BIENNALOCENE Se ‘l mare fosse de tocio is an event by the Goethe-Institut and Institut of Radical Imagination in the framework of Performing Architecture a series of events run by the Goethe-Institut as program partner of the German Pavilion at the 18th International Architecture Exhibition La Biennale di Venezia.
Corte delle Casette, Calle Cantiere (Giudecca Palanca), 19 May 2023 h 7.30 pm
with the participation of Federica Arcoraci, Emanuele Brocardo, Est Coulon, Valentina Pettosini, Enrico Pittalis, Davide Tolfo + 5 workers who prefer to remain anonymous
NOTES FFROM A PERFORMATIVE INVESTIGATION by Marco Baravalle on ARCH+
BIENNALOCENE, Corte delle Casette, Giudecca Venezia
from Art for UBI (Manifesto) a militant research on the conditions of cultural work in Venice
BIENNALOCENE is a performative inquiry into the conditions of cultural work in Venice. The play was written starting from a series of interviews with a group of workers in the Venetian cultural industries. The interviewees themselves will stage their considerations on professional and existential precariousness, housing, income and the future of the lagoon city to the test of global warming.
The performance takes its cue from Art For UBI, a project by the Institute of Radical Imagination which started in 2021 with the collective writing of a manifesto in which the art world takes a position in favor of universal basic income and which resulted in the publication of the book “Art For UBI (Manifesto)”, (Bruno, 2021).
da Art for UBI (Manifesto) una ricerca militante sulle condizioni del lavoro culturale a Venezia
BIENNALOCENE è una ricerca militante sulle condizioni del lavoro culturale a Venezia e sull’ecosistema Biennale, grande evento che mobilita centinaia di lavoratori e lavoratrici ogni anno. A partire dalle interviste effettuate ad un gruppo diversificato di questi lavoratori e queste lavoratrici (precari, stagionali, freelancers, artisti, mediatori, tecnici, addetti alle pulizie e non solo) emerge una drammaturgia che da vita ad un’assemblea performativa animata dagli stessi intervistati e messa in scena nello spazio pubblico.
La performance prende spunto da Art For UBI, progetto dell’Institute of Radical Imagination iniziato nel 2021 con la scrittura collettiva di un manifesto in cui il mondo dell’arte prende posizione a favore del reddito di cittadinanza universale e che ha portato alla pubblicazione di il libro “Art For UBI (Manifesto)”, (Bruno, 2021).
Talk performativa 14.12.22 ore 18:30 Libreria bruno Dorsoduro, 2729 Venezia
In collaborazione con Sale Docks, Art for UBI (manifesto): A cura di: Marco Baravalle, Emanuele Braga, Gabriella Riccio (Institute of Radical Imagination) – Intervengono: Federica Arcoraci, Chiara Buratti, Ilenia Caleo, Roberta Da Soller e IRI Institute of Radical Imagination
Art for UBI (manifesto): il libro è il primo volume della Collana IRI il cui scopo è quello di produrre conoscenza in comune e attorno al commoning situato all’intersezione tra arte, pedagogia e attivismo per una transizione verso il post capitalismo.
Art for UBI è un manifesto: il mondo dell’arte si posiziona a favore del reddito di cittadinanza universale e incondizionato, ponendo in primo piano le sue condizioni di vantaggio in termini economici, sociali ed ecologici. Il manifesto nasce come scrittura collettiva all’interno della School of Mutations, un progetto dell’Institute of Radical Imagination, una piattaforma internazionale di artisti, ricercatori, attivisti e curatori impegnati nella sperimentazione di pratiche artistiche post-capitaliste. Oltre all’introduzione delle curatrici, il volume raccoglie i contributi di diverse artiste, teoriche e attiviste che affrontano UBI nel panorama della precarietà generalizzata del lavoro artistico, della domanda di reddito nelle lotte transfemministe e decoloniali, delle pratiche mutualistiche nel scena artistica indipendente, il rapporto tra finanza, fabulazione e cripto filosofia.
Contributi: Emanuele Braga, Kuba Szreder, Ilenia Caleo, Maddalena Fragnito and Raising Care Assembly, Gabriela Cabaña and Julio Linares, Erik Bordeleau.
A cura di: Marco Baravalle, Emanuele Braga, Gabriella Riccio (Institute of Radical Imagination)
Per acquistare la pubblicazione il link è bruno, Venezia
Art for UBI (manifesto): the book is the first volume of the IRI Series whose aim is to produce knowledge in common and around commoning situated at the intersection between art, pedagogy and activism for a transition towards post capitalism.
Art for UBI is a manifesto: the world of art positions itself in favor of universal and unconditional basic income, placing in the foreground its advantageous conditions in economic, social and ecological terms. The manifesto was born as collective writing within the School of Mutations, a project of the Institute of Radical Imagination, an international platform of artists, researchers, activists and curators engaged in the experimentation of post-capitalist artistic practices. In addition to the introduction by the curators, the volume contains the contributions of diverse artists, theorists and activists addressing UBI in the panorama of the generalized precariousness of artistic work, the demand for income in trans-feminist and decolonial struggles, mutualism practices in the independent art scene, the relationship between finance, fabulation and crypto philosophy.
Contributors: Emanuele Braga, Kuba Szreder, Ilenia Caleo, Maddalena Fragnito and Raising Care Assembly, Gabriela Cabaña and Julio Linares, Erik Bordeleau.
