Marcel Klett:

Foreword

Germany, Europe, “the West” in the 21st century. Complaints about a “lack of clarity” abound. Cohesive social forces in society are dissolving—in their place: fragmentation. Supposedly independent individuals communicate in closed groups with other likeminded individuals. Communities are isolating themselves from one another. Open society is not inclusive, but serial. Where is the great idea that might connect everyone with everyone else? Nowhere. In this de-ideologized wasteland, neoconservatives, neo-nationalists, and identitarians have it easy, as long their opponents remain in their echo chambers and talk to themselves, since they address the general unease and are able to promise cohesion, solidarity, and meaning to members of an autochthonous majority society. The fact that the rest have no place in this old world is the concept and stimulus. Forgotten social ideals are then replaced by aggressive delimitation against and hatred of “the other” and/or “others.”

LOVE MOVEMENT attempts to provide an answer and strives to facilitate communication between various distinct spheres of life: visual art, performing art, literature, pop culture,
science, politics. Six social spheres with their own rules, forms of communication, argumentation techniques, and addressees. Six social spheres that rarely communicate with one another, but instead mostly only make judgments about each other and exist in parallel. The aim is collaboration. The aim is to find a language that can once again leave its own echo chamber.

LOVE MOVEMENT is an experiment. In the introduction to his “Aesthetic Theory”, Theodor W. Adorno writes: “It is self-evident that nothing concerning art is self-evident anymore, not its inner life, not its relation to the world, not even its right to exist.” This assessment can be reiterated in a social situation in which artistic expressions, as a rule, have to be read as communication by specialists with specialists. LOVE MOVEMENT strives to bring back lost implicitness, if only for a fleeting moment.

Marcel Klett is Commercial Director
and part of the artistic direction team at Theaterhaus Jena