Un workshop intensivo per creare un Super-Simbionte, un corpo collettivo in movimento. Sperimenteremo pratiche performative nello spazio pubblico creando sovrapposizioni tra visioni artistiche, scientifiche, politiche ed ecologiche, per arrivare a creare icone trans-disciplinari e alimentare nuovi immaginari per la giustizia ecologica, climatica e sociale. L’obbiettivo del workshop è comporre una coreografia per la Climate March del 10 settembre, uno spezzone mutante, visionario ed indefinibile, a cui tutti e tutte possono partecipare. Se il capitalismo verde si appropria di linguaggi ecologisti, masticandoli e svuotandoli di senso, siamo sempre pronti a mutare a trovare altre definizioni e linguaggi per essere inafferrabili e per mantenere la radicalità dei contenuti e delle istanze. Il Super-Simbionte è un organismo mutante ed iridescente che sa curare come la calendula sulle scottature, come le felci sui terreni inquinati dai metalli. Il simbi
An intensive workshop to create a Super-Symbiont, a collective body on the move. We will experiment performing practices in the public space; overlapping artistic, scientific, political and ecological visions we will create trans-disciplinary icons to feed new imaginaries for climate and social justice. The goal of the workshop is to compose a choreography for the Climate parade, a mutant and dreamy, elusive and indefinable block, in which everyone can participate. If Green Capitalism appropriates ecological definitions, chewing them and emptying them of meaning, we will constantly mutate, finding new language and practices to maintain the radicality of the contents and instances. The Super-Symbiont is a mutant and iridescent organism able to cure as marigolds on sunburn or ferns on metal-polluted soils. The symbionte is a new Best Practice, a Climate Action to create new radical imaginaries.
Looking at the data about greenhouse emissions by individual countries and their Carbon Majors, Paolo Cirio will propose conceptual and provocative art interventions to address the Venice Climate Debt paid directly by tourists. Starting from the introduction of ticketing and entry fees for tourists visiting Venice, the concept can be push forward with creating a new reality in which the entry fee can be proportional to the amount of greenhouse gases emissions of the tourist’s country origin. During the workshop Paolo Cirio will discuss emissions data, attribution science, carbon tax and credits, global climate agreements, and how these can be material for works of investigative and interventionist art. Furthermore, the workshop will be a chance to debate on policies on tourist tax, the controversial entrance of a city with tickets, and generally overturism globally. The workshop will culminate with a small intervention with proposing the entrance fee directly to the tourists in Venice.
In 2021, Paolo Cirio established an utopian international Climate Tribunal to accuse the major 100 fossil fuel firms with data, graphs, and documents that he transformed in artworks. Through creative forms of journalism and activism for public policies, Paolo Cirio investigates and intervenes into the social, economic, and cultural issues of contemporary society. His work researches the social fields impacted by technology, geopolitics, and economics in order to address human rights, inequality, justice, and democracy.
Osservando i dati sulle emissioni di gas serra dei singoli paesi e delle loro Carbon Majors, Paolo Cirio proporrà un intervento artistico, concettuale e provocatorio, in cui saranno i turisti a pagare il debito climatico. Partendo dalla notizia dell’introduzione del biglietto d’accesso per i turisti che visitano Venezia, il workshop crea una nuova realtà in cui la tariffa d’ingresso è proporzionale alla quantità di emissioni di gas serra del paese di provenienza del turista. Durante il workshop, Paolo Cirio parlerà dei dati sulle emissioni, della scienza dell’attribuzione, della carbon tax e dei crediti, degli accordi globali sul clima e di come questi possono diventare materiale per opere d’arte investigativa e interventista. Inoltre, il workshop sarà un’occasione per discutere delle politiche sulla tassa di soggiorno, del controverso tema del biglietto di ingesso e, in generale, dell’overturism a livello globale. Il workshop culminerà con un piccolo intervento che proporrà la tassa d’ingresso direttamente ai turisti di Venezia.
Nel 2021, Paolo Cirio ha istituito un utopico Tribunale internazionale del clima per accusare le 100 principali aziende produttrici di combustibili fossili con dati, grafici e documenti che si trasformano in opere d’arte. Attraverso forme creative di giornalismo e attivismo, Paolo Cirio indaga e interviene sulle questioni sociali, economiche e culturali della società contemporanea. Il suo lavoro indaga i campi sociali impattati dalla tecnologia, dalla geopolitica e dall’economia per affrontare i temi dei diritti umani, della disuguaglianza, della giustizia e della democrazia.
