FILTRATION

“The new always happens against the overwhelming odds of statistical laws and their probability, which for all practical, everyday purposes amounts to certainty; the new, therefore, always appears in the guise of a miracle. The fact that man is capable of action means that the unexpected can be expected from him, that he is able to perform what is infinitely improbable”.

Hannah Arendt, “The Human Condition”

Hannah Arendt’s words, written over 60 years ago, resonate in our lives as we reflect on her observations of action as the beginning of a new while filtering the outdated.

At every moment, whether we are aware or not, we apply filters to our lives, to the irrelevant, the superfluous, the inappropriate, the extraneous, the unrelated, the inconvenient, and the untimely, so that we are left only with what truly matters.

At the same time, we live inside different filter algorithms applied to us. We are “smart filtered” daily. These algorithms allow for maintaining their filtration efficiency over time, even as we as a society change.

In this thematic issue of the ARé Festival, we interrogate how new art and performance can activate or reactivate concepts and practices of ‘filtration’ without defaulting to the erasure of something valuable.