Sollten die Kouachi-Brüder und Amedy Coulibaly posthum doch noch die Schlacht der Ideen gewonnen haben? Die öffentliche Debatte richtet sich seit dem 7. Jänner 2015 an falschen Alternativen aus.

The autonomous factory Rog is under threat of being evicted and destroyed by the municipal authorities which are pursuing their project of renovating the area into a centre for creative industries.

Networks of protest and dissent, actual and virtual, were understood to have become increasingly centreless and leaderless across the 1990s, and beyond. Even the nature of protest and dissent fell away from previous models, as aligned to pragmatic demands and manifestos, single issues and norms of controlled civil disobedience. Now the masses were understood not to assemble behind any one position, or rally to one slogan, but more to stand in a kind of collective negative correlation to the faltering status quo: a crowd of singularities. This crowd or mass has been identified and explored in various ways as “the multitude” by theorists such as Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Paolo Virno, The Invisible Committee, Mauricio Lazzarato, and Franco Berardi among others.

The first edition of the Performance Biennial will take place on 23 June to 4 July in Greece. Emerging from DIY self-organised cultural practices appearing during these past years in Athens, in a present without a future, this event seeks to critically interrogate the role of performance, historically and in the present, in relation to political and social materialities and imaginaries. Playfully subverting the term ‘biennial’ into a self-organised practice, the event will test self-instituted forms of culture and politics. Under the title “No Future” this guerrilla biennial will bring together forms of artistic, political and theoretical practice and discourse questioning the potential of a collective refusal to a referred futurity.

On the occasion of the new edition of Instituierende Praxen transversal texts publishes the new introduction to the book.

In the morning of April 22nd, activists and refugees joined action to squat an abandoned hotel in the northern center of Athens. The “Hotel Plaza” is supposed to host up to 400 refugees, and hopefully in the upcoming week, they will be able to receive further room requests. Since the occupants have entered the building, the weekend has been a busy one: The rooms have been aired and cleaned, the kitchen cleaned and prepared for cooking, weeds and trash removed from the front entrance, the first meals cooked, assemblies held and plans made.

We, the undersigned, support the struggle to defend the integrity of the art project Park Fiction and to keep the Golden Pudel Club as a part of the park and Gesamtkunstwerk Park Fiction.

On the occasion of publishing the German edition of The Undercommons, transversal texts spoke with the authors about the book’s central concepts.

Semiotext(e) / MIT Press has announced the publication of Gerald Raunig’s new book DIVIDUUM. Machinic Capitalism and Molecular Revolution, Part 1: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/dividuum.

The Institute for Democracy and Municipalism (Institute DM) introduced itself this morning in Madrid. The initiative’s objective is "to stimulate the cycle that was started by 15M beyond its current limits, or to work so that the democratic revolution continues its course,” as its promoters point out. The think tank, as one of its founders, the sociologist and historian Emmanuel Rodríguez, describes it, “aims to become a space of reference at the levels of debate, education, research and political discussion.” Ultimately: “to animate and promote the emergence of ideas that stimulate a change in the political cycle.”

Statement des Demobündnisses zum offenen Brief über die Zustände bezüglich der Frauen in der Unterkunft Westerwaldstraße

Late Saturday night, the Golden Pudel Club stood in flames. The roof structure is destroyed. The improvisational shelter of a homeless refugee burned as well, including his papers. The Park Fiction Archive housed on the building’s top floor is drenched in extinguishing water.
Demonstration: Friday, February 19, 8:30 pm, from: FC St. Pauli, South side areaway, to: Golden Pudel Club / Gezi Park Fiction

The inconceivable struggle of refugees and migrants we have been witnessing has resulted in the opening of the corridor of hope across the fortified borders of the European Union. Consequently, European forces started turning the Balkan Route into a detention route, leaving behind their democratic masks. The ruling classes of “Europe without borders” started erecting razor blade fences all over the Balkan Route.

