Decide or else

Impulse conference on Decision-Making in Society, Politics and Art

How we make decisions, what sort of decisions we are allowed to make and who makes them, are now questions of political survival that are being felt acutely. At the same time, however, decisions themselves appear to have been substantially devalued in our immersive all-inclusive form of capitalism. We enter a state of constant voting or choice that essentially reduces our activity to one of consumption, a state we cannot escape that simply serves to prevent us from having any genuine power. Passivity is disguised as activity.
Genuine involvement – in both politics and art – has a radical potential because it means sharing responsibility and power.
The independent theater often aspires to develop different forms of decision-making: collective, non-hierarchical or at least transparent. However, reality – both on stage and backstage – often looks rather different.
For our final edition, theoreticians who have followed the festival, artists, advisors, and guests from this and previous Impulse will come together on the last day of the festival to examine some fundamental questions: What can we decide if all officially sanctioned options are unacceptable? Do we believe in reform or revolution? Is our goal a model of consensus, as practiced by Occupy? Or an agonistic pluralism which allows us to act out contrary positions instead of having to reconcile them? Are circumstances so complex that only experts should make decisions – or is that precisely what hegemonic discourse would have us believe? On the other hand: after Trump, Brexit and everything else do we still want everyone to be able to simply carry on voting? Or would a system of deciding by lot be a better solution? Questions and more questions. Only one thing is clear: that crises and decisions still go together. And that the clock is ticking.

Language ENG

Certain parts of the conference can be followed via Live-Stream. You will find the links attached to the corresponding part in the schedule below.

SCHEDULE

10:30 AM: Welcome & Intro
Florian Malzacher

10:40 AM: “The Affects of Politics” (Lecture)
Chantal Mouffe
Live-Stream

11:30 AM: “How do we decide? Agonism, deliberation and consensus in contemporary and future politics”
(Inputs and conversation)
John Jordan, Oliver Marchart, Chantal Mouffe & Judha Su hosted by Jan Sowa
Live-Stream

1:00 PM: Lunch

2:00 PM: “The Origin of Collective Decision Making”
Andy Blunden (via Skype)
Live-Stream

2:30 PM: “Cultura Ciudadana – A Citizen’s Culture”
Antanas Mockus in conversation with Joanna Warsza
Live-Stream

3:30 PM: Coffee

4:00 PM: Short Inputs
Bojana Kunst, Marcus Steinweg & Stefanie Wenner

4:15 PM: Working Groups
“Artist at work”: Bojana Kunst: Input & conversation with Stefan Bläske & audience
“Decision or Choice”: Marcus Steinweg: Input & conversation with Pelin Başaran & audience
“The art of collective decisions”: Stefanie Wenner: Input & conversation with Monika Gintersdorfer & audience

5:30 – 6:00 PM: Final discussion

ON

SATURDAY 1 JULY 10:30 AM-6 PM Cologne
Language ENG studiobühneköln
Tickets here

With Pelin Başeran, Andy Blunden (via Skype), Monika Gintersdorfer, John Jordan, Bojana Kunst, Oliver Marchart, Antanas Mockus, Chantal Mouffe, Milo Rau, Jan Sowa, Marcus Steinweg, Judha Su, Joanna Warsza & Stefanie Wenner

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