Keynote speech by Dr Sibylle Peters at the opening of [Still] Claiming Common Spaces
[Still] Claiming Common Spaces
by Sibylle Peters
“The system is breaking down all around us, at the very moment when many people have lost the ability to imagine how any alternative system might work.”
David Graeber uttered these words in 2018, just two years before his untimely passing. He referred to this loss of our ability to envisage alternative systems as the “dead zone” of political imagination. This zone is deadly for democracy, he argued, because how can we expect people to become engaged and push for change if they can’t even imagine any alternatives in the first place? The vacuum that results from this inability to harness our imaginations can then be quickly filled by the far right, he noted, which is exactly what’s happening today – as we speak.
In their new book 'Durchlöchert den Status Quo' (tr. Poke holes in the status quo), Michael Hirsch and Kilian Jörg propose countering Graeber’s “dead zone” of imagination by calling forth and implementing a different zone, the Zone à Défendre or ZAD.
For starters, the Zone à Défendre is a marshland in rural France that was originally supposed to be the site of a new airport. Today, the location is instead home to several groups experimenting with alternative lifestyles. These groups draw on a premise that seems to be gradually dawning on all of us today, namely that our existence outside of ecosystems is not sustainable in the long run. The people living in the ZAD experiment with alternative ways of life based on the principle of the commons, on commoning, that is, on the conservation of those things that belong to everyone and that we all need to live.
[Still] Claiming Common Spaces seeks to make a number of things clear to us: first, that our common spaces are constantly shrinking and that even the ocean floor and the space surrounding the Earth are being destroyed, privatised and capitalised; second, that the supposedly common spaces that are provided to us in our mobile phones as substitutes are, in fact, not common spaces at all, but ultimately only serve the interests of a very small group of people; third, that democratically elected governments fail time and again to defend the commons and make common spaces available to all; fourth, that even language – which is also a common space and something democracy would be lost without – is becoming a battleground once again today in an age where lists of prohibited words threaten anyone who uses them with exclusion from the public sphere.
In this context, Hirsch and Jörg are not suggesting that we all become radicals and wage fierce battles with law enforcement officers from up in trees. Instead, they suggest that we take on the principle of temporary, heterotopic autonomous zones and transform it into a democratically legitimised format. In other words, that we invent a democratic process that allows us to establish zones of commoning in which we can experiment with alternatives to the status quo. For example, the authors ask the following question: What if the federal government had found a way to give the 30,000 young protesters in [the German town of] Lützerath a say in how things would move forward? What if they’d declared Lützerath an experimental zone instead of clearing it and evicting the protesters? My 16-year-old son was one of the 30,000 activists in Lützerath, so I can answer the question on a very personal level. If they had, it would have spared us from having to watch young people give up their activism, become depressed and stop believing in our capacity to generate new and viable alternatives.
Today we are celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Alliance of International Production Houses (BIPH), and this is a wonderful opportunity to point out that the connection between the BIPH and the suggestion put forth by Hirsch and Kilian in their book – that is, that we punch holes in the status quo – goes even deeper and is even more direct than a shared focus on the commons. Jay Jordan and Isabella Fremaux from the Institute of Insurrectionary Imagination are two artists who made a significant contribution to and defence of the ZAD; but they also happen to have been guests at Kampnagel and several other BIPH stages time and again over the course of the past 20 years. They joined us not only to present their work, but also to reflect on art and permaculture with local activists, to build bicycles, to experiment at the intersection between art and activism and to carry out events in the public space. Thousands of us learned from them and alongside them, and they both were able to continue their work, not least thanks to the BIPH.
The Zone à Défendre itself is thus related to all the smaller, alternative zones that are constantly being established everywhere thanks to the work of various artists from the independent scene and the BIPH – in rehearsal rooms, on stages and in other public spaces. These temporary alternative zones are used by artists from the independent community as venues for gathering together with audiences to pose questions and poke holes in the status quo – all in an effort to keep that dead zone of imagination at bay. These zones are precisely the ones being impacted by budget cuts today in Berlin, North Rhine-Westphalia and all across Germany. In these spaces, we’re reminded of what we’re currently seeing in the US, namely the defunding of key democratic creators and places of discourse. Thus Zones à Défendre in this sense, too.
If we weren’t here [in Hamburg] today, but instead in Düsseldorf, Dresden, Berlin, Essen or Frankfurt, we would have a number of options for engagement: we could explore artistic positions of feminist solidarity in Eastern Europe at HAU or take part in a 30-hour theatre festival at the FFT in Düsseldorf examining the original relationship between theatre and democracy in ancient Greece. If we were at tanzhaus nrw, we could work with the participants in the Digital Dance Creators residency to explore the role of dance on the internet and in social media – which are key arenas for processes of social negotiation – as a form of artistic expression and as a means of socio-political participation. If we were in Frankfurt, we could visit Klassenraum, a “braver space” that shows us ways out of the classism that is still having a massive impact in Germany. At the same time, if we were in Essen, we could assist in organising an upcoming summer congress that seeks to counter Shell’s famous “carbon footprint” with a “creative handprint” that spotlights the extent to which we can find creative ways to live in a new, climate-friendly manner. Right now at the Festspielhaus HELLERAU, the 32th edition of the Dresdner Tage der zeitgenössischen Musik (Dresden Days of Contemporary Music) is taking place against the backdrop of dramatic global upheavals. There’s also a lot on the agenda of the latest Arts & Encounters series financed by the BIPH; for example, there’s a trans-generational festival at HELLERAU, and here at Kampnagel, we’ll be celebrating the 10th anniversary of one of the most unlikely sites in the City of Hamburg, the wonderful Migrantpolitan.