We find out with dismay that a provision of the management of the Municipality of Rome calls for the eviction of the self-managed atelier Esc. We also discover that dozens of other social centres and cultural associations are facing this measure.
All this is a very serious mistake, that hits to the heart of the virtues that still survive in the city of Rome, that has always stood out for an unequalled proliferation of self management, mutualism, and independent cultural production.

Can we conceive of any universal idea of man, or of so-called rights, of man without the anticolonial struggles, without the struggles and resistances of slaves, without the movements of decolonization or of national liberation in the whole world, without the struggles of women, without the antiracism of black or non-occidental women? It is something that generally remains unsaid when people speak of “human rights” in mass political and televised debates. And yet it is something that would help to revise the material and discursive limits of European humanism. In Europe, this deficiency is very pronounced. The thread that unites humanism, racism and colonialism is not clear in public debate... The point is not to perform a mea culpa about the colonial past of Europe, but rather to understand the material legacy of colonialism in the material constitution of postcolonial European social and political space.

An ‚Tagen wie diesen‘ scheint es mir wichtig, die Fähigkeit, zu staunen, sich zu wundern, zu kultivieren. Allzu schnell normalisieren sich unwahrscheinlichste Politikwechsel, wie derjenige der massenhaften Aufnahme muslimischer Flüchtlinge in Deutschland Ende 2015, in veralltäglichte politische Prozesse. Dabei gäbe die Tatsache, dass eine solche Schubumkehr in einem Land möglich ist, das im europäischen Vergleich neben Ungarn und Polen 2011 die höchsten Quoten islamfeindlicher Einstellung aufzuweisen hatte, Anlass zum Überdenken politischer Potenzialitäten. Radikale Transformation ist möglich, auch wenn sie, wie im zu diskutierenden Fall, ‚von oben‘ kommt.

It was this moment of “debordering” that pushed the “crisis” onto a completely new level. What became clear at this moment was that there was indeed a crisis. But this was the crisis of European migration policies.

Seit heute dem 1. Dezember 2015 befinden sich Gefangene in der JVA Butzbach im Hunger- oder Bummelstreik, sie fordern für ihre Arbeit im Gefängnis unter anderem das Recht auf gewerkschaftliche Organisierung, den Mindestlohn und die Einzahlung in die Rentenversicherung.

Europe is in movement, Europe needs to move - Moving Europe!

Es gibt Foucault noch nicht – so der Hinweis von Werkbiograph und Historiker Philipp Sarasin auf die Tatsache, dass noch nicht alles von Foucault publiziert worden ist. So fehlen in der deutschen Übersetzung noch zwei weitere Vorlesungsreihen am Collège de France, im Französischen ist das Werk seit diesem Frühjahr erstmals vollständig verfügbar. Schon die jüngsten Übersetzungen zur Strafgesellschaft und der Regierung der Lebenden eröffnen neue Facetten und Zusammenhänge, aber auch neue Begrifflichkeiten.
Gemessen an den beiden Symposien in Zürich und Wien in diesem Jahr fällt nicht primär ins Auge, dass es «Foucault noch nicht», sondern vielmehr, dass es längst verschiedene Foucaults gibt.

In ganz Europa macht sich die Prognose breit, welche die Kanzlerin Angela Merkel für ihr Land formuliert hatte: „Diese Ereignisse werden unser Land verändern“. Ich meinerseits würde sagen, sie werden Europa verändern. Aber in welchem Sinn?

Schon wieder ein Schiffbruch, Sonntag, also. Montag schließt Deutschland seine Grenzen, die anderen europäischen Länder sollen reagieren, es ist von überlaufen, von überfordert die Rede. 15 Kinder sind am Sonntag ertrunken. Die deutschen Städte sind überfordert. Ungarn und sein Zaun.

Since yesterday, when Hungary attempted to close its borders, by bringing army and heavy police force at the newly built fence, and the new law criminalising migrants has stepped into force, up to 5000 migrants have been stuck at the border. This is a call out to all activists, for an emergency intervention at the border – we need people to show solidarity with those stuck at the Horgoš 2 border crossing.

