flattered to be here. Thank you for coming. Today I will talk about my favorite subject. This is inflatables and why they are such a great tool for actions, political organizing.

As I was preparing this PowerPoint, I was thinking, what does inflatables, okay, what does inflatables

have to do with immersion? And then I was thinking about my first experience where I got really excited about inflatables. And that was in 2009. I cycled to the Copenhagen Climate Conference to join the protest during this big summit about climate change and

what to do about it. And there was this no border demonstration. It stagnated in front of the parliament in Copenhagen. And no one really knew what to do. And then suddenly they unleashed the ropes of this big balloon. And then police tried to hold it, but then

the wind got caught of it. And then people started to run with it. And they were choreographed by the wind. And it was like a big social amoeba, like floating through the city, going up and down. And people said, this was the best experience ever. This was the

nicest protest. And I was also part of it, of this running. And that was an immersive experience. And there I also saw the power of inflatables, as an object, really also can create spontaneous crowd unity. Something that trade unions work on for years,

inflatables just do in a second. So, yeah. Then the next year, there was the climate change conference in Cancun, Mexico. And as artists, asking questions about how

can we contribute to society, how can we, yeah, be kind of useful. We were thinking, what can we do? How can we do something also for these protests as we were in Copenhagen? And that was actually the start of Tools for Action. We did a 10-day workshop.

We invited all kinds of people. And we made this 12-meter inflatable hammer. It was very intense work. A bit like a party. All kinds of people helped in. Then we put it in a suitcase and then send it there. So we stayed in Berlin. But the hammer went there. We had contact

with a Mexican activist group. And we didn't really have a clue what will happen. But this happened. And yeah. While delegates are trying to hammer out a deal on climate change

at UN talks in Cancun, Mexican protesters have been carrying a giant silver inflatable tool down the road outside. On Wednesday, one group arrived with a 12-meter inflatable hammer.

The blow-up hammer was sent by the German-based Eclectic Electric Collective of Artists. Eclectic Electric Cooperative. Hoping to use it to symbolically stamp out the talks. They say it's to allow the demonstrators to symbolically stamp out the talks.

At the right gear, club police were in no mood to deliver the hammer to the delegates. As it was chucked over the gate, they descended on it, tearing it to pieces. So what you saw was a compilation of different media footage. What happened was that this

group, they had this big inflatable hammer, ran with it to the fence of this conference complex. And then the police, they threw it over, just like that. The police tore it to pieces, and there was a Reuters cameraman. And within two, three hours, the inflatable hammer became

the icon of the protests of the day. So there we suddenly understood how inflatables can create media spectacles, that the inflatable is almost like a media spectacle, how it blows up into giant proportions and then deflates again, as if nothing happened.

And yeah, basically, we were art students. We had a bunch of press contacts, and we were just spamming all the time our press release. We didn't know, and then this happened. And that was the beginning of Tools for Action, and we made different tools. For example,

here in Russia, with a Russian arts activist group or socially engaged group called Partizaning, we made this 10-meter inflatable saw, because the saw represents corruption, how it divides the budget. And it was one year after a year of silence,

and there were no protests in Russia. Pussy Riot was in jail. 30 organizers have been also in jail. So this was the first demonstration, and for this, it was really good to come with

some surprising, something that authorities don't know how to cope with, and then that's why it works. Sometimes it not totally worked how we wanted. I was in a project with Tilly, my collaborator who is here in India, and we somehow got involved with a theater group.

