[spectre] dictionary of war -- berlin edition

[florian schneider]

A TO Z: THE PRECARIOUS ALPHABET OF WAR

Dictionary of war, a two-day performance event featuring artists,
scientists, activists and theorists
February 23 and 24 2007, starting at 5 pm and 2 pm
Sophiensaele Berlin, Sophienstrasse 18
http://dictionaryofwar.org


War, in the broadest sense, is a battle about the power to define and
definitions, that are not carried out at the center of words but at
their very margins. But what can words do, as soon as the state of war
has become a rule and a normality worldwide?

The fourth and so far final edition of DICTIONARY OF WAR will take place
on 23 and 24th of February 2007 in Berlin, Sophiensaele. Loosely based
on the slogan: "At least, when we create concepts, we are doing
something" DICTIONARY OF WAR is a collaborative platform for creating
concepts. 75 concepts on the issue of war, have had already been
invented, arranged and presented by scientists, artists, theorists and
activists at the first three public, two-day events in Frankfurt,
Munich, and Graz.

The Berlin edition of DICTIONARY OF WAR features contributions by:

London based artist and magician Jonathan Allen; conductor Christian von
Borries from Berlin; Berlin based sci-fi-author Heinrich Dubel; the
historian Stefan Doernberg, who participated 1945 as a translator of the
Red Army within the negotiations about unconditional surrender with the
german Wehrmacht; the author and curator Felix Ensslin; curator Charles
Esche from Eindhoven; writer Stefan Heidenreich; the choreographer and
stage director Emil Hrvatin from Ljubljana;  the former curator of the
museum Karlshorst, Peter Jahn; the artist-group kuda.org from Novi Sad;
the historian and curator Andrea Moll from Berlin; Cologne based curator
Vanessa Joan Müller; the musicians Quio & Darius James;  US-American
philosopher Sylvère Lotringer; the theorist Brian Massumi from Montreal;
South-African film-director Khalo Matabane; Avi Mograbi, filmmaker from
Israel; the Frankfurt based designers Martin Neumeier & Nathalie
Landenberger; artist Michalis Pichler; the theatermakers collective
Rimini Protocoll; sociologist Saskia Sassen from Chicago; the Munich
based photographer Armin Smailovic; artist Simon Starling from Glasgow;
Berlin based author Marcus Steinweg; architect Stephan Trüby from
Stuttgart; Israeli photographer Meir Wigoder und theorist Irit Rogoff
from London; Soenke Zehle, scientist from Saarbrücken.

The aim of the project is to create key concepts that either play a
significant role in current discussions of war, have so far been
neglected, or have yet to be created. DICTIONARY OF WAR tries to make
the creation or revaluation of concepts transparent into more or less
open processes in which we can and need to intervene; at the same time,
the goal is to develop models that redefine the creation of concepts on
the basis not of interdisciplinary but rather undisciplined, not
co-operative but rather collaborative processes.

DICTIONARY OF WAR started in June last year in Staedelschule Frankfurt
and was characterized from the very beginning by a wide range of
polyvocal and multi-layered approaches. The Munich edition several weeks
later has been overshadowed by the war in the Middle East, but turned
out as enormously substantial by lots of very focussed contributions. In
Graz, in the framework of the festival "steirischer herbst", a further
differentiation and multiplication of the concepts and their formats has
become overwhelming.

The entire video recordings (live mixed from four cameras and additional
sources) of the first three editions of the DICTIONARY OF WAR are
available for free download from the website:
http://dictionaryofwar.org/en-dict/v2v

The next 25 concepts that are going to be presented at the Berlin
edition will be ready for download near on real time -- published under
a creative commons share-alike license. Together with the already
available concepts this will lay the ground for a unique, topic-based
multimedia archive that encompasses more than 50 hours of video
material. Even by now the video files of the DICTIONARY OF WAR are
shared by thousands of users worldwide who download the material for
educational or research purposes and remix it in various new contexts.
Finally, this autumn a book will be published by Merve-Verlag (Berlin)
which is supposed to work as a fifth, virtual edition.

The Berlin edition of the DICTIONARY OF WAR starts on Friday, February
23, at 5 pm in Sophiensaele Sophiensaele, Sophienstrasse 18, 10178
Berlin-Mitte. It will be continued on Saturday, February 24, at 2 pm. On
Sunday, February 25th, 2007 the session concludes with a Postscriptum at
the historic site of the unconditional surrender of German Fascism in
1945, today's "German-Russian Museum" in Karlshorst. At 8pm in the
evening "Pirate Cinema" screens Chris Markers film "Scenes from the
Third World War 1967-1977".

The concepts are introduced in alphabetical order by their concept
persons in half-hour long presentations or performances. The entrance
fee is 10 Euro (5 euro reduced) per day and includes a CD-edition of the
video-recordings of the first three sessions.

More informations at:
http://dictionaryofwar.org
or
info[at]dictionaryofwar.org

DICTIONARY OF WAR is a project by Multitude e.V. and Unfriendly
Takeover, in collaboration with Sophiensaele. DICTIONARY OF WAR is
supported by the Federal Culture Foundation, Germany.