Under the title Vague Intellectual Pleasures, or vague_ip for short, artist Jan Erbelding is organising a lecture series for the Lothringer 13 Halle from April to May 2022. Vague Intellectual Pleasures, as a broad label, is dedicated to the pleasure of very theoretical constructs and their direct impact on social coexistence.
Monday, 28 February, 7 pm
Vague Intellectual Pleasures
with Marlene Halser
In the first lecture, Marlene Halser talks about the current hype around the "psychedelic renaissance", between social utopia and racist drug politics. She will explore the question of whether mind-expanding drugs, such as LSD, magic mushrooms or MDMA, really make us better people, and what role ego dissolution currently plays in the healing of addictive diseases. It is about who exactly is considered socially unfit through which drug use and who is totally celebrated for it and why. We hear who will benefit from a possible cannabis legalisation and talk about the complex implications of legally marketing mind-expanding substances.
Marlene Halser is a freelance journalist from Berlin and writes for Vice, taz, Zeit and the Süddeutsche, among others. In 2020, she published a comprehensive article on the "glorification of the broken white man" in the feminist magazine "Anschläge" together with her colleague Maike Brülls. Currently, her extensive research on the abuse of power and sexualised violence within the Bhakti Marga sect has been published as a six-part podcast by Hessischer Rundfunk. You can listen to the podcast entitled "Just Love" in the ARD media library here: https://www.ardaudiothek.de/sendung/just-love/96463766/
You can find an overview of Marlene Halser's journalistic work at
https://www.torial.com/marlene.halser
Friday, May 13, 2022, 7 pm
Vague Intellectual Pleasures
with Anatole Lucet on Gustav Landauer
In the second lecture of the vague_ip series, Anatole Lucet talks about the political theory of Gustav Landauer and his democratic socialism or anarchism. It is about the emancipatory role of language and language criticism and mysticism, of literature and poetry and music, on Gustav Landauer's theories and about what is actually meant by "mystical anarchism" in this context. In addition to an introduction to Gustav Landauer's life and work, we will talk about why Gustav Landauer's theories are experiencing renewed interest today and what potential they still hold for art, on the way to the good joyful life.
Gustav Landauer (1870-1919) was a writer and philosopher. At the request of Kurt Eisner and Erich Mühsam, Gustav Landauer came to Munich in November 1918 and became the "Minister of Culture" of the first Munich "Räterepublik" in April 1919.
Anatole Lucet's work in the field of political philosophy includes the role of utopia, the theory and practice of liberation and the emancipatory potential of education. After his Bachelor of Arts in Politics, Philosophy and Economics in Europe (University of Kent / Sciences Po Lille), he studied philosophy and history of philosophy at the École normale supérieure de Lyon. Following his doctoral thesis "Community and Revolution in Gustav Landauer", he translated one of Gustav Landauer's most important works, the "Call to Socialism" (1911), into French together with Jean-Christophe Angaut.
Thursday, 19 May 2022, 7 pm
Vague Intellectual Pleasures
with Paul-Philipp Hanske on ecstasies
"Out of oneself and completely in the now - the boom of ecstasies in art and life".
Shamanism, psychedelicism, mysticism: contemporary art is dominated by phenomena that - despite formal differences - have one thing in common: they refer to ecstatic cultural techniques. Intoxication, rituals and self-forgetfulness have an enormous radiance at the moment. And not only in art. Ecstasies are also increasingly used as a tool for self-optimisation in other areas of society - in lifestyle phenomena such as mindfulness, the new spirituality, but also in the tech world; just as they are appropriated by the right in a celebration of the archaic. The lecture presents an anthropological model of ecstasy that can grasp these different phenomena and asks why all this is happening right now.
Paul-Philipp Hanske is one of the founders of the editorial agency Nansen & Piccard in Munich. Together with his colleague Benedikt Sarreiter, he is currently working on a new book: Ekstasen der Gegenwart (Matthes & Seitz Berlin). In 2015, both published Neues von der anderen Seite - die Wiederkehr des Psychedelischen (Suhrkamp).
May punch will be served after the lecture.
Wednesday, May 25, 2022, 7 pm
Vague Intellectual Pleasures
with Michael Hirsch on cultural work
There is not only discomfort with culture, there is also discomfort with cultural work, with its relations of production: with the conditions under which artists, scientists, musicians, publicists and writers carry out those activities that actually stand for a different, freer behaviour towards things, towards others and towards themselves.
Michael Hirsch's book KULTURAREBEIT. PROGRESSIVE DESILLUSIONIERUNG UND PROFESSIONELLE AMATEURE asks about the ways of life and forms of action that may already be there but cannot become visible because we are constantly struggling with the inevitable disappointments of the field. Michael Hirsch reads from his book and talks to us afterwards about (almost) real life and working on contradictions, about double life and non-identity in relation to a life of and life for art, science and politics, and about progressive disillusionment and self-empowerment as a traversal of the phantasm and revision of expectations.
Michael Hirsch (*1966), Dr. phil. habil, is a philosopher, political scientist and art theorist. He teaches political theory and the history of ideas at the University of Siegen and lives as a freelance author in Munich. He works regularly for radio (Bayern 2, Deutschlandfunk, SWR 2), newspapers and magazines (Blätter für deutsche und internationale Politik, Der Freitag, Die Gazette, Jungle World, Oxi Blatt, Prager Frühling, Telepolis, among others). In 1997 he was a participant in documenta 10 as a member of the Jackson Pollock Bar (theory installations). Book publications (selection): Cultural Work. Progressive Disillusionment and Professional Amateurs (2022); Right Wrong. There is a Right Life in Wrong (2019); Overcoming Labour Society. A Political Philosophy of Labour (2016); Logic of Distinction. 10 Theses on Art and Politics (2015)