Foreign affairs 2013 - The Bet

THE BET THE B

WETTE DIE W www.berlinerfestspiele.de www.kw-berlin.de

Inhalt

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THe BET – A STUDY ON DOUBT, CONTINGENCY AND MEANING IN ECONOMY AND SOCIETY. The performance weekend

10

CONNECT FOUR: THE BET. The exhibition

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YOU BET – THIS IS THE FUTURE. Film programme

Participating artists:

16 BÖHLER & ORENDT: Mehrung #5 18 PIETER DE BUYSSER: In Praise of Speculation 20 ARMIN CHODZINSKI & NIS KÖTTING: Dr. C explains: The Bet 22 JOCHEN DEHN: Why Stand When You Can Fall 24 ELENA ESPOSITO: Betting and Fate: Observation and Construction

of the Future

26 Tim Etchells: A Lucky Lottery Future 28 CLAIRE FONTAINE: Get Lost 30 FORCED ENTERTAINMENT: ALL (TOMORROW’S PARTIES) 32 WILLIAM FORSYTHE: Suspense & The Defenders Part 3 34 NIKOLAUS GANSTERER: Theoriegehäuse 36 GEHEIMAGENTUR & JOSHUA SOFAER: Improbability Drive 38 HADLEY+MAXWELL: The House Rules (Betting is for Losers)

40 GOLDIN+SENNEBY: The Discreet Charm 42 HEATSICK: Extended Play 44 DANIEL KELLER: FUBU Career CAPTCHA's & Soft Staycation (Gaze Track Edit) 46 JOHANNES KREIDLER: Rich Harmonies 48 BARBARA MATIJEVIĆ & GIUSEPPE CHICO: Forecasting 50 MOTHER FUTURE: The Safe Bet 52 MICHAEL PORTNOY: Abstract Gambling 54 JOHANNES PAUL RAETHER feat. UTE WALDHAUSEN:

Protektorama Akhada Materialistischer Spiritologie

56 REACTOR: Dummy Button 58 SASKIA SASSEN & RICHARD SENNETT: Betting With the Life of Others 60 SANTIAGO SIERRA: 20 m3 of Earth from the Iberian Peninsula 62 JANEK SIMON: A Short Survey of Lotto Winning Strategies 64 CALLY SPOONER: And You Were Wonderful, On Stage 66 DANIEL TYRANDELLIS & JOSEPH VOGL: Geld=Wunsch*(Vertrauen/Zeit) 68 DANIEL BOY, TANJA KRONE, EMMA RÖNNEBECK,

INGOLF MÜLLER-BECK: Wetten, was geht

70 ELLEN BLUMENSTEIN and MATTHIAS VON HARTZ: Talk 77

Das Wette-ABC

Performance weekend

THE BET – A STUDY ON DOUBT, CONTINGENCY AND MEANING IN ECONOMY AND SOCIETY

Given that the future’s uncertainties cannot fully be grasped, even with the seemingly foolproof calculations of probability theory, we dive into two days of speculative artistic and theoretical experimentation on the theme of the bet. With the belief that purely mathematical economic models are no longer sufficient to even approximately understand the complex structures and conditions of our societies, for these two days we devote ourselves to examining the bet as an undervalued phenome­ non of our present. We launch the cooperation between Berliner Fest­ spiele/Foreign Affairs and KW Institute for Contemporary Art with a weekend of performances spanning theatre, art and theory that will be accompanied by two exhibition projects at KW: “Suspense” and “The Defenders Part 3” by William Forsythe, and the group show “Connect Four: The Bet”.

We begin by inviting you to the Haus der Berliner Festpiele early on ­Friday evening for the finale of the most improbable improbability drive of all times, which we will celebrate with geheimagentur & Joshua Sofaer on the main stage of Berliner Festpiele. At 9 p.m. at KW, we open a bet-themed performance weekend during which visitors can partici­ pate in a casino by Michael Portnoy and Reactor’s betting shop for time.

A film programme will end the evening in the inner courtyard of KW. On Saturday we once again await you at KW, at 3 p.m.; for a double kickoff with Jochen Dehn and Hadley+Maxwell. Afterwards, Cally Spooner presents a musical, and then Daniel Tyradellis speaks with Joseph Vogl about his equation “Money=Desire*(Trust/Time)”.

The evening program at Haus der Berliner Festspiele begins at 7 p.m. in the main hall with an introduction to betting and fate by Elena Esposito and Nikolaus Gansterer. The Italian sociologist demonstrates the treacherous pitfalls of observing and constructing the future.

If, in the hours that follow, you ever wish to depart from the prognoses of

Forced Entertainment taking place in the main hall, an evening filled with wagers and speculation, visual and performance art, theory and play await you throughout the entire Berliner Festspiele grounds.

On the side stages, Richard Sennett and Saskia Sassen will speak about the macroeconomic consequences of speculation in our globalized so­ cieties, before Giuseppe Chico and Barbara Matijević present their per­ formance “Forecasting” in the same space.

In the Kassenhalle, you will find lecture-performances by three very different artists: Pieter De Buysser delivers a paean to speculation, Janek Simon will demonstrate different strategies for playing the lottery and Armin Chodzinski & Nis Kötting will attempt to create a musical glossary of the bet.

Outside, in the garden, Johannes Paul Raether a.k.a Protektorama, the world-healing witch, awaits you under a chestnut tree; Santiago Sierra unloads 20 m3 of earth from the Iberian peninsula in front of the building; in the Bornemann bar, Johannes Kreidler performs a musical rendering of all numbers of the German lottery from its founding in 1953 up until tonight, and Heatsick takes over in the late hours.

At the bet-counters in the foyer, our bet-masters await you all night long. Mother Future lays out her cards in the Mobile House of Kyohei Sakaguchi and Tim Etchells invites you to his “Happy Lottery Future”.

Come and place your bets during an evening of superlatives! Here’s to our future!

Ellen Blumenstein & Matthias von Hartz

Exhibition

Connect Four: The Bet The phenomenon of the bet recurs in different social contexts; from postFordist financial speculation to gambling, from Mephistopheles’ bet with God to the Book of Job, wagers are made on the outcome of events.

With “Connect Four: The Bet”, KW Institute for Contemporary Art con­ tinues, in the form of an exhibition, its examination of betting and speculation which also took place during “The Bet: A Study On Doubt, Contingency And Meanin g In Economy And Society” performance weekend in conjunction with Foreign Affairs. Four artistic positions ­debate the meaning of the bet from different perspectives: The Swedish artist collective Goldin+Senneby examine the phenomenon of the bet against the background of capitalist financial speculation.

In a society in which betting is largely reduced to meaningless games of chance, their work “The Discreet Charm” (2011/2012) positions eco­ nomic financial strategies as the most significant bets of our time – wagers which put the existence of entire states and social systems on the line and yet can only be played and controlled by a few.

In his contribution to the exhibition, the American artist Daniel Keller speculates about the future of work. Keller negotiates utopian and dystopian ideas (by the author Martin Ford, for example) about the work structures of the future, and translates this debate into visual ­objects: three-dimensional PVC lettering showing mindless job descrip­ tions from a high-tech future, in which work and jobs have to be artifi­ cially produced.

KW 1+2, til 04. August 2013, Wed – Mon 12:00 – 19:00, Thu 12:00 – 21:00.

In their work “Get Lost” (2007), the French duo Claire Fontaine portrays the complexity of interpersonal relationships in the capitalist system.

With reference to Hamlet’s words “I did love you once”, the viewer is presented with an excess of attractive pairing options on two monitors: A surplus of photos of attractive people flicker in front of viewers, posi­ tioning the idea of love in relation to consumption and affluence. As a result, the impression emerges that love isn’t merely fleeting and en­ tertaining, that under neo-liberalism even love and relationships are subject to the rules of the market.

With the installation-performance cycle “Mehrung”, the artists Böhler und Orendt bring together two central aspect of the bet: belief and conjecture. As in Pascal’s wager, in which Cartesian doubt about the existence of God was skirted using a wager about God, the visitors to this new work submit themselves fully to a speculative future despite knowing that it could easily be false. The setting of “Mehrung #5” evo­ kes a cult whose rules and rites cannot be deciphered. The object they have dedicated themselves to and worship in the manner of a religious sect is an exponential curve. The visualization of the exponential func­ tion reveals the growing progression of values in a coordinate system to be a reflection of a meritocracy in which the increase of capital is the highest priority.

Film programme

YOU BET – THIS IS THE FUTURE Jan Peter Hammer:

The Fable of the Bees (2012), HD, 8’ Annika Eriksson:

Arbeitswelt (2003), Video excerpts, 10’ Pilvi Takala:

Players (2010). Video, 7’50’’ Ayşe Erkmen:

Coffee (2007), Video, 25’ Cao Fei + RMB City:

The Birth of RMB City (2009), Video, 10’30’’ A bet always addresses the present and the future to the same extent, because it develops a hypothesis of a possible or probable future based on the here and now. Bets address questions of speculation, security, risk, belief and superstition, always with the (best) possible future in mind.

The film programme “The Bet – This is the Future” looks at the way in which the bet, insurance and speculation relate to the future, and exa­ mines the way we envisage the future and try to influence it at the same time.

