Stadtgespräch. Metropolitan Perspectives #9

Wednesday, April 8, 2015, 7 pm

Club der Marinauten: Flowing against the logic of the cruise

Sibylle Peters (Artist, Researcher in Cultural Studies, Hamburg)

In German language.

The sea is the most important habitat and emblem of the blue planet. She bears the shipping lanes, the currents of things, she is the escape route of the desperate and the hunting ground of pirates, a dump and a holiday paradise, a habitat of undiscovered species, and a gravesite of bygone civilizations. Since the 1960s, – at first with small individual actions – Shipping Art developed. In the meanwhile, across all the oceans there are Marinauts, who sail clandestine trade routes, build boats from stories and found free states on floating islands. At the same time, there are ever more travelers roaming around on ever larger ships, which let one forget the realities of the sea with wellness and consumer landscapes. The cruise liner industry is booming, and its headquarters is in Hamburg. On the stages of the tourism fleet, thousands of creative artists struggle against the boredom, which afflicts the holidaymakers on these journeys. Club der Marinauten – developed and founded by the geheimagentur Hamburg – is stepping up, in order to reverse this situation: In the tradition of Shipping Art the club developed visions of a new travel culture, which flow against the logic of the cruise. In the summer of 2015, the club will move into the Hamburger Hafen Quartier: “There we can see the city from afar. We can see how the current and waterways, the smell of malt and the customs patrols cross each other. And suddenly the city reflects onto itself, and becomes exactly this, this borderland, in which we are all migrants, this strewn projection into the ocean. And everything else is only the backdrop.”

Dr. Sibylle Peters heads the theater research program at the Fundus Theater in Hamburg. As a performer and director, she has realized numerous projects – amongst others, with the geheimagentur. In the postgraduate college Performing Citizenship she is the head of the section “Cultural Education and Research”.