Blue Skies #1: Bodies in Trouble – Körper in Aufruhr

PACT Zollerverein and the Office medienwerk.nrw, hosted by HMKV, organised a five-day festival with an extensive music and conference programme. The festival takes place for the first time from 10 to 14 July 2019. „Blue Skies – Bodies in Trouble" focuses on the technological and pharmaceutical change of the body. The admission to many items of the programme is free – detailed information can be found on the website of PACT Zollverein.

Workshops: Biotranslab, Xenopolitics & DNA

In addition to the diverse programme PACT Zollverein and the medienwerk.nrw offer three remarkable workshops: artists from Spain, France and the Ruhr area invite you to discuss the current developments in biotechnology and digital change. Among the topics are biohacking, queering, body politics, new ecologies and relationships as well as the decolonisation of the individual body.

Please mind that the workshops have a limited capacity regarding the number of participants. Further information on the website of the medienwerk.nrw

The festival

Unbridled technological advances and radical developments in biochemical research are increasingly interfering with life itself: hybrids of machine and organism are already reality, technical interventions and materials becoming one with the body. However, the latest developments in genetic engineering promise to make humans modifiable before birth. The foundations of our existence and of our social and public coexistence are changing profoundly. In the alluring technological promises of big corporations, the freedom to make the body, social dynamics and our environment completely shapeable and changeable sounds like a universal solution. Others fear a hopeless social scenario in which the individual's power to act falls victim to comprehensive technical reductions, mathematical operations and filtered knowledge. But how or in what forms might critically nuanced responses to these polarizing positions find expression?

Over the course of four days, PACT and medienwerk nrw shine an investigative light on active interdisciplinary perspectives on new narratives, speculative visions of the future and alternative practices in the company of international artists, scientists, activists, publicists, students and audience members.

The festival is the fifth conference of the office medienwerk.nrw and at the same time the beginning of a new series of events by PACT Zollverein, which in the coming years will be devoted to active and interdisciplinary work on urgent current issues in the field of tension between technology and society, new narratives, speculative visions of the future and alternative, empowering practices.

With contributions from:

Exhibition, Performances & Workshops
acting in concert, The Agency, Aliens in Green, Heather Dewey- Hagborg, FAM_, knowbotiq, labsa, Xavier Le Roy, Mary Maggic, Špela Petrič, Paula Pin, Johannes Paul Raether, Rimini Protokoll (Stefan Kaegi) & Thomas Melle, Silke Schönfeld, Nguyễn + Transitory and others

Lectures & Talks
Marie-Luise Angerer, Madeleine Böckers, Astrid Deuber-Mankowsky, Gabriele Gramelsberger, Jens Hauser, Oliver Kuchenbuch, Justus Pötzsch, Luiza Prado de O. Martins, Kaushik Sunder Rajan, Tabita Rezaire, Emilia Sanabria, Paula-Irene Villa and others

Music
Asita Shirali, COOL FOR YOU, Odete, tryniti, N!zza