Affirmative Nachhaltigkeit

The content on this page was translated automatically.

Subject according curriculum

Politics & Aesthetics

Teachers

Scope

Wednesdays, 2-5 p.m. (bi-weekly): 5.11. / 12.11. / 26.11. / 10.12. / 14.01. / 28.01. / Additional: Symposium at the beginning of the summer semester (date to be announced)

Room

Wiesendamm - Raum 1.15 (Seminarraum 3)

Duration

1.5 Semesterwochenstunden

Description

The climate crisis, ecological transformations, social inequality - these are all pressing issues of our time. Reference is often made to technical solutions, political measures or economic management. What is neglected is the cultural imagination: what images of the future do we actually want to create? And how can we think about sustainability in such a way that it is not primarily linked to prohibitions or scarcity, but rather to pleasure, design and relationships?

The performative arts in particular offer a productive space for experience here. They allow relationships to be choreographed anew, material flows to be reinterpreted, rhythms and bodies to be shifted into other constellations. In social contexts, sustainability is often seen as an imposition: as a call for restriction, reduction and renunciation. However, in artistic practice, this renunciation - of large stage sets or energy-intensive production methods, for example - can become a source of aesthetic innovation: Minimalism, repurposing or processuality do not appear as a deficit, but as a creative challenge. This gives rise to new dramaturgies, other forms of presence and altered relationships to the world. The performative arts have an aesthetic-practical repertoire that invites us to think affirmatively about sustainability: as a possibility of abundance, not scarcity.

The seminar focuses on two dimensions of sustainability, the ecological and the social. Sustainability is understood as relational work - between people, materials, resources, institutions and aesthetic forms. This perspective is compatible with various cultural-theoretical, philosophical and anthropological positions of the 21st century. We want to examine ecological ways of thinking in interaction with performative practices. Possible topics are:
- Eco-aesthetics and artistic ecologies
- Materialities and resources in art production
- Ecological dramaturgies and choreographies
- Sustainability beyond moralism
- Precarity, care and community as ecological practices

Literature

Ingolfur Blühdorn (2024): Unsustainability. On the way to a different modernity, Berlin; ders. et al. (eds.) (2019): Sustainable Unsustainability, Bielefeld; Camilla Brudin Borg et al. (eds.) (2024): Contemporary Ecocritical Methods, Lanham; Robert Fleck (2023): Art and Ecology, Vienna/Hamburg; Reckwitz (2024): Verlust. Ein Grundproblem der Moderne, Berlin; Mira Sack et al. (eds.) (2024): Performative Arts and Social Transformation, Bielefeld; Lisa Woynarski (2020): Ecodramaturgies. Theatre, Performance and Climate Change, Cham; Theatre Green Book. A Guide to Sustainable Theatre Practice, London.

Credits

2 Creditpoints

Comments

Interest in the connection between theory and artistic practice, a presentation in the seminar and a written reflection are required to obtain credit points. Various approaches to theory work will be tested, including dialogic reading, clustering or AI-supported readings. Optional participation without the awarding of credit points is also possible and takes place after consultation with the lecturers.

Registration: Please register by 03.11.2025 to katharina.alsen@hfmt-hamburg.de and benjamin.sprick@hfmt-hamburg.de

Modules

Modul Theorie 2 Schauspiel, Regie Schauspiel, Regie Musiktheater