As Institute of Radical Imagination, together with many other collectives, we created a coin to support the online crowdfunding campaign to finance repression and bailout costs for police eviction of collective B611.
Staub zu Glitzer is a queer-feminist artist collective, they have been working since September 2017 within their transmedial production, “B6112” in and around Berlin’s Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz.
“B6112” is a collective artwork that aims to radically democratize and open up the theater.
After the failed negotiations regarding the implementation of their demands with the current artistic director, they felt compelled to prepare a renewed occupation of the Volksbühne.
The Institute of Radical Imagination joins L’Internationale Confederation of European Museums in solidarity with Ukraine and their call to the art community: Never again war!
1/ Universal and Unconditional Basic Income is the best measure for the arts and cultural sector. Art workers claim a basic income, not for themselves, but for everyone.
2/ Do not call UBI any measures that do not equal a living wage: UBI has to be above the poverty threshold. To eliminate poverty, UBI must correspond to a region’s minimum wage.
3/ UBI frees up time, liberating us from the blackmail of precarious labor and from exploitative working conditions.
4/ UBI is given unconditionally and without caveats, regardless of social status, job performance, or ability. It goes against the meritocratic falsehoods that cover for class privilege.
5/ UBI is not a social safety net, nor is it welfare unemployment reform. It is the minimal recognition of the invisible labor that is essential to the reproduction of life, largely unacknowledged but essential, as society’s growing need for care proves.
6/ UBI states that waged labor is no longer the sole means for wealth redistribution. Time and time again, this model proves unsustainable.Wage is just another name for exploitation of workers, who always earn less than they give.
7/ Trans-feminist and decolonizing perspectives teach us to say NO to all the invisible and extractive modes of exploitation, especially within the precarious working conditions created by the art market.
8/ UBI affirms the right to intermittence, privacy and autonomy, the right to stay off-line and not to be available 24/7.
9/ UBI rejects the pyramid scheme of grants and of the nonprofit industrial complex, redistributing wealth equally and without unnecessary bureaucratic burdens. Bureaucracy is the vampire of art workers’ energies and time turning them into managers of themselves.
10/ By demanding UBI, art workers do not defend a guild or a category and depreciate the role that class and privilege play in current perceptions of art. UBI is universal because it is for everyone and makes creative agency available to everyone.
11/ Art’s health is directly connected to a healthy social fabric. To claim for UBI, being grounded in the ethics of mutual care, is art workers’ most powerful gesture of care towards society.
12/ Because UBI disrupts the logic of overproduction, it frees us from the current modes of capital production that are exploiting the planet. UBI is a cosmogenetic technique and a means to achieve climate justice.
13/ Where to find the money for the UBI? In and of itself UBI questions the actual tax systems in Europe and elsewhere. UBI empowers us to reimagine financial transactions, the extractivism of digital platforms, liquidity, and debt. No public service should be cut in order to finance UBI.
14/ UBI inspires many art collectives and communities to test various tools for more equal redistribution of resources and wealth. From self-managed mutual aid systems based on collettivising incomes, to solutions temporarily freeing cognitive workers from public and private constraints. We aim to join them.
