SFB 1512:  Intervening Arts

• Subject Area: Humanities ; Social and Behavioural Sciences
• Term: since 2022
• Website: Homepage
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 451897170

Today, perhaps more than ever, the arts claim to have an impact on society. Globally, they aim to alter social processes, to interfere in political conflicts, and to create public spheres. Artistic movements such as Participatory Art, Artivism, Climate-Change Art, and Nature Writing bear witness to the presence of global crises and social conflicts: The arts involve themselves in struggles for democracy, human rights, and fair global power structures; they address various crises, from climate change to the COVID-19-pandemic; they outline new ways of living and working. In order to describe this political involvement of artistic poiesis, the Collaborative Research Centre proposes the term intervening arts. This guiding concept supports the exploration of new forms of artistic sociality and artistic creation of society. In this context, the historicality of contemporary arts as reflected in references to forms and procedures of the avant-garde movements and their variations in the 20th and 21st century is of particular importance.The CRC unites arts-related disciplines with philosophy, history, sociology, and cultural anthropology. It is particularly interested in the generative or activating dimensions of the arts and examines their potential to bring about social relations and to instigate political discord by establishing artistic practices and modes of perception.Disparity and heterogeneity are characteristic of both contemporary art and society and shape the intervening potential of arts. Postcolonial, intersectional, and queer theories help to understand how the arts and their practices are entangled in current social crises and struggles and how they engender new concepts of the political. The CRC strives, however, to maintain a broader theoretical approach that considers artistic intervention not only as obvious interventions in social or political contexts. Therefore, the CRC investigates both programmes of manifest artistic interventions and those artistic poetics and practices, by virtue of their specific construction or form, material defiance, and performative dynamics, develop their intervening potential rather hidden, subcutaneously and micrologically. To provide a new concept of the social position of the arts in relation to their intervening practices and to develop a new theoretical framework for contemporary arts constitute the main goals of the Collaborative Research Centre. To achieve these goals, the CRC explores basic poetics of intervention, divided into three areas: (A.) participating and separating; (B.) moving and disrupting; (C.) drafting and rejecting.

• DFG Programme: Collaborative Research Centres

Current projects

• A01 - Participation and Dissociation: Frictions in 20th Century and Contemporary Political Theatre (Project Head Warstat, Matthias )
• A02 - Shared Protocolls: Assembly in Contemporary Art (Project Head de Bruyn, Eric C. H. )
• A03 - Post-Autonomous Artistic Interventions in Brazil and Argentina (Project Heads Simoni, Mariana Maia ;  Zepp-Zwirner, Susanne )
• A04 - Musical Polyphony as Experimental Sociality (Project Head Jeßulat, Ariane )
• A05 - Counter Publics? The Socio-Political Placing of Intervening Arts in the Post-Ideological Age (1970-2010) (Project Head Nolte, Paul )
• A06 - Artistic Way of Life as Intervention (Project Head Söntgen, Beate )
• B01 - Improvisation as Paradigmatic Artistic Intervention (Project Head Bertram, Georg W. )
• B02 - Intervening Choreographies: Formats and Practices of Decolonization and Ecology (Project Heads Brandstetter, Gabriele ;  Maar, Kirsten )
• B03 - Expectations of Efficacy of Artistic Intervention: A Study of Self-Conceptions, Practices, and Receptions (Project Head von Scheve, Ph.D., Christian )
• B04 - Acquiring – Editing – Spreading: The Intervening Potential of Internet Memes (Project Head Weingart, Brigitte )
• B05 - Acoustic Disruptions. Postcolonial and Queer Potentials of Sonic Intervention (Project Head Kolesch, Doris )
• B06 - Architectural Interventions between Digital Technology, Processuality, and Improvisation (Project Heads Hauser, Susanne ;  Weber, Julia )
• C01 - Writing as Intervention. From the Proletarian-Revolutionary Literature of the Weimar Republic to the Literatures of the GDR und FRG (Project Head Brokoff, Jürgen )
• C02 - Futurity as Intervention – Ethnographical Studies of Artistic Exhibition Practices of Doing Future (Project Head Chakkalakal, Silvy )
• C03 - Artistic Outlines and Intervening Practices of Co-Operation of the Avantgarde and Contemporary Arts in East Central Europe (Project Head Werberger, Annette )
• C04 - Between Unbolting and Bolting: Political Movements and Artistic Intervention (Project Head Celikates, Robin )
• C05 - Intervening Images of the World: The Audiovisuality of Climate-Change (Project Head Grotkopp, Matthias )
• C06 - History as Material? Artistic Historicizing as Intervening Practice (Project Head Gludovatz, Karin )
• R - Laboratory Formats – Theoretical Reflections (Project Heads Brokoff, Jürgen ;  Chakkalakal, Silvy ;  Warstat, Matthias )
• Z - Central Tasks of the Collaborative Research Centre (Project Heads Brokoff, Jürgen ;  Gludovatz, Karin )
• Ö - Laboratory Formats – Public Spheres (Project Heads Brokoff, Jürgen ;  Chakkalakal, Silvy ;  Warstat, Matthias )

• Applicant Institution: Freie Universität Berlin
• Participating University: Europa-Universität Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder); Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin; Leuphana Universität Lüneburg; Universität der Künste Berlin (UdK)
• Spokespersons: Professor Dr. Jürgen Brokoff, until 6/2024; Professorin Dr. Karin Gludovatz, since 7/2024