Auf Initiative Barcelonas mobilisieren sich „empörte“ Städte, um mehr Geflüchtete aufzunehmen, und lancieren Solidaritätskampagnen. Ihre Ziel: Den Druck auf die rechte Regierung von Mariano Rajoy aufzubauen, die sich im Vorfeld der allgemeinen Wahlen in das Thema verbeißt.

Eight years after the beginning of subprime crisis it seems more than urgent to develop new approaches of economic theory, on the basis of the further hightening of social inequality between Northern and Southern regions and emerging signs of the transformation of machinic capitalism towards sharpened authoritarianisms.

On the 19th of June, 2015 a group of artists, theoreticians, and cultural workers occupied Green Park cafe in the Pedion tou Areos, one the two central parks of Athens. Almost 4 years after the occupation of Embros theatre in November 2011 this new occupation emerged from and sought to build on the failings of collective struggles during recent years; both failings in the face of mechanisms of repression and failings from within the emergent collective formations of resistance.

Some months before transversal texts will release the German version of Stefano Harney’s and Fred Moten’s book The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning & Black Study, we are publishing Stefano Harney’s poetico-philosophical piece “Jay-Walker” on the intertwining logics of logistics, consulting, and racism.

Statement from the organisers of the international meeting Peripheralizing Europe, which discussed the commonalities, differences and prospects for common struggles on the eastern and southern peripheries of Europe.

The International Conference on Penal Abolition (ICOPA) is a bi-annual gathering of activists, academics, journalists, practitioners, people currently or formerly imprisoned, survivors of state and personal harm, and others from across the world who are working towards the abolition of imprisonment, the penal system, carceral controls and the prison industrial complex.

For the last four weeks, asylum seekers have regularly met with human rights activists from Freedom not Frontex Vienna in order to call attention to their situation and their observations; these observations are documented by photos and videos. The asylum seekers have expressed the wish to make their difficult situation in the camp visible to the public so that improvements and more human living conditions will be implemented soon.

At the beginning of July, activists of different networks and organizations were in Linz. The refugees summarized their claims in an open letter and demand that this letter will be presented to the Austrian population, the government as well as international organizations in order to inform the public and the persons responsible about their situation.

We have yet to come to terms with the full meaning and implications of the Marikana tragedy. Although the report released by the Marikana Commission of Inquiry goes some way towards this goal, the foundational moral dilemmas raised by the loss of every life in this conflict have yet to be properly articulated.

Beginning to work in art is never a decision, says Jimmie Durham. The artist, poet and activist born 1940 in Arkansas began to work as a sculptor in 1964, while he was active since the early 1960s in the American civil rights movement. In 1973, he graduated in Fine Arts in Geneva and returned to the U.S. In the 1970s, he was a co-founder and chairman of the International Indian Treaty at the United Nations, where his work led to the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. In 1987, Durham left the U.S., settled in Mexico and since 1994 in Europe, where he has lived in Dublin, Marseille, Rome and Berlin.

Wir veröffentlichen hier einen Text von Abdel Hafed Benotman, Atheist, der im Februar 2015 viel zu früh verstorben ist. Er selbst veröffentlichte diesen Text im Jahr 2008 auf seinem Blog. Ebenso wie L’Envolée finden auch wir, dass er auf so manche gegenwärtige Diskussionen passt.