Individuals / Organisations
Emanuele Braga / Macao, Milan; Institute of Radical Imagination
Marco Bravalle / Sale Docks, Venice; Institute of Radical Imagination
Gabriella Riccio / L’Asilo, Naples ; Institute of Radical Imagination
Ilenia Caleo / Campo Innocente; Incommon – Università IUAV Venezia
Anna Rispoli / Artist
Maddalena Fragnito / Macao, Milan; Phd at Coventry University
Andrea Fumagalli / Effimera; University of Pavia
Nicola Capone / Philosopher; L’Asilo, Naples
Luigi Coppola / Artist
Giuseppe Micciarelli / L’Asilo, Naples, University of Salerno
Julio Linares / Economist and Anthropologist; JoinCircles.net
Dena Beard / The Lab, San Francisco
Manuel Borja-Villel / Museum Director, Madrid
Salvo Torre / Professor, member of POE Politics, Ontologies, Ecologies
Sara Buraya Boned / L’Internationale; Institute Of Radical Imagination
Kuba Szreder / Curator and theorist, Warsaw
Dmitry Vilensky / Chto Delat
Charles Esche / Director of Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven
Franco Bifo Berardi / Philosopher
Gregory Sholette / Artist
Zeyno Pekunlu / Artist, Institute of Radical Imagination
Anna Daneri / Forum dell’arte contemporanea italiana
Massimo Mollona / Goldsmiths’ University of London, Institute of Radical Imagination
Jerszy Seymour / Artist and Designer; Sandberg Institute
Marco Assennato / Maître de conférences in filosofia, Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture, Paris-Malaquais
Roberto Ciccarelli / Philosopher and journalist
Sandro Mezzadra / Philosopher
Geert Lovink / Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam
Alisa Del Re / senior professor Ateneo Patavino
Andrea Gropplero / Film Director
Giuseppe Allegri / Activist
Elena Lasala Palomar / Institute of Radical Imagination
Nicolas Martino / Philosopher
Ilaria Bussoni / Editor and curator
Danilo Correale / Artist
Annalisa Sacchi / Incommon – Università IUAV Venezia
Giada Cipollone / Incommon – Università IUAV Venezia
Stefano Tomassini / Incommon – Università IUAV Venezia
Piersandra Di Matteo / Incommon – Università IUAV Venezia
Elena Blesa Cabéz / Researcher, Barcelona; Institute of Radical Imagination
Jesús Carrillo / Senior Lecturer at the Department of History and Theory of Art Universidad Autónoma de Madrid; Institute of Radical Imagination
Pablo García Bachiller / Arquitecto; Institute of Radical Imagination
Theo Prodromidis / Artist; Institute of Radical Imagination
Mabel Tapia / Art Researcher Madrid-Paris
Chiara Colasurdo / Labour Lawyer
Institute of Radical Imagination
Il Campo Innocente
Macao
Sale Docks
Chto Delat
L’Asilo
Euronomade
Dirty Art Department Gerrit Rietveld Academie and Dirty Art Foundation
“There will be no return to old ‘normality’ in the near future” These are Tedros Adhamon’s words. Meanwhile, due to “old normality”, in some places disguised as “new normality”, no near futures seem to appear on our horizonts.Global illness. A yearning for accumulation that does not pay attention to those who are left out, crowded in refugee camps or in shacks surrounded by greenhouses of slave labor; those who are evicted from their homes, neighborhoods and lives; those who are forgotten in jails which negotiate with their black bodies; those who are forced to put their dignity in the queue of the food bank, of the charity of the State or the Churches, of unemployment, of the papers, or the hawthorn borders. Global resistance. A force that reinvents each time the meaning of the word freedom to undress it from the abuses it suffers on a daily basis. Which recovers the word justice by putting it into practice, day by day, in the networks of mutual support, in stopping evictions, in the demonstrations for the support of the public, of the common; in strengthening ties; in the planetary virtual proximity of the contagion of slogans, struggles and political affections. With this text we invite you to continue denouncing the unbearable injustice of normality, and to tell where it breaks and how from these cracks emerge genuine political springs ; through words, posters, sounds, images, graffiti, tweets, stones or birds.
With this campaign we invite you to continue denouncing the unbearable injustice of normality, and to tell where it breaks and how from these cracks emerge genuine political springs ; through words, posters, sounds, images, graffiti, tweets, stones or birds.
The context of the global pandemic has amplified all the inequalities that feed the capital accumulation system: gender inequalities (more violence in closed-door households, more care workload for women without schools or senior centers, more harassment on online channels…); the inequalities of border regimes; inequalities in the international division of labor, among many others. At the same time, all public goods have been eroded, as shown by the state of health systems around the world. That was and it is our normality.
