The TEH81 Meeting "It's (about) Politics — Performing the Emancipatory Potential of Cultural Practice", hosted by TEH Member WUK, took place in Vienna, Austria, on 5-8 May 2016.
The meeting offered room for debate and reflection on the emancipatory potential and impact of cultural practice, set against a backdrop of widespread unease about a loss of democracy, the power of markets and globalisation, inequality, eroding solidarity and ever-expanding job and living insecurity — an unease that called for a political response and action.
"It's (about) Politics" investigated what it meant to be 'political': what it meant for each and every individual, and how people could act — as individuals, as collectives, as institutions. Independent cultural centres have their roots in the political act of appropriating space for alternative cultural and social production, and cultural institutions are therefore also places where civil society acts, where questions of how to take part in the political process are negotiated and lived. Taking these roots into account, the meeting focused on the self-conception and role of cultural centres as institutions, as well as on the importance of art and culture in a political present characterised by the dynamics of inequality.
Across four thematic "routes," the meeting addressed a variety of issues, from contemporary political theory to practice-oriented inputs. From the perspectives of politicisation, networking and building alliances, participants discussed the possibilities of individual and collective political action, with interventions planned through workshops, hands-on sessions, and exchanges of experience.