Everything‘s coming together while everything‘s falling apart: Venice Climate Camp A film by Oliver Ressler, 4K, 21 Min., 2020
This film celebrates the Venice Climate Camp of September 2019. Leaving the camp on the Lido at dawn, 200 activists forced their way into the Venice Film Festival enclosure, where they occupied the red carpet for nine hours. Making full use of the international media presence, the activists laid claim to the world attention focused on the day’s prize giving ceremony, turning it to the agenda of the climate movement. The Venice Film Festival as such was not the target of the blockade, but the activists took a sharply critical position on its neglect of an important opportunity to call publicly for climate justice.
The path is never the same A film by Oliver Ressler, 4K, 27 min., 2022
This film focuses on two complex, self-organizing systems: a forest and an occupation. The Hambacher Forest near Cologne (DE) has become the scene of Europe’s longest tree-top occupation. Since 2012, about 200 people have been living in this forest to prevent its clearing by the energy company RWE, which wants to extract lignite. The film reflects on the forest as a living space and on the need to confront the climate vandalism perpetrated in the name of “economic activity”. The people here organize non-hierarchically, standing – as one activist puts it in the film – “just like the trees, next to each other, on the same level”.
Everything‘s coming together while everything‘s falling apart: Venice Climate Camp Un film di Oliver Ressler, 4K, 21 Min., 2020
Questo film celebra il Venice Climate Camp del settembre 2019.
Lasciando il camp del Lido all’alba, 200 attivisti si sono fatti strada nel cuore della Mostra del Cinema di Venezia, dove hanno occupato il red carpet per nove ore. Sfruttando appieno la presenza dei media internazionali, gli attivisti hanno attirato su di sé l’attenzione mondiale per la cerimonia di premiazione del festival, dirottandola poi sull’agenda del movimento per il clima. La Mostra del Cinema di Venezia in quanto tale non era l’obiettivo del blocco, ma gli attivisti hanno assunto una posizione fortemente critica nei confronti della sua negazione di un’importante opportunità per chiedere pubblicamente giustizia climatica.
The path is never the same Un film di Oliver Ressler, 4K, 27 min., 2022
Questo film si concentra su due sistemi complessi e auto-organizzati: una foresta e un’occupazione. La foresta di Hambacher, vicino a Colonia (DE), è diventata la scena della più lunga occupazione di alberi d’Europa. Dal 2012, circa 200 persone vivono in questa foresta per impedirne il disboscamento da parte della società energetica RWE, che vuole estrarre lignite. Il film riflette sulla foresta come spazio vitale e sulla necessità di affrontare il vandalismo climatico perpetrato in nome dell'”attività economica”. Le persone qui si organizzano in modo non gerarchico, stando – come dice un attivista nel film – “proprio come gli alberi, uno accanto all’altro, sullo stesso piano”.
The Venice Climate Camp 2022 is the opportunity to bring together art and performing arts workers to initiate a discussion that will lead to the collective writing of a manifesto on the role of art in the struggle for climate justice and in the creation of new ecologies (which take into account the intersection of environmental and social facts). If the pandemic had already dramatically underlined the consequences of extractivist anthropization, the war in Ukraine (in addition to its immediate death toll) is a manifestation of what Andreas Malm has called ‘fossil fascism’, a mix of authoritarianism and fossil fuels that weakens the already insufficient measures to combat global warming. The scarcity of Russian gas has brought coal back into vogue and, in Italy, the construction of new re-gasifiers is on the agenda. The decision to organize the workshop at the Venice Climate Camp (promoted by Rise Up For Climate Justice and Fridays For Future) reflects our belief in the importance of freeing art from the capture of institutional circuits. We want to experience, as participants in social movements, aesthetic-political concatenations that interpret creativity as a radical character of the social and not as a commodity. The participants also share the conviction that the fight for climate justice is, necessarily, a fight against and beyond extractive capitalism, even in its green version (actually an attempt to turn the crisis into new accumulation).
The workshop will be a moment of discussion based on the practices of the invited guests, who convoke some central themes: the use of art as a method of inquiry and visualization in the climate crisis; the production of activist art forms that look at the performativity of direct action; art as a ground for radical imagination in designing new ecologies that reshape the relationship between human and non-human; art as an archive of movement practices and so on.