Edited by: Marco Baravalle, Emanuele Braga, Gabriella Riccio (Institute of Radical Imagination)
Art for UBI (manifesto) will be launched in Milan during the panel L’Arte dei Commons/The Art of the Commons together with the Italian premiere of the performance Incondizionatamente. Vita Reddito Amore as the result of the enquiry on the Art for UBI (manifesto) to inhabitants of the city of Milan by Emanuele Braga, Gabriella Riccio / Institute of Radical Imagination & Anna Rispoli in the framework of FAROUT/Base and Le Alleanze dei Corpi Festivals on September 30th in the basket court of Piazza Selinunte in the neighborhood of San Siro.
To purchase the publication please contact bruno, Venice
Idea Drammaturgia Regia: Emanuele Braga, Gabriella Riccio (Institute of Radical Imagination) & Anna Rispoli
Testo: Emanuele Braga, Gabriella Riccio (Institute of Radical Imagination) & Anna Rispoli + 11 abitanti di Milano
Interviste: Laila Sit Aboha, Iman Salem
Con la partecipazione di: Samuel Adoma, Fabrizio Bassani, Nadia Belatik, Al Cane, Ivan Carozzi, Yuri Simone D’Ostuni, Osasele Eromosele/iman Salem, Simona Franzé, Federico Fumagalli, Roberto Mastroianni/Lorenzo Fidanzi, Vincenzo Pizzolante/Dario Leone, Gabriella Riccio e Anna Rispoli.
Una produzione Institute of Radical Imagination
Partners: Base Milano, Alleanze dei Corpi, Landscape Choreography
Campo di Basket, Piazza Selinunte Milano, Settembre 2022
Come sarebbe il mondo se tutt* avessero sufficiente denaro per condurre una vita degna? Se tutt* ricevessero un reddito di base universale e incondizionato?
Partendo dall’Art for UBI (manifesto), l’IRI propone discussioni sul ruolo che l’arte e il mondo della produzione culturale dovrebbero avere nella lotta per la redistribuzione finanziaria basata sul mutualismo, sulle modalità di autogestione delle risorse, sull’accesso ai mezzi di produzione e altre pratiche solidali.
Con la performance INCONDIZIONATAMENTE. Vita Reddito Amore, persone di diversa estrazione e condizione lavorativa si riuniscono in un’assemblea coreografata per discutere dell’impatto che un reddito universale e incondizionato avrebbe sulle loro vite. Il RBUI è una “semplice” misura finanziaria o uno strumento fondamentale per un’alternativa radicale alla realtà neoliberista in cui viviamo? Come sarebbe se guadagno e ore di lavoro non fossero legati? Se si potesse dire no al ricatto della precarietà? Porre fine alle asimmetrie di razza e genere così comuni nel mercato del lavoro di oggi? Disintossicare il pianeta da lavori ecologicamente pericolosi? Prendersi cura e aiutarsi a vicenda di fronte all’infinito invito a essere individui competitivi? Queste sono alcune delle domande che ispirano il dialogo pubblico.
In questa occasione, un team dell’IRI ha lavorato per adattare la proposta di Anna Rispoli e produrre una performance che riprende queste linee attraverso una serie di interviste ad un gruppo di persone che vivono e lavorano a Milano e che sono interpreti di questa rappresentazione.
What would the world be like if everyone had enough money to lead a worthy life? What if everyone got a universal and unconditional basic income?
Starting from the Art for UBI (manifesto), IRI proposes discussions on the role that art and the world of cultural production should have in the struggle for financial redistribution based on mutualism, on the methods of self-management of resources, on access to the means of production. and other solidarity practices.
With performance UNCONDITIONALLY. Life Income Love, people of different backgrounds and working conditions gather in a choreographed assembly to discuss the impact that a universal and unconditional income would have on their lives. Is the RBUI a “simple” financial measure or a fundamental tool for a radical alternative to the neoliberal reality in which we live? What would it be like if income and working hours weren’t linked? If you could say no to the blackmail of precariousness? End the race and gender asymmetries so common in today’s labor market? Detoxify the planet from ecologically dangerous jobs? Caring and helping each other in the face of the endless invitation to be competitive individuals? These are some of the questions that inspire public dialogue.
On this occasion, an IRI team worked to adapt Anna Rispoli’s proposal and produce a performance that takes up these lines through a series of interviews with a group of people who live and work in Milan and who are interpreters of this representation.
Marco Baravalle talks to artists, curators and activists. From the phantom archive of activist art to the museo situado, from Afrofutirism to decolonisation of neoliberal museums, these constellations of radical art may help us trace possible routes through the drift of the present.
Marco Baravalle talks to artists, curators and activists. From the phantom archive of activist art to the museo situado, from Afrofutirism to decolonisation of neoliberal museums, these constellations of radical art may help us trace possible routes through the drift of the present.
EPISODE #4 with MTL+ Collective
How to act in the face of a scenario in which the major US art institutions function as artwashers of a colonial, patriarchal and extractivist capitalism? MTL+ tells of concrete actions such as Decolonize this Place and Strike MOMA, of the need to escape institutional co-optation and the urgency of creating new infrastructures of solidarity. The museum is an object to be de-fetishised, not a temple of memory (whose memory?), just another battlefield.
