshed. As Serb, he is strongly criticizing Serbian nationalism and hegemony in Bosnia, as well as Croatian and Bosnian attempts towards mythologization.

Ghetto Ambient

2008-01-30T22:18+00:00

[Sebastian Meissner] Ghetto Ambient explores urban and rural environments frequently described as “non-places”. Expanding common definitions, which regards such places with limited presence of identity, social relations and history, this project is focusing on "places at the edge of the globalized world" (Spex), where silent and barely visible wars are fought: struggle for economical domination in the Barents (RUS/NO/FIN), new representations of (virtual) Jewishness in Crakovian district of Kazimierz (PL), housing struggle on the outskirts of Algiers (AL), abandoned agricultural and touristic resorts in the Judea desert (IL) and many other places. Meissner uses processed photographic material collected on various geographic locations dissecting it into fragments and re-arranging it to a highly dramatic fictional movie. Moving slowly from one geographic location to another, each sequence is build with “an acute sense of spatial composition and narrative structure which is drawing the listener into a captivating aural tale” (All Music).

Eating Rawness

2008-01-30T21:10+00:00

[Jean Mathee] “Man tries to satisfy his need for aggresion at the expense of his neighbour, to exploit his work without compensation, to use him sexually without his consent, to appropriate his goods, to humiliate him, to inflict suffering on him, to torture and kill him”. (Feud); To find the path of desire is to encounter on routethe bad character of the drives, settled at the heart of all subjects who have to recognise it. Who am I? “You are the waste that fails in the world through the devil's anus.” (Martin Luther); Radical forms of sublimation are attempts to confront and transform the bad character of the drives, salvation holds on by a thread.

Digital Despair

2008-01-30T20:40+00:00

[Geert Lovink] The war in Iraq, from 2003 to the present, is the first war covered by bloggers. Salam Pax caused a stir by reporting online the last months of the Sadam Hussein regime and the US invasion. During the short summer of media freedom (2003-2004) Iraqi weblogs popped up in great numbers. Four years later we find ourselves in midst of a pool of 'digital despair'. Most bloggers have left the country and report from Damascus, Amman or London. Humor and irony have vanished. Some became news professionals, others turned silent. How are modern communication technologies such a blogs used to express emotions about the loss and exile? The tragic condition of the Iraqi blogosphere is used as a case study to investigate blogs as online diaries. Rather than promoting 'citizen journalism', I analyse blogs as 'technologies of the self' (Foucault).

Counter imaging

2008-01-30T20:17+00:00

[Erden Kosova] After a period of relative normalisation, the politics within the Republic of Turkey has been drifted again into serious conflict. The rise of the governing party, which has its roots from the Islamic movement and which tries now to fuse cultural conservatism with rampant neo-liberalism, has disconcerted the established actors of the regime (army, bureaucracy and the urban bourgeoise) and the urban middle class in the West of the country which feels threatened by the heedless nouveau riche emerging from the conservative provinces. The looming threat of having another military coup was evaded by the landslide election victory of the governing party. The nationalist discourse recovered from the bitter defeat when the Kurdish separatist army decided to resume armed struggle and inflicted serious casualties to the Turkish army. Along the rise of the political tension, the contemporary art scene in Istanbul has experienced a considerable institutionalisation reinforced by the sudden interest of the most prominent bourgeois families and financial corporates into the field. The art practice which has defined itself trough anti-statist, anti-militarist and anti-nationalist stance encountered a bitter dilemma. A strand within these artists surrendered to the recuperative frameworks of the new institutions whereas another strand tried to radicalise it political edge, to the extent of deciding to switch occasionally into anonymous visual production.

Collection

2008-01-30T19:54+00:00

[Nebojsa Milikic] The guided tour through an art-collection assembled in the period between 1986/7-1996/7, which is the period of the outset and ongoing of wars in Yugoslavia. How social and political agendas were absorbed or radiated through the process of selection - as seen in the content and concept of works. Which ideological and class positioning of the collectioner could generate motives, guide decisions or get blended into todays appearance of the collection.

Collaboration

2008-01-30T19:33+00:00

[Galit Eilat] "Collaboration" is a structure, where two or more people work together toward a shared aim―typically for an intellectual or cultural project that is creative in nature. Yet, "Collaboration" acquires a very negative meaning as referring to persons or a groups which help an occupier or enemy of their country. What are the benefits and dangers of cultural collaborative projects between Palestinians and Israelis when any kind of collaborative structure is acknowledged as collaboration with the enemy?