Jan Peter Hammer’s film “The Fable of the Bees” takes the poem of the same name by Bernard Mandeville as the starting point to think about social constructions in the future: If we were all better people, would

KW Courtyard, FrI 23:00

the world be a better place? Hammer deconstructs this utopian idea by means of a financial market analysis and comes to the conclusion: “Better people make the world a worse place”.

We live in a society that is reacting to the risk and contingency of bet­ ting with a growing need for security in order to keep the future as pre­ dictable as possible. In her film “Arbeitswelt” (Working World), Annika Eriksson talks to employees of the Swiss RE insurance company to find out their personal views about security. Sitting at their desks, the emplo­ yees not only talk about their work but also explain what security means to them and the role that it plays in their lives now and in the future.

In stark contrast to this are the Scandinavian poker players in Pilvi Takala’s film “Players”. Takala follows their lives in Thailand, where they put their future at stake every day playing professional online poker.

Just how isolated their lives are becomes apparent in the way in which they use betting as a form of establishing interpersonal relationships.

What methods are there for finding out more about one’s own future?

In “Coffee”, Ayşe Erkmen portrays an unusual way of predicting the fu­ ture: reading coffee grounds. Trusting in the grains of coffee at the bottom of a cup is a way of dealing with the unknown in one’s own life, now and in the future.

In her animated film “The Birth of RMB City”, Cao Fei creates a kind of ideal island-city and shows how the future might look. Using computer animation, she assembles the elements that will be important for an ideal life in the future: high-rises, leisure and sports facilities, temples and artificial nature. The film creates a vision of the future that always updates itself and does not need a fixed identity or calculability.

Artists Z

Artists A to Z

Böhler & Orendt Mehrung #5

“Mehrung #5” is the fifth part of a continuing series of installation ­performances that tell the story of a secret society whose members have dedicated themselves entirely to the idea of exponential growth.

They revere their principles in regular evening séances, which primarily involve the production of the largest possible number of potentially im­ pressive graphs of the exponential function. The members of this cult see this “archetype of luck” as the lost key to fruitful world events and believe they must lead those who are still ignorant of their knowledge onto their path.

For the series’ fifth instalment, KW visitors will have the opportunity over five weeks to take up an appropriate, humble stance towards this “arche­ typal idea”, to participate in the construction of modest devotional works and, finally, to give over their puny little souls to this greater goal.

Matthias Böhler (* 1981 in Aachen) and Christian Orendt (* 1980 in Sighisoara, Romania) have been working together as Böhler & Orendt since 2007. Together, they have been producing large-scale installa­ tions, which create imaginary, immersive environments that play with the sense of scale and imagination. They often treat the relationship between humanity and its environment, whether natural or artificial, and draw attention to the irony of its construction. Their work has been shown in exhibitions at the Museum Schloss Moyland in Bedburg-Hau, Wilhelm-Hack-Museum Ludwigshafen und Halle 14 Leipzig. www.boehler-orendt.com

KW Exhibition, 1+2 FLOOR

Installation Albrecht Dürer Gesellschaft, Nürnberg Photo: © Böhler & Orendt

Pieter de Buysser

IN PRAISE OF SPECULATION IN COLLABORATION WITH NIKOLAUS GANSTERER (p. 34) I'll come humble and happy with a tribute to the noble art of specula­ tion. A praise to the pariahs, the interlopes, the swine of our recent fi­ nancial crisis. I will come to kiss them. We must urgently rehabilitate the practice of speculation. We don't like to talk about it. Speculation is something which, like violence, civilized people prefer to outsource, to contract out to people who don't mind getting their hands dirty.

While we are all creatures held together by speculation and faith, cre­ dit and debt. A prohibition on speculation for financers is like forbid­ ding them to have like you and I a nose in the middle of our face. I will come with a proposal, that starts with giving a warm welcome to the trans-kapitalistic kangeroo.

Pieter De Buysser writes texts for perfomance, essais, stories and no­ vels. He also directs and performs. He performed in HAU with "Anthol­ ogy of optimism" and "Mauervariationen für Anfänger". His upcoming solo-piece "Landscape with skiproads" will be coproduced by HAU. Some of his plays have also been translated into German: “Die Narbe Lippe”, “Ismael Stamp” and “Nachtsonne”. In 2006, the Münchner Kammerspiele performed “Robinson Crusoe, die Frau und der Neger”, De Buysser’s stage version of J.M. Coetzee’s novel “Foe”. In the same year, he was invited to perform “Eekhoornbrood / Die Lösung” at the ‘New Plays from Europe’ Theatre Biennale in Wiesbaden. www.pieterdebuysser.com

BFS Kassenhalle, SaT 20:00

Armin Chodzinski & Nis Kötting DR. C EXPLAINS: THE BET

The bet. It was once a playful yet moral form of resolution to conflict, ­ a way of postponing a clash between conjecture, knowledge, skills and beliefs – most often those of “others”. A feature of salons, of citizenship, of the path from cockfights to refinement. The grand bet on humanity exists too, but it is perhaps best called politics, economy or utopia. A lecture-concert, part-ballad and part-encyclopaedia entry that at­ tempts disambiguation during a time of a wistful love – a love that, if we don’t pay attention, threatens to turn us into fatalistic consumers.

Nis Kötting (* 1981) studied Musicology and is a piano and keyboardplayer in several band formations. He has toured throughout the world over the past few years with the Nigerian soul singer Nneka and has played in numerous clubs and at festivals in Europe, America and Afri­ ca. He is most passionate about jazz, funk and soul, preferably in ‘his­ torical performance practice’ with diverse vintage keyboards as well as his 1962-Hammond organ. He lives and works in Hamburg.

Armin Chodzinski (* 1970) studied art, worked in management and consultancy then completed a doctorate in anthropogeography. He works at the interface between art and economy, distilled in urban spaces. In performance lectures, exhibitions, lectureships, concerts and publications, he attempts to explain the world insufficiently. His method is self-experimentation. He lives and works in Hamburg.

BFS Kassenhalle, SaT 22:00 in German

Armin Chodzinski, Photo: © Frank Egel Photography

Jochen Dehn

Why stand when you can fall (title by Charlie Jeffery)

If I had the tongue of Gene Simmons, the nose of Ilja Gort, the chest hair of Tom Jones and the smile of America Ferrara, I wouldn’t need the legs of David Beckham or the left-hand fingers of Keith Richards to turn misfortune into wealth. Insurance is an ornament. Security can create happiness. You can ride a bicycle once you have learned how to turn in the direction in which you fall. You can start by looking out of the window, you can dress too warm or too cold.

My odds of being hit by a meteor probably won’t increase if I insure myself against such an event, but such insurance brings us closer on paper. We build a sentence. The meteor and I are brought together.

“Why Stand When You Can Fall” is about the wish to be brought into connection with something.

“Why Stand When You Can Fall” shows, in slow-motion, the process of falling in love.

Jochen Dehn (* 1968 in Germany) lives and works in Paris and produces a variety of performance-based works, telling stories and often using content as obstacles and triggers for action. His performances create breakage points and collapses which bring out moments of recognition for places, gestures and thoughts. He has conducted and developed research and theatrical works in official settings as well as in homes, streets and more unlikely locations. His work often concerns the body and the space around it, the physical and emotional distances be­ tween people, and their possible collisions. He has performed among others at the 11th Biennale de Lyon, the Centre Pompidou in Paris and in galleries in London, Berlin and Paris.

KW Studiolo, SaT 15:00 In German

the grandmother's paradox, in collaboration with J. Fouchard and KD Nguyen Thu Lam 2009 Photo: Š V. Veopraseut

Elena Esposito

Betting and Fate: Observation and Construction of the Future IN COLLABORATION WITH NIKOLAUS GANSTERER (p. 34) The bet has always existed, but its meaning and rationality have changed radically with the evolution of society. It is closely tied to the interpretation of the future and the role of people in the design of the future. A person who wagers places him or herself outside of time while simultaneously observing a supposedly pre-determined future that ex­ ists independently of his or her actions or behaviour. Someone who wa­ gers attempts to predict the course of events in the same way one at­ tempts to guess something about which one doesn’t have enough information. The winner is the person who comes closest to the correct assessment. It is actually a de-futurized future, treated as if it was the present – a measure of ignorance, but not of true uncertainty; we don’t know what will happen but we have a correct way of anticipating it.

The uncertainty of the future has another quality: The future cannot be known, not because we lack information, but more broadly, because it does not yet exist, and the manner in which it will come to be also de­ pends, among other things, on what we do or don’t do today – ­inclu­ding making a bet.

In all social situations, the bet changes the conditions of the future it attempts to anticipate. This fascinating and dangerous circularity isn’t always evident in, for example, common wagers on horse races or the weather. In these cases we often unwittingly adopt a conception of time belonging to other societies in which the future was predeter­ mined – where uncertainty was merely attributable to the confinedness of people incapable of seeing far into the distance, of seeing things in advance. The wager is an opportunity to simultaneously use this igno­ rance and neutralize it.

In other cases we are forced to cope with a radical uncertainty: These are cases in which our own prediction changes the conditions of the future that it attempts to predict – for example, when we, like everybody else, attempt to predict the times during holidays when there will be less traf­ fic on the roads. We all search for a “smart” departure time, with the

BFS MAIN STAGE, SaT 19:00 In German

result that the hypothetically most advantageous time becomes the worst. The bet isn’t simply a prediction of the future – it affects the future.