Profile
Decolonize This Place (DTP) is an action-oriented, decolonial formation and a call to action. Facilitated by MTL+ Collective (Nitasha Dhillon, Amin Husain, Marz Saffore, Amy Weng), DTP resists and unsettles settler colonial structures in our cities as it builds movement infrastructure of care and solidarity on the path of collective freedom and liberation. Organizing, research, aesthetics, and action are rooted in interconnected struggles that are anti-colonial, anti-imperial, anti-patriarchal, and anti-capitalist. The university, museum, and city are sites of struggles and organizing. They are sites of refusal, sabotage, infrastructure, sanctuary, play, exit. Let them be sites of training in the practice of freedom. When we breathe we breathe together.
Marco Baravalle talks to artists, curators and activists. From the phantom archive of activist art to the museo situado, from Afrofutirism to decolonisation of neoliberal museums, these constellations of radical art may help us trace possible routes through the drift of the present.
EPISODE #3 withMANUEL BORJA VILLEL
Borja Villel addresses his critical practice as a museum director. How to transform from within the neoliberal structure and functions of an art institutions? How to work with concepts such as “Museo situado”? How to create alliances with the subalterns instead of the wealthy? How to break the cause-effect relationship between museums and gentrification? How to dialogue with examples of radical art from the Global South avoiding cultural extractivism? How to work on an epistemological revolution of collections?
Profile
Manuel Borja-Villel is Director of the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (MNCARS) in Madrid and is one of the institutional agents of Spanish culture. Borja-Villel has directed three of the major art institutions in Spain: Fundació Antoni Tàpies in Barcelona (1990–1998); Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA, 1998–2008); and Museo Reina Sofía (2008–present). He has curated solo exhibitions of some of the most important artists of the last century: Marcel Broodthaers, Lygia Clark, James Coleman, Óyvind Fahlström, Luis Gordillo, Hans Haacke, Lygia Pape, Antoni Muntadas, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Nancy Spero, Antoni Tàpies, Krzysztof Wodiczko, amongst others. His most recent book is titled Campos magnéticos: Escritos de arte y política (Arcadia, 2020).
Marco Baravalle talks to artists, curators and activists. From the phantom archive of activist art to the museo situado, from Afrofutirism to decolonisation of neoliberal museums, these constellations of radical art may help us trace possible routes through the drift of the present.
EPISODE #2 withCOCO FUSCO
Coco Fusco discusses her encounter with Afrofuturism in the 1980s through the Black Audio Film Collective and how this encounter has influenced her performance work. In the second part, Fusco discusses the recent mobilisations for freedom of expression in Cuba, where artists are in the forefront.
Profile
Coco Fusco is an interdisciplinary artist and writer. She is a recipient of numerous awards, including a Guggenheim fellowship, an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award, Latinx Art Award, a Fulbright fellowship and a Herb Alpert Award in the Arts. Fusco’s performances and videos have been presented in the 56th Venice Biennale, Frieze Special Projects, Basel Unlimited, three Whitney Biennials (2022, 2008 and 1993), and several other international exhibitions. Her works are in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, The Walker Art Center, the Centre Pompidou, the Imperial War Museum, and the Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona. She is the author of Dangerous Moves: Performance and Politics in Cuba (2015). She is represented by Alexander Gray Associates in New York. She is a Professor of Art at Cooper Union. Fusco is currently preparing new works for the next Sharjah Biennial and a solo retrospective that will open in 2023.
Marco Baravalle talks to artists, curators and activists. From the phantom archive of activist art to the museo situado, from Afrofutirism to decolonisation of neoliberal museums, these constellations of radical art may help us trace possible routes through the drift of the present.
EPISODE #1 withGREGORY SHOLETTE
The conversation builds on Sholette’s forthcoming book The Art Of Activism, The Activism of Art (Lund Humphries) in which the author attempts an account of what he calls the phantom archive of activist art, namely a series of counter-histories of radical art from the 1960s to the present. Situationists in France and Argentinean pioneers of activist art are discussed, as well as the challenges posed to art and politics by the current condition that Sholette names unreality.
Profile
Dr. Gregory Sholette is a New York-based artist, writer, activist and curator Imaginary Archive: a peripatetic collection of documents speculating on a past whose future never arrived. His art and research theorize and document issues of collective cultural labor, activist art, and decolonial historical representation after 1968. Sholette is also co-founder of the collectives, Political Art Documentation/Distribution (1980-1988); REPOhistory (1989-2000); and Gulf Labor Coalition (2010 ongoing), as well as the author of Delirium and Resistance: Activist Art and the Crisis of Capitalism (2017); Dark Matter: Art and Politics in the Age of Enterprise Culture (2011); Art As Social Action (with C. Bass: 2018), and the forthcoming book, The Art of Activism and the Activism of Art from Lund Humphries (2021). Along with his colleague Chloë Bass, Sholette co-directs Social Practice CUNY (SPCUNY), a new, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation-funded art and social justice initiative at the Graduate Center, City University of New York.
This conversation takes place at KINLAB in Milan ( Piazzale Segesta, 3) and online at The School of Mutation within the framework of the iteration Raising Care on APRIL 6th 2022 at 18:00 CET. Join us on Zoom or follow us on live streaming on IRI YouTube Channel
Elke Krasny, PhD, Professor for Art and Education and Head of the Department of Education in the Arts at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. Krasny’s scholarship, academic writings, curatorial work, and international lectures address questions of care at the present historical conjuncture with a focus on emancipatory and transformative practices in art, curating, architecture and urbanism. The 2019 exhibition and edited volume Critical Care. Architecture and Urbanism for a Broken Planet, curated and edited together with Angelika Fitz, was published by MIT Press and introduces a care perspective in architecture addressing the anthropocenic conditions of the global present. Her 2020 essay ‘In-Sorge-Bleiben. Care-Feminismus für einen infizierten Planeten‘ develops a care-ethical perspective for pandemic times and was published by transcript in Michael Volkmer’s and Karin Werner’s volume Die Corona-Gesellschaft.
