minimal club

parallelwährung was presented in 1991 within the theoretisches fernsehen series by minimal club. It is an installation and performance, and also a series of texts, graphic artworks, and videos. It is based on excerpts from other works that could then be more flexibly adapted to different spaces, situations, and political activities. The integration of the live news TV programs Tagesschau and Tagesthemen was a key part of the concept of theoretisches fernsehen. Concrete material was also provided by the exchange rate from East German to West German marks and the role of the West German Federal Bank, which was a topical issue at the time. The currency union—the enforced transfer of Western economic (anti-)rationality onto the former East Germany—was defended in Tagesthemen by Hans Tietmeyer, who several years earlier had been the victim of a Red Army Faction attack, in his role as state secretary, then became an advisor to Helmut Kohl, and later the new President of the Federal Bank. For parallelwährung this man’s career was one way of looking behind the surface of politics. As the “television studio” was a trade fair stand, reflections on the media were intermingled with ironic sales talk—the art of selling yourself. The connections between television, advertising, presence, and the economy addressed here are sometimes mysterious or disjointed, and sometimes pseudo-mathematical or burlesque.

Program

The screening includes a new adaptation of the historical material (parallelwährung, c. 20 minutes) and a new video work showing a selection of various linguistic, visual, and performative methods that were developed by minimal club (c. 25 minutes).

Introduced by Elfe Brandenburger, Sabeth Buchmann, and Stephan Geene

minimal club is a group of artists founded in 1983 in Munich and Berlin, consisting of Elfe Brandenburger, Sabeth Buchmann, Stephan Geene, and Mano Wittmann. Their works look at issues of technology, gender, and political theory. Numerous plays for theater, video works, texts, and installations. In 1985, Michel Foucault’s Theatrum Philosophicum was premièred and the accompanying book published in 1996. Since 1989 A.N.Y.P. (Anti New York Pläne) // Zeitung für 10 Jahre has been published annually.

Elfe Brandenburger lives in Berlin. She works as a film editor, screenplay author, film director, and actress, and since 2014 has also been co-owner of the bookstore paul + paula (Berlin). Film works together with Mano Wittmann, Karin Michalski, Silvia Casalino, and others. Since 2011, she has been working on the feature film project Der Raub des Ganymed, which looks at institutionalized sexual violence against children and youths in the context of the educational reform movement.

Sabeth Buchmann lives in Berlin and Vienna. She is an art historian and critic and professor for modernist and postmodern art at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts. With Helmut Draxler, Clemens Krümmel, and Susanne Leeb, she co-edits PoLyPen, a series on art criticism and political theory.

Stephan Geene lives in Berlin. As well as works for theater with minimal club and mainly film contributions to exhibitions in diverse contexts (including with Judith Hopf), he works with the collective b_books (bookstore, publishing house, events, and film production) as a theoretician and translator (of Jacques Derrida, Maurizio Lazzarato, Beatriz Preciado, and Jacques Rancière).

In conjunction with the exhibition to expose, to show, to demonstrate, to inform, to offer