DO TANK

is a program in which artists are invited to respond to the social and political challenges in our communities with an artistic action. The focus is in the works that address local communities but there will also be works with global concerns. The works can be for example performances, installations, dialogues, discussions, constructing environments and hosting workshops. Local and international artists from various different disciplines are invited to make their projects in the program. The participating artists widen our horizons of what we consider political or socially relevant, perhaps not those with the loudest manifestos but the ones who make a difference in simple and direct, grass-root actions and one-to-one meetings. There is not necessary a product but there is always a process.

The first DO TANK took place in the frame of Satu Herrala’s curatorial residency at Spielart Theatre festival in Munich between the 18th of November and 3rd of December 2011. She co-curated the program with Angelika Fink, the artistic director of Pathos München Theatre. The next DO TANK will take place in November 7th-11th 2012 in Helsinki in the frame of the Baltic Circle International Theatre Festival. DO TANK Helsinki is curated by Satu Herrala and it is focusing in the shared space between art and activism. 

DO TANK invests in the presence of artists in society rather than simply in their products. It brings artistic practices from their often marginalized position (art for art's sake) to the core of social dialogue. The desire of artists to engage with social and political issues and to enter into a direct exchange with non-artist communities is a sign of a deeper need to re-define the role of the arts and the responsibility of artists in society. By focusing on process rather than the product, DO TANK makes artistic practices transparent to non-artist communities (audience members who are not involved with arts, students, marginalized communities etc.). Artists are invited to contribute to the program with workshops, lectures, adaptations of performances or installations etc. and by doing so laying open their process and including the audiences in that process as active participants. Thus the DO TANK projects contribute to more socially engaged arts practice as well as activate non-artists' artistic potential. In this sense DO TANK's aim is three-fold: to transform people, art forms as well as society. Like Beuys said: "Real future political intentions must be artistic".

DO TANK Munich 2011

The first DO TANK took place in Munich within the Spielart festival. It was a collaborative project of the Spielart Munich Theatre Festival, Pathos München and the FIT Lab - an academy for the next generation of festival programmers organised by the Festivals in Transition Network.

During the Spielart festival DO TANK had a base camp at the Muffathalle Studio 1 from where the projects migrate to urban spaces, private gardens, wastelands, social institutions and to a public sauna. The base camp operated as a working room for the community of the DO TANK artists as well as an interface between the individual acts and the public during its opening hours at Spielart.

DO TANK Munich was curated by Angelika Fink, the artistic director of Pathos München, and Satu Herrala, a resident curator at Spielart from the FIT Lab. The two curators hosted the base camp guided the public through the various acts (and refrains) that took place in DO TANK Munich. The production was taken care by Katrin Dollinger.

10 local and international artists from various different disciplines performed their projects in the DO TANK Munich programme:

Barbara Balsei (GER, Munich), Tom Biburger (GER, Munich), Martin Clausen (GER, Berlin), Anna Estarriola (ES/FIN) & Johanna Ketola (FIN), Verena Holzgethan & Paul Neuninger (AT), Judith Huber (GER, Munich), Gero Tögl (GER, Munich), Jacob Wren (CA).

Spielart Festival: http://www.spielart.org

Pathos München: http://www.pathosmuenchen.de