The places where art is most important are not the megacities, which have too much art as it is. Instead, they are the places where the resistance of the audience may initially be greater than its interest. What does it mean to go to these places and create political publicity here for and with art?

Övül Durmusoglu (via Skype), Pauline Doutreluingne, Eleni Froudaraki & Stavros Perakis from DA Heraklion (artist collective)
With Lisa Glauer & Jan Verwoert  

Lisa Glauer is an associate at BAS. Jan Verwoerd is an art critic and visiting professor at the Graduate School.

The Salon für Ästhetische Experimente is a cooperation with the Haus der Kulturen der Welt and co-funded by the Einstein Foundation Berlin.

This is DA. It is a self-managed social space for discussions, exhibitions, concerts, assemblies and other cultural, social and political events that began to operate in the spring of 2015 in Heraklion, Crete. It brings together diverse and related groups and individuals with the expectation for participation, self-organization and social engagement.

In particular, DA provides space for ConQueer, the Solidarity Initiative for Refugees and Immigrants, the Organizational Group of the Integral Cooperative of Heraklion, the Solidarity Initiative for VioMe as well as the independent group Art and Politics on a weekly basis. Apart from these, the site also gives other people or collectives the opportunity to exhibit their work, perform events, produce shows, organize bazaars, collective kitchens or anything else that promotes equality, solidarity and self-organization.

Ellie Froudaraki (*1984, visual artist) and Stavros Perakis (*1984, ceramist) both grew up in Heraklion. After their studies drove them away for several years, they decided to return and apply their knowledge and experiences in their hometown, not as individuals, but as subjects of a community. Their need for a studio was enriched with the one to socialize the discourse on art and creation, so DA was established, a collective space in the city of Heraklion aiming  to cover a community's needs for coming together and for forming content in a self-organized manner. As a result, exhibitions and art talks are intermingled with assemlbies of various groups, with events, with street celebrations, with the feeling of community.  Besides the fact that creating an art space in small cities has a certain level of both difficulty and at the same time significance, what does it mean, socially and politically, to attempt to break the centrality of the model that art exists and regenerates itself today?   

In the discussion in HKW, the artists' collective of DA will go through their answer on the question "Should I stay or Should I go?", where "staying" and "going" become intepretable in meaning; where the notions of centre and periphery get re-signified when examined on another base on which horizontallity playes a crucial role as a path to overcome the individual sphere towards a more ethical social format; where art and its contextualization could become a reflection of a social model rather than a representation of it. 

When?
11 December 2017, 7pm

Where?
Haus der Kulturen der Welt
John-Foster-Dulles-Allee 10
10557 Berlin