“48 Hours: The Urgency of Scary Intelligence and Glamorous Monsters”

Master of Fine Arts (MFA): Körper, Theorie & Poetik Des Performativen / Bodies, Theory & Poetics of the Performative
Deans: Prof. Wolfgang Mayer, Prof. Dr. Cristina Gómez Barrio, Prof. Dr. Felix Ensslin

“48 Hours: The Urgency of Scary Intelligence and Glamorous Monsters”
Thursday, May 3, 11am–Friday, May 4, 4pm
with Ulf Aminde (Berlin, Germany); Cara Benedetto (Richmond, USA); DISCOTECA FLAMING STAR (Berlin and Stuttgart, Germany); Mladen Dolar (Ljubljana, Slovenia) Felix Ensslin (Köln and Stuttgart, Germany); Sabrina Karl (Stuttgart, Germany); Lisa Mühleisen (Stuttgart, Germany); Johannes Paul Raether (Berlin, Germany); Anike Joyce Sadiq (Berlin, Germany); Ülkü Süngün (Stuttgart, Germany); Slavoj Žižek (Ljubljana, Slovenia); Alenka Zupančič (Ljubljana, Slovenia).

The Kick-Off Symposium will present some artistic and theoretical questions which guide and orient the new Master of Fine Arts. It is divided into three sections, titled “Bodies,” “Theory“ and “Poetics,“ which each will include both art practices and theoretical positions.

The new Master of Fine Arts Program—the first of its kind in Germany—is an opportunity for students to develop an advanced art practice in the field of performative art. Students will work with different materials, produce writing and other language based projects as well as engage in theoretical reflection. Each of these practices is considered on their own premises, while being thought of as necessarily intertwined in relation to performative art practices.

If bodies are socially and politically produced, are they not also possible sites of resistance? If rule based poetics have become impossible, are then not singular practices and their reflection the only possible way to articulate a new politics, a new universality? If theoretical work is necessarily tied to the material and social condition of its production, then is it not also the site where these conditions can practically be made objects of change by realizing a different way to see, a different aesthetics? These questions are pertinent to all artistic and theoretical practices. But they also come together in a unique way in performance art, since Bodies, Theory and Poetics are inseparably intertwined in its practice.

In 1981, Sotirios Michou—at that time a professor at the Stuttgart State Academy of Art and Design—founded an innovative course of studies called “Intermediales Gestalten,” which over decades successfully transferred recently introduced changes in the practice of art into teaching. References for his notion of “intermedia art” were Fluxus, Performance Art, Happening and other developments which had strayed beyond the limits of media specific art practices.

Today, the Stuttgart State Academy of Art and Design is once again pursuing innovative paths and making a unique offer with the MFA “Bodies, Theory & Poetics of the Performative”. Inter-, multi-, and transmediality are omnipresent in art and in the culture at large. At the same time, the importance of Performance Art is constantly increasing while it becomes less and less clear what the terms “performance” or “performative” are meant to specifically convey in the context of the art world and of art making. With the MFA “Bodies, Theory & Poetics of the Performative,” the Stuttgart State Academy of Art and Design offers an unique advanced course of study not only to art students, but also to students of Performing Arts, Scenography, Dance, etc., and even to students theoretical subjects such as Theater Studies, Art Theory, or Curatorial Studies, if they show an aptitude for art making practices.