Project Description

The project ZEN & SPLATTER (Laundry Chinoise) as executed by The New Schicksalsgemeinschaft is a kaleidoscopic peek into the various paradigms and procedures of the artists’ cultural practices (lecture, video, drawing, etc.) that were performed during the 52-hour-lab at Akademie Schloss Solitude from Friday, May 22, 8 pm until Saturday, May 23, 8 am. The project (and other related activities) was located in the laundry room—Laundry Chinoise is a reference to Jean-Luc Godard and a film-tracing that we performed during the lab activities.

Objective

Among other aspects, these practices want to be representations and anti-representations, contemplations and appearances of the critical questioning of the “internal truth” of artistic gatherings as such (“What does it mean to collaborate?” “What is gained by it?,” etc.). And by questioning the very premises upon which any form of involvement gains its momentum, one simultaneously defines and re-defines the principles of what consequences useful or useless scenarios for production may have.

Reading

The intent of The New Schicksalsgemeinschaft is to illustrate a commonly referenced core of social organization: a joint effort based on sheer coincidence of time and place within a framework of production (nature, goods, logistic, topography, technology, communication, etc.). Society is nothing but a coincidental (rather than interwoven) entity of diatypical and antagonistic subjects and projects its outcome thus highly unpredictable, no matter how stable its “constitution.” There is no society without a hazardous core, and there is no art without the drive of failure. The fear of disaster is stronger than the fear of death. Death is an illustration of fear.