Civil war (A quiet)

2008-01-30T19:16+00:00

[Thomas Campbell] Over the last fifteen years, many parts of the former Soviet Union have been devastated by civil war and other disruptive armed conflicts. Despite this glaring fact, it has often been stated that the break-up of the Soviet Union was a remarkably "bloodless" affair. In a major Russian city like Saint Petersburg, which has seemingly been far from the frontlines in any of these wars, the economic stagnation and chaotic political scene of the eighties and nineties have given way to what the city's current governor calls "aggressive development" and to an apparently well-fed political apathy amongst the previously engaged populace. Here, then, we see the exact opposite of anything resembling civil war -- a stable (albeit dull) civil peace. But what if this peace is, in fact, founded on a "quiet" civil war that has been going on for the past decade -- a war that in many ways has been just as devastating for the "losing" party as the hot civil wars fought in the former Soviet hinterlands? How can we delineate the frontline in this quiet civil war? How do we identify its victims? Its victors? How is it connected to the "real" wars in the former Soviet Union and former Yugoslavia? And what does it have to do with an American band called Beirut and an unhappy Russian girl named Masha?

Exergue

2008-01-30T18:51+00:00

[Florian Schneider] "The necessity of not having control over language, of being a foreigner in one's own tongue in order to draw speech to oneself and 'bring something incomprehensible into the world.'" I chose a quote of a quote as the exergue i would like to put in the beginning of the 5th edition of the "Dictionary of war". The exergue is taken from Deleuze and Guattari's "Mille Plateux" but itself it is quoting the german poet, dramatist and writer Heinrich von Kleist: It is a close reading of Kleists famous text "On the Gradual Formation of Ideas in Speech" ("Über die allmächliche Verfertigung der Gedanken beim Reden"), in which Kleist denounces the central interiority of the concept as a means of control--the control of speech, of language, but also of affects, circumstances and even chance.

Home front

2007-02-28T13:59+00:00

[Michalis Pichler], Saturday, February 24th, 2007, 15:00 - 15:30 God Bless America EXTRA CHEESE / SAUSAGE / MUSHROOM / PEPPERONI / CB/HAM / BLACK OLIVES / BEEF / ONIONS / SPECIAL CUSTOMER

War, Nuclear - Darius James & Quio

2007-02-28T10:21+00:00

... somehow a remake of Sun Ra's Nuclear War from 1982

Untermensch im Osten

2007-02-28T10:20+00:00

[Peter Jahn], Saturday, February 24th, 2007, 21:30 - 22:00 Der Krieg im Osten 1941-1945, der mehr als 30 Millionen Menschen das Leben kostete, sprengte alle Grenzen zwischen „erlaubtem“ Töten feindlicher Soldaten im Kampf und dem Mord an Gefangenen und Zivilisten. „Zig Millionen“ zivile Opfer sah schon die deutsche Planung vor, die folgende Kriegsrealität war der Planung adäquat. Unter den Faktoren, die einen derart enthemmten Krieg möglich machten, wird hier das deutsche Feindbild des slawischen Untermenschen thematisiert: Inhalt, Kontext, Funktion, Tradition.

Stance

2007-02-28T10:19+00:00

[Khalo Matabane], Saturday, February 24th, 2007, 21:00 - 21:30
.... to talk about a filmmaker taking a stance

Safe Distance

2007-02-28T10:18+00:00

[kuda.org], Saturday, February 24th, 2007, 20:30 - 21:00 Safe Distance is video that was recorded during NATO air strikes against FR Yugoslavia. Videotape shows electronic cockpit of the US Air Force plane. There were 4 airplanes flying from NATO-base from Italy to destination in Yugoslavia. Mission objective was to bomb several targets in the area around city of Novi Sad. On the way back, after mission was completed, plane was shot. Tape (Sony Video 8) was found near crashed plane in Fruska Gora mountain in Srem region. It shows electronic cockpit with basic graphical interface and voice communication between pilots. Videotape is a regular document of flight used by command structures to analyze its efficiency and success after very mission. Tape presents these last moments before plain was crashed.