In this reflection on the bet we must also reflect on the circularity that sometimes undoes the most responsible wager and allows the person who has most recklessly wagered to win big. We all know that in bets on football, a responsible, well-informed bet isn’t interesting because if it is correct, then many other bettors are correct as well, and you end up winning almost nothing. A certain amount of irresponsibility is nec­ essary for a successful wager. But how can we direct this irresponsibili­ ty? What does it mean to bet carefully?

The world of finance offers instructive, different examples of ap­ proaches to the wager. Derivatives have existed for thousands of years and have always been described as “sales of a promise”, meaning, a bet. But forms of risk and their management have changed dramati­ cally – as the history and problems of structured finance demonstrate.

The investigation of derivatives can be described as an investigation of the evolution of the social form of wagering and its blindness.

Elena Esposito (* 1960 in Milan) studied sociology and philosophy at the University of Bologna, including, among others, with the professor of se­ miotics and author Umberto Eco. In 1986, Elena Esposito was drawn to Bielefeld to study under Niklas Luhmann, one of the foremost social scien­tists of the 20th century and creator of sociological systems theory.

She teaches communications sociology today at the University of Mode­ na e Reggio Emilia. With works like “Soziales Vergessen. Formen und Me­ dien des Gedächtnisses der Gesellschaft” about social memory and for­ getfulness (2002) and “Die Fiktion der wahrscheinlichen Realität” about the fiction of probable reality (2007), Elena Esposito has driven systems theory forward. For some time now her research interest has focused on the processes taking place in financial markets.

TIM ETCHELLS

A LUCKY LOTTERY FUTURE

“A Lucky Lottery Future” is a free prize draw in which every audience member at the Foreign Affairs 2013 Betting Weekend gets one chance to win the big prize. Each person gets a unique free ticket, identifiable by its very own combination of a year and a possible future event.

Spectators just fill in their details on the ticket and enter it into the draw for a chance to win. The winning ticket for “A Lucky Lottery Future” will be drawn in Haus der Berliner Festspiele. Moving from the poetic , to the disturbing or the banal and the texts assembled on the tickets for Etchells' “A Lucky Lottery Future” create playful and mischievous predictions for the future, suggesting 100's of possible events, some of them likely, some of them extremely unlikely. „A Lucky Lottery Future“ is a projekt by Tim Etchells for the performance weekend „The Bet“ during Foreign Affairs festival 2013.

Tim Etchells is an artist and a writer based in the UK whose work shifts between performance, visual art and fiction. He has worked in a wide variety of contexts, notably as the leader of the Sheffield-based per­ formance group Forced Entertainment. He is currently Professor of Per­ formance at Lancaster University. Recent publications include “Vacuum Days” (Storythings, 2012), “While You Are With Us Here Tonight” (LADA, 2013). www.timetchells.com www.forcedentertainment.com

BFS FOYER & BORNEMANN BAr, SaT From 20:00

Illustrations: © Tim Etchells

Claire Fontaine Get Lost

The work “Get Lost” (2007) examines the interconnections between lust, desire and free love in our capitalist world. A central element of the work is the quote from Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”, “I did love you once”. The sentence, which Hamlet utters at the beginning of the third act only to negate it later close to the end of the act (“I loved you not”), is itself a complex rumination about love: the proof of past love is juxtaposed to the title, “Get Lost”, so that the audience is pulled in only to be pushed away.

Claire Fontaine employs the mixing of sound, text, images and the mo­ vements in the room to make a complex statement about relationships in our capitalist society.

Claire Fontaine is a Paris-based collective artist, founded in 2004. After lifting her name from a notebook brand, she declared herself a “ready­ made artist” and began to elaborate a version of neo-conceptual art that often looks like other people’s work. Working in neon, video, sculp­ ture, painting and text, her practice can be described as an ongoing interrogation of the political impotence and the crisis of singularity that seem to define contemporary art today. She emerges from the ruins of the notion of authorship, experimenting with collective protocols of production and with various devices for sharing intellectual and private property. Her work has been featured at the Musées d’Art Contempo­ rain Marseille, the Institute for Contemporary Art in San Francisco and the Schinkel Pavilion in Berlin, and more.

KW Exhibition, 1+2 Floor

Get lost, 2007 Two channel iPhoto/itunes slide show: two 4:3 plasma screens or monitors on plinths, two mac-mini, two amplifiers with speakers.

Colour and sound. Duration : continuous shuffled loop.

Photo: Courtesy of the artist and galerie Neu, Berlin

Forced Entertainment All (Tomorrow’s Parties)

Forced Entertainment look to the future again and again in this fivehour durational version of their performance “Tomorrow's Parties”. Ex­ ploring utopian and dystopian visions, science fiction scenarios, politi­ cal nightmares and absurd fantasies, four performers make their way through these futures, as many as can be named, in a flowing tide of speculations, possibilities and dreams. “All (Tomorrow’s Parties)” draws the optimistic and pessimistic stories we tell ourselves and on the plea­ sures of invention that arise as the work twists and turns in perfor­ mance. From these conjectures, inventions and gripping but well-worn narratives the piece will move out in different directions to other kinds of speculations – the realistic, the personal and the evidently ridiculous.

“All (Tomorrow’s Parties)” is Forced Entertainment in intimate and co­ mical mode – a playful, poignant and at times delirious look forwards to futures both possible and impossible. As with all the company's du­ rational work the audience is free to arrive, depart and return at any point as the performers spool through a catalogue of speculation.

Conceived and devised by the company: Robin Arthur, Tim Etchells, Richard Lowdon, Claire Marshall, Cathy Naden and Terry O’Connor Performers Forced Entertainment: Cathy Naden, Claire Marshall, Richard Lowdon, Robin Arthur Direction: Tim Etchells / Design: Richard Lowdon / Lighting Design: Jim Harrison / Production: Jim Harrison Forced Entertainment Management Team / General Manager Eileen Evans / Marketing Manager: Sarah Cockburn Production Manager: Jim Harrison / Administrative Assistant: Natalie Simpson “All (Tomorrow’s Parties)” has been commissioned by Berliner Festspiele.

It is a durational version of “Tomorrow's Parties” which is a production of Belluard Bollwerk International, made possible thanks to a contribution of the Canton of Fribourg to culture. In co-production with BIT Teatergarasjen (Bergen), Internationales Sommerfestival (Hamburg), Kaaitheater (Brussels), Künstlerhaus Mousonturm (Frankfurt), Theaterhaus Gessnerallee (Zurich) and Sheffield City Council. With the support of Stanley Thomas Johnson Foundation Forced Entertainment is regularly funded by Arts Council England Learn more at www.forcedentertainment.com @ForcedEnts #alltomorrowsparties

BFS Main Stage, SaT from 19:30

Since forming the company in 1984, the six core members of the group Forced Entertainment have sustained a unique artistic partnership for nearly thirty years, confirming their position as trailblazers in contem­ porary theatre. The company’s substantial canon of work reflects an interest in the mechanics of performance, the role of the audience and the machinations of contemporary urban life. Forced Entertainment’s trademark collaborative process – devising work as a group through im­ provisation, experimentation and debate – has made them pioneers of British avant-garde theatre and earned them an international reputation.

„The future will be confusing” Photos: © Tim Etchells

The future will be confusing, Photo: © Tim Etchells

William Forsythe

Suspense / The Defenders Part 3

“A choreographic object” is not a substitute for the body, but rather an alternative site for the understanding of potential instigation and orga­ nisation of action to reside.” (William Forsythe)

Suspense Films

The Defenders Part 3

Choreographic Object Videoediting: Philip Bußmann William Forsythe is considered to be one of the leading choreographers worldwide. His works are renowned for uncoupling the practice of bal­ let from its identification with classical ballet repertoire and transfor­ ming it into a dynamic art form of the 21st century. Forsythe’s pro­ found interest in the founding principles of organisation has led him to create a broad spectrum of projects in the area of installation, film and internet-based knowledge development.

The Forsythe Company is supported by the city of Dresden and the state of Saxony as well as the city of Frankfurt am Main and the state of Hesse. The Forsythe Company is Company-in-Residence of both HEL­ LERAU – European Center for the Arts in Dresden and the Bockenheimer Depot in Frankfurt am Main.

With special thanks to the ALTANA Kulturstiftung for supporting The Forsythe Company.

KW Books and Rooftop, Fri & Sat from 12:00

Suspense, Photo: Š Julian Gabriel Richter

Nikolaus Gansterer Theoriegehäuse, 2013

Nikolaus Gansterer translates forecasts about our future into theoretical constructs which are in danger of collapsing. Expanding on his work “Dra­ wing a Hypothesis”, he will develop on site a performative philosophy of the diagrams of bets. In his performances the artist will deal with the fun­ damental question of how thought processes can be visualised. Using drawn and assembled constellations, he will develop – simultaneously with the lectures by Elena Esposito and Pieter De Buysser – associative con­ structs of ideas. The fragile drawings and models represent Gansterer’s ri­ gorous development of a specific language for the material quality of thought processes and a playful way of dealing with the complex levels of the meaning of speculative concepts.

