The theme for this workshop will be the constructions and delimitation of a specific figure; the speaking subject. How does this figure emerge through discourse, and what are its functions? What can be said and not said in order for a speaking subject to appear as real, as authentic, as authoritative and/or as truthful. We will discuss what is implied in certain speech acts and subject positions, such as the figure of ‘the reporter’ and ‘the artist, as well as the ‘witness’ and the ‘source’. As well as taking a philosophical and political approach, this workshop will also attempt to integrate the exhibition, not as objects to be analyzed, but rather as propositions from which to depart: How are subjects positioned, and how is truth produced, and subsequently, staged? This could be a way to make the editors reflect on their own work in a performative and productivist way rather than as merely observing and commenting. Or, to put it another way, what role as a speaking subjects is occupied through such an approach, and which are evacuated? What will a phrase such as ‘the editor as producer’ indicate, and how is this related to acts of reportage within art and within d12? Obviously, the workshop will also discuss what these roles mean in our current moment of (permanent?) crisis in the public sphere during times of war.

The Position of the Speaker is organised and hosted by Simon Sheikh (Berlin/Copenhagen) for the documenta 12 magazines project.

Participants

Balazs Beothy (exindex, Budapest)
Ariane Chottin (Vacarme, Paris)
Keti Chukrov (philosopher, Berlin/Moscow)
Göran Dahlberg (Glänta, Gothenburg)
Laurence Duchêne (Vacarme, Paris)
Nikolett Eros (exindex, Budapest)
Victoria Fareld (Glänta, Sweden) tbc
Andrea Geyer (documenta 12 artist, New York)
Ashley Hunt (documenta 12 artist, Los Angeles)
Anders Johansson (Glänta, Gothenburg)
Graziela Kunsch (artist, São Paulo)
David Riff (Chto Delat?, Saint Petersburg)
John Roberts (writer, London)
Katya Sander (documenta 12 artist, Berlin)
Irina Sandormirskaja (Glänta, Gothenburg)
Shuddhabrata Sengupta (Sarai, New Delhi)
Mikela Lundahl (Glänta, Gothenburg) tbc
André Mesquita (rizoma, São Paulo)
Jelena Vesic (curator, Belgrade)
Dmitry Vilensky (Chto Delat?, Saint Petersburg)
Pierre Zaoui (Vacarme, Paris)

Tuesday 14 August

13:00-14:00 Lunch Lecture

The How-To of Bare Life: A Story of O.

A presentation by Irina Sandormirskaja (contributing author to Glänta, Stockholm)
in the context of documenta's second and third Leitmotif.

This is the story of Olga Skorokhodova (1914?-1982), a blind-deaf scholar, educationalist and author, a star of Stalin's cultural revolution. Skorokhodova lost hearing, vision, and speech in her childhood and gradually regained language through persistent effort and with the help of advanced special education technologies in the 1930s. In her presentation Sandormirskaja will follow Skorokhodova's re-invention of her own self in the process of her re-acquistion of language.

16:00-18:00 Avant-Gardes after Vanguardism
Kabinett 1

A lecture by John Roberts (writer, London) followed by a discussion with David Riff and Dimitry Vilensky from the collective Chto Delat? [What is to be done?], (Saint Petersburg/Moscow).

In both contemporary art and contemporary grass roots politics, the idea of avant-gardism sounds rather discredited by the Soviet experience of party politics. Most if not all new cultural workers refuse such claims of totality, at the same time, the developing political situation urgently poses the questions of the forms of the organization which can arise on a place of party politics. Which new forms of cultural production are capable of continuing avant-garde practices? Which political subjectivity lies at their base? Or, as John Roberts puts it in his lecture, what are the possibilities for “avant-gardes after avant-gardism”?

Thursday 16 August

13:00-14:00 Lunch Lecture

9 Scripts from a Nation at War

Andrea Geyer, Ashley Hunt and Katya Sander in conversation with Simon Sheikh about their current documenta work. 9 Scripts from a Nation at War is a collaborative project developed over the past two years by David Thorne, Katya Sander, Ashley Hunt, Sharon Hayes, Andrea Geyer.