Resist, Refuse, Rebel

2007-02-28T10:15+00:00

[Rimini Protokoll], Saturday, February 24th, 2007, 20:00 - 20:30 The two Vietnam Veterans and Anti-War activists Darnell Stephen Summers and Dave Blalock with their definition of Resist...Refuse...Rebell

Raw

2007-02-28T10:14+00:00

[Arianna Bove], Saturday, February 24th, 2007, 19:30 - 20:00 From the Practice of Joy before Death (in Visions of Excess)
 Heraclitean Meditation : “I myself am war”
 “I imagine human movement and excitation, whose possibilities are limitless: this movement and excitation can only be appeased by war. I imagine the gift of an infinite suffering, of blood and open bodies, in the image of an ejaculation cutting down the one it jolts and abandoning him to an exhaustion charged with nausea. I imagine the earth projected in space, like a woman screaming, her head in flames. Before the terrestrial world whose summer and winter order the agony of all living things, before the universe composed of innumerable turning stars, limitlessly losing and consuming themselves, I can only perceive a succession of cruel splendours whose very movement requires that I die: this death is only the exploding consumption of all that was, the joy of existence of all that comes into the world; even my own life demands that everything that exists, everywhere ceaselessly give itself and be annihilated. I imagine myself covered with blood, broken but transfigured and in agreement with the world, both as prey and as a jaw of TIME, which ceaselessly kills and is ceaselessly killed. There are explosives everywhere that perhaps will soon blind me. I laugh when I think that my eyes persist in demanding objects that do not destroy them.”

Profit

2007-02-28T10:12+00:00

[Stefan Heidenreich ], Saturday, February 24th, 2007, 18:30 - 19:00 Eine kurze Ökonomie des Kriegs als Dienstleistung: Was wird beim Krieg verdient. Wer bietet den Service an. Zu welchem Preis. Wer kauft. Wer zahlt. Wie sieht der Markt aus.

Portrait/Mugshot

2007-02-28T10:10+00:00

[Armin Smailovic], Saturday, February 24th, 2007, 18:00 - 18:30 During my military time in former yugoslavia i had to photograph more than 4500 soldiers for their military IDs. This happened 3 years before the war, which started 91. In the age of 19 and not enough politically grown to realize what i ve got in my hands, the negatives were just trash for me, after i printed 4 copies for each soldier. So all together something like 18000 prints in B/W. Then in 91 i went to the croatian war as a war photographer. During and especially after the war i had to think about all this young boys, i was taken a photographs of. What happend to them? Are they killed? Tortured? Or became killing machines? I cant tell...i only know that these images with the green shirt, fresh cut hair and a scary expression in their face are in my mind until today. These mug shots were my biggest project concerning war i have ever done. Now with the DOW i start from the beginning. Collecting the first 100 faces of an anti-military collaboration. I changed green into white. The colour for mourning and peace in the same moment. There are hundreds of war images by photographers like James Nachtwey, Franklin Stuart, Robert Capa and many others who create images of war and gave it a „face“. I couldn't and cant use those images of thousands of „faces“ of the soldiers to do something with it. So i started from the beginning. And i have to say that... “At least, when we create images, we are doing something.”

Plündern

2007-02-28T10:09+00:00

[Vanessa Joan Müller], Saturday, February 24th, 2007, 17:30 - 18:00 „Shoplifters of the world, unite and take over“, sangen die Smiths 1986. Das destabilisierende Potenzial des kollektiven Ladendiebstahls scheint ungleich geringer gegenüber dem des Plünderns, und doch setzten bereits die Smiths auf das Aushebeln jener Tauschgesetzmäßigkeit „Geld gegen Ware“, auf denen der ökonomische Imperativ des Systems Kapitalismus nun einmal basiert. Die romantische Vorstellung des kollektiven Ladendiebstahls funktioniert jedoch nur in Friedenszeiten. Im Krieg wird geplündert, und das heißt die willkürlich Aneignung von Besitz, die der Logik des entfesselten Haben-Wollens folgt.

Pleasure

2007-02-28T10:09+00:00

[Avi Mograbi], Saturday, February 24th, 2007, 17:00 - 17:30 My concept consists of 2 videotaped testimonies of ex-soldiers concerning their service experiences. The first one is a short testimony about the pleasure of controlling other people with the tips of you fingers. 3 minutes. The second testimony concerns the pleasure of doing what you are trained to do and how killing can be fun.

Perception Attack

2007-02-28T10:08+00:00

[Brian Massumi], Saturday, February 24th, 2007, 16:30 - 17:00

Magician

2007-02-28T10:07+00:00

[Jonathan Allen], Saturday, February 24th, 2007, 16:00 - 16:30 »Once we fully recognise secular magic's role as a cultural agent, our sensitivity to the play of puzzlement, fictiveness, and contingency in modernity will be heightened.« Simon During, Modern Enchantments (Harvard 2002) »The purpose of this paper is to instruct the reader so he may learn to perform a variety of acts secretly and undetectably. In short, here are instructions for deception.« Some Operational Uses for the Art of Deception, Commissioned for MKULTRA (CIA) from magician John Mulholland in 1954.