Nikolaus Gansterer (* 1974) lives and works in Vienna and Berlin. He stu­ died Art under Brigitte Kowanz at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, where he himself has taught since 2007, and at the Jan van Eyck Acade­ mie in Maastricht. In his trans-media works, Gansterer concentrates on mapping approaches in science onto artistic environments and, in doing so, reveals immanent interconnections. By rejecting a strict differentiation of these two areas, and through a consequent recombination of methods and settings from both fields, he succeeds in making surprising connec­ tions that question the boundaries between nature and culture. In 2009, he was awarded the Culture Prize for Visual Art from the State of Lower Austria. In 2011, he published an elaborate book project, “Drawing a Hypo­ thesis” (Springer Vienna/New York), on the ontology of forms of visualisa­ tion, and the development of the diagrammatic view and its use in con­ temporary art, science and theory. www.gansterer.org

BFS Main Stage, Sat 19:00 & BFS KASSENHALLE, SAT 20:00

Theoriegeh채use 5, 2013, Photo: courtesy of the artist

geheimagentur & Joshua Sofaer Improbability Drive

This is a Lincoln Town Car converted into a stretch limo by the compa­ ny Crystal Club in California. During the financial crisis, one of these limousines was abandoned in the desert near Dubai Airport. Its owner had gone bankrupt and fled the country. geheimagentur and the artist Joshua Sofaer will bring this limousine to Berlin for Foreign Affairs in order to turn it into an Improbability Drive: if actual or would-be power­ ful men or stars are likely to be found in stretch limos – what, then, would constitute an improbable use of the car? Should the limo pick up people who are thrown out of their flat by the bailiff? Or people who are so lovesick they don’t know where to go? Should it serve as a state­ less state limousine of the Sans Papiers movement? Or shall we name ­­­ it a spaceship and give it to the Club of Autonomous Astronauts?

On 12 July, at 19:00, the improbable is in fact going to happen: The ­limousine will drive onto the main stage of the Berliner Festspiele. And there we will give it away. To whom will be decided by the audience.

© geheimagentur

BFS Main Stage, Fri 19:00

What if the crisis that happened over the past five years is a crisis of probability – not a crisis marked by the downturn of the curve, but a crisis of the curve itself? What if the movements on financial markets have brought to the surface what was always least of all probably, ac­ cording to probability laws? What if it’s not about bringing this improba­ bility under control if only in order to appreciate the boundaries of the probable? The only good thing about the crisis is that it also suspends the probability regime of fear and worry. But this is precisely what the crisis management of governments reinstates in the first place.

The Bank of Burning Money, the Wunder-Annahmestelle (i.e. Miracle Receiving Office), the Alibi-Agentur (i.e. Alibi Agency), the TourismArt-Stipendienprogramm (i.e. Tourism Art Scholarship Programme) – geheimagentur (i.e. the secret agency) produces situations and insti­ tutions that appear to be fictional but then nonetheless withstand the test of reality. geheimagentur is an independent label, an open collec­ tive and the attempt to practise the “art of being many”.

Joshua Sofaer (* 1972 in Cambridge, England) is an artist who is cen­ trally concerned with modes of collaboration and participation. Often with an irreverent use of humour, he plays with established forms of production, appropriating and reconfiguring the chat show, competi­ tion, lecture, or museum display. He acts as curator, producer and di­ rector of a broad range of projects, including large-scale events, inti­ mate performances, and publications. www.geheimagentur.net www.joshuasofaer.com

Goldin+Senneby

THE DISCREET CHARM with Pamela Carter (playwright), Ismail Ertürk (cultural ­economist), Anna Heymowska (set designer), Hamadi Khemiri (actor)

The title alludes to Luis Buñuel’s surrealist film from 1972 (“The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie”), which parodies the spectacle and self-ap­ pointed entitlement of the bourgeoisie. The piece, however, concerns the discreet charm of the banking system, or rather, the infrastruc­ tures that are created in relation to capital and finance. Using a scale model of the kind frequently used as demonstration material in thea­ tres between the director and actors, or between production teams and investors, an economist – who may possibly be an actor – explains various financial strategies and instruments.The relationship between drama, model, stage and reality is constantly negotiated with the viewer. The work is part of a series of projects by Goldin+Senneby, using performance and theatre to explore the geography and methods of the financial market. (Kim Einarsson) Originally commissioned for “The End of Money”, curated by Juan Gaitán, Witte de With, Rotterdam 2011. This version from “Counter-Production”, Generali Foundation, Vienna, 2012

Goldin+Senneby (since 2004) is a framework for collaboration set up by artists Simon Goldin and Jakob Senneby; exploring juridical, financial and spatial constructs. In their body of work known as “Headless” (2007 –), they approach the sphere of offshore finance, and its production of virtual space through legal code. Looking at strategies of withdrawal and secrecy, they trace an offshore company on the Bahamas called Headless Ltd, while a ghost-written detective novel continuously narrates their investi­ gations. Since 2010 their work has focused on “The Nordenskiöld Model”, an experiment in theatrical finance, in which they attempt to (re)enact the anarcho-alchemical scheme of 18th century alchemist August Nor­ denskiöld on the financial markets of today. www.goldinsenneby.com

KW Exhibition, 1+2 floor

Goldin+Senneby, Top 5 Hedge Fund Weapons, with Ismail Ert端rk (Cultural Economist)

Hadley+Maxwell

The House Rules (Betting is for Losers)

Can we only beat the House by bending the house rules? Or is getting lucky about finding another way? What is it to put oneself into play or to bet one's safety and sanity on what we do? If we describe the world we live in as the spectacle that has left the terrestrial for the omnipresent fantastical realm of the virtual, what keeps us from losing the earth al­ together? By what threads do we remain attached? This presentation will make use of a speculative manifestology of artistic subjectivity and how it is gambled away, or put into play, by production and representation.

Choreography: Emma Waltraud Howes

Hadley+Maxwell is a collaboration between Canadian, Berlin-based artists Hadley Howes and Maxwell Stephens. The two have been work­ ing together since 1997, producing in video, installation, sound, drawing and sculpture. Stemming from their commitment to collaboration, their work examines mediation as the threshold of understanding bet­ ween singular and group, at times questioning the individual, creative voice. Often appropriating iconic images and traditional forms from pop-culture, artistic and political movements, they use comparative strategies between diverse media to engage the relation between pri­ vate life and public appearance. They have exhibited internationally in­ cluding the National Gallery of Canada, Witte de With (Rotterdam), and the 4th Marrakech Biennial. www.hadleyandmaxwell.net

KW Chora, Sat 15:00

House Rules Overview, watercolour on paper, 24x32 cm, 2013 Photo: Š Hadley+Maxwell

Heatsick

Extended Play

Heatsick will perform his 'Extended Play' project in which he trans­ forms the setting of the Berliner Festspiele into a cybernetic play­ ground. He touches upon the idea of the singularity with participants involved in leisure tasks as work (keep-fit exercise as self regulation).

Heatsick's music mirrors this process, supported by programmed light patterns, and creates self-replicated states of abstraction.

Heatsick is the project of British-born, Berlin-based musician and visu­ al artist Steven Warwick. Warwick's music is created in real time based upon loops that are molded, stretched and reduced to interlink, nestle and merge with one another, in a similar way to his visual work where objects and media combine and coalesce in an environment inviting the viewer's participation. The 'Extended Play' concept is built upon the idea of the DJ set–albeit performed live–with visual accompaniment in the form of a light installation grid and experiments with temperature settings. Warwick uses limited resources to produce an immersive maximalist sound environment that has been favourably received in spaces diverse as Berghain Panorama Bar, Malmö Konsthall, Frankfurt Städelschule and Melt Festival.

BFS Bornemann Bar, SaT From 23:00

Illustration Š Heatsick

Daniel Keller

FUBU Career CAPTCHA'S & Soft Staycation (Gaze Track Edit)

IMAGINE a world where… labor, consumption, marketing, leisure and protest have been hybridizied, automated and outsourced into oblivion. We'll still need a mass market to consume our products, but we won't need people to do much else. 70% of current jobs won't exist in 30 years and humanity will become, absurdly enough, ‘unnecessary’ to the continued maintenance and growth of the global economy. Let’s call the last remaining work available ‘prosumarkritique’. That’s about as productive (or rebellious) as any of us can hope to be these days.

You got a few options…

The work “FUBU Career CAPTCHA's“ is an extrapolation of the seminal essay by Sun Microsystems founder Bill Joy called “Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us” published in Wired Magazine in 2000. The pessimistic essay quotes at length Ted Kaczynski, the Luddite mail bomber and cultural critic as well as the techno-utopian futurist, Ray Kurzweil. Ulti­ mately the essay sides with Kaczynski when it comes to 'Industrial socie­ty and its [really bad] future', calling for limits to computer power and its subsequent stream of software mediated economic disruptions. The works are 3d-printed imaginary futuristic portmanteau job description CAPTCHA's (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart) derived through a multistage man/machine syn­ ergistic abstraction process from the Bill Joy essay source text into unique asset-class wall ornament.

In the video installation “Soft Staycation (Gaze Track Edit)“, a Tobii gaze-tracking camera was used to measure the eye movements of a group of unemployed Hartz-IV recipients and expat freelancers, which the artist, playing the role of ‘job creator’, hired from Craigslist to watch a 30 minute compilation of national tourism ads sponsored by various publicly funded tourism boards.

