Vantage Points
Authors: Ivakhiv Adrian , Kakhidze Alevtina , Gareis Sigrid , Pather Jay , Mani Charulatha , Lapidot Elad , Dündar Can , Teichmann Andi , Bhagwati Sandeep 
Published: May 2023

Decolonization and the Invasion of Ukraine (Excerpt)

Arguments about decolonization rest upon an understanding of the identity of the colonizer. A nuanced historical analysis can critically distinguish between British, French, Spanish, Russian, and other forms of colonial, as well as imperial, power. A less nuanced, but more globally palatable, understanding typically takes aim instead at the broad and loose category of “the West,” while placing itself ostensibly in the service of the non-West, that is, “the rest.” Each of these approaches has its virtues (Europe, speaking generically, did indeed colonize the world), but each also carries risks.

The Degree of Fault of Every Citizen of the Russian Federation (drawing)

The Degree of Fault of Every Citizen of the Russian Federation. Drawing by Alevtyna Kakhidze (Ukraine) 2022. Based in Muzychi, Ukraine, twenty-six kilometers from Kyiv, she grew up in the Donetsk region of Ukraine, known for coal mining, and has experienced Ukraine's abrupt and chaotic changes from the days of the USSR to the imbalanced environment after, including the undeclared war between Russia and Ukraine that is going on today.

Whose Dance? Who is Dancing, Who is Watching, Who is Framing?: Some Questions on Gatekeeping and the Production of Dance

The two curators, Sigrid Gareis (from Berlin) and Jay Pather (from Cape Town), were asked for a short interview about working in a global context in the field of dance for the publication Gegenwart Choreografieren of tanzhaus nrw/Dusseldorf in 2022 (Gareis and Pather 2022). In order to achieve an exchange of thoughts that would be as equitable as possible, they chose a different format for this North–South dialogue. Each brought two questions to their colleague that they considered the most urgent in the context of the current situation. In a second round, mutual additions and comments were made.

A Garland of Languages: Curating Liveness One Moment at a Time

As a singer-researcher, I have been performing and curating live arts for around two decades. Over that time, I have come to understand that through curation we can transmit not only stories and songs into the realities of a physical space but also embodied memories into visible frameworks of time and action. Curatorial approaches that project the memories and vignettes of lived experiences onto backdrops have also fascinated me in recent times due to their visual appeal. These experiments have affirmed my belief that a multimodal activation of spaces is a good vehicle for narratives that are by nature experienced in multisensorial modes. Moreover, when such multimodality actively foregrounds the cultural strengths of voices from artists and populations that reside at the margins, the narrative arc is able to tell a story of and for equity. Like a house of cards, a live act resides in the precarities of the moment. However, unlike a house of cards, the thoughtfulness that informs the liveness lives on as the “curated design,” an instantiation of the residues arising from a series of decisions that were taken for and with a group of performers and audiences at a given time and place in history.

A Scandal of European Iconography: On the documenta fifteen Controversy

If art does not just show objects and bodies, but renders visible the regime of perception, the politics of aesthetics—then this year's documenta was a work of art. This art exhibited its power by suppressing the work of the artists. It was this failure of representation, the prohibited show, which revealed a horizon of sense that documenta fifteen set out to challenge.

Entertainment Forbidden!

According to a study on Generation Z by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation published earlier this year (Hoffman 2022), 87 percent of young people in Turkey complain about unemployment, 83 percent about the prevailing income disparity, and 76 percent of those surveyed do not trust politicians. The percentage of young people who have hope for the future of the country is just 10 percent. The most important finding, however, is that 73 percent of respondents say they would like to live in another country—most of them want to live in Germany.

Social Booking: Curation as Co-creation and Stimulation of Social and Musical Situations and Processes

I encountered the term “music curator” for the first time in the context of a request: my brother Hannes and I were asked to curate the opening event of a festival. I had known the term “curation” from the visual arts, in galleries or museums. As a musician, I had previously dealt with bookers, program directors, operators of clubs and venues or—in the record label context—with A&Rs. These terms also refer to recognized professions. “You must decide whether you want to be a musician or a label manager,” a boss and A&R of a Hamburg-based indie label had told us about twenty years ago, when we signed our first record deal as part of our rock band beigeGT. We did not want to decide, even though at the time it was not entirely clear to us why. The music we were passionate about was always part of a specific scene and happened in specific places. We wanted to be part of these places and spaces and help shape them, sonically as well as spatially. We had for some time already been running a small record label, a platform for our music and for electronic musicians who mostly were friends of ours. We organized and initiated techno parties, we DJed, and played in the aforementioned indie rock band. A little later, we came into contact with contemporary and experimental music. We always felt the need to exchange music and ideas with these “other” scenes. How cool would it be to learn with and from each other?

Quaint Questions on Curating in the Live Arts

This questionnaire is neither systematic nor exhaustive but works according to the acupuncture principle: small pinpricks positioned at the nodes of cultural energy flows! It is not primarily meant to stimulate public discourse—rather, it invites a very personal reckoning. Further questions may be added.