Ein Brief von Abdel Hafed Benotman, der im Juli 2005 in der Zeitschrift L’Envolée veröffentlicht wurde. Als bewaffnete Männer und andere magis-rats es für gut befanden, ihn für einige Diebstähle in der Versenkung verschwinden zu lassen. +++ Une lettre d’Hafed publiée dans l’Envolée N°14, en juillet 2005. Lorsque quelques hommes en armes et autres magis-rats, avaient jugé bon de le recoller au placard pour quelques vols …

Er war Dieb, Räuber, Krimischriftsteller, Drehbuchautor, Theatermensch, Dichter und Schauspieler. Abdel Hafed Benotmans Herzmaschine hat ihn am 20. Februar 2015 abends losgelassen und lässt uns in unendlicher Trauer zurück. Aber sein wirkliches Herz wird uns nie verlassen. ++ Il fut voleur, braqueur, écrivain de polars, auteur de scénarios de films, homme de théâtre, poète et acteur. La machine cardiaque d’Abdel-Hafed Benotman l’a lâché le 20 février 2015 au soir, nous laissant dans une infinie tristesse. Mais son vrai cœur ne nous lâchera jamais.

Last Sunday a funeral took place. Thousands of people gathered in the governmental area of Berlin for the so-called March of the Determined, which could be called a demonstration though it was more than just another political protest. The Center for Political Beauty had announced the event to lay to rest the bodies of those who died while attempting to escape war, crossing the Mediterranean Sea in the hope of finding refuge in Europe.

On April 20, the Joint Foreign and Home Affairs Council of the EU released a ten-​point action plan outlining their response to the recent deaths of migrants in the Mediterranean Sea. Many other proposals have also been made over the last few days. We are activists who have been involved in the struggles against the European border regime for several years and who have been in touch on a daily basis with hundreds of people who have crossed the Mediterranean through Watch The Med and the Alarm Phone project. Faced with the hypocrisy of the “solutions” that have been proposed so far, we feel compelled to undermine their falsity and attempt to open up an alternative space for reflection and action.

The system of constitutional democracy in the most recent postwar era in Europe was organized around a model of rotating the exercise of government between left and right in all countries (and, after 1978, also in Spain, complemented by the nationalist and/or independentist forces). This took place within the framework of a capitalist system in evolution that was subject to reforms – but not subject to discussion of fundamental issues. The terms were those of Yalta. This model is in crisis. In fact, third forces have already emerged in the electoral fields of many European countries that disrupt this dual scheme. In this regard we must ask ourselves if the construction of the new constitutional structure of the European Union did not begin precisely from the moment of foreseeing the crisis of the postwar constitutional model – and, at any rate, from the moment of perceiving incontinence already visible in the classical democratic model.

Die neue Kamion#1 'Aus den Kreisläufen des Rassismus' fragt nach den Verhältnissen von Rassismus und Ökonomie, so wie sie sich in ihren Verfahren und Aktivitäten gegenwärtiger Zirkulation präsentieren. Die Fragen der Logistik, beziehungsweise logistischer Formen des Kapitalismus, nehmen eine zentrale Stellung ein. Die Autor_innen suchen nach widerständigen Aktualisierungen, das heisst nach Möglichkeiten die Schließung von Subjektivitäten und Körpern zu sabotieren und zu queren um einen materiellen Beitrag gegen den permanenten Zugriff zu leisten.

The comrades who have given life to Podemos say: we have managed to move past the limits of the horizontality of the movement, so rich yet often ineffective. We managed to do this with a political gesture of self-constitution, organization and representation. We had the intelligence to understand that the space between the municipal and the general elections, between May and the end of the year, was our only chance to “break the lock of ‘78”: during election periods the adversary is forced to spread out into the territory; constitutional guarantees work better than under other conditions and thus become possible zones of rupture of the current regime, so deeply discredited and divided. Moreover, at the end of 2015 the capitalist front will perhaps be busy preparing its attack, regrouping after having responded to, and possibly demolished, viciously, our resistance. Such would the historic window of opportunity again be closed for a long time.

It seems, there is nowadays an accumulation of diverse voices, who push the call for verticality. For example, the tendency to describe (pseudo)horizontal post-Fordist modes of production, and their valorisation of affects, cooperation and communication, as ubiquitous; and subsequently denunciating any form of horizontal exchange. And when once again the lack of depth in contemporary cultural thinking is emphasized, it is mostly to recycle an old topos. The recurring lamenting of the superficiality of the world, which makes us mediocre and produces new forms of assimilation, is nothing other than the boring repetition of a cultural-pessimistic figure, which consistently affirms the old elites or the desire for new elites.