KW Ausstellung, 1+2 Floor

Daniel Keller (* 1986 in Detroit) is an American artist based in Berlin.

Together with Nik Kosmas he founded the artist collective AIDS-3D, which has been collaborating since their studies at the Chicago Art In­ stitute, producing installations, performances, sound and internetbased work. Without committing to one media or style, their work is concerned with the internet age’s view on contemporary art and cul­ ture and interactions, engaging but also commenting on ideas of digi­ tal kitsch and technological utopia. Their work has been shown, among others, at the New Museum in New York, ICA in London and recently at the Aachener Kunstverein, Aachen; Import-Projects, Berlin; T293, Rome as well as at the Biennial of the Americas, Denver.

Johannes Kreidler Rich Harmonies

Video and sound installation for four monitors, headphones and text panels + live performance A four-octave keyboard has 49 keys on which you can play “6 out of 49”, as in the German Lotto game. Every six-part chord corresponds to the six “right numbers”. This acoustic luck metaphor makes it possible to penetrate the essence of chance and bets through the medium of music and – perhaps – hear which numbers are coming up in the next draw!

Johannes Kreidler (* 1980) studied from 2000 to 2006 at the Musik­ hochschule in Freiburg, Germany where teachers included Mathias Spahlinger (composition), Mesias Maiguashca and Orm Finnendahl (electronic music), and Eckehard Kiem (music theory). Since 2006 he has taught music theory, ear training, and electronic music in Germany at various music colleges. In 2008 he received broad attention for an art performance action in which he delivered 70,200 forms by truck to the GEMA head office (the German performance rights authority) in order to officially register his recent 33-second electronic piece com­ prised of 70,200 samples of other artists' work. Kreidler's works have been featured at numerous international music festivals, Donau­eschinger Musiktagen (2012), Wittener Tage für Neue Kammermusik (2013), Darmstädter Ferienkurse (2010, 2012 and 2014), Ultraschall Berlin (2013), Ultima Festival Oslo (2010)and Huddersfield Contemporary ­Music Festival (2010 and 2011). www.kreidler-net.de

BFS Bornemann Bar, Sat 20:00 (LIVE PERFORMANCE), UPPER FOYER (INSTALLATION)

6-aus-49 © Johannes Kreidler

Barbara Matijevic´ & Giuseppe Chico Forecasting

Barbara Matijević confronts her own, three-dimensional presence with the two-dimensional world of countless YouTube videos. This results in a series of spatial and temporal disparities and the screen turns into a window onto the future which, as an accumulation of not-yet-realised events, only ever exists as a speculation.

Barbara Matijević (* 1978 in Našice, Croatia), studied dance with the choreographer and teacher Kilina Cremona in Zagreb, where she was active as a dancer, movement assistant, actress and choreographer.

After graduating in literature from the Faculty of Arts at the Zagreb University, she went to Paris at the invitation of Boris Charmatz to join the project “Bocal” exploring performative approaches to dance peda­ gogy. She has worked, among others with Bruno Marino, David Her­ nandez, Bojan Jablanovec (project “VIA NEGATIVA”). In 2007 she be­ gan a collaboration with Giuseppe Chico. Together they have realized four performances: “I AM 1984”, “Tracks”, “Forecasting”, and “Speech!”

She is also teaching dance at the Art Academy in Osijek, Croatia. She lives in Zagreb and Paris.

Giuseppe Chico studied theatre in Italy before training with the choreo­­graphers Mark Tompkins and João Fiadeiro. In theatre, he was also an actor for Joris Lacoste. Since 2008, he has been co-writing projects with Barbara Matijević for a cycle of lecture-performances, involving the public in mental, historical or imaginary architectures: the trilogy called: “D'une théorie de la performance à venir où le seul moyen d'éviter le massacre serait-il d'en devenir les auteurs?” www.premierstratageme.net

BFS Side Stage, Sat 22:00

Forecasting, Photo: Š Yelena Remetin

Mother Future: The Safe Bet Do you know your future or does your future know you? Mother Future from the Berlin collective Keep It Real receives visitors in the Mobile House of Kyohei Sakaguchi, uses tools of fortune-telling to ask about our bets on our own future in individual interviews, and satisfies our yearning for predictability and insight: I see you with one foot over the abyss, but you will be saved. Integrate your personality into the future, on which you yourself will have placed your bet, and your success will be guaranteed.

The future dissolves in the infinity of the now. Live up to your future. I see you with one foot over the abyss, and you continue walking.

Margret Nisch, a.k.a Mother Future, studied Applied Cultural Sciences in Hildesheim, with a focus on Film, as well as Set Design at the TU Berlin.

She works as a set- and costume designer in film and theatre.

BFS Upper Foyer, Sat from 20:00

Kyohei Sakaguchi, Mobile House. Photo: Piero Chiussi

Michael Portnoy Abstract Gambling Michael Portnoy will be digging the engraved anklebones out of cold stor­ age for a few more high-stakes sessions of abstract gambling around his “Talus” table. A limited group of players will be selected to try their luck in this disorienting, inscrutable game under the command of Portnoy, Rela­ tional Stalinist. “Talus” was the centerpiece of Portnoy's acclaimed “Casino Ilinx” (2008), a highly dysfunctional subterranean casino under the influ­ ence of a class of games termed ilinx by sociologist Roger Callois, that “destroy the stability of perception and inflict a kind of voluptuous panic”.

Michael Portnoy (* 1971 in Washington, D.C.) lives in New York. With a background in dance and stand-up comedy, he switched camps to the field of visual arts around 2006. His performance-based practice is realized in a variety of media, from sculpture, participatory installation and cura­ tion, to painting, writing, theatre and video. He combines these threads in unique, extreme and deeply ironic performances and installations, using what he calls “experimental comedy” and describing himself as a “director of behaviour”. Portnoy has performed and exhibited, among others, at dOCUMENTA(13), at de Appel, Amsterdam at the Centre Pompidou, Paris, the Sculpture Center in New York and the Taipei Biennial. www.strangergames.com

KW Studiolo, Fri 21:00

Street game –Jacmel, Haiti, May 25, 1980, Photo © Ludo Kuipers

Johannes Paul Raether feat. Ute Waldhausen Protektorama Akhada materialistischer Spiritologie

With the “Protektorama Akhada materialistischer Spiritologie”, the Berlin artist Johannes Paul Raether creates another setting for his ava­ tar, the “world healing witch” Protektorama. In the World Healing Forest, where prosthesis-like metal sculptures and plastic bags are gathered forming a contemporary cult site, the witch works on new tools for re­ thinking globality. A ritual indoctrination procedure based on Protekto­ rama’s theses about the world’s preoccupation with capitalist princi­ ples is conducted at first with the help of the flock of attendants, their mobile phones and the supporting arms of the forest, before the be­ ginning of a materialist spiritology is developed using talking sticks, surprise eggs and passages from Marx, Deren, Latour and Boltanski.

Johannes Paul Raether has worked for many years on a series of selforganised projects, was involved in the “Freie Klasse” (Free Class) at the Berlin Universität der Künste and “basso”, an artist’s space in Berlin Kreuzberg. His works have been shown at exhibitions in KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin, Kunsthaus Bregenz, Künstlerhaus Stutt­ gart and the KUMU Art Museum, Tallinn. His texts have been published in “Jungle World” and “chto delat?”. He regularly writes for “Texte zur Kunst”. Raether has taught at the Stuttgart State Academy of Art and Design, the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen and the Berlin Universität der Künste. www.johannespaulraether.net

BFS GARDEN, SAT from 20:30

Photo: © Humphrey Maleka

Reactor

Dummy Button

Welcome to “Dummy Button”. This is the future. The currency of choice is time, and you must trade in Periods. Enter now, and boost, BOOST, BOOST! “I cannot believe my luck! Reactor is bringing the new 'Dummy Button' to Berlin in July. Offering us the chance to take a risk on the behaviour of others. They say this is not a game – but that it is a continually evolving situation where we can change our bets, and affect how things play out.”

Max Gold

Loops and circuits of time are in constant flux; each of us is anchored to time by moments, structures, and fictions. But now you can enter a place where time is horizontal, vertical or backward; it stops, starts and eradicates itself. “Dummy Button” is experienced as a perpetual ‘now’ with the future only three minutes away. Here time is controlled by su­ pernatural beings that embody its myriad temporalities. These are the Time Dealers, and none shall pass without making the deal of a lifetime.

Take a risk on how long to spend inside “Dummy Button”. Your first de­ cision frames your future: one, two or three Periods? It is only once in­ side that you will know if you chose enough time, or too much. Do you want to get the full experience, or just show up and take a look?

How then does this “Dummy Button” activate the audience? Push the button and see what happens to others in the space – nothing or every­ thing is possible. You are dealing in time, but your gamble only pays off if luck is stacked in your favour. How much can you boost it? To the max?

You watch, you listen, you play, you trade, you cheat, and you try your luck.

Have we got time for you? Everyone is welcome here, at least for a Period!

KW Chora, Fri 21:00

Reactor is an art collective based in the UK that assembles new, collec­ tive realities in which audiences and Reactor members cooparticipate.

