After Neurath: Like sailors on the open sea: opening exhibition with performance by Stephan Dillemuth
Saturday February 24, 2007
4-5 pm: performance Stephan Dillemuth
5 pm: opening speech by Prof. dr. L. de la Rive Box (director Institute of Social Studies)
Location: Hogewal 1-9
Prior to the opening of the exhibition 'After Neurath: Like sailors on the open sea',
the artist Stephan Dillemuth will present the screening/performance of
'People of light in the slush of the sun, studies in the reform of
life'. The piece deals with his research into the 19th century life
reform movements, a group of sub-cultures which held within them the
kernels of the seemingly contradictory ideologies of Socialism and
Nazism.
The following text is courtesy of Cubitt, London:
'In Germany, around the turn of the century, a number of groups were
formed that can be subsumed under the term 'Lebensreform' (Life
Reform). These part utopian, revolutionary, reactionary and reformist
approaches characterised the most varied attempts to break free from
the Empire of the day: the nationalistic, capitalistic and monolithic
Wilhelminian Reich. In view of the development of 'multitudes' of
parallel conceptions of life, the Life Reform movements were certainly
predecessors of today's 'escapist' constructions of identity, formed
via lifestyle conceptions. At the time, some of these approaches lent a
sense of 'metaphysical depth' to the arising National Socialism. Other
groups were, on the contrary, persecuted by the society of the Third
Reich, and incorporated or forced into line, which again produced
another monolithic homogeneity.'
'The video that Stephan Dillemuth attempted to make about these matters
was bound to fail in the face of their very complexity. Instead of
presenting a refined and finished product, he confronts us with the
assembled rubble of his investigation... a performance?'
Stephan Dillemuth: www.societyofcontrol.com
- Saturday 24 Feb '07 4 pm prompt
- Hogewal 1-9, The Hague
- Entrance: free