WE NEED YOUR CARKEYS ! – The Horizons of Horror
Symposium, Künstlerhaus Worpswede

with Anselm Franke, Bracha L. Ettinger, Melanie Bonajo, Laboria Cuboniks (Diann Bauer, Helen Hester), Anja Kirschner, Sam Basu and Anke Hennig

Künstlerhäuser Worpswede, Germany

We are pleased to announce another gathering in Teufelsmoor: after PSYCHO MATERIALISM in 2014, we will examine the world through the lens of horror, discovering over three days of symposiums, workshops, and exhibitions the new perspectives contained therein.

Increasingly we are organised around global emergencies that reach into every facet of life, disseminating an underlying apprehension of horror. These urgencies, mediated through spectacular polarizations, limit our comprehension of and capacity for being in the world. Given the recent resurgence of discourses on ‘horror’ what is mostly imagined with and against it tends towards an acceleration of the crisis-vortex and a staring into the abyss of a radically indifferent world. But can ‘horror’ become a lever for emancipation?

This symposium invites participants to contribute to a different, more flexible understanding of the horrific in multiple ways. We question the fascination with horror in popular culture. We affirm the experience of horror in life and its presence in the mechanisms of extreme or radical change. Alongside this we weave the idea of horos, the ancient Greek word for a boundary marker, something that points to a limit and horizon. We Need your Car Keys! will explore the horizons that open up as we navigate through experiences of ungrounding and the 21st century condition of horror. How do the art and culture of our times express the alienation that arises in periods of great change?

We Need your Car Keys! proposes that horror is a tool that helps us to understand and foreground strategies that undo the dichotomy between inside and an opposing outside. Can we harness the monstrous becomings within us and around us, and can we do so in a positive way?

The symposium is organised by Anja Kirschner, Anke Hennig, Sam Basu, and Tim Voss, who came together as a group of art practitioners, curators, and theorists who share an interest in the excessive potential of horror.


SYMPOSIUM SCHEDULE (watch out for updates)

Friday, October 28th
11:00 am Introductory Student’s Workshops (Anke Hennig, Sam Basu)
2:30 pm Welcome to the Teufelsmoor/Künstlerhäuser Worpswede (director Tim Voss) / opening with works by Diann Bauer, Bracha l. Ettinger
4:30 pm “Invocation of our Demon Sisters!!” (Anke Hennig, Sam Basu, Anja Kirschner)
5:00 pm Bracha L. Ettinger (Keynote)
9:00 pm Screening of Anja Kirschner’s film

Saturday, October 29th
11:00 am - 12 noon Helen Hester “Towards a Theory of Thing-Women” (Laboria Cuboniks)
12noon - 1:00 pm Diann Bauer “It’s not you, it’s me (working title)” (Laboria Cuboniks)
2:30 pm - 4:00 pm Anselm Franke “The Horror, the Horror - Primary Violence and the Underworld of Modernity”
4:30 pm -6.30 pm Follow-up Seminar Bracha L. Ettinger & Workshop by Anke Hennig “Zombie Formalism”
9:00 pm "Can I Get a Cuddle? Horror or Fun - on the ethics of non human labour online", Lecture by Melanie Bonajo

Sunday, October, 30th
11:00 am - 1:00 pm Follow-up Seminars by
Diann Bauer & Helen Hester “What is Xenofeminism?”
Anja Kirschner “The Processed and the Possessed”
and Melanie Bonajo
2:30 pm - 4:30 pm "The Final Girl" - Panel