Reactor projects explore the ways in which cohesion of social groups is maintained through shared belief systems and collective action. Seek­ ing to transcend the exhibition form, Reactor employ a lateral exten­ sion of the possibilities of art practice, encouraging it to spill out from its initial structure into an expanded field of activity. Recent projects include: “The Reactor Technique” – Latitude Festival (Suffolk, UK – 2013), “MoMAMonarch” – MoMA (New York, USA – 2013).

“Dummy Button” is new work for “The Bet – an examination of doubt, contingency and meaning in economy and society” a joint project of KW Institute for Contemporary Art and Berliner Festspiele / Foreign Affairs.

Reactor are supported by Arts Council England.

Photo: © Reactor

Saskia Sassen & Richard Sennett Betting with the Life of Others

The two American sociologists provide an introduction to how specula­ tion works on a global level and discuss the economic and social ab­ surdities that arise as a consequence. While Saskia Sassen will concen­ trate on high finance mechanisms, Richard Sennetts reflections are inspired by reading Dostoevsky's “The Gambler”, which looks at taking extreme risks as a form of death wish. It is the dark side of capitalism's current winner-takes-all operation in markets; on the other side the willingness to lose all is a kind of suicidal gamble. In other words, he wants to explain why markets are structurally imprudent, based on what Dostoevsky tells us about compulsive gambling.

Moderation: Ulrike Herrmann (taz)

BFS Side Stage, Sat 20:30

Saskia Sassen is the Robert S. Lynd Professor of Sociology and CoChair, The Committee on Global Thought, Columbia University (www. saskiasassen.com). Her recent books are Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages ( Princeton University Press, 2008), A Sociology of Globalization (W.W.Norton, 2007), and the 4th fully updated edition of Cities in a World Economy (Sage, 2012). Her books are translated into over 20 languages. Her forthcoming book is Expulsions: When complexity produces elementary brutalities. (Har­ vard University Press 2014). She has received diverse awards, from mul­ tiple doctor honoris causa to being chosen as one of the Top 100 Global Thinkers by Foreign Policy and as the 2013 winner of the Principe de As­ turias Prize for the Social Sciences.

Richard Sennett (* 1943 in Chicago) writes about cities, labor, and cul­ ture. He teaches sociology at New York University and at the London School of Economics. Important Publications: “The Fall of Public Man” (1977), “The Corrosion of Character, The Personal Consequences Of Work In the New Capitalism” (1998) “The Culture of the New Capital­ ism“ (2006),”The Craftsman” (2008) and recently. “Together: The Ritu­ als, Pleasures, and Politics of Cooperation” (2012)

Santiago Sierra 20 m3 of Earth from the Iberian Peninsula The Spanish artist Santiago Sierra is bringing 20 m3 of earth from a construction site in Bilbao to Berlin – in so-called BigBags, 1x1x1-metre plastic sacks. Cubes with such “ideal” dimensions were the epitome of an objective aesthetic in modernism and above all minimalism. But Si­ erra revises the idealisation of universal, “indifferent” forms by using a format used in logistics for freight transport and filling it with econom­ ically and politically loaded content: rubble from Spanish real-estate projects. Its removal from the Basque capital to the artistic hub of Ber­ lin, where the same earth – now a work of art – gains in value overnight, creates a real value-added chain. This reflects the economic North-South divide in Europe and the migration of cheap goods and manpower to the economic stronghold of Germany, as well as the speculative gains made through art, which bear no relation to the actual economic situation.

Santiago Sierra was born in Madrid in 1966, where he currently lives. He studied visual arts in Mexico City, Madrid and Hamburg, amongst oth­ ers with Franz Erhard Walther. Since the mid nineties Sierra realizes a large number of projects, offensively addressing repression and exploi­ tation as he meets them in different parts of the world. Sierras work stems from a critical reconsideration of minimalism, with a performa­ tive sculptural practice as the core of his engagement, accompanied by photographies, videos and films. Some of his projects originate from collaborations with institutions such as Magasin3 Stockholm Konsthall (2009), Kestnergesellschaft Hannover (2005) and Kunsthaus Bregenz (2004). In Germany, Deichtorhallen Hamburg/ Sammlung Falckenberg offers a broad overview of his oeuvre in 2013. His Projekt for Berliner Festspiele will be continued in September 2013 at KOW in Berlin. www.santiago-sierra.com

BFS Vorplatz, open all the time

Photo: Š Santiago Sierra

Janek Simon

A short survey of Lotto winning strategies

The lecture will present a wide array of lottery winning strategies, their histories and philosophical assumptions lying behind them. There will also be talk about mathematics of lottery, theory of probability, it's implications for the developement of the early modern scientific meth足 odologies and different magical and esoteric systems used to forecast future. We will also test the systems live on the German national lot足 tery draw.

Janek Simon is a cultural producer based in Warsaw. After studying cognitive science and sociology at the Jagiellonian University and a short episode of being a VJ in the Polish underground club scene of the 90's he became a visual artist. His conceptually driven practice is influ足 enced by a varied array of topics, from the use of the image in science through cultural geography to DIY ethics and anarchist political theory.

From 2008 to 2012, he ran an independent project space called Goldex Poldex in Krakow. The artist's work was shown, among others at the Manifesta 7 and Liverpool Bienial and in solo shows at the Arnolfini in Bristol and Casino Luxembourg, among others. He received the Views prize for the most interesting emerging Polish artist in 2008.

BFS Kassenhalle, Sat 21:00

Illustration: Š Janek Simon

Cally Spooner

And You Were Wonderful, On Stage

“And You Were Wonderful, On Stage” is a musical for a female chorus line, relocated from margins of the musical form to take the lead role in a production without clear narrative or action. Exploring usefulness of speech and disclosure of self within semiocapitalist labor markets, the musical is itinerant, evolving in parts, and built around the feelings and actualities of loss, in a climate of progress and ‘high performance’ promises. When cognitive activity is increasingly synced up to networked productivity, and language tied up in economic interests, the boundaries of personal expression of self, and the regurgitation of market agendas, have never been less legible.

“And You Were Wonderful On Stage” stages this condition using material sourced from current affairs, where a public figure trades the unmediated space of improvisation for an automated performance. Their public display continues to parade as 'live' whilst lacking its qualities; change­ ability, direct encounter, and risk. Material includes: Beyoncé lip-syncing at the Presidential inauguration, her voice becoming a techno prosthetic to her potential liveness; Lance Armstrong's doping confession to Oprah Winfrey on live TV – a perversion of 'disclosure' and apology; British Secretary for Education Michael Gove's new rote-learning exams as inscription of learning and Obama's speechwriter, leaving his post as political communicator to write action movies in Hollywood.

To carry this material, the musical's libretto is lifted directly from an advertising-agency's instructions; on how to extract, divulge and distort employee and consumer’s real-life stories, for economic and personal gain.

The musical was originally commissioned by and is supported by the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.

It has been co-curated by Annie Godfrey Larmon.

Written and directed by Cally Spooner Original composition by Peter Joslyn Performed by Helen Hart, Cloe Turpin, Piya Malik, Jenny Minton and Rebecca Thorn.

KW Chora, Sat 16:00

Cally Spooner (* 1983; Ascot, UK) is based in London. Her work is an en­ quiry into, and a production of, live events. Using philosophers and cur­ rent affairs to help her write and casts of conflicting characters to help her perform, the artist produces single-take, unedited feature films, plot-less real time novellas and non-narrative live musicals to write and stage the movement of speech.

Recent solo exhibitions and performances include “And you Were Won­ derful, On Stage”, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2013); “Seven Thirty Till Eight”, Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen (2013); “Collapsing In Parts”, International Project Space, Birmingham (2012); “Cally Spooner: Footnote 5”, (with Dulcie Lewis and Peter Joslyn), ICA, London (2012); “It’s 1957, and the Press Release Still Isn’t Written”, Hermes und der Pfau, Germany (2011).“It’s 1957, and the Press Release Still Isn’t Written”, Hermes und der Pfau, Germany (2011). www.callyspooner.com

And You Were Wonderful, On Stage, Photo: © Ernst van Deursen

Daniel Tyradellis & Joseph Vogl Geld=Wunsch*(Vertrauen/Zeit)

Money is a medium for accumulating and delaying wishes – on an individ­ ual and a societal level. Its value is based on a logic that may be volatile but is also indestructible. Literary scholar Joseph Vogl, author of “Das Gespenst des Kapitals” (The Spectre of Capital), among other works, and philosopher Daniel Tyradellis, curator of exhibitions such as “Wealth: More than Enough”, discuss false evidence concerning money and loans, impossible social contracts and their bets on the Greek legacy.

Daniel Tyradellis (* 1969) is a philosopher and curator. He did a doctor­ ate degree under Friedrich Kittler about the creation of Husserlian phe­ nomenology in the context of the foundational crisis of mathematics.

Apart from his university teaching and postgraduate work, since 1997 Tyradellis has curated internationally acclaimed exhibition projects at the interface between science and art. His particular interest is trans­ ference in the sciences as well as “images of thinking.”

Joseph Vogl is professor for literature and cultural theory at Humboldt University in Berlin and permanent Visiting Professor at Princeton Uni­ versity. His latest publications include „Kalkül und Leidenschaft. Poetik des ökonomischen Menschen“ (2002), „Über das Zaudern“ (2007), „Soll und Haben. Fernsehgespräche“ (mit Alexander Kluge, 2009), „Das Gespenst des Kapitals“ (2010) and “Der Souveränitätseffekt“ (2013).

