»It has become a matter of fact that nothing, when it comes to art, is to be taken for granted anymore. Not even its right to exist.«

In other words: The world is burning - why art today?

Social upheavals only succeed through long-term change in the hegemonic structures of thought that root in the categories of class, race, gender. Art can do that. Because it criticizes that thought which dwells in identificatory language and rapes the individual in the basement. Art explodes sentences of the form "A is B" and frees us from a language that, like enclosures for the measured-out life, is portioned out like the hospital food of an ailing society. Our language fails in the face of hybrid identities. No word that comprehends us.

Who is Conflict Zones Arts Asylum?

We are Conflict Zones Arts Asylum: an undernational network of artists, activists, authors, performers and curators who believe that aesthetics is the better ethics, art the better politics, language the most powerful force. Our artistic practice is influenced by the critical analysis of hegemonic Western societies as well as our own experience of exile and migration from Russia, Turkey, Hungary, the Jewish diaspora in the United States and Israel. We oppose today's reality in Germany and look beyond it.

What is Studio Я?

STUDIO Я is an art haven for marginalized subjects and ways of thinking, a platform for discussion and creative processes - postnational, queer, empowering! And a place where discourse transitions smoothly to disco. Creatives from conflict zones gather beyond all borders in STUDIO Я. Radical new forms merge here with political practice. No approach is excluded, as long as it aims to question and change society.

Я [pronounced: ya] is the last letter in the Cyrillic alphabet and means I. Thus our name sets up a line of thought: This is about self-determination! STUDIO Я is a platform where the self is questioned and developed further.

The core of the collective consists of:

Tobias Herzberg – Artistic Director
Monica Marotta – Project Manager
Silvia Petrova – Production Assistant
Ajnwojner, Rebecca – Dramaturg
Maike Mueller – Communication Assistant
Sasha Marianna Salzmann – Author
Deniz Utlu – Curator of the literature series gegensätze
Daniel Kahn – Curator of the musicseries unternational
Tucké Royale – Author, Performer
Talking Straight– Collective of performers
Michael Ronen – Founder of the artist collective Conflict Zone Arts Asylum
Yavuz Akbulut – Curator of the Disc Jockey Crew

stagediving
Theater in the broadest sense. This ranges from evenings of theater in a language that doesn't deny the facts, finding a communication far from words, to performances about the status quo here and beyond our maneagable borders – in English, Hebrew, German, and every other language that finds its way to us. We search for our topics in innumerable questions of form and content in Studio Я.

contra dic(ta)tion
Author Deniz Utlu – who has already sought an aesthetic resistance in the literature series “tausend worte tief” (thousand words deep) and “Vibrationshintergrund” (vibration background) – joins with colleagues who counter the political corruption of reality. It's about coping with the present, about a Science Fiction of Color, a poetology of resistance, all languages are allowed, all stylistic devices will be used for words beyond stigmata and clichés, beyond platitudes and corroborations. Against dictation. For words.

unternational
Originally begun as a music project from post-klezmer singer songwriter Daniel Kahn and the living legend Psoy Korolenko, unternational considered how our norms – economic, political, sexual – could be dissolved. It is the bracket for music events in STUDIO Я. Smoking heads and DJ-set furious hands unite to incite us to celebrate and dance. Because as Emma Goldman once said: If I can´t dance to your revolution, I don´t wanna be a part of it.