The witch Protektorama is one of Berlin artist Johannes Paul Raether’s three “Self-Sisters”; she is a potential identity (or: “identitecture”) whose body and language he uses to express a performance system that he has been continuously expanding since 2008. The point of identitecture is to layer a multipolar, hysterical and at the same time conceptually stringent analysis of society, in order to challenge the sometimes simple legibilities of political art and the issues it deals with. By way of infiltrations, lecture adventures, selfie-wars, processions and rituals, Raether’s characters question the politics of visibility and strategies of communication employed by art itself. “To engineer into community” or “to communeer”, these are his guidelines for dissolving the audience into the joint excess of a community machine, into shrieking, colourful surfaces and socio-political dreams.
The lecture was held under the title „Protektoramae – Forking Horizon 5.5.5.2 / (Un)certainly (Un)readable“ at the Foreign Affairs 2016 symposium „Landscapes of Uncertainty“ on 10 July 2016 at Haus der Berliner Festspiele.