KW Chora, Sat 17:00 In German

Photo: Š Andreas und Axel Pinkow

The Bet-Masters Wetten, was geht

Play along in this near-final evening of Foreign Affairs, an evening of superlatives! Bet it all on one card, live large, compete against yourself, compete against your loved one(s), bet on the new, on luck, challenge the old, have a try at human wealth, fall short. Wager against and with one another, dissolve limits, exceed yourself. Bet double on everything.

Create your own wager, your own worth, create your own luck!

Bet that the theoretical framework will fall apart tonight, bet that the world will finally experience healing, bet that tonight’s lottery number can be deduced ahead of time by listening to a musical performance and bet that the future won’t be left hanging on stage. Bet – for your life and on it – that tomorrow morning the sun will rise again.

Our Bet-Masters: Emma Rönnebeck was born in Magdeburg and from 1995 to 1999 studied acting at the Theaterwerkstatt Berlin-Charlottenburg (under the direc­ tion of Valentin Platereanu). 2001 “laughter diploma” from the ComedySchule in Cologne. 2001-2007 freelance theatre and comedy productions.

2008-2011 member of the Schauspiel Leipzig ensemble. She worked under the direction of Claudia Bauer, Mirko Borscht, Herbert Fritsch, Rainald Grebe, Sebastian Hartmann, Sascha Hawemann, Albrecht Hirche, Martin Laberenz, Mareike Mikat and Kay Wuschek among others. Several radio, film and TV jobs. Musician in the Berlin band Metrodiv.

Tanja Krone studied cultural science and aesthetic communication at the University of Hildesheim, Germany. Since 2006 she’s been working as theatre director, performance artist and musician in various artistic contexts. She is co-founder of the music/performance collective Maid­ en Monsters whose work focuses on site specific, participative and transdisciplinary projects.

BFS Foyer, Sat from 19:00

Together with Berlin-based musician Hans Narva and other musicians and performers from Johannesburg, South Africa they invented the „United African Utopias“. You can still hear the anthems on Gandhi square....

Ingolf Müller-Beck, born in 1965 in Freiburg. 1990-1993 studied at the “Mozarteum” university for music and the dramatic arts in Salzburg.

1993-1995 worked at the Burgtheater in Vienna; 1995-1997 ensemble member at the Staatstheater Hannover; 1997-1999 at the Theaterhaus Jena; 2005-2007 at the Maxim Gorki Theater Berlin. 2000-2009 freelance work at the Staatstheater Kassel, the Volksbühne Am Rosa-LuxemburgPlatz Berlin, the Maxim Gorki Theater Berlin, Schauspiel Frankfurt am Main and Theater Basel. Film and TV jobs. Since 09/2009 member of the Schauspiel Leipzig ensemble.

Daniel Boy (INVISIBLE PLAYGROUND) Invisible Playground develops games for cities. As a collective of designers, artists, artists and economists they research and install experience systems that are developed at the interface of site-specific theatre and transmedial gameplay.

ity is ikely. And is the em.�

“Reality unlike that is problem (Elena Esposito)

Talk ELLEN BLUMENSTEIN, Chief Curator at KW Institute for Contemporary Art, MATTHIAS VON HARTZ, Artistic Director of Foreign Affairs EB: Matthias, how did it all begin? We started out talking about the spectres of capitalism …

MvH: The title of our first project idea was “Capital Spectres”, which was about alternative economic strategies. Unfortunately – or perhaps fortunately! – nothing came of it.

EB: In our subsequent discussions, we tried to find a way of taking into account this economic aspect while also going beyond it – interlinking different fields and addressing different ways of thinking about the fu­ ture. An important reference point was Joseph Vogl’s book “Das Gespenst des Kapitals” (The Spectre of Capital), in which the bet features as a means of speculating on the future, suggesting that the future can be predicted. In other areas, however, the bet is much more about being at the mercy of the unknown, an unpredictable future.

MvH: An important concept in this regard is the idea of trust. Realising that the way we perceive reality is often based on belief systems led us to think about other world views, and we ended up with the idea of the bet as a form of playing with faith and belief. This finally led to the idea of including as many aspects of “the bet” as the framework of the project would allow.

EB: I’m interested in the positive moment of uncertainty. The strength of this topic is that it is very multifaceted. There is necessarily something playful about betting, but it can tip over into something serious at any time. For artists it is also inspiring to draw on the multifaceted charac­ ter of the bet, which embodies fun, economic aspects, as well as a

social element that refers back to our Christian heritage. There is Job’s wager in the Bible, then there’s Pascal’s wager; and in Goethe, Mephis­ topheles makes a bet with God. It always revolves around trust, but also around the leap into the unknown. The narrow focus on the economy veils the fact that speculation works with a completely unpredictable future, even if we are always led to believe that it can be controlled.

Since the financial crisis of 2008, the link between the economy and loss, risk and the uncontrollable has become clearer.

MvH: In one of her books, Elena Esposito describes how the literary novel and the theory of probability emerged at the same time as dif­ ferent forms of fiction. If you think of the theory of probability as fic­ tion from a cultural perspective, then the whole economic system that has developed out of it over the last three hundred years collapses. It is not about being able to prove something or about scientific validity, but about grappling on an emotional level with social and philosophical subjects, about another form of producing knowledge.

EB: Nowadays, social truth is only justified with economic-scientificmathematical models. Which is why art, in the broadest sense, is so fascinating: because it is one of the last areas of society in which one is able to think differently. Since the Bologna Process everything has been focused on the natural sciences, and the humanities have fallen by the wayside, so that art is increasingly the only field that allows other forms of knowledge and thinking. And even this last bastion is increasingly endangered.

MvH: In conversations I have had with theoreticians, we found it very difficult to differentiate between the bet and speculation. Urs Stäheli argues that the bet is a closed system that you view from the outside.

There is no feedback mechanism between you and the system, where­ as with speculation you are always part of the system. Perfidiously, this

is used to justify society’s tolerance of speculation, because we are, after all, part of the system. But the fantasy that it is possible to influ­ ence speculation through one’s behaviour in the system, and perhaps even prevent malpractice, is false. Being “on the inside” is a very rela­ tive matter: if I speculate on food prices, then I’m somehow involved.

At some point rice will become more expensive for me, too, but at first it doesn’t affect me. But it is important to both of us that our event is not primarily a criticism of capitalism, but also an exploration of a cul­ tural phenomenon – of course with a capitalist-critical agenda … ­ In any case, nowadays it is common knowledge, that speculation – the way it works today – is “evil”.

EB: Our two fields – visual arts and theatre – are logically interlinked; performance is the border zone where we overlap. The audience is al­ ways important in theatre, but its importance in art is less obvious. We wanted to involve visitors on very different levels. For example, there’s ­ a real gambling casino by Michel Portnoy, an ongoing performance by Jochen Dehn, which deals with the question of betting and invites visi­ tor participation. Both projects explore the relationship between those who create this situation and those who take part in it.

MvH: But it has to be said: we’ve known each other a long time, but it was only through working together that we noticed how difficult it is to merge these two fields into a collaborative project.

EB: It’s only when you work together that you notice that assumptions, truths, conventions etc. are extremely context-specific and not identical.

For me this is the key aspect of this collaboration, because you only begin to understand how you tick by pushing at your own boundaries, which in turn opens up new perspectives and gives you the freedom to see things differently. We always assume that the rules of our personal system are natural.

MvH: Our collaboration is about the rules according to which an insti­ tution functions, but also about the way working with artists func­ tions. It is only in conversation that you notice how inflexible you are in the way you see things.

EB: The framework conditions for theatre and visual art are completely different. In terms of structure and capacities we have come from fair­ ly opposite poles and have tried to develop new forms out of this ten­ sion. It is extremely difficult, but also very rewarding.

MvH: I think we have realised that we don’t actually know each other’s system. It is only through doing that you become aware of the way in which the other’s art form works. For example, in theatre, responsibility for the audience goes further than in the visual arts. In theatre, you only stop being responsible for the audience once they have left the room. With many visual artists we have the feeling that the responsi­ bility ends once the work is in place. It’s about the work, not the im­ pact it has.

EB: Basically, all the parameters are different. Audience expectations and and the significance of space and time are different. The audience is different – more extreme – than you would imagine. I would say that most visual artists are simply not interested in the audience, they are interested in creating their work which should then be seen. Time is ex­ pansive, there is no beginning or end, and in terms of space there is no separation between stage and audience. Of course in theatre there are now also forms in which the stage and audience space are merged, and in the field of visual arts there are artists like the group Reactor, who start to divide up the exhibition space, but the distinctions are still valid as basic categories. In theatre, the setting provides a clear frame­ work, but more implicit rules apply to art: how we go into exhibitions, how long we stay standing, how we move, how we understand what we

see – all that is in fact extremely regimented. I’m interested in exploring this and pushing at its limits.

MvH: I would say that theatre is a less free system. Formally it is like this: go in, lights out, stay sitting, leave. But at the same time this is where responsibility comes into it. If you give me your time, if I am re­ sponsible for the fact that you will be sitting here for an hour; I need to make sure that you are entertained during this time. There may be ex­ ceptions to this rule, but generally theatre is part of the entertainment industry.