Faced with this situation, governments in different parts of the world promote in a variety of ways a kind of return to normality based on the coercion of bodies, on restrictions, on the continuity of impoverishment processes and on necropolitical logics.
That is why we make an internationalist call to give body, words, breath to #NormalityWasTheProblem proposing, from the specific perspectives we inhabit, reflections, questions and answers, in the form of words, audiovisual clips, photos, collages, sounds …
Virologists have spent these last few months bent over their microscopes as they labour to identify the origin, vectors of contagion and ways to combat Covid-19. They are not there yet. But they can at least claim to have resolved many of the urgent questions and most pressing needs.
Meanwhile, activists and militants, the impoverished working classes and other unquiet critics of the status quo have been scrutinising the implacable effects of a better known but equally vaccine-less virus: capitalism.
As the pandemic has tightened its grip, it has thrown into stark relief the simmering inequalities that feed the accumulation of capital. Indeed, it has intensified them to an intolerable degree: inequalities of gender (a surge in violence behind closed doors, a ramped-up burden of care for women as schools and old people’s centres shut down, more online harassment, etc.); inequalities of frontier regimes (illegal migrants are shut out from emergency support measures); inequalities in the international division of labour (countries confront the same virus with vastly differing resources in terms of healthcare systems, material conditions of their population, etc.). And many more.
This situation, which we used to call normality, has revealed itself in its dystopian reality.
So, while governments talk about a return to normality or a new normality, we – those of us who seek an emancipatory change to this monstrous normalised reality – are throwing our thoughts, bodies and energy into forging new paradigms, alliances and practices that map the way to new horizons.
But how to translate this urgent desire into specific, down-to-earth, locally relevant measures? How can we vaccinate ourselves against capitalism on the eve of an economic crisis deeper than 2008? At a time when the forces of the far right are eager to seize on the discontent stoked by the pandemic’s material cost?
How can we avoid a return to the dangerous promises that the nation state will save us and instead forge new alliances and new forms of international cooperation?
How can we short-circuit the spaces where capital accumulation squeezes out the resources we have to live on? How can we rescue from rampant marketisationour homes, neighbourhoods, cities, towns, water, air, public spaces and natural and urban environments?
How can we protect social assets (educational systems, cultural institutions, social security systems, healthcare) and create other new goods, under common management, which can overcome the dangers afflicting “public” sectors that are increasingly falling into the claws of financial elites.
How can we break away from a financialised economy centred on accumulation and instead develop a social organisation based on the needs and desires of a decent, independent and free life?
This campaign invites everyone to put forward (in words, video, photographs, collage, sound, etc.), each from our own corners of the world and from the reality we live and see, more questions and more answers to meet the colossal challenge of our collective global demand:
#NormalityWasTheProblem
#LaNormalidadEraElProblema
El contexto de pandemia que se está viviendo globalmente ha amplificado todas las desigualdades de las que se alimenta el sistema de acumulación de capital: las desigualdades de género (más violencia en los hogares a puerta cerrada, más carga de trabajo de cuidados para las mujeres sin escuelas ni centros de mayores, más acoso en los canales on line…); las desigualdades de los regímenes de frontera; las desigualdades de la división internacional del trabajo, entre muchas otras. Al mismo tiempo se han erosionado todos los bienes públicos, como lo muestra el estado de los sistemas de salud en todo el mundo. Esa era y es nuestra normalidad.
Frente a esta situación, los gobiernos de diferentes lugares del mundo promueven de distintas maneras una suerte de vuelta a la normalidad basada en la coerción de los cuerpos, las restricciones, la continuidad de procesos de empobrecimiento y las lógicas necropolíticas.