During Camp days, in addition to the main meeting moment, there will be a screening of films by Oliver Ressler, a workshop by Paolo Cirio and collective performative practice by Andreco.
First participants: Sale Docks, Institute of Radical Imagination, Caracol Olol Jackson, Rise Up For Climate Justice, Andreco, Annaclara Basilicò, Paolo Cirio, Terike Haapoja, Rosa Jijon, Francesco Martone, Teresa Masini, Oliver Ressler, Federica Timeto
The Venice Climate Camp 2022 is the opportunity to bring together art and performing arts workers to initiate a discussion that will lead to the collective writing of a manifesto on the role of art in the struggle for climate justice and in the creation of new ecologies (which take into account the intersection of environmental and social facts). If the pandemic had already dramatically underlined the consequences of extractivist anthropization, the war in Ukraine (in addition to its immediate death toll) is a manifestation of what Andreas Malm has called ‘fossil fascism’, a mix of authoritarianism and fossil fuels that weakens the already insufficient measures to combat global warming. The scarcity of Russian gas has brought coal back into vogue and, in Italy, the construction of new re-gasifiers is on the agenda. The decision to organize the workshop at the Venice Climate Camp (promoted by Rise Up For Climate Justice and Fridays For Future) reflects our belief in the importance of freeing art from the capture of institutional circuits. We want to experience, as participants in social movements, aesthetic-political concatenations that interpret creativity as a radical character of the social and not as a commodity. The participants also share the conviction that the fight for climate justice is, necessarily, a fight against and beyond extractive capitalism, even in its green version (actually an attempt to turn the crisis into new accumulation).
The workshop will be a moment of discussion based on the practices of the invited guests, who convoke some central themes: the use of art as a method of inquiry and visualization in the climate crisis; the production of activist art forms that look at the performativity of direct action; art as a ground for radical imagination in designing new ecologies that reshape the relationship between human and non-human; art as an archive of movement practices and so on.
During Camp days, in addition to the main meeting moment, there will be a screening of films by Oliver Ressler, a workshop by Paolo Cirio and collective performative practice by Andreco.
First participants: Sale Docks, Institute of Radical Imagination, Caracol Olol Jackson, Rise Up For Climate Justice, Andreco, Annaclara Basilicò, Paolo Cirio, Terike Haapoja, Rosa Jijon, Francesco Martone, Teresa Masini, Oliver Ressler, Federica Timeto
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.
THE DEMOCRACY PAVILION FOR EUROPE Ljubljana, March 9-11, 2022 ZRC SAZU
The Democracy Pavilion is a conference in Ljubljana organized by L’Internationale association and Zrc Sazu . Part of the #TheEuropeanPavilion program by European Cultural Foundation
Plans for this conference were first drawn up some months ago and we doubted whether to carry it on. We decided to use this platform to stand in solidarity with the Ukrainian people and condemn the war.
We will begin the sessions on March 9 with news from artists and cultural workers in Ukraine and the Ukrainian diaspora, to listen to what they want and need.
Our question: what does democracy mean in these current, bleak conditions? How do we both seek to defend the limited space to think and act that we still have and push for a new sense of living well and caring for the planet we share?
📺 online at European Cultural Foundation YT channel
Plans for the Democracy Pavilion were first drawn up some months ago. However, with the current Russian’s army invasion of Ukraine in our minds, L’Internationale association wants to use this platform to stand in solidarity with the Ukrainian people and condemn the military invasion that affects the lives of millions of civilians.
During the three days, we will discuss many issues of democracy, Europe, colonial legacies and contemporary empires. We will do this with Ukraine in our minds and our hearts. We share the urgency of stopping the war and we are taking the actions that are in our hands as civilians to demand an immediate end to the attacks. In addition to solidarity with those who directly suffer from Russian aggression, we also want to stand with those who resist from inside Russia and who risk their own lives and well-being to defend others. Together, we must try to use art to imagine a society that will prevent such conflicts in future, and then go on to build it. We hope our conference can contribute a little to all these urgencies.