It was just the time after the Delhi gang rape, and a woman got raped in the bus by a group, and the response of the authorities was very patriarchal, and there was a big feminist

upsurge. So a lot of women started to protest around the country, and with one theater group who was doing work around domestic violence, we made this slipper, because the slipper is also a tool. If you got hit by a slipper, it's a big offense in India,

because the underside is dirty. So we tried to find symbols that work in the local culture, even when the object didn't totally work, it still kind of worked. Another example was the inflatable cobblestone we first tested in a general strike in Barcelona. The whole city

was on strike again because of austerity cuts, and then two weeks later we tried this as well at the first of May demonstration in Berlin, just to try different ways of creative

tactics, because this first of May thing is always this ritual that is always happening in the same way, and we thought, hey let's try to change it. Tilly brought one already, look that is it, and yeah this is the movie that shows what happened. And it was interesting

because first even the people from the demonstration didn't know what it was, and also were not sympathetic to it, and then the whole dynamic changed. I tried to show the movie,

no, doesn't work, but I can, shall I show it from a different way? One second, can I get in there? Here we go, okay.

So basically we did a performance or a theater piece intervention in this demonstration and mixed it up a little bit, and yeah I'm very interested how these objects create situations,

adults become children suddenly because they get reminded of their childhood that they were playing with big balloons, and suddenly there's this big balloon, so we're playing also with skill

and proportion, and also how the street turns into a playground, and it is de-escalating, all kinds of things play in it. Yeah, are there any questions? Maybe later, okay. And basically this tactic then got replicated by different groups,

yeah so I'm getting into the powerpoint again, one second please, and now I would like to

make a jump, this was in 2012, and as you see somehow got invited also to participate in protests just to make a performance, and the last one was in December for the United Nations

climate change conference in Paris, and because it's like an important summit, reducing emissions, making binding agreements, and yeah being skeptical about this whole process, in the group we decided there will be, at the end of the conference there will be a big

day of civil disobedience, and how do we gonna do this? We're gonna do this with inflatable barricades, because France is, actually Paris is the inventor of barricades,

the first barricades are from the 16th century, the word barricade comes from the French word barique, meaning barrel, hollow barrels were rolled out into the streets, they put stones into it and secured with metal chains, and these were the first barricades,

and then after a while this tactic got spread through Europe, and the French people are really proud of this heritage, so it's again a symbol that really resonates within French culture, here are some examples of barricades from the Paris commune 1871, the left and at the right,

second world war, even in the second world war the French were building barricades, and when we were there, there was just a terrorist attack, and there was a ban on protest with the argument, big people come together, this is dangerous, so that's why protest is not allowed,

we saw this also as a suppression of the freedom of speech, the right to protest, and basically this whole state of exemption really mixed up the alliance and the politics within

the protest parties, so then we decided we make the inflatable barricades, but we send them out to the world, so we export them for this day of disobedience, so we send them

to New York and Westchester, this is like north of New York, there they blocked the construction site of a fracked gas pipeline, and the protest happened also in New York at the same time, in Portland, and in London,

and now there's also different groups making this inflatable barricades around the world, because we exported it, so there's a really active London group, and here in Paris,

although there was a ban on protest, it still happened, and actually it was very peaceful, and contrary to what you think, it was actually a party, I can show you the video, this is a handy picture, so it's not, it's an immersive video, so basically this is a barricade

of the 21st century, because it's light, it's mobile, and it's not secured with metal chains, but with Velcro, and you can transport it over the whole world, so it's like

more fitting or globalized economy, and this was in December, and now I would like to tell you about the future project that will be in Dortmund, on the 4th of June, there will be a big neo-nazi march happening, it's called, they call it, the organizers, the day of

the German future, and they demonstrate against alienation of German society, basically 1500 neo-nazis are expected from whole Germany to come to Dortmund,

and the Dortmund citizens really want to do something against it, but they don't know really how, and this is how we get in, by creating different ways of engagement, how people can engage, one is like, they can build inflatables with us, and now we give barricade workshops

in schools, so we give barricade workshops in schools, we do the workshops in the theater, and then we do trainings every Sunday, and we also do a crowdfund campaign, so for people

who cannot make it there, they can still support it in a different way, for me the school workshops are the most interesting, because thinking about future generations, how do we want to go on, do something against the rise of xenophobia, right-wing