EB: There is also a theoretical, non-performative talk by Saskia Sassen and Richard Sennett. In art you would normally include this in the sup­ porting programme … is this something that only you do, Matthias, or is this usual in theatre?

MvH: It’s exactly the same in theatre – you might have a format called “Sunday Morning at Eleven” when lectures and discussions take place.

It is actually not typical for it to be featured so centrally in the main programme. We tried to develop a spectrum through which one can move freely between emotional-associative projects that are more likely to arouse emotions, through to lectures in which real knowledge is conveyed. As a spectator, I always really enjoy being able to decide: now I would like to find out more about something and now I would like to approach the subject more playfully. When on Saturday evening Ele­ na Esposito talks about how impossible it is to construct the future and to protect oneself against uncertainty through betting, and then the curtain rises and Forced Entertainment repeats the sentence “In the future …” for five hours, then I hope that people recognise how we are trying to approach the subject in different ways. Every single visitor has the freedom to decide what he wants to get out of it – there are usually several things going on at the same time.

EB: Which means, however, that the visitor acts differently here than he normally would.

MvH: Yes, this event breaks down the typical expectations of theatre.

Structurally it comes close to the field of visual arts. Basically it functions more like a performative exhibition, even if you do not have to choose between thirty but only three works. But then there are performances – as is usually the case in theatre – during which you are forced to stay for a certain amount of time. The amount of time spent in front of a single work is then longer than in an exhibition. But basically you are able to wander between and explore different works, different projects and thereby different formats.

etting The Betti bet Alphabet

aberglauben-Fund (superstition fund): managed by a robot that acts according to such criteria as 'Friday the 13th' and full moon.

The test phase will be completed in June 2013.

Bank Run: In a run on bank-

teller’s windows, many investors try to withdraw their deposits at the same time. During the world economic crisis and the Argentine crisis this led to the collapse of the banks.

Casino Royal: from Bond to Berlin Dostoevsky: In The Gambler (1866), he portrayed a gambling addict. Autobiographical. D. per­ sonally suffered from gambling addiction.

Ellsberg paradox: a phenomenon known from "Entscheidungstheo­ rie" decision theory. If people have to decide between different options and the "Wahrscheinlich­ keitsverteilung"probability

­ istribution is known for only ­ d one option, most will choose that option.

F aust: the object of a bet be­ tween God and Mephistopheles.

Faust also makes a wager with Mephistopheles on whether he will ever achieve a state of con­ tentedness: “If ever you, with lies and flattery /... can dupe me with a life of pleasure, / may that day be the last for me! ...” – “”Here’s my hand!” – “And mine again!”

Gameshows: popular television format where candidates have to solve tasks. The most famous German example is Wetten dass …

(You want to bet that ...)

Hiob(Job): During an assembly of the angels, Satan and God make a wager about Job’s faith. Satan believes that the only reason Job is so God-fearing is that he is do­ ing so well. God then allows the devil to take everything away from Job, only Job himself is off limits for him.

Integration mechanism: a theory

according to which games work as a social adhesive within the context of the modern-capital­ ist threat of anomie by bringing people together regularly and frequently.

Juice: an American term for the bookmaker’s margin that is in­ cluded in the calculation of quo­ tas. No-juice bets are wagers where the calculation does not include a bookie’s margin. Bet­ ting firms offer these kinds of ­ bet for promotional purposes.

Kukuruzwette (maize bet): a bet about maize harvest made in 1960 between Austrian Parliament President Leopold Figl and the So­ viet head of government, Nikita Khrushchev. The wager was a pig.

Long bet: for example between Mitchell Kapor and Ray Kurzweil, which is currently on, from 2002 to 2029. It is about whether a computer will pass the Turing Test

of exhibiting intelligent human behaviour by 2029.

Mississippi Scheme: financial crisis in France in the 18th century, trig­ gered by the trading company Compagnie de la Louisiane ou d'Occident (or Compagnie d'Occident for short, or Mississippi Company) which was founded by John Law. A total of 160 kiosks were temporarily set up at the Place Vendôme and the Hôtel des Soissons in order to meet the de­ mand for stocks. Guards even had to prevent night-time trad­ ing. The bubble burst in 1719.

Nahrungsmittel-Spekulation

(food speculation): trading with agricultural commodities such as wheat or maize at the stock ex­ change. It is currently supposed to be restricted through financial market guidelines.

Over: form of football bet. The bet is on more (over) or fewer (under) than 2.5 goals being scored in a match.

Pascal’s wager: Blaise Pascal’s fa­ mous argument in favour of believ­ ing in God. Pascal argued that it is always a better wager to believe in God, as the expected gain as a consequence of believing in a god is always greater than the expect­ ed gain in disbelieving in a god.

Quota: factor by which the bettor’s bet is multiplied if he or she wins.

Rehabilitation bet: invented by the US bank Goldman Sachs. The wager is on the rehabilitation of US prison inmates.

South Sea Bubble: trading with South Sea shares issued by the South Sea Company, which in 1720 jumped from 120 to 950 pounds within a few months. The promise was trade with exotics goods, commodities and slaves.

Not a single dividend was paid.

Tulip bulb speculation: trading with the tulip bulbs, newly im­ ported from India, on

17th-century Dutch financial markets. Prices exploded by a factor of 50 within three years. ­ In Amsterdam an entire house was sold for 3 tulip bulbs.

Resulted in a crash in 1637.

Ungleichheitsstrukturen (inequality structures).

Versicherungs-Spekulation (insurance speculation).

Weather futures: bets on warm winters or rainy summers, typically made by utility companies.

X oder 0: a draw Yakama-Indianer: American Indi­ an tribe in the south-east of Washington State in the US. They have operated a casino, the Leg­ ends Casino near Toppenish, close to Yakima, since 1998. In 2008 it had approximately 600 employ­ ees, over 450 of whom were Yaka­ ma Indians.

Zwei-Weg-Wette(two-way bet):

wager with two possible outcomes

(e.g. in tennis, where there is no draw).

Impressum Ein gemeinsames Projekt von Berliner Festspiele/ Foreign Affairs und KW Institute for Contemporary Art, gefördert durch die Kulturstiftung des Bundes Berliner Festspiele Ein Geschäftsbereich der Kulturveranstaltungen des Bundes GmbH Gefördert durch den Beauftragten der Bundes­ regierung für Kultur und Medien Intendant: Dr. Thomas Oberender Kaufmännische Geschäftsführerin: Charlotte Sieben

Technische Leitung: Andreas Weidmann Leiter Beleuchtung: Carsten Meyer Leiter Tontechnik: Manfred Tiesler, Axel Kriegel Bühneninspektor: Thomas Pix Bühnenmeister: Benjamin Brandt, Claudia Stauß Beleuchtungmeister: Jürgen Koß, Hans Fründt Tonmeister: Martin Trümper Bühne: Birte Dördelmann, Stephan Fischer, Sybille Casper, Pierre Joel Becker, Manuel Solms, Mirco Neugart, Karin Hornemann, Maria Deiana, Thomas Pix, Fred Langkau Licht: Lydia Schönfeld, Robert Wolf, Arndt Rhiemeier, Bastian Heide, Ruprecht, Lademann, Mathilda Kr­ uschel, Frank Szardenings Ton: Axel Kriegel, Stefan Höhne, Tilo Lips, Klaus Tabert, Falco Ewald, Sebastian Pieper, Simon Franzkowiak, Felix Podzwadkowski, Hardy Hartenberger Azubis: Malte Gottschalk, Otis Weihrauch

THE BET THE B

Foreign Affairs Künstlerische Leitung: Matthias von Hartz Künstlerische Mitarbeit: Cornelius Puschke Dramaturgie: Carolin Hochleichter Musikkurator: Martin Hossbach Produktionsleitung: Caroline Farke Technische Leitung Festival: Matthias Schäfer Produktion: Ann-Christin Görtz Mitarbeit technische Leitung: Lotte Grenz Student Affairs: Katja Herlemann Architektur: realities:united Ausstattung Festival: Frieda Schneider Mitarbeit Ausstattung: Agnes Fabich, Jasmin Wiesli Praktikum: Milena Kowalski, Alexandra Keiner, Johanna Colmsee Künstlerbetreuung: Loredana Cimino, Nuria Gimeno Redaktion: Anne Phillips-Krug, Christina Tilmann Übersetzung: Jenny Piening, Karen Witthuhn / Transfiction Graphik: Ta-Trung, Berlin Druck: enka-druck GmbH, Berlin Umschlagabbildung: Nikolaus Gansterer, „Diagrammatik der Wette - ein Alphabet”, 2013 Gestaltung Programmübersicht: Jasmin Wiesli

Förderer

Partner

Medienpartner

KW Institute for Contemporary Art Direktorin: Gabriele Horn Chefkuratorin: Ellen Blumenstein Co-Kuratorin „Vier gewinnt: Die Wette” Anja Lückenkemper Projektleiter: Jasper Kettner Assistentin künstlerisches Büro: Adela Yawitz Praktikantinnen: Nina Kuttler & Jenny Verclas Aufbauleitung: Matten Vogel Aufbauteam: Kartenrecht Alle Künstlertexte und –material, soweit nicht an­ ders angegeben: © die KünstlerInnen.

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Stand: Juni 2013

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