Festival

1 Jul

Florence Peake & Eve Stainton, Practice, 2024, E-WERK Luckenwalde. Commissioned and presented as part of The Drop Out: Tell them I said No, Photo by Stefan Korte.

Florence Peake & Eve Stainton, Practice 1, 2024, E-WERK Luckenwalde. Commissioned and presented as part of The Drop Out: Tell them I said No, Photo by Stefan Korte.

Pussy Riot, Riot Days, 2024, E-WERK Luckenwalde in partnership with Cultural Foundation Schloss Wiepersdorf, Presented as part of The Drop Out: Tell them I said No, Photo by Stefan Korte.

Dragging Workshop by Eglė Budvytytė in collaboration Fernanda Muñoz-Newsome, 2024, E-WERK Luckenwalde, Presented as part of The Drop Out: Tell them I said No, Photo by Stefan Korte.

JJJJJerome Ellis, Aster of Ceremonies, 2024, E-WERK Luckenwalde. Presented as part of The Drop Out: Tell them I said No, Photo by Stefan Korte.

Department of Transformation, May 2024, E-WERK Luckenwalde. Presented as part of The Drop Out: Tell them I said No, Photo by Stefan Korte.

Introduction by Helen Turner & Katharina Worf, May 2024, E-WERK Luckenwalde. Presented as part of The Drop Out: Tell them I said No, Photo by Stefan Korte.

Participating as Parents, Hettie Judah, Mirthe Berentsen & Sascia Bailer, 2024, E-WERK Luckenwalde, part of The Drop Out: Tell them I said No, Photo by Stefan Korte.

Melanie Jame Wolf, The Promise of Their Body, 2024, E-WERK Luckenwalde. Commissioned and Presented as part of The Drop Out: Tell them I said No, Photo by Stefan Korte.

Tell Me What You Want, What You Really Really Want, with Melanie Jame Wolf, Florence Peake, Abbas Zahedi & Fatoş Üstek, 2024, E-WERK Luckenwalde. Photo: Stefan Korte.

Abbas Zahedi feat. abbzah, bill dags & Saint Abdullah, rose & STEMM (E-WERK remix), 2024, E-WERK Luckenwalde, The Drop Out: Tell them I said No’, Photo by Stefan Korte.

SERAFINE1369, IV, 2024, E-WERK Luckenwalde. Presented as part of The Drop Out: Tell them I said No, Photo by Stefan Korte.

Introduction by Helen Turner & Katharina Worf, 2024, E-WERK Luckenwalde. Presented as part of The Drop Out: Tell them I said No, Photo by Stefan Korte.

Lauryn Youden, seeping into my bloodstream, 2024, E-WERK Luckenwalde. Presented as part of The Drop Out: Tell them I said No, Photo by Stefan Korte.

Lauryn Youden, seeping into my bloodstream, 3 May 2024, E-WERK Luckenwalde. Presented as part of The Drop Out: Tell them I said No, Photo by Stefan Korte.

Introduction by Helen Turner & Katharina Worf, 2024, E-WERK Luckenwalde. Presented as part of The Drop Out: Tell them I said No, Photo by Stefan Korte.

Soil Workshop with Asad Raza, 2024, E-WERK Luckenwalde. Commissioned and Presented as part of The Drop Out: Tell them I said No, Photo by Stefan Korte.

The Drop Out: Tell Them I Said No

E-WERK Luckenwalde
Luckenwalde, Germany

In 2024, E-WERK Luckenwalde presented The Drop Out: Tell Them I Said No, a major international programme of performances, conversations and workshops exploring the politics and potential of refusal.

Inspired by Tell Them I Said No (2016) by Martin Herbert (published by Sternberg Press), the programme examined the implications of resistance, radical models of self-sufficiency, the political dimensions of counterculture (or cancel culture), the privilege embedded in the act of saying “no,” and artistic vulnerability.

The two-day event unfolded across E-WERK’s 25,000-square-metre site, including the historic Turbine Hall, the Bauhaus Stadtbad and the outdoor geodesic dome. The programme spanned day and night events including concerts, performances, panel discussions, workshops, karaoke and sauna sessions.

Contributing artists, thinkers and performers included Pussy Riot, Candice Breitz, Asad Raza, Prem Krishnamurthy, Nástio Mosquito, Eglė Budvytytė (in collaboration with Fernanda Muñoz-Newsome), JJJJJerome Ellis, Eve Stainton & Florence Peake, Abbas Zahedi, Melanie Jame Wolf, Fatoş Üstek, Lamis Ammar, Sascia Bailer, Mirthe Berentsen, Hettie Judah, Zoë Claire Miller, Lauryn Youden and SERAFINE1369. Many contributors presented work in Brandenburg for the first time.

The programme was co-curated by Helen Turner (Chief Curator & Artistic Director) and Katharina Worf (Curator), with programme support from Florine Lindner and Alison Midgley; technical coordination by Moritz Schmolke and Sebastian Reinicke; and communications support from Nicola Jeffs and Carolin Kralapp.

The presentation of Riot Days by Pussy Riot was realised in collaboration with Kulturstiftung Schloss Wiepersdorf and the Ministerium für Wissenschaft, Forschung und Kultur Brandenburg.

The Drop Out: Tell Them I Said No was funded by the Kulturstiftung des Bundes (German Federal Cultural Foundation), supported by the Beauftragte der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien (Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media), with additional support from the Canada Council for the Arts and the City of Luckenwalde. Programme partners included FRANK - Fair Artist Pay and Gallery Climate Coalition.

Press:

The Drop Out by Dalia Maini, Arts of the Working Class, 2024

Inside E-WERK Luckenwalde’s ‘Tell them I said No’ by Will Jennings, Wallpaper, 2024

How an art centre in a former power station is harnessing the word ‘no’ to help save the planet by Louisa Buck, Art Newspaper, 2024