politics, and right-wing extremism is by working together with their main target audiences, like 16 year olds, 20 year olds, adolescents who are still finding identity, and then maybe

glitch into extremism, so by working with them and letting them really take action, I think this is, I am really excited, I think this is the thing we should need to do,

because I felt it doesn't help to all the time chew the same historical topics over and over again, and yes, we all know history was bad, but we need to kind of change political attitudes and working, so now I want to show you one of our first workshops, this was Thursday last week,

yeah, at the end of the workshop we all built this, and these are from the Phoenix gymnasium,

they're like, it's like from a gay working group called TV Couragia, and so basically a workshop consists of making the cubes in four hours, then going outside in the school yards,

doing a training with it, and this training I want to do with you in the afternoon at two, because what I find very interesting is that you have to put the barricade together, and then you can work with it, you can do different formations and choreographies, and this creates instant cooperation working together, and so you start to get a sense of

collective actions on a very basic physical level of just working together, and the front of the inflatables have mirrors to, if we intervene in the march, to block it to put a mirror against

xenophobia in our society, as you would say, and I have a last crowdfund movie, the crowd funding just got online on Friday, and I would like you to support me, maybe after the Q&A, and here's the movie.

The action is very important to me, so I'm going to show you how to do it. Wurfelpahr, the financier of material health,

helps with 200 wurfels per hour. Wurfelpahr, the spaghetti barricade in Germany. Info by George B. Dortmund, spaghetti barricade at Teatro.de, and by facebook.com slash tools for action. So please, retweets,

spaghetti barricade, come to our crowdfund campaign. We need support, and I'm very interested in all your questions. Thank you very much, Artur. We immediately open for your questions.

We would like to ask you to speak always into the mic, because we're streaming live, and otherwise you're not heard from the white internet audience. Hello, I just have a short question about the lifetime of one of these cubes, because I saw it depends, I guess, on the riots that it's in into it,

but I would like to know how long is the time span of one of these cubes, and how many cubes do you kind of need to hold up like a situation where people actually interact with it? Oh yeah, I can. So they are ephemeral objects, and that is also the beauty of it, that it is fragile,

the fragility is like the power of it, the lightness is the power of it. And in the demonstration in Paris, people were playing with it for hours and hours, so it was like a whole day of intense playing, and we still have the cubes, you get holes in it, but you can't repair it.

Yeah, so it's a bit like this, it's not like forever, and as you have seen also, we plan interventions or performances that the object also gets destroyed, because that is part of the theatrical drama.

Hey, I like the idea of how those inflatables are really shaping public space temporarily. I was just wondering whether this technique would be also, well I mean, has the challenge of being that corporations and marketing activities would also like adopt this, and this way it would lose its effect,

or you've seen any response from that perspective? Yeah, so this is like basically the main issue, inflatables have been always used from the beginning, from the 1930s, by advertisement, the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, the 1930s started in New York,

basically it was promoting the shopping time before Christmas, and this parade is still going on. One of my groups I'm very interested in is from the 1970s,

it's like the event structure research group, they did events, and oh, what happened? I think your time is up. Okay, I wanted to show that picture. Anyway, so they did events, and then afterwards, all these events got incorporated into event marketing in the 90s,

so what we try to do is have a subversive content, and do a subversive situation, because what advertisement is always doing is more like doing a parade, or having it as an installation, something like this, and what we try to do is create situations of dialogue,

of interaction, what is not, yeah, interaction I would say, or creating decision dilemmas to really provoke kind of a reaction, but I think provoke is not always the right term. Yeah, I'm sorry, but we have to finish now.

I wish you best of luck in Dortmund, and Dortmund is not far away, if you want to play with that in facing 1,000. Yeah, well, come at two, and try the inflatable barricade. We have 17, and we're going to do analog Twitter, because basically every cube will be a letter,

so you can make your analog hashtags. So I would like to invite you to come at two in the relaxed area, and we will have some fun. Thank you. Thank you very much, Atra. Great having you.