Homeland Security Advisory System

2007-02-28T10:06+00:00

[Stephan Trüby], Saturday, February 24th, 2007, 15:30 - 16:00 Since 2002, a blueprint for escape route coding has been in place in the United States: the colour-coded terror alert levels set by the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS), called “5 Codes”. Even though the colour sequence does not correspond with the rising wavelength of the colours in the spectrum (blue comes before green), the US government was still clever to choose the rainbow motif, as the “Rainbow Warrior” Isaac Newton with his prismatic analysis of “white divine light” made a major contribution to the dawn of the age of risk . The 5 Codes are exit and relaxation codifications in the age of an outside inside the law. Woven into them is a subtext of readiness, flight and evacuation measures. Sometimes they keep a population on their toes, sometimes not, they slow the tempo down and speed it up as well. They are invisible distribution corridors with regulators for the flow of movement, rudimentary notations of a state choreography for a country that is escaping.

Heraklit

2007-02-28T10:05+00:00

[Marcus Steinweg], Saturday, February 24th, 2007, 14:30 - 15:00 Heraklit ist der Philosoph, der die Welt, d.h. die Seinstotalität, als KRIEG gedacht hat, als POLEMOS, WIDERSTREIT (eris), AUSEINANDERSETZUNG, ZWIETRACHT, WERDEN. Mit Heraklit ist der KRIEG zu einer ONTOLOGISCHEN GRÖSSE erhoben. Seitdem gibt es ONTOLOGIE nur als ONTOLOGIE DES KRIEGES und als KRIEGERISCHE ONTOLOGIE. Vielleicht ist Heraklit der PHILOSOPH, von dem sich die ABENDLÄNDISCHE PHILOSOPHIE (d.h. Die PHILOSOPHIE ÜBERHAUPT) nicht erholen kann und nie wird erholen können. Vielleicht liegt hier das ERBE der HERAKLITISCHEN KRIEGSKUNST: das DENKEN, die PHILOSOPHIE, jenseits der PAZIFIERUNG zu situieren.

Helikopter

2007-02-28T10:04+00:00

[Heinrich Dubel], Saturday, February 24th, 2007, 14:00 - 14:30 The essence or the hidden identity of the helicopter appear as a dichotomy; on the one hand a total threat coming from above, something you cannot possibly escape from, the all-seeing flying eye in the sky, the omnidirectional warmachine; and at the same time, its opposite: a rescuer coming from the air, from heaven above, as an angel. One aspect of this idea is of release (or freedom): Release from threat and fear but also freedom that can be attained if you grow above and beyond yourself. This cipher of evil and illumination is united in the image of the dragon, the snake of fire or the plumed snake. Such basic figures emerge from an meta-individual archetypal reservoir of images of the human psyche traversing the mythologies of many different peoples.

Flintenweib

2007-02-26T20:59+00:00

[Andrea Moll], Friday, February 23th, 2007, 21:00 - 21:30 »Flintenweib« ist eine auf deutscher Seite gebräuchliche feindliche Bezeichnung für die sowjetische Soldatin im Zweiten Weltkrieg, sie wurde in Propaganda und Befehlsgebung der Wehrmacht angewandt – mit mörderischer Konsequenz. Der Begriff „Flintenweib“ äußert auch eine soziale Konstruktion des Weiblichen und Männlichen im Krieg.

Entertainment

2007-02-26T20:58+00:00

[Emil Hrvatin], Friday, February 23th, 2007, 20:30 - 21:00 and to present various approaches to entertainment in different armies today as well as to question why don't we have entertainment for peacekeeping soldiers on international level. Lecture will consist on presenting documents as well as a part of documentary about American Military Theatre festival I am busy with.

Disappeared

2007-02-26T20:57+00:00

[Sylvere Lotringer], Friday, February 23th, 2007, 20:00 - 20:30 People don’t just disappear in wartime, they also disappear in broad daylight. Los Desaparecidos. Not accounted for, never to be seen again. Some are lucky enough to survive, but they are not in peace for all that, they become the war. Through their reactions, they reveal a reality that may not be accessible in any other way : the war is never over. It is simply simmering under the surface, ready to burst out at the slightest opportunity and show itself for what it is. War has become one with peace as death has become one with life.

DAVOS/DUBAI

2007-02-26T20:54+00:00

[Christian von Borries], Friday, February 23th, 2007, 19:30 - 20:00 exploitation / imagineered urbanism / islamic banking / laundered dollars / permanent exception / slavery in the 21st century / The World Economic Forum Davos / "The world" island resort, Dubai

Coloniality

2007-02-26T20:53+00:00

[Soenke Zehle], Friday, February 23th, 2007, 19:00 - 19:30 Coloniality, no longer an awkward major paradigm but an agile minor concept, enters the mise en scène of William Kentridge's »black box« (Germany/South Africa 2005) and its reenactment of Germany's most recent Historikerstreit to report on various passions for the real.