Es por ello que hacemos una llamada internacionalista a dar cuerpo, palabras, respiración a #NormalityWastheProblem proponiendo, desde las perspectivas concretas que habitamos, reflexiones, preguntas y respuestas, en forma de palabras, de clips audiovisuales, de fotos, de collages, de sonidos… sobre la vida que queremos.
Los microscopios de los estudios de virología han trabajado duro estos últimos meses para hallar el origen, las formas de contagio y las maneras de enfrentarnos al Covid19. Aún queda camino por recorrer, pero no cabe duda de que encontrarán respuestas a buena parte de las preguntas y necesidades.
Mientras tanto, las lupas de los espacios activistas y militantes, de las clases populares empobrecidas y de los espíritus inquietos, incómodos y críticos con el status quo han observado el aumento dramático del efecto implacable de un virus previamente conocido del que aún no hemos sabido vacunarnos: el virus de un sistema económico y social incluso más letal al que identificábamos con la normalidad.
En efecto, en estos tiempos de pandemia se han visibilizado y ampliado hasta dimensiones insostenibles todas las desigualdades de las que se alimenta el sistema de acumulación de capital: las desigualdades de género (más violencia en los hogares a puerta cerrada, más carga de trabajo de cuidados para las mujeres sin escuelas ni centros de mayores, más acoso en los canales on line…); las desigualdades de los regímenes de frontera (las personas sin papeles no pueden acceder a las medidas de urgencia desplegadas por las instituciones); las desigualdes de la división internacional del trabajo (los diferentes países se enfrentan al mismo virus con muy diferentes recursos, sistemas de salud, condiciones materiales de la población…). Y muchas otras.
Eso que llamábamos normalidad se ha revelado como una auténtica distopía.
Por eso, mientras los gobiernos hablan de volver a la normalidad, o de alcanzar una nueva normalidad,las miradas, cuerpos y empeños de quienes buscamos una transformación emancipadora de esa monstruosa realidad normalizada, construimos paradigmas, alianzas y prácticas que nos orienten hacia otros horizontes.
¿Pero cómo traducir ese deseo potente en pasos concretos, aterrizados, situados? ¿Cómo vacunarnos contra los efectos de una crisis económica mayor que la del 2008 y con unas fuerzas políticas de ultraderecha que pugnan por capitalizar el malestar generado por los estragos materiales causados por la pandemia?
¿Cómo desviarnos de un regreso a las peligrosas promesas de salvación de los Estados nación para buscar nuevas alianzas y formas de cooperación de escala internacional?
¿Cómo seguir cortocircuitando los espacios de acumulación de capital a costa de nuestros recursos de vida? ¿Cómo sustraer de la mercantilización nuestras casas, barrios, ciudades, pueblos; el agua, el aire, el espacio púbblico, el medioambiente natural y urbano? ¿Cómo hacemos del cuidado una política colectiva y tranformadora que interviene en los horizontes transfronterizos?
¿Cómo sostener la posibilidad abierta de estallidos y revueltas que se han levantado en distintas latitudes contra la normalidad precaria? ¿Qué hacemos para que la distancia física no devenga aislamiento social? ¿Cómo se transforman los repertorios de acción de protesta y articulación en el confinamiento y posterior a este?
¿Cómo defender y proteger bienes públicos (sistemas educativos, instituciones culturales, sistemas de seguridad social, sistemas de salud) y crear otros nuevos, bajo regímenes de administración del común capaces de superar los peligros de sectores “públicos” cada vez más amenazados por las garras de las élites financieras?
¿Cómo salir de una economía financiarizada que pone en el centro la acumulación para articular la organización social en torno a las necesidades y deseos de unas vidas dignas, autónomas, emancipadas?
Esta campaña invita a proponer (en forma de palabras, de clips audiovisuales, de fotos, de collages, de sonidos, … ) desde nuestro específico rincón del mundo, desde la perspectiva concreta que habitamos, más preguntas y más respuestas para abonar el reto colosal de un deseo globalmente compartido:
