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