Maddalena Fragnito is an artist and activist exploring the intersections between transfeminisms and technologies by focusing on practices of “commoning care”. At the moment, she is a Doctoral Student at Coventry University’s Centre for Postdigital Cultures. She cofounded MACAO (2012), an autonomous cultural centre in Milan, and SopraSotto (2013), a self-managed kindergarten by parents. She is co-author of “Rebelling with Care” (2019), “Pirate Care Syllabus” (2020) and “Ecologies of Care. Transfeminist perspectives” (2021). During the pandemic, she joined the Institute of Radical Imagination by developing the Rasing Care iteration.
Zoe Romano is a craftivist, digital strategist and lecturer focused on social innovation, women in tech, technology, open design. She graduated in Philosophy at the University of Milan, worked for several years in digital communication and tech, developed her social skills as media-hacktivist on precarity, material and immaterial labor in the creative industries. She worked for Arduino as digital strategist from 2013 to 2017 and then co-founded WeMake Makerspace in 2014. She’s now a consultant on R&D, teaches courses in various organisations and collaborates on eu-funded digital social innovation projects. She takes part on research/activism activities and develops projects around e-textiles and digital fabrication in different contexts.
Emanuele Braga co-founder of Macao center, an artist, researcher and activist. In addition to his work at Macao, he co-founded the dance and theatre company Balletto Civile (2003), the contemporary art project Rhaze (2011), as well as Landscape Choreography (2012), an art platform questioning the role of the body under capitalism. His research focuses on models of cultural production, processes of social transformation, political economy, labor rights and the institution of the commons.
Art for UBI Terraforming, courtesy of Emanuele Braga
Location / Lugar Museo Reina Sofia, Edificio Sabatini Jardin Date / Fecha: September 17 19:00
with Andy Abbot, Emanuele Braga, Marco Baravalle, Érik Bordeleau, Ilenia Caleo, Anna Cerdà Callís, Kuba Szreder.
Art for UBI Terraforming, courtesy of Emanuele Braga
Third public assembly organized by the ART for UBI (Manifesto) an initiative born within the framework of the activities of The School of Mutation by the Institute of Radical Imagination. The Pandemic of Covid19 has been correctly defined as a syndemic. The term clearly shows how pre-existing conditions of social, race, gender and environmental asymmetries, influenced the impact of Covid19, exposing to serious consequences poor and precarious workers, women and lgbtqia+ subjectivities, racialized and indigenous people and those living in areas more subjected to pollution and extractivism. In Europe (and elsewhere) thousands of billions of Euros are allocated to respond to the crisis. Unfortunately, at least from European perspective, it looks like the vast majority of these funds will go to the supply side, in the vain hope that financing private companies will have an overall positive impact on society. The result will be a further polarization of global richness, and the progressive impoverishment of millions of people. Contrary to this option, It is time to support the implementation of forms of universal, basic and unconditional income. We believe UBI is a struggle of primary importance in order to finally achieve a fair remuneration for the value freely extracted from our lives on a daily basis (for example through platform capitalism and through the still invisible care work performed mainly by women). We believe UBI will have a radical impact on social life, not only in terms of reducing poverty and precarity, but also freeing time and energies to build worlds where care, mutual aid and the commons become priorities.
Using the ART FOR UBI [Art for Universal Basic Income] Manifesto as its starting point, the IRI has been proposing discussions on the role that art and the world of cultural production should play in the fight for financial redistribution based on mutualism, methods of self-management of resources, access to the means of production and other solidarity practices. This activity begins in the Museum’s Sabatini Garden, with a “performative round table” based on the proposal of the artist Anna Rispoli, who regularly works on topics such as remuneration, income and the UBI (universal basic income), mixing performance, social research and conducting real experiments on how to share assets and financial resources.
PROFILES
Andy Abbot is an artist, musician and cultural activator. He has exhibited and performed as a solo artist and in various collaborations, including the Black Dogs art collective. He participates in different projects as a musician, both solo and in groups, and composes music for film, performance and installations. In 2012 he obtained his PhD from the University of Leeds with his thesis “Art, self-organized cultural activity and the production of post-capitalist subjectivity”.
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Marco Baravalle is a member of S.a.L.E. Docks, a collective and an independent space for visual arts, activism, and experimental theater located in what had been an abandoned salt-storage facility in Dorsoduro, Venice. Founded in 2007, its programming includes activist-group meetings, formal exhibitions, screenings, and actions. In addition to managing the diverse programming at S.a.L.E. Docks, Baravalle is currently a research fellow at INCOMMON (IUAV University of Venice). His fields of research include the relationship between art, theatre and activism, creative labor, gentrification, and the positioning of art within neoliberal economics.
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Emanuele Braga co-founder of Macao center, an artist, researcher and activist. In addition to his work at Macao, he co-founded the dance and theatre company Balletto Civile (2003), the contemporary art project Rhaze (2011), as well as Landscape Choreography (2012), an art platform questioning the role of the body under capitalism. His research focuses on models of cultural production, processes of social transformation, political economy, labor rights and the institution of the commons.
