School of resistance in the akademie der künste NTGent/IIPM/Akademie der Künste

In search of strategies of resistance, NTGent & IIPM (International Institute of Political Murder) founded a globally networked School of Resistance as a livestream debate series in May 2020. As a symbolic institution of the future, it has now come to the Akademie der Künste, Berlin and, drawing on previous projects, examines aesthetic practices of resistance. Activists and artists discuss art as a transformative, reality-creating practice.

Milo Rau has been working on the contradictions of global capitalism with IIPM and NTGent for almost 15 years through installations, plays, films, books and political interventions. The interweaving of activism and art leads to an expansion of artistic strategies and at the same time contributes to dissolving the boundaries of the concept of art. How can art react to states of crisis? How can it contribute to strategies of resistance? Six cinematic works by Milo Rau form the starting point for this investigation: The Last Days of the Ceausescus (2009/10), The Moscow Trials (2014), The General Assembly (2017), The Congo Tribunal (2017), Orestes in Mosul (2020) and The New Gospel (2020). In doing so, the "School of Resistance" at the Akademie der Künste examines the conditions of global art production and the artistic strategies of the IIPM itself.

School of Resistance: "The General Assembly" - 24/02/21 at 5pm

The film series begins with the documentary recordings of The General Assembly, which took place in Berlin in 2017. Today more than ever, The General Assembly raises questions: Is the production of utopian images a possible template for representing opposing political formations? Akademie member Georg Seeßlen, theatre author and Vice President of the Akademie der Künste Kathrin Röggla and Milo Rau will discuss the intertwining of activism and art. 

School of Resistance: "The Last Days of the Ceausescus" - 24/02/21 at 7pm

The images of the sentencing and execution of the Ceausescus in 1989 have left a lasting mark on the collective memory of several generations. In the winter of 2009/2010, IIPM brought this groundbreaking event in the fall of communism to numerous stages in Romania, Germany and Switzerland. Together with Eyal Weizmann (Forensic Architecture), Andrei Ujica (director of Videograms of a Revolution), Silvia Sasse (historian) and Akademie member Matthias Lilienthal (dramaturg and curator), Milo Rau questions re-enactment as a means of coming to terms with the past and the present.

School of Resistance: "(Im)possible Art" - 25/02/21 at 5pm

Discussion about art as a way of transforming reality.

School of Resistance: The Moscow Trials - 25/02/21 at 7pm

The Moscow Trials (2013) is the story of a campaign that the state and the church themselves waged against inappropriate artists, staging it again through the means of political theatre. The lecture following the screening explores the potential of artistic strategies as acts of rebellion. Curator and dramatist Florian Malzacher, curator Inke Arns and Mikhail Ryklin, writer and performer in The Moscow Trials, will discuss the possibilities and limits of resistance art.

School of Resistance: "Aesthetics of Resistance - Part I, II en III" - 26-27-28/02/21 at 4pm

Three podcasts about the possibilities and contradictions of political art. The conversations are also the starting point for a new production by Milo Rau and Édouard Louis.

School of Resistance: "Transnational (In)justice" - 26/02/21 at 5pm

Discussion about the possibilities, the problems and the state of transnational justice

School of Resistance: "The Congo Tribunal" - 26/02/21 at 7pm

In their film The Congo Tribunal (2017), IIPM/Milo Rau highlight the backgrounds of the war in the Great Lakes region, which has been going on for 20 years and has claimed more than 6 million lives. The Congo Tribunal sketches a harrowing yet analytically profound tableau of a neo-colonial world. In the discussion following the screening, Celine Tshizena, one of the principal investigators of The Congo Tribunal, curator and journalist Dorothee Wenner and sociologist Harald Welzer will discuss the conditions of global art production and the significance of artistic strategies of resistance.

School of Resistance: "Can there be global art?" - 27/02/21 at 5pm

Conversation on the challenges of global art.

School of Resistance: "Orestes in Mosul" - 27/02/21 at 7pm

How can you stop the vicious circle of violence? With Orestes in Mosul, Milo Rau made perhaps one of his most important works for NTGent and IIPM. The discussion afterwards focuses on the central question of the theatre production and the film: Can the circle of violence be broken? Together with cultural theorist and writer Klaus Theweleit, playwright Mohammad Al Attar and actress Susana Abdul-Majd, dramaturge Eline Banken examines the conditions of global art production and the meaning of artistic strategies of resistance.

School of Resistance: "The Revolt of Dignity" - 28/02/21 at 5pm

Conversation on the contradictions of capitalism and their attempts to resist.

School of Resistance: "The New Gospel" - 28/02/21 at 7pm

With The New Gospel, director Milo Rau documents and stages a "revolt of dignity". After the screening, actress Maia Morgenstern, writer and activist Yvan Sagnet and Academy member Georg Seeßlen will discuss artistic strategies of resistance. How can art react to crisis situations?