In 2010 radical_hope acted as the title for the research-project of performance artist Heike Langsdorf at a.pass. Meanwhile it developed into a working attitude supporting her various distinct practices.
This attitude is allowing to resist the constant call for art being explicitly political, societal relevant and socially engaged. There is an attempt to work without a pre-set conception of both the kind of artistic task that will be fulfilled, what the work could mean within the artistic career, and a discourse produced to date. Alternately, radical_hope is about embracing the in situ context as a point of departure and supporting the imagination of ‘what can happen’ from there on.
The etymology of the word ‘radical’ is to be traced back to the Latin word ‘radix’ meaning ‘a root’. Accordingly, radical_hope is about grounding the artistic work in something tangible: the very context — in which the works take place — is embraced as a given and forms the departure point. This requires an in situ approach in which the surrounding environment undergoes as little manipulation as possible. Radical_hope is a way of working that challenges a context from an artistic point of view without diminishing its natural complexity.
Heike Langsdorf generates environments, spaces and situations — usually co-created in collaboration with others — in which we get a sense for the potential to shape things ourselves and experience the succes and failure that goes with it as something tangible. Within a world that compulsively calls for attention and participation, Langsdorf reclaims attention and participation as something we can shape ourselves. The public is invited to find their own way of viewing, interpreting and ‘dealing with things’. Radical_hope is about enabling engagement, not ordering it.