As this brief selection of events from the current list of BIPH activities shows us, there’s definitely a method to the madness: at each and every one of the BIPH venues, people are consciously creating and expanding common spaces, they’re living and fostering democracy in a dimension that is not covered by right-wing or left-wing parliamentary realities, but which concerns us all equally.
Democracy, as Jacques Derrida once put it, is always a coming democracy. It will continue to be democracy as long as we strive to “dare more democracy”, something Willy Brandt asked us to do back in the 1970s. It is inevitable that not everyone will be represented at the political level; representation can never function without misrepresentation, which is why we must always fight to expand common spaces until we can actually hear the voices of those who feel unrepresented or who are not represented at all: young people, newcomers, people of all classes, human and non-human beings.
In a situation as frightening as the one we’re currently experiencing – one in which democracies everywhere appear to be dying, where common spaces are being destroyed, where the enemies of democracy are growing stronger, even here in Germany – it’s easy to push us into a defensive position. This is a problem. Indeed, simply defending an existing democracy is not enough. If we merely try to hold onto a particular status quo of democracy, this will likely also lead to censorship, exclusion and violence – and ultimately it will benefit the enemies of democracy. Democracy must be a coming democracy; it must constantly question itself and poke holes in the status quo. In the vernacular of football, we would say democracy needs to be defended forward. And we all know what that means: it means opening up at the back and becoming vulnerable, and that’s hard to do in times like these. And yet it’s exactly what we need to do. Courage, courage! If we don’t play the ball forward, we’ll never be able to win.
But how exactly do we do that?
The good news is that we’re not helpless. We’re not intimidated, nor are we submissive. We know how to play the ball forward skilfully and unexpectedly from out of the zone, from out of our common space.
Last week, I supervised a dissertation in artistic research on theatre and democracy in Malmö. There, we discussed the extent to which the relationship between theatre and democracy has always been inherent in that particular art form. We also discussed an important paradigm shift in the political theatre of the past 100 years, which I believe is embodied in a special way in the Claiming Common Spaces series organised by the BIPH.
Unlike in the days of Brecht and Boal, independent theatre no longer sees itself primarily as a site of education with regard to democracy. Instead, independent theatre’s scope of action today is about social games where we – and I quote here from the BIPH programme – “test scenarios of coexistence for the future of our societies”. And it’s true, independent theatre today is developing and testing the democratic institutions of tomorrow. This is taking place, for example, at the Klimarechnungshof (Climate Audit Office) in Vienna and at the Kinderwahlbüro (Children’s Election Office) at the FUNDUS Forschungstheater (Research Theatre). Independent theatre seeks to be a breeding ground for the democracy of tomorrow. No more and no less.
Millions in funding for the independent performing arts have always been a good investment, and funding continues to be a damn important investment, one that must not be cut, especially now. For it is here that people are engaged in discovering, cultivating and regenerating a polyphonic, shared knowledge about how to constantly further develop democracy by the diverse means of theatre, participation and assembly. This is a wealth of knowledge that the 30,000 people working in the independent performing arts in Germany share – and want to continue to share – with others.
So we’re not helpless. Indeed, at least in this regard we’re perhaps surprisingly well prepared for difficult times. In fact, in this country, we have one independent theatre professional for every 3,000 citizens. And these professionals are well trained, well networked, highly motivated and fully operational – not least thanks to policymakers’ decision to support and stand in solidarity with the independent performing arts throughout the coronavirus years. And also not least thanks to the continuous work of the BIPH and many other important networks that have finally come into existence in recent years.
So, as a final point, at an event such as this, the call we send out to political decision makers can only be the following: Put us to use! Take back the budget cuts in Berlin and North Rhine- Westphalia. Take back the cuts to the federal budget and everywhere else. And then ... do the exact opposite. Notice what you have in us. Multiply the funding for independent theatre – on all levels and especially at the federal level. We’re here and we’re ready to go. Let’s get to work, all of us, everywhere in the republic, on big stages and on street corners. Let’s poke holes in the status quo and defend democracy forwards. Let us expand and multiply common spaces. Now. Right now. If not now, when?
We’re counting on you.
Congratulations on the 10th anniversary of the Alliance of International Production Houses.
Still Claiming Common Spaces – We’re just getting started.
(Translated from German by Julie Hagedorn)