Autoxylopyrocycloboros

2007-02-26T20:52+00:00

[Simon Starling], Friday, February 23th, 2007, 18:30 - 19:00 Autoxylopyrocycloboros (2006) took the form of self-defeating journey in a small wooden steam boat. The voyage, made on the waters of Loch Long, Scotland, home to the Trident submarine base and neighbouring peace camp, was fuelled with wood from the boat itself, as plank by plank, piece by piece, it was feed to its own boiler, until inevitably disappearing into the submarine infested depths of the Loch.

Anxiety

2007-02-26T20:50+00:00

[Felix Ensslin], Friday, February 23th, 2007, 18:00 - 18:30

Anti-War

2007-02-26T20:47+00:00

[Saskia Sassen], Friday, February 23th, 2007, 17:30 - 18:00 Anti War I think doesn't work anymore as a word. And I want to explore why. Is it that war itself is a situated historical something and we've moved beyond that historical period? Is it that we are no longer positioned in a clear way, so that we can identify war? - I think the last time anti-war worked, as a word, as an image, of letters, was when massive demonstrations happened all over the world, hoping to prevent the invasion of Iraq. When the invasion happened, the word didn't work anymore. Anti-War became an anti-word. Can we say anti-massacre? We don't say that we are anti-massacre. We don't say that we are again anti-bombing of sitting ducks, those who cannot bring your planes down when you bomb them with planes. Is it that war itself is really no longer what it used to be ? It's not that I like war or that I'm saying 'Oh I wish for the good old days, when war was clearly war'. But I think it is an invitation to rethink the politics of how we handle this, how we respond. War has a certain architecture, a tight architecture. It's a big word with a tight architecture. What is happening today just doesn't look like that. So what I want to sort of examine is, what is it, that might be changing? And the first thought - and again, I'm not trying to romanticize the past at all - the first thought is that, it seems that, they - I'm talking about a generic they - they only go to war when they have absolute military superiority. If it's going to be a level engagement, they are out of there. When they finally had tools, whoever - the terrorists, the murderers, the good people - whoever they were, who brought down five of those american helicopters, when they thought, that they had the skies to themselves, that was a crises back in Washington. So can we still say war when you have absolute military superiority and you're just dropping the bombs, etc. and nobody is going to bring you down, and then when they somehow bring down five of your planes, when you have been using hundreds, it's a crises. What is it that we are really talking about in the contemporary period when we speak of war? ...

Alert

2007-02-26T20:17+00:00

[Meir Wigoder & Irit Rogoff], Friday, February 23th, 2007, 17:00 - 17:30 An occupation, military or civilian, is lived out at many different levels, modalities and distances. The suffering that is visited upon those whose freedoms are curtailed, whose movement is blocked and whose lives are threatened is rarely matched by the misgivings of those implicated in inflicting the occupation, or those associated with it through citizenship or other modes of inscription. Our concern here is with the question of how the occupiers might vigilantly live out an occupation beyond the simple rhetorics of resistance. There are many levels to such a living – out ; the need to be alert and vigilant in seeing what is actually going on, the need to document it, the need to find ways of incorporating what one sees into one’s work – often in oblique and indirect modes.

PartisanInnen, Kärntner

2006-10-18T18:18+00:00

[Tina Leisch], Saturday, October 14th 2006, 16:00 - 16:30

War on the Poor

2006-10-18T16:18+00:00

[Ultrared], Saturday, October 14th 2006, 21:00 - 21:30 What does the war on the poor sound like?

Verfassungskriege

2006-10-18T16:16+00:00

[Peter Weibel], Saturday, October 14th 2006, 20:30 - 21:00

Tracking

2006-10-18T16:15+00:00

[Jordan Crandall], Saturday, October 14th 2006, 20:00 - 20:30 ways of seeing change over time - shaped by history, thechnology, culture and are closely connected with ways of thinking... tracking as 1) a technology / 2) a perceptual modality / 3) as a discourse

Territory

2006-10-18T16:14+00:00

[Peter Fend], Saturday, October 14th 2006, 19:30 - 20:00 1. patterns of location in past wars 2. threat to territory as rationale for war 3. outer space as the upcoming field of war

Surface

2006-10-18T16:13+00:00

[Tris Vonna-Michell], Saturday, October 14th 2006, 19:00 - 19:30 a science-fiction story of berlin in 1945, about trainstations, subways and bus-lines, tunnels, places, borders and hamburger bahnhof.