Boris Groys, philosopher and art theorist, has recently published a text entitled ‘On Art Activism’ (e-flux) or ‘Kunstaktivismus’ in German (Lettre International) in two reputable journals. In this text he makes a claim that can only really be described as being totally false.
Jens Kastner
03 12 14
Oggi 14 novembre è sciopero sociale. Come lavoratrici e lavoratori della cultura, dello spettacolo e della conoscenza, come spazi occupati e indipendenti, come esperienze di autorganizzazione aderiamo alla giornata di mobilitazione europea.
Heute, 14. November 2014, ist Tag des sozialen Streiks. Als Kultur- und Wissensarbeiter_innen, als besetzte und freie Räume, als Erfahrungen der Selbstorganisation beteiligen wir uns am Europäischen Aktionstag.
14 11 14
We are sorry it has taken so long to get back to you, but this letter has not been an easy one to write and things have been difficult here. We are also sorry that what began as a letter has perhaps become a long “manifestos against a world that we hate”.
The Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination
31 10 14
An appeal by researchers involved in the production of knowledge on migration
Day after day we keep receiving updates on that uncanny war which is ongoing in the Mediterranean: updates on how many migrants were rescued and how many have died since the beginning of “Mare Nostrum,” the “military and humanitarian” operation that the Italian government enlisted in the Mediterranean as a response to the shipwreck of October 3, 2013. At that time, the island of Lampedusa was swamped by a wave of dead bodies - of women, men, and children. We are asked to form our opinion on Italian and European policies – those policies made also in our name - based on the statistics of deaths.
Gruppo ricercatrici e ricercatori migrazioni
31 10 14
Ce qu’il y a de stupéfiant dans l’affaire du barrage de Sivens depuis plus d’un an, c’est la scandaleuse disproportion entre les prétendues finalités de ce projet et les moyens mis en oeuvre par les autorités tarnaises pour l’imposer. [...] Dans la nuit de samedi à dimanche, vers 2 heure du matin, Rémi, 21 ans, est tombé sous les tirs de cet État de droit. Selon divers témoignages, il aurait reçu en tir tendu (ce qui est formellement interdit) une grenade de dés-encerclement à l’épaule.
La coordination du 25 octobre
31 10 14
Ein breites Bündnis von NachbarInnen, KünstlerInnen und WissenschaftlerInnen ruft zum zivilen Ungehorsam gegen die Räumung der Gerhart-Hauptmann-Schule auf.
Wir würden uns freuen wenn ihr diesen Aufruf mit unterzeichnet. Schreibt einfach an
zwangsraeumungverhindern@riseup.net. Die Zeit drängt, Solidarität jetzt!
Bündnis Zwangsräumung Verhindern
30 10 14
Save the Collège international de philosophie
In November 2014, if an arm of the state does not decide to intervene, the Collège international de philosophie will close its doors after 30 years of activity and production in substantial international networks. A space of experimentation, of innovative research and original training, will disappear.
The Collegial Assembly of the Collège international de philosophie
21 10 14
20 years of maiz | call for papers - deadline 30.09.2014
To give more space to utopias and to the discussions surrounding the epistemic dimension of our praxis, maiz decided to found the University of Ignoramuses. The starting point of our university is the realization that everyone is ignorant, as long as bodies of knowledge are possessed and knowledge continues to be produced without a critical reflection of the power dimension and the violent processes of legitimization and de-legitimization of knowledge and without implementing the resulting consequences in praxis.
maiz
25 09 14
La Electrodoméstica is an associative project that comprises a working space bringing together research and self-education through feminist trajectories, the production of situated knowledges and the desire to experiment with composition and organization based on embodied practices of reproduction, work and the material conditions of life in common.
15 09 14
This issue brings together a series of commentaries, interventions and projects centred on the theme of workers’ inquiry. Workers’ inquiry is a practice of knowledge production that seeks to understand the changing composition of labour and its potential for revolutionary social transformation. It is a practice of turning the tools of the social sciences into weapons of class struggle.
03 09 14
The Provost’s Office of the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo opened an investigatory procedure against professors Peter Pál Pelbart, Yolanda Glória Gamboa Muñoz and Jonnefer Barbosa, under the allegation of having invited, envisaged, supported and advertised the theatre-performance staged in the University’s facilities in November 2012 by theatre director Zé Celso Martinez. The accusation being pursued is that the artistic performance acted against the “moral and cultural patrimony” of the institution and that in supporting it the three aforementioned professors stimulated indiscipline among the student population. Please support the persecuted teachers and oppose this attack on academic freedom by signing this online letter of support and circulating the link:
http://cartapucsp.lrdsign.com/.
