Outcast Registration

W139 (2023), Amsterdam, NL

THE CULTURAL SPACE Space

W139 hosts preliminary findings from recent project implementations of parrhesia in Austria (2022) and Norway (2023), and offers a first insight into the continuation of the artistic and scholarly work of the OUTCAST REGISTRATION, which investigates the living conditions of female drug addicts before and after the onset of their addiction.

Related biographies

Isabella Petrova

Emilie Rasmussen

Sabrina Hager

Ivana Landmann 2022

Esma Bronkovič

Background: what is a THE CULTURAL SPACE space?

This includes places and facilities that are institutionally legitimised and funded, for example, museums, art venues and galleries, as well as urban facilities such as parks and playgrounds. Such spaces offer the possibility of a performative publication of the biographies at a cultural institution of the respective country, and also the opportunity to exchange views and reflections with people from the areas of culture, subculture, politics, and science.

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to be aware of outsiders, that is, marginalised groups in a society, to register and research conditions they live under, and to demand public visibility for them, is the main concern of this arts and science research project. Such groups all suffer from similar systematic exclusion procedures that push them over and over again further to the margins of society. Unlike their male fellow sufferers, drug-addicted women in European prisons are considered a “negligible phenomenon”. The work of the OUTCAST REGISTRATION counters this by recognising the need of the participants to make their lives a public affair, which ultimately also means laying part of the responsibility for their illness at society’s door.

comes from the Greek and means “freedom of speech” or “talking about everything”. It is the key theoretical concept of the eponymous project PARRHESIA: THE RISKY ACTIVITY OF SPEAKING THE TRUTH, which is based on Michel Foucault’s remarks on parrhesiastic speaking the truth. Drawing on the ancient tradition of truth speaking that can be traced back to Euripides, Foucault defines parrhesia as “a kind of verbal activity where the speaker has a speciﬁc relation to truth through frankness, a certain relationship to his own life through danger, a certain type of relation to himself or other people through criticism (self-criticism or criticism of other people), and a speciﬁc relation to moral law through freedom and duty. More precisely, parrhesia is a verbal activity in which a speaker expresses his personal relationship to truth, and risks his life because he recognises truth-telling as a duty to improve or help other people (as well as himself). In parrhesia, the speaker uses his freedom and chooses frankness instead of persuasion, truth instead of falsehood or silence, the risk of death instead of life and security, criticism instead of ﬂattery, and moral duty instead of self-interest and moral apathy.” (Source: Michel Foucault, The Meaning and Evolution of the Word Parrhesia in Discourse & Truth: The Problematisation of Parrhesia, 1999, 6 lectures at the University of California at Berkeley, CA, Oct.–Nov. 1983. https://foucault.info/parrhesia/foucault.DT1.wordParrhesia.en/)