Well, then, keynesianism or post-keynesianism? Once we have recognised the reactionary nature of ordoliberalism and the same constitution of the ECB under the command of the Bundesbank, what economic and business framework should be favoured? And who should be the fundamental actor of this economic revival, which is at the same time a democratic one? The problem is difficult, and this is because it is new.

The hour of the lord, writes the Apostle Paul, comes like a thief in the night. This line is taken from a letter to the Thessalonians, a community where today’s Saloniki in Greece is located. An incredible coincidence – as today we are also faced with a new era, one that has broken out rather suddenly with its origin in Greece. The challenges of this new era do not simply depend on one government’s ability to fulfil voters’ expectations, because the great changes that are approaching and which were ushered in by the Greek elections cannot be handled by a government, and certainly not by one government alone.

“A spectre is haunting Europe”. The Italian newspaper Il Manifesto used this headline a few days ago for its homepage, commenting on the visits of Tsipras and Varoufakis to European governments. A real nightmare for the ordoliberal Germans, a Geisterfahrer, to be precise, a suicidal conductor looking to collide with the European bus, as Der Spiegel described on its front page. Imagine what could happen with the victory of Podemos in Spain: what a magnificent spectre would then be seen lurking about, a real monster created by the exploited and the productive forces of the fourth European economy!

Am Dienstag, 10.02.2015 gingen ca. 100 Geflüchtete gegen die deutsche Asylpolitik und die Bedingungen in der Gemeinschaftsunterkunft in Neuburg an der Donau auf die Straße. Mit selbstgebastelten Plakaten und Bannern zog die dreistündige Demonstration von der Gemeinschaftsunterkunft zum Landratsamt und dem Neuburger Rathaus. Die Geflüchteten äußerten dort lautstark ihren Unmut über die miserablen Bedingungen, forderten ein Ende der Lagerpflicht, „gleiche Rechte für alle“ und prangerten das Lagersystem als Gefängnissystem an.

This campaign stems from the preliminary framework of Errar de Dios (Erring from God), a participatory installation created by Etcetera collective together with Franco Berardi "Bifo," featuring works by Leon Ferrari created on the occasion of the 31st Sao Paulo Biennial, How to talk about things that do not exist.
Over the course of a three-month campaign in San Pablo, we have collected more than 15,000 signatures on sheets of paper, to be sent directly to the Vatican in Rome. We are now pleased to announce the launch of the petition online, and invite you to sign and to spread the word. The collection of signatures will continue through 2015 while we continue to wait for an official confirmation from the Vatican for a personal meeting between representatives of International Errorist and His Holiness.

Not too long ago, we ran into some strange and worrying news from Poland. The story happened during a recent public talk of renowned philosopher and political commentator Slavoj Žižek. The discussion was moderated by Sławomir Sierakowski, the leader of the Polish journal and collective “Political Critique” (Krytyka Polityczna), which enjoys wide reputation as a leading Polish left-leaning think tank. After Žižek’s talk, the discussion turned to the most pressing issues of the ongoing escalation between Russia, Ukraine and the West.

Es gibt eine Verherrlichung des „Volkes“, in einigen Teilen der (antiimperialistischen) Linken ebenso wie in ethnologischen und anthropologischen Theorieansätzen. Sicher. Aber muss man, um dies zu thematisieren, gleich ein Maximum an klassistischem Ressentiment auffahren und historische Tatsachen verdrehen, wie der Schriftsteller Michael Köhlmeier es in seinem Text „Was wir meinen, wenn wir von Demokratie reden“ tut?

On March 17th 2014 the trial against eight persons accused of “Schlepperei/human smuggling in the frame of a criminal association” started at Landesgericht Wiener Neustadt. On the December 4 shortly before midnight the sentences were passed.