Intervening Arts - Recent Articles

Art Challenging Digital Repression

Wed, 22 Oct 2025 12:15:00 +0200

The panel »Art Challenging Digital Repression«, held at the annual conference »Digital Interventions. Bodies, Infrastructures, Politics« of the Collaborative Research Center (CRC) Intervening Arts at HAU Hebbel am Ufer in Berlin on May 10, 2025, explored the growing significance of understanding and resisting repression in digital spaces. As forms of digital repression, including mass surveillance, censorship, misinformation and invasive spyware, equip governments with powerful tools to suppress dissent, artistic interventions play a crucial role in challenging these mechanisms and fostering critical awareness.

Intervening Walks

Mon, 01 Sep 2025 13:40:00 +0200

Honoring Memory and Future Sounds

Fri, 11 Jul 2025 13:10:00 +0200

Butoh as inter/section and in/fusion

Thu, 26 Jun 2025 14:50:00 +0200

Scene: An auditorium in the Academy of Arts in Berlin; a stage whose back wall is open and gives a shadowy, mirror-like impression of another auditorium in the darkness. Suddenly, indistinct figures with megaphones, blinding spotlights and loud shouts and roars storm across the empty rows of seats towards the stage. Shreds of slogans become audible, mingled with cries that hint at acts of violence. – Gradually, figures emerge from the darkness, stumbling and climbing over the empty rows of chairs; one of these figures is covered by a mane of hair that reaches down to the floor; confused, unidentifiable as a body, with wild and angular movements; a creature somewhere between animal, human, undergrowth ... Once on stage, a performance begins – in a collage of e-sound and voice, light storms and bizarre, furious movements – that goes beyond the categories of dance and theater: a riot – a rebellion; RRRRRiot.

This action by the Butoh artist Yuko Kaseki took place during the 1st annual conference of the CRC 1512 Intervening Arts.

Not a Body for Burial

Sat, 10 May 2025 16:45:00 +0200

»Who gets to write history? Whose memories deserve to be saved? It’s all a question of narrative.« – Şirin Fulya Erensoy

Azadeh Ganjeh gave the lecture performance »Not a Body for Burial« at the Annual Conference »Digital Interventions. Bodies, Infrastructures, Politics« of the Collaborative Research Centre (CRC) Intervening Arts, that took place at HAU Hebbel am Ufer on May, 10 2025. She is regaining power by making a person, their story and background visible. By reminding us that behind numbers of people suffering and dying when fighting for their rights is more than just a number.

Follow the Body

Sat, 10 May 2025 15:40:00 +0200

On May 10, 2025, Joana Moll gave the lecture »Follow the Body: Materiality and Resistance in the Age of Data Extraction«. The lecture was part of the annual conference of the Collaborative Research Center (CRC) Intervening Arts entitled »Digital Interventions. Bodies, Infrastructures, Politics«. This article gathers some reflections on this lecture, created by students of the research module »Postdigital Interventions« by Brigitte Weingart and Anja Dreschke, which took place in the summer semester of 2025 at the University of the Arts Berlin. Digitality permeates all areas of life: our bodies, which have long since mutated into cyborgs, for example, because they have become fused with mobile phones; our communicative infrastructures dominated by the attention economy of platform capitalism; and – in view of disinformation and algorithmic surveillance, this is clearly evident – our opportunities for participation as political subjects. This state cannot be simply switched off by ›going offline‹. Postdigital intervention in the power relations of digital culture means designing agency not from the outside, but instead being mindful of the entanglements in its digital conditions. The research module was dedicated to cultural and artistic strategies aimed at such critical interventions. The contribution contains parts in German and English.

Desinformation (and) War

Sat, 10 May 2025 14:45:00 +0200

Postdigital Bodies

Sat, 10 May 2025 11:35:00 +0200

Die Multimedia-Performance »NFTs: Non Fuckable Token« derdes peruanischen Performance- und XR-Künstlersin Claudix Vanesix war Teil der Jahrestagung »Digital Interventions. Bodies, Infrastructures, Politics« des Sonderforschungsbereichs (SFB) Intervenierende Künste. Die Tagung fand am 9. und 10. Mai 2025 am HAU Hebbel am Ufer in Berlin statt. In »NFTs« verbindet Vanesix indigenes Wissen mit Zukunftsvisionen für das Zusammenspiel von Mensch und Maschine. Auf diese dynamische Extended-Reality-Erfahrung reagierten Studierende des Forschungsmoduls »Postdigitale Interventionen«, das im Sommersemester 2025 von Prof. Dr. Brigitte Weingart und Prof. Dr. Anja Dreschke an der Universität der Künste Berlin angeboten wurde, mit zwei sehr unterschiedlichen Beiträgen.

KILL YOUR PHONE!

Sat, 10 May 2025 11:05:00 +0200

KILL YOUR PHONE! ist ein offenes Workshopformat des Berliner Künstlers Aram Bartholl. Der Workshop wurde am 10. Mai 2025 im Rahmen der Jahrestagung »Digital Interventions. Bodies, Infrastructures, Politics« des Sonderforschungsbereichs (SFB) Intervenierende Künste im HAU Hebbel am Ufer in Berlin mit den Konferenzteilnehmer*innen durchgeführt und dokumentarisch von Aron Kühner und Bjarne Meisel begleitet.

Radical Ontological Agilities

Fri, 09 May 2025 11:55:00 +0200

In her lecture »Labour, Art, and the Vernacular Aesthetic Online«, given as part of the annual conference »Digital Interventions. Bodies, Infrastructures, Politics« of the Collaborative Research Centre (CRC) Intervening Arts at HAU Hebbel am Ufer in Berlin on May 9, 2025, artist-theorist Aria Dean constructs a sophisticated framework for understanding Blackness in digital spaces. Drawing from philosophers like Brian Massumi and Gilles Deleuze, Dean examines Blackness not as mere cultural identity but as an operational force within what she terms »the in-between space« of contemporary media—neither fully actual nor merely fictional, but powerfully real.