40 Years International Performance Art Archive
In fall 2021, the performance art archive will look back on 40 years of existence: in 1981, more than 40 international artists gathered to spend 30 days together in the KONZIL, exploring ways of working, living, discussing, and collaborating. The International Performance Art Archive emerged from this event at the Künstlerhaus Stuttgart.
40 years later, we reflect on the KONZIL and revisit the questions in the present: How to work, connect, conceive of art and society? How do we encounter each other in productive diversity? Which structures will last sustainably in the 21st century, what are relics to be discarded, dragged on merely out of habit?
These questions will be addressed by a publication (planned release autumn 2021) and a hybrid performance meeting (October 2021). In addition, the Künstlerhaus Stuttgart will feature the exhibition “Permanente Performance – 40 Jahre Konzil” with collections from the archive BLACK KIT | DIE SCHWARZE LADE (30 August–12 September 2021). We are pleased that the collective BLACK MARKET INTERNATIONAL, which emerged from ideas of the KONZIL, will be in Cologne (18 September 2021): Sandra Johnston (Northern Ireland), Myriam Laplante (Canada/Italy), Alastair MacLennan (Northern Ireland), Helge Meyer (Germany), Boris Nieslony (Germany), Jacques van Poppel (Netherlands), Elvira Santamaria (Mexico), Marco Teubner (Germany), Julie-Andrée T. (Canada), Roi Vaara (Finland), Jürgen Fritz (Germany).
One month of experimental work
h an d e l n (hybrid)
40 years International Performance Art Archive
DIE SCHWARZE LADE | BLACK KIT
30 September 2021 – 30 October 2021, Cologne
The KONZIL was based on lived artistic encounters and proximity. A hybrid performance festival will bring together performers, artists, and theorists to "1 Month of Experimental Work" in October 2021. In 1979, the performance artist Boris Nieslony invited colleagues to the small exhibition space of the Künstlerhaus Hamburg. It was the precedent of the KONZIL and laid the foundations for the Stuttgart gathering in 1981. Artists came to Hamburg and reflected in 30 days on h an de ln – how to "act" – as an artist and as a human.
In discussions, performances and talks, dimensions of h an de ln will be debated, explored, tested, denied as well as acted upon; open-ended. h an de ln in the field of performance art is a huge field, historically as well as theoretically. However, October 2021 is less about tracing the excesses of the verb. Rather, the concern is to take up the question of what "to act" currently means, is, should be, from the present and in distinction to what has been. When is the time for action and when is the time for refusal? How does the medial transmission or documentation of an action affect it? What rhythm does action require, what warmth, what atmosphere? When is action experienced as valuable, how is it to be acted in the present? In art, in systems, in collectives, in private as well as in public?
The archive will provide research material from its collection. Screenings, lectures, talks complement the 1-month hybrid program. What emerges or does not emerge is determined by the encounters.
Unfolding the Archive
The International Performance Art Archive Die Schwarze Lade | BLACK KIT, founded in 1981, archives the documentation of organizations, associations, artist-run spaces and most important international projects in the field of performance art since 1975. BLACK KIT contains material on more than 4000 artists, thousands of photos, individual performance relics and videos since about 1970. The archive also includes more than 10.000 theoretical publications with a focus on performance art in the public sphere, collaboration, and intervention art such as the crossover areas between arts