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Anna Cerdà Callís is a manager and cultural activist. She has been working in the MACBA Department of Exhibitions since 2005, a task that she combines with the field of music. She co-directed the popArb festival (2005-2015) and since 2017 she is involved in the design and organization of Acció Cultura Viva. She is also part of the governing council of La Murga, and participates in MIM (Women of the Music Industry) and the board of the Xàfec association of small festivals.
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Ilenia Caleo is performer and researcher in queer studies and feminist epistemologies at the IUAV University of Venice. She is among the co-founders of Campo Innocente, a network founded after the pandemic outbreak to defend art workers rights and to promote UBI.
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Érik Bordeleau is a researcher at the SenseLab of the Université Concordia de Montreal and the Center for Arts, Business and Culture of the Stockholm School of Economics, which he combines with his activity as a fugitive financial designer at the Economic Space Agency (ECSA). His work is articulated at the intersection of political philosophy, media and financial theory, contemporary art, and film studies. He is currently working on creating a Master’s program in Cryptoeconomics at the Global Center for Advanced Studies (GCAS) with campuses in Dublin and New York.
Location / Lugar:Museo Reina Sofia, Jardin Edificio SabatiniDate / Fecha:September 17, 18:00 Language / Idioma: Español Access / Entradas: Free until full capacity, free tickets available from Reina Sofia Museum website (here) from September 15
Text / Texto Marco Baravalle, Elena Blesa, Emanuele Braga, Gabriella Riccio, Anna Rispoli and 14 citizensof Madrid and Barcelona
Direction / Dirección: Gabriella Riccio
Research & Interviews / Investigación y Entrevistas: Gabriella Riccio with the collaboration of Ana Campillos, Maite Gandulfo, Maria Mallol, Celina Poloni
With the support of / Apoyan Hablarenarte / Planta Alta
With the participation of / Con la participación de: Miguel Ángel Álvarez Tornero, Andrei Alexandru Mazga, Sara Babiker Moreno, Elena Blesa Cabéz, Amalia Caballero, José Antonio Campillos Martín-Consuegra, Constanza Cisneros, Ana Gutiérrez Borreguero, Sebastián Laina, Mar Núñez, Lucía Núñez Ortega, Gabriella Riccio, Juan Manuel Rodriguez, Hella Spinelli
A production by / Una producción de: Institute of Radical Imagination, FfAI Foundation for the Arts Activities / Museo Reina Sofia
Sabatini Gardens, Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid, September 21, 2021
Con el Manifiesto ART FOR UBI [Arte por la Renta Básica Universal] como punto de partida, el IRI viene proponiendo discusiones sobre el papel que el arte y el mundo de la producción cultural deben tener en la lucha por una redistribución financiera basada en el mutualismo, los métodos de autogestión de recursos, el acceso a los medios de producción y otras prácticas solidarias. Esta actividad comienza en el Jardín de Sabatini del Museo, con “Una renta muchos mundos” mesa redonda performativa basada en la propuesta de la artista Anna Rispoli, que trabaja regularmente temas como la remuneración, los ingresos y la RBU (renta básica universal), mezclando performance, investigación social y realizando experimentos reales sobre cómo compartir bienes y recursos financieros.
En la performance Una Renta, Muchos Mundos (One Income, Many worlds) un grupo diversificado de personas interpretará una asamblea ficticia en forma de discurso público coral donde se analiza el hipotético impacto en sus vidas de una renta universal, básica e incondicional en el contexto de la actual crisis pandémica. ¿Es la RBU una medida financiera “simple” o una herramienta fundamental para una alternativa radical a la realidad neoliberal que vivimos? ¿Qué pasa con ganar dinero no relacionado con el trabajo y las horas de trabajo? ¿Y la posibilidad de decir no al chantaje de la precariedad? ¿Qué hay de poner fin a las asimetrías de raza y género tan comunes en el mercado laboral actual? ¿Qué hay de desintoxicar el planeta de trabajos ecológicamente peligrosos? ¿Qué pasa con el cuidado y la ayuda mutua frente a la interminable invitación a ser individuos competitivos? Estas son algunas de las preguntas que inspiran el diálogo público La actuación será seguida por el panel Art For Ubi # 3 en el Museo Reina Sofía.
En esta ocasión, un equipo del IRI ha trabajado para adaptar la propuesta de Rispoli y realizar una dramaturgia que retome estas líneas a partir del diálogo con un grupo de personas que viven y trabajan en España, y que han participado en una serie de entrevistas que han dado lugar a la dramaturgia de esta performance. Esta fase de investigación, se enmarca dentro del Programa Abierto de DESVÍO una herramienta de diálogo y trabajo colectivo impulsada por hablarenarte / Planta Alta que se propone accionar y afectar nuestro contexto inmediato.
Using the ART FOR UBI [Art for Universal Basic Income] Manifesto as its starting point, IRI has been proposing discussions on the role that art and the world of cultural production should play in the fight for financial redistribution based on mutualism, methods of self-management of resources, access to the means of production and other solidarity practices. This activity begins in the Sabatini Garden of the Museum, with “One income many worlds” performative round table based on the proposal of the artist Anna Rispoli, who regularly works on topics such as remuneration, income and the UBI (universal basic income), mixing performance, social research and conducting real experiments on how to share assets and financial resources.
In the performance Una Renta, Muchos Mundos (One Income, Many worlds) a diversified group of people will perform a fictional assembly in the form of a public coral speech, where the hypothetical impact on their lives of a universal, basic and unconditional income is analyzed on the background of the current pandemic crisis. Is UBI a “simple” financial measure, or is it an essential tool for a radical alternative to the neoliberal reality we are experiencing? What about earning money unrelated to jobs and working hours? What about the possibility to say no to the blackmail of precarity? What about putting and end to race and gender asymmetries so common in today’s labor market? What about detoxing the planet from ecologically dangerous jobs? What about care and mutual aid in front of the endless invitation to be competitive individuals? These are some or the questions inspiring the public dialogue.The performance will be followed by the panel Art For Ubi #3 at the Museum Reina Sofia.
On this occasion, an IRI team has worked to adapt Rispoli’s proposal and carry out a dramaturgy that takes up these lines from dialogue with a group of people who live and work in Spain, and who have participated in a series of interviews that have given rise to the dramaturgy of this performance. This research phase is part of the DESVÍO Open Program, a tool for dialogue and collective work promoted by hablarenarte / Planta Alta that aims to actuate and affect our immediate context.
UNA RENTA MUCHOS MUNDOS, Sabatini Gardens, Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid, September 21, 2021
School of Mutation within the framework of the iteration DAO Decentralised Autonomous Organizations for the Commons. The online meeting is on Wednesday, June 9th Round Table 15:00 CEST, Lecture 17:00. The lecture and the round table will be recorded and streamed in the museum, the zoom room will be open to the speakers.
Co-organized by
Institute of Radical Imagination / The School of Mutation
Ruth Catlow (Furtherfield), Emanuele Braga, Cem Dagdelen (CurveLabs / The Sphere), Massimiliano Mollona (Goldsmith University/IRI) in discussion with Erik Bordeleau, Massimo De Angelis and Jerszy Seymour
We gather around this table projects and researchers that experimented in the last decade on how to use blockchain and crypto-economic for the process of commoning. The challenge here is how to use technology, not for a blind techno-optimism, replicating the capitalistic financialization of the social, competition and individualism, but on the opposite, how new technologies could infrastructure the planet to come. In this round table, we question how NFT, decision-making process, fundraising and common management of resources can be the technological answers to political questions.
17.00 – Lecture
We Too Have a Code: Notes Around Digital Commons and the question of Programmability
Erik Bordeleau
We need to cultivate a new feel of the infrastructure that is up to the challenge of political organizing in the digital age. How do we conceive of the becoming machinic of the social, and the becoming social of the abstract machines we are part of? And how does that concern the formation of cosmo-financial or crypto-scalable commons to come? Taking Deleuze & Guattari’s notion of surplus value of code as a starting point, this presentation will explore the question of organization as digital incorporation in an age of monetary experimentation, following the development distributed ledger technologies (DLT) and the emergent field of blockchain-based cryptoeconomics.
Having worked for more than two decades at the intersection of art, de-colonial politics and ecological justice, art historian T. J. Demos has consistently theorized and written about art as an experimental practice of “world making”, based on speculative knowledge creation and posed against racial and colonial capitalism, emerging in the dialogical encounter between artists and various communities of action and social movements. Demos’ vision of “ecology as intersectionality” locates revolutionary agency at the crossroad, and, as an articulation, of different, socio-political, and economic fields, and out of the labour of connection, mediation, and recuperation of shifting and diverse “uncommon grounds”. In conversation with Mao Mollona, Demos will discuss contemporary practices of de-colonial and anti-capitalist artistic engagement, particularly resurgent forms of black and indigenous activism. Besides, in line with recent IRI’s iterations, he will also discuss his involvement with the Zapatista political experiment in Chiapas, considered as a form of anti-colonial and anti-capitalist socio-political experiment, a revolutionary indigenous aesthetics and an experiential practice of land-based autonomy and self-determination.
After joining the Art for UBI (manifesto) Platformin 2020, Anna Redi presented the first performance based on the Art for UBI (manifesto) for the opening of the Wiener Festwochen 2021 in collaboration with Institute of Radical Imagination. Since then the Institute of Radical Imagination & Anna Redi have realised all the following performaces based ion the Art for UBI (manifesto) in Madrid, Milan, Venice.
In collaboration with Emanuele Braga, Maddalena Fragnito, Britt Hatzius, Irena Radmanovic, Common Income, ART for UBI, Institute of Radical Imagination, Volksbegehren Grundeinkommen: Runder Tisch Grundeinkommen Österreich, Generation Grundeinkommen, Verein Das Grundeinkommen, Attac Österreich, Runder Tisch Grundeinkommen Salzburg, Netzwerk Grundeinkommen Research,
Interviews Magdalena Fischer
Text Anna Rispoli, Katja Dreyer and 15 citizens of Vienna Production management Marine Thévenet
How would we organise our lives if we didn’t have to earn a living? Indeed, what would we do if our livelihood was secured? In 2021, the Wiener Festwochen will once again open with a discursive debate; artist and activist Anna Rispoli is elaborating a choral speech on unconditional basic income. It is an appeal to reflect on distributive justice, precarity and sustainability. Based on interviews with Viennese citizens and against the backdrop of a work environment thrown even more out of sync by a virus, Income. The unconditional speech sees our present-day utopia as tomorrow’s realities. How would unconditional basic income redesign our lives, our towns and cities, society, and the world as a whole? Rispoli’s interventionist art practices aim to change the public space and are founded on the principle of affective mutual contamination. When words uttered by others pass through our own mouths, a form of non-monetary exchange is able to occur. An economy like we have never seen before!
Wie würden wir unser Leben organisieren, wenn wir nicht von Erwerbstätigkeit abhängig wären? Wenn für unsere Lebenserhaltung gesorgt wäre – was würden wir tun? 2021 eröffnen die Wiener Festwochen erneut mit einer diskursiven Debatte; die Künstlerin und Aktivistin Anna Rispoli gestaltet eine chorische Rede zum bedingungslosen Grundeinkommen. Ein Appell, über Verteilungsgerechtigkeit, Prekarität und Nachhaltigkeit nachzudenken. Basierend auf Interviews mit Wiener*innen und vor dem Hintergrund einer durch ein Virus erst recht aus dem Lot geratenen Arbeitswelt begreift das leidenschaftliche Plädoyer die Utopien von heute als die Realitäten von morgen. Wie würde ein bedingungsloses Grundeinkommen das Leben neu gestalten, die Stadt, die Gesellschaft, die ganze Welt? Rispolis interventionistische Kunstpraktiken zielen auf Veränderung des öffentlichen Raums und fußen auf dem Prinzip der gegenseitigen affektiven Ansteckung. Wenn die Worte anderer durch den eigenen Mund wandern, kann eine Form von nichtmonetärem Austausch geschehen. Eine Ökonomie wie noch nie!
After a devastating bombing or a political victory, there’s no time for art. That is to say no time for contemplative reflection, for philosophy. It is time for action; solidarity or celebration, and anything else seems inappropriate.
Doa Aly, “No Time for Art?”
We are pleased to invite you to the talk with curators Olga Kopenkina, Antonina Stebur and artist Aliaxey Talstou, who will focus on various forms of artists’ organization, activist practices and strategies that have emerged during the mass civil uprising in Belarus.
Since August 10th, 2020, the day after the Presidential elections in Belarus, marked with the state’s fraud to ensure Alexander Lukashenko’s pre-determined victory, until now, Belarusians have conducted a peaceful but fierce political-aesthetic mobilization that was met with the unprecedented use of violence by the authoritarian state. The confrontation between people and the state resembled almost the Manichean dualism of good and evil: a good, peaceful and tolerant nation, most famously symbolized by the march of women-in-white waving flowers, is impeded by an evil force embodied by the mustached male dictator and heavily armed police force – an image that rather obscured the real social and political forces that stand behind the protest than illuminated them.
What became clear, though, is that Belarus is experiencing the cultural renaissance amidst civic unfreedom. The proliferation of street activism, protest-oriented art and political imagery, as unforeseen as it was, has been one of the most astonishing outcomes of the political unrest there. Across the country, professional actors, musicians, painters, book illustrators, commercial graphics and Instagram artists weaponized their skills to make works that instantly became icons of the protest. Their work has often merged with creativity and activism of the regular citizens, who employed aesthetics as a tactics in their everyday protests, seeking to cross-fertilize creative and emancipatory energies, between experiences of suffering and resistance.
The conflation of art and political activism, of course, is not a new thing. From the Paris Commune to Russian Revolution to Occupy Wall Street, artists and intellectuals never simply cater to the needs of rebellious masses – they forge a new creative linkage between themselves and “militants,” and, as philosopher Alain Badiou argues, find new spaces where “politics is possible.” After it became clear that factories in Belarus failed to establish themselves as the central force of the uprising, in classical Marxist sense, artists began to utilize cultural institutions, repurposing them – in a partisan way – into platforms of radical positioning. Many artists and cultural workers abandoned “normality” of exhibiting their works in official art galleries and cultural centers and joined the struggle by staging actions of solidarity on the streets, similar to actors and musicians, who refused to perform on stages of the state-run theaters and concert halls, and instead, played in the outside public spaces.
Discussions among Belarusian art practitioners are centered around the question: What should artists do during a revolution – echoing the debate artists around the world have conducted for decades. In one such a debate, Egyptian artist Doa Aly asks: In time of a revolution, is there time for art? Do artists have to represent themselves – individually, or collectively – within a common struggle?Or, do they become a sort of “martyrs” who “kill” their own practice to blend with revolutionary masses? Does the expression “time for action” really imply “no time for contemplative reflection”, or art?While merging the category of ‘artist’ with that of ‘protestor,’ do artists distinguish their role from any other professional, or a citizen, who employs tactics of “visual activist” in their struggles? Can the new forms of political organizing that emerge during the protest, with its focus on depersonalization and decentralization, protect cultural producers from the state violence and ensure their survival in the future? Other questions are at stake: Can artists disassociate their practice from the idea of fine art market and its neoliberal institutions (private galleries, privately-funded art spaces, cultural hubs, etc.), in a context, where such institutions, as opposed to state-run art centers, foster new communities, while facing the consequence of becoming a target of government’s repressions? When joining the public outcry to release political prisoners, among which are a former banker and cultural entrepreneurs, will artists in Belarus re-join neoliberal capitalism? Or, can they create a “third position,” from which they can negotiate autonomy and spaces of resistance within the capitalist hegemony? Isn’t it the future that calls us now?
Biographies:
Olga Kopenkina is an independent curator and art critic. She was an artistic director of the 6th Line gallery, the first privately-funded non-profit art center in Minsk, Belarus. Based in New York City since 1998, she has curated numerous exhibitions, including “Sound of Silence: Art during Dictatorship” at Project Space in Elizabeth Foundation for Arts, New York, 2012. Kopenkina is a contributor to publications such as Moscow Art Journal, Art Journal, Artforum,ArtMargins, Hyperallergic,Brooklyn Rail, and others. She teaches at New York University.
