Recap of the Düsseldorf Workshop

Under the title “The State of Experience, or: ars activa,” the GUI, in cooperation with the ZERO foundation, hosted a workshop in Düsseldorf. In the historic rooms of the ZERO foundation, we spent three days intensively exploring the most pressing discursive questions surrounding artistic action today. Presentations and discussions at the workshop included approaches from art historical discourses and political theory from the 1960s, expanded to include contemporary debates on (artistic) production, the field of action and the experience of work and subject, as well as the terms ‘action,’ ‘act,’ and ‘performativity’ themselves. The gathered scholars, researchers, and artists engaged in discussions and were able to open up new perspectives via insights from their various areas of expertise.