Tobias Nanz

Ästhetische Experimente. Zur Ereignishaf igkeit und Funktion von Störungen in den Künsten

Disruption is a phenomenon that has gained the attention of a broad and diverse range of academic disciplines. Building on this work we propose that disruptions are by no means solely destructive but rather have productive consequences. We aim to establish disruption as a starting point for the analysis of formulas of societal self-description. In this, epistemological and aesthetic aspects of disturbances will be focused since these moments of interruption or loss of order evoke efforts of theoretical or practical consolidation of the social sphere. After discussing the history of ex-perimentalization of the life sciences, we point out how art can be understood as an experimental system that integrates and explores the function of disruption. Second, the relationship between factual and fictional knowledge and how both impact on society through the fabrication of different worlds are to be questioned. Finally, we will argue that art such as literature, film, modern theatre, or performances use disruptions as a tool, with which the perception of the past, present and future and of the society itself can be shaped. They achieve this by employing powerfully repercussive narratives that construct political and socio-cultural coherence through the symbolic re-integration of imaginary or real disruptive incidents.

Das ›Rote Telefon‹. Ein hybrides Objekt des Kalten Krieges

The ›Red Phone‹, understood as a telephone connection between the Cremlin and the White House, never existed. In this paper I treat it as a hybrid object of knowledge, whose materiality is mixed with facts and fictions. When the fictitious object first appeared in literature and film it was still relatively amorphous and insignificant. Only due to an increased production of signs, symbolic attributions, narrative strategies and rhetorical figures was the notorious Cold War apparatus constituted. As a discursive object the ›Red Phone‹ in turn provides specific information on a form of knowledge characteristic of this period. The ›Red Phone‹ is closely connected to crisis situations that deal with apocalyptic scenarios. To better understand this hybrid object this paper will analyze the short story »Abraham’ 59–A nuclear Fantasy« (Harvey Wheeler) and the novel Fail-Safe (Eugene Burdick/Harvey Wheeler) that both stage a telephone connection between Moscow and Washington, which aims at deescalating a crisis situation.