While condemnation of the war is crucial, it is in itself only one necessary step. We also find it important to maintain the spaces for public debate and analysis of the causes of the war and the position of arts and culture when life and democratic values are under threat. In that light, we carry the pain of ongoing conflicts in Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan and elsewhere, as well as the histories of exploitation and erasure that still manifest themselves in the present. Our question remains what does democracy mean in these current, bleak conditions? How do we both seek to defend the limited space to think and act that we still have, and push for a new sense of living well and caring for the planet we share? We will begin the sessions on Wednesday with news from artists and cultural workers in Ukraine and the Ukrainian diaspora. We hope that some of them will be able to travel to Ljubljana so that we can listen to what they want and need. With this invasion, it is more clear than ever that real existing democracy is under existential threat. While it is true that European democracies are imperfect, they have allowed for governments that are to some degree responsive to open, independent elections decided by debate and argument. Today, even that version of democracy is something we need to defend, as well as to nurture the better, more equitable, more joyful versions we hope can yet emerge. Re-energizing our common futures is something to which everyone can contribute; but we believe that the arts can play its role as an initiator of imaginative epistemologies and a new ethic of living together within the limits of the planet. We want to use this opportunity to explore that belief.
Curated by Zdenka Badovinac and Charles Esche, the Democracy Pavilion for Europe aims to contribute to the rethinking and potential revival of communal forms of decision making as a vision and practice, with artists playing a key role in their conception of different and better worlds and an ethics of living together differently on this planet.
The aim of the Democracy Pavilion for Europe conference is to concentrate artistic, activist, and institutional energies. The objective is to find ways for the creative community to understand democracy and its limits, articulate its values, and propose forms through which to build a new commitment to shared control, public interest and the commons.
The Pavilion will start as an international conference in Ljubljana on 9–11 March, organized by the L’Internationale association in cooperation with ZRC SAZU. This is the first step in the Pavilion’s planned programme that will unfold through local workshops at L’Internationale confederation member locations and transform into an online pavilion at: http://www.internationaleonline.org.
The Democracy Pavilion for Europe is part of The European Pavilion – an initiative by the European Cultural Foundation that aims to support and promote artistic projects that imagine desirable and sustainable futures for Europe. The European Pavilion was initiated by the Amsterdam-based European Cultural Foundation and is developed in partnership with the Camargo Foundation, the Kultura Nova Foundation, and Fondazione CRT.
Over the course of 2021, seven arts and cultural organizations in various countries across Europe have joined this exciting new initiative: ARNA (Sweden), Brunnenpassage (Austria), INIVA (London), OGR Torino (Italy), State of Concept (Greece), Studio Rizoma (Italy) and L’Internationale (Ljubljana, Belgium, Netherlands, Spain and Poland).
More information at: theeuropeanpavilion.eu
Coordination of the Democracy Pavilion: Nika Ham, Maria Mallol
PROGRAM
9 March, Day 1
Should we stay or should we go? Leaving or reforming liberal democracy
This day will be devoted to looking at people/groups/organizations that are questioning their experience of existing democracy and investigating an “elsewhere”, thinking about cultural efforts in communities, in cultural education, in other forms of change. Is existing liberal democracy a viable way towards emancipation, inclusion, and social justice? What is the potential relation between culture, social justice, and democracy? What cultural forms might sensibly contribute to these aims?
10:00–10:30 Welcome. Oto Luthar, Zdenka Badovinac, Charles Esche. On zoom: André Wilkens (Director of the European Cultural Foundation) and Lore Gablier (ECF program manager) presenting the European Pavilion Program and the European Culture for Solidarity Fund.
10:30–12:00 Artists and Democracy – Panel 1 Emergency action. Contributions from / for Ukraine.
Open panel. Artists and cultural workers in the Ukraine and the Ukrainian diaspora. including Nikita Kadan (artist and curator) and others depending on the current situation.
COFFEE BREAK
12:15–12:45 In conversation with Iskra Geshoska (zoom) 12:45- 14:00 Artists and Democracy – Panel 2 Gabriella Riccio – IRI Nika Autor
Moderator: Charles Esche
14:00h- 15:00 Lunch 15:00–17:00 Artists and Democracy – Panel 3 Dmitry Vilensky (zoom) Antifascist Year Eszter Szakács Moderator: Charles Esche
17:00–17:30 In conversation with Hazal Halavut (zoom) COFFEE BREAK
18:15 EVENING LECTURE Peter Klepec
10 March, Day 2
Using Democracy
On the second day, actors are invited who are active in politics, