Exhibition Concept
A lack of identity, social, economic or political uncertainty, or the fear of impending loss mark subjective constellations and social structures and split them into conflictual zones.
Survival strategies for the untrained, a selection:
The phenomenon of "training courses for everything" and mechanisms of repression as a survival strategy are to be investigated in terms of the economic aspect of supply and demand, and in terms of the socio-cultural aspect of the difference in starting positions.
The phenomenon of coursing courses, of "training courses for everything" - either one attends a training course or leads one, to train body or intellect, reflecting general uncertainty. Formulas for survival are offered, rules/recipes, schemata to meet demands: no problem. With the help of external survival strategies generated by others, codices (self-help literature) are stylized into an everyday product for more successful, happier, healthier and more beautiful living. Behavior patterns programmed by media can be trained in courses and promise success. Courses and training programs as a widespread phenomenon for actively filling the lacunas previously produced through repression methods with something else or avoiding them altogether. Pre-programmed course behavior rules for increasing survival capacities, economically oriented, often cover up the repressed Other of the self.
How are methods of repression constituted in the subjective private sphere and in the objective public sphere? System immanent repression mechanisms in the socio-cultural context as pseudo-survival strategies? Repression as a method for remaining untroubled by disturbance factors in a constructed illusionary world/reality? Are not new repression techniques and technologies constantly being invented, offered and demanded (from work to TV to mobile telephones), and is there not already an "obligation" to repress (always ready for action) and an "obligation" to be healthy?
“Narcissus no longer looks into the mute mirror, he needs someone he can talk to over the telephone. "Video(r) ergo sum" is the title of (Martin) Altmeyer's lecture. [...] I am seen, therefore I am. Or even better: I have a video of myself, therefore I am."
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1 Joachim Rogosch: "www.bin-ich-sexy.de", insight from the psychotherapists' meeting in Lindau: the single society has outlived its usefulness, from: Der Tagesspiegel, April 30, 2002
Repressing the self into a replication, from the real into the virtual. What is seen/heard is shifted into the virtual, stylized into an event. If it no longer takes place in reality, it is repressed into the virtual and ritualized and seemingly becomes constituent for the self.
Subjective and objective constellations, external and internal conditions differentiate survival (what survival is for whom and where) and strategies (which, how) to the same extent. The difference of the starting positions, socially marked dispositions and their conditioning, the habitus determine the respective strategy forms and capacities. Traces of cultural developments/experiences and socialization processes are inscribed as sediments and form an "unconscious" store of behavior codes. Handed-down codes of crisis management?
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