Featuring multiple videos installed in the Documenta Halle, the work responds to the new questions and changed conditions that have arisen since March 2003. The project considers the processes by which we become, are placed into and/or refuse to be certain kinds of “individuals”—artists, soldiers, students, journalists, prisoners, detainees, citizens, Iraqis, Europeans, Americans, and so on.

16:00-19:00 Screening
Kabinett 1

A film on Olivier Cadiot, French writer by Pascale Bouhenik presented by Vacarme (Paris). Details to be announced.

Saturday 18 August

13:00-14:30 Lunch Lecture

The position of the speaker

With participating editors from Chto Delat (Saint Petersburg/Moscow), Exindex (Budapest), Glänta (Gothenburg) and Vacarme (Paris) moderated by Simon Sheikh (Copenhagen/Berlin)

The theme for this Lunch Lecture will be the constructions and delimitation of a specific figure; the speaking subject. How does this figure emerge through discourse, and what are its functions? What can be said and not said in order for a speaking subject to appear as real, as authentic, as authoritative and/or as truthful? Questions which will also serve as reflections on the current exhibition and the editorial work of magazines: How is truth produced, and subsequently, staged?

16:00-19:00 Screening and Discussion – The unbearable lightness of censorship
Kabinett 1

Introduced by Miklós Erhardt (Exindex, Budapest)

The Hungarian Magazine Exindex presents three films from the archives of the Balázs Béla Studio that all rely on the genre of documentary while subverting it to different degrees: Tibor Hajas: Self-Fashion Show (1976), Péter Dobai: Archaic Torso (1971) and Miklós Erdély: Version (1979). Three positions to deal with the double layered reality of the seventies/eighties’s Hungary (as opposed to the multilayered reality of today). While exploring the different conceptions of the figure of the ‘documentator’ discernible in the films, the screening tries to address the specific cultural-political situation of the so called ‘soft dictatorship’, the remarkable role of the Balázs Béla Studio in organizing and making visible certain underground contural activities as well as the relevance of documentary filmmaking in that period.

Sunday 19 August

13:00-18:00 Combatant Status Review Tribunals, pp. 002954 – 003064

A public reading
Presented by the Vera List Center for Art and Politics

Documenta Lunch lectures presents “Combatant Status Review Tribunals, pp. 002954 – 003064,” a five-hour public reading of fifteen tribunals held at the U.S. military prison camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, between July 2004 and March 2005. Featured are approximately 110 pages of tribunal transcripts, a small fraction of the material generated by 558 tribunals. This performance is part of the artwork “9 Scripts from a Nation at War” by David Thorne, Katya Sander, Ashley Hunt, Sharon Hayes, Andrea Geyer on view in the Documenta Halle.

After the United States Supreme Court ruled in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld that prisoners held at Guantánamo had certain minimal rights, the Department of Defense set up The Combatant Status Review Tribunals, or CSRTs, to provide the appearance of a Habeas Corpus procedure while, in accordance with Article 5 of the Geneva Conventions, allowing detainees to contest their status as “enemy combatants.” During each tribunal, the U.S. government presents unclassified accusations against the detainee, and the accused is then permitted to rebut these specific charges. The detainee is given personal representation but not legitimate legal counsel; he is not allowed to see, or therefore rebut, classified information, and since the bulk of the evidence that provides the basis for “enemy combatant” designation is usually classified, prisoners are effectively kept from making their cases.

The sheer volume of transcripts released on the Internet by the Department of Defense has effectively obscured them from public view. “Combatant Status Review Tribunals, pp. 002954 – 003064” stages an excerpt of these proceedings as a gesture of making these tribunals public, with all their fabrications, inconsistencies, and contradictions.

“Combatant Status Review Tribunals, pp. 002954 – 003064” was originally performed on March 11th, 2007 at Judson Memorial Church in New York in collaboration with the Vera List Center for Arts and Politics.

The reading in Kassel will be held in German, after a translation of the original CSRT transcripts from the Department of Defense. The reading will take approximately 5 hours including breaks.