Organized by Oliver Marchart (Wien) und Nassima Sahraoui (Frankfurt)

Depot Wien, Programme

The protests that spread across the globe most recently, such as the ones in Chile, Hong Kong, Beirut, Fridays for Future etc., stand in a long tradition of resistance movements that span the realms of politics and aesthetics from disputes about the ‘right to resist’ to actual revolts and revolutions, from the uprising of workers to the general strike, from barricades to protests to artistic activism. All social struggles of past and present times even crystallise around theories and practices of resistance. Resistance comprises moments of rejection and refusal, of persistence, and of abstention. It carries the potential to withstand the ruling structures and institutions of oppression and, furthermore, to irritate and disrupt power relations that demand and command a specific way of behaviour or action. Likewise, resistance also bears hopes and expectations for a ‘positive’ change in society, a transformation of our political system, and the epistemological framework we live in.

What exactly do we have in mind when we discuss this highly overdetermined concept of resistance? What actually is resistance, both, in politics and in aesthetics? How can we read the concept and grasp the political and artistic practices of it?

The workshop will explore the limits and potentials of the relation between resistance, politics, and aesthetics from different perspectives, spanning political theory, philosophy, aesthetics and visual arts, and curatorial studies, literature and literary theory.