The mobilization attempts of the New Right are characterized by numerous discourse sovereignty appropriation tactics. This also applies to the re/interpretation and staging of symbolic spaces. How can the authoritarian appropriation of the right be countered by design strategies?

The starting point for the thematic discussion with and in this lecture-performance is a bouncy castle. As a materialized metaphor, the bouncy castle brings together our different research perspectives in productive friction. The bouncy castle itself symbolizes the observation that the self-image of a society is increasingly negotiated on the basis of and performed in symbolic spaces. «Bouncing» in this sense can be understood as a breaking out of rigid knowledge productions, as paralogy – displaced logos. The childish bouncing undermines the adult (academic) epistemological seriousness. Insight takes off, gets out of balance and when it arrives again it easily finds itself somewhere else, offset. 

The bouncy castle can also point to aspects of a chaotic space, that is, to interdependencies, the recognition of complexity and unpredictability, and in this respect also poses the question of how we move in and through such spaces. For a movement of reduction and authoritarian appropriation does not fit this diverse and complex world. The bouncy castle is an attempt to develop an understanding of places as places of knowledge, of spaces as spaces of negotiation, of things as things of meaning. What (epistemological, design, theoretical) tools do we have at our disposal? What tools can we – as designers, artists, philosophers, social scientists– make available without these, in turn, being rigidly fixed, predetermined? 

A specially made version of Hambach Castle (which is at the same time a symbol of «German democracy» and right-wing appropriation) as a bouncy castle – for this performative lecture – presents itself as a deliberately wobbly materialized demand to bring unrest into knowledge and entrenched thought practices. 

Trailer:
Attending [to] Futures Conference, KISD - Köln International School of Design 

Conception, Text, Performance: Tom Bieling · Frieder Bohaumilitzky · Anke Haarmann · Torben Körschkes 
Edition / Sound / Conception: Stephan Kraus 
Camera / Conception: Tamara Hildebrand 
Support / Subtitles: Alice Lagaay 

German original version with english subtitles 
40 min.