Antonina Stebur (born in 1984) — curator, researcher. Graduated from the European University of Humanities (2009) and School of Engaged Art “Chto Delat” (What is to be done?) in 2019. Antonina is a co-founder of the #damaudobnayavbytu project on gender discrimination in Belarus, a co-founder of the research group on activist art “Spaika”, member of the “AGITATSIA” research group. She is one of the authors of “The History of Belarusian Photography” book. She is a co-curator of the exhibition “Every Day. Art. Solidarity. Resistance,” which is currently on view in Mistetsky Arsenal, Kiev, Ukraine.
Aliaxey Talstouis an artist, curator and writer. He worked as a curator of gallery CECH in Minsk and a project leader at Status: Role of the Artists in Changing Society project. His two films, Observing solidarity and If the past will not end are currently on view at the exhibition “Every Day. Art. Solidarity. Resistance.” at Mistetsky Arsenal in Kiev, Ukraine.
What is the role of revolutionary art in times of distress? When Emory Douglas, former Minister of Culture of the Black Panther Party, accepted an invitation from the art collective EDELO and Rigo 23 to meet with autonomous Indigenous and Zapatista communities in Chiapas, Mexico, they addressed just this question. Zapantera Negra is the result of their encounter. It unites the bold aesthetics, revolutionary dreams, and dignified declarations of two leading movements that redefine emancipatory politics in the twentieth and twenty-first century.
The artists of the Black Panthers and the Zapatistas were born into a centuries-long struggle against racial capitalism and colonialism, state repression and international war and plunder. Not only did these two movements offer the world an enduring image of freedom and dignified rebellion, they did so with rebellious style, putting culture and aesthetics at the forefront of political life. A powerful elixir of hope and determination, Zapantera Negra provides a galvanizing presentation of interviews, militant artwork, and original documents from these two movements’ struggle for dignity and liberation.
EDELO (Where the United Nations Used to Be)
In the Fall of 2009, over one hundred displaced indigenous community members occupied the offices of the United Nations, located in San Cristóbal de las Casa, Chiapas, Mexico. The offices were taken over in the hope of gaining international attention from humanitarian organizations. After a few months of the occupation, the United Nations simply decided to find another building and moved.
A few months later, Mia Eva Rollow and Caleb Duarte, repurposed the building. It is a part of an investigation into how Art, in all its disciplines and contradictions, can take the supposed role of such institutional bodies to create understanding, empathy, and to serve as a tool for imagining alternatives to a harmful and violent system that we do not have to accept.
Inspired by the 1994 indigenous Zapatista uprising, where word and poetry are used to inspire a generation to imagine ‘other’ possible worlds, EDELO has retained the name of the UN office. From 2009 to 2014, EDELO, Where The United Nations Used to Be, was an artist run project in Chiapas, Mexico that created sculptural performances and community events through relational aesthetics, social practice, and social sculpture. EDELO centered its practice as an intercultural artist residency of diverse practices and an ever-changing experimental art laboratory and safe house. The work at its core focused on the lessons and use of art by the EZLN, the Zapatista autonomous indigenous movement in Chiapas, Mexico that has used art as a main tool to demand immediate and drastic social and economic change as a response to 500 years of invisibility, oppression, and neglect. The works consisted of artist residencies in Zapatista territory as well as at our art center and gallery. The emerging aesthetic was one of urgency in the face of the continuing clash between colonial and Mayan Mexican indigenous worldviews.
EDELO Migrante 2014 – Present
Once an experimental intercultural art space and residency of diverse practices inhabiting the building of the former UN, Edelo is now nomadic collectives creating works with diverse communities in the Americas.
Our work is of urgency. It is theater, sculpture, social practice, dance, painting organizing festivals in the spirit of true collaboration and shared authorship with the communities and art spaces that we work with. URGENT ART is a specific working methodology that collaborates with artist from different disciplines in the development of art. It encourages us to listen to what communities are expressing and turning that into a visible living experience. This augments the possibilities of converting experienced moments of tragedy into situations of healing.
The Zapatismo Movement breaks in many respects with traditional forms of politics. It does so by opening spaces at a creative distance from the State, and by constantly experimenting with innovative ideas and strategic perspectives. In this session, I will give an insight on the organic role that aesthetics and poetics have played in the politics of this revolutionary movement. In the first part I will provide a general overview on this theme. Some of my views are informed by the fieldwork that I conducted in Chiapas, México, between 2013 and 2020. Then, I will talk and show my experience of curating two exhibitions on Zapatista art in Nottingham, England (2015) and Havana, Cuba (2018).
Natalia Arcos (Santiago de Chile, 1979) has a Degree in Theory and Art History from the University of Chile and a Master in Contemporary Art from Paris IV-Sorbonne University, where she was the first latinamerican accepted. As an independent curator, she has done twenty exhibitions in Chile, Argentina, Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, Cuba, England and Greece. From 2008 to 2013, she was Programming Director of the Chilean Television Channel specialized in art, ARTV. From 2013 to 2020, she was member of GIAP (Grupo de Investigación en Arte y Política) based in Chiapas, México, where she also directed the center for artistic residencies. Natalia was collaborator on the books “Los latidos del corazón nunca callan: poemas y canciones zapatistas” and “Para una estética de la liberación decolonial”invited by Professor Enrique Dussel. Actually, she follows a Master Degree in Sociology of Art at CESMECA Institute of University UNICACH, México.