Update 18 August 2014: The local and international manifestations against the absurd trial against Peter Pelbart and two other professors of philosophy by the Provost of the PUC-SP and Arcepispo of São Paulo was victorious. The inquisitors retreated and decided to quash it.
09 08 14
It promises to be an exciting cultural summer in France. Not so much due to the planned artistic activities, but rather because of the combativeness with which the French campaign for fair labour conditions in the cultural sector, and for everyone with discontinuous employment. Many French summer festivals receive an ‘adjusted’ programme. A plethora of actions are drawing attention to the precarious situation of cultural workers due to the downsizing and marketing policy that the French authorities wish to implement.
Robrecht Vanderbeeken
23 07 14
With a sharp tug the soot-covered tire slides free from a pile stacked over my head. Then another. And another. Soon I have fifteen tires loosened. It’s April 22, 2014, and along with local curator Larissa Babij I am standing on the battle-charred northeast corner of Kyiv's Independence Square known locally as Maidan (square).
Greg Sholette with curators Olga Kopenkina and Larissa Babij
21 07 14
In March 2014, more than a hundred activists from various parts of Europe gathered in Madrid for the conference ‘El nuevo rapto de Europa: deuda, guerra, revoluciones democráticas’. The conference participants developed both the foundations and a preamble for a Charter for Europe. In the following months, a first version of this Charter was composed via mumbles, skype-conferences, wikis and diverse other virtual communication channels and spaces. This version is planned to proliferate and get distributed over the next few months to discuss and further develop it. Rather than considering this proposition as a text for a future constitution, it is supposed to operate as an impulse for a potential constituent process in Europe — in a way, it is already a component of such a process.
30 06 14
new issue of transversal web journal
The publishing industry is in a fundamental crisis. In its final hours it is beginning to lash out, but only hits itself. As much as academic apparatuses and cultural industries wrestle with conformity, the traditional forms of knowledge production remain just as incompatible with the new media conditions as with future emancipatory concatenations of writing, translating and publicly negotiating publications. “The Insurrection of the Published” emerges in these concatenations beyond the domestication of styles, forms and formats, beyond valorization and self-valorization, beyond the hegemonic mechanisms of exclusion like peer reviews, impact factors, ranking, and rigid copyright regimes.
30 06 14
Eine neue Zeitschrift zu sozialen Bewegungen, politischen Kunstpraxen und kritischer Intellektualität
Kamion ist eine Zeitschrift für politische Theorien und nützliche Nachrichten aus dem Alltag von Prekarisierung und Krise. Sie forciert den Verkehr, die Übersetzungen, die Vernähungen zwischen sozialen Bewegungen, Kunstpraxen und kritischer Intellektualität. Sie eröffnet Raum für entspannt theoretische, essayistische, nicht-akademische Schreibweisen und experimentelle Erzählformen. Sie entwickelt Taktiken und Strategien der Verkettung, Neuzusammensetzung und Bildung von Allianzen. Zentrale Themenfelder sind politische Kunstpraxen, Aktivismus, Medienkritik, Kulturpolitik, Wissensproduktion/Bildungspolitik. Die Redaktionen in Wien, Zürich und Berlin beleuchten transnational relevante Themen (nicht nur) aus europäischer Perspektive.
http://diekamion.org
30 06 14
The representation- and identity-critical movements of occupying squares since 2011 have been inventing new forms of democracy for which I have proposed the term ‘presentist’. Presentist democracy does not mean simply the negation or the other side of political representation. The presentist is not in a dichotomous relation to re-presentation, but rather it emerges through a break with identitarian confrontations between ‘us’ and ‘them’, through an exodus from dualisms between refusal and engagement or consensus and conflict. In the midst of the presentist, such an exodus opens up a breach for transversal constituent processes.
Isabell Lorey
30 06 14
Statement of the Refugees on the Roof of Former Gerhart-Hauptmann-Schule, Berlin
We are now on the roof since six days. The last days have been very hard and exhausting to us, not only because of being on the roof, but more because we are facing harrassment by the police again and again.
29 06 14
Postface of Gerald Raunig, Factories of Knowledge, Industries of Creativity, Semiotext(e) / MIT Press 2013
Antonio Negri
15 04 13
