What does life apart from norms mean? Who determines the boundary crossing, who the norm? Often, an unnormal life leaves us feeling a lingering and silent sadness. In this year's think tank, we reflect together on this melancholy behind the norms.
Join us as local communities, regional experts and international artists come together.
Live and let read –
or: Norm & Melancholy
We are surrounded by norms that we cannot always fulfill, that we often do not meet. We live with that. And without wanting to, we also read others according to the alphabet of these norms. Do they fit into a certain pattern or not? Faster than we would like, we standardize ourselves and are standardized by others. Or, as the writer Claudia Rankine puts it in a text, »She wants me to lead a readable life - one that can be read as worthwhile, and successful.« But not all lives are readable as worthwhile and (socially) successful.
What does life apart from norms mean? Who determines the crossing of boundaries, who determines the norm itself? Do we want to live in a way that a small number of people determined several decades or even centuries ago? Be it the norm that determines how wide a chair and how steep a staircase may be. Or the norm that describes who is considered a family and who is not. Or the dress code in the theater or the literature venue. What of these corresponds to the realities of our lives?
On the other hand, we have to deal with it when we don't orient ourselves to norms and feel lost. Often an “abnormal” life, a life outside the norm, makes us feel a lingering and silent sadness. This melancholy behind the unfulfilled norms is hard to grasp. What is this feeling? What words do we (not) have for it? What does melancholy mean?
The playlist Melancholic Mix reminds us of better times, of a walk last summer or failure of a relationship. Or of the fact that we will never conform to certain norms. Grief can overwhelm us in moments when we become aware of the constellations in which we live, and in which we would have to live in order to be happy. It can also be persistently present, like a quiet bass humming somewhere.
For three days, artists think about how we can create spaces together in which we do not have to conform to the norms, do not feel shame and in which we can naturally move in a self-determined way - alone and together, as accomplices.
The CfL invites everyone to think, play, find comfort or simply dance with us! Over the course of key notes, performances, discussions, presentations, game sessions or shared conversations over dinner, we will practice radical empathy and the courage to fail.
During three days, we will allow sadness and search for answers to the question: how can we talk about being melancholy in this time and what spaces does art offer for this?
Program
What does »norm« mean?
We often speak of norms. When we speak of norms, we mean fixed guidelines. At the same time, norms also describe the standard for many objects, so that they are similar worldwide: the height of doors, the arrangement of letters on a keyboard or the placement of airbags in cars. But many people are not included in the definition of norms because there are many different bodies, origins, languages and lifestyles. Some do not want to live according to the norm defined by a majority and some cannot. Therefore, norms have to be reconsidered and adapted again and again. Particularly in the art and culture industry, we encounter many normed codes, such as the dress code in the theater, the knowledge of rituals during breaks and the presumed knowledge of certain discourses.
Day tickets:
10 € regular
7 € reduced*
5 € only concert Marshall Vincent at Reservix.
*Reductions for recipients of benefits according to the German Social Security Codes II and XII, students (with the exception of »study in old age«), trainees, volunteers, members of the voluntary social and ecological year, severely disabled people.
The think tank will take place on three days at three different locations. All rooms offer seating.
The rooms at Burg Hülshoff and Haus Rüschhaus are partly accessible only via stairs and therefore not barrier-free. The studio stage of the University of Münster is accessible without barriers.
The event consists mainly of spoken contributions and is therefore accessible for blind and visually impaired people. Individual contributions will be shown in the Digitale Burg and subtitled in the respective language.
In the presence on site, we offer whisper translations from English into German spoken language and vice versa.
If you have any questions or need assistance, please contact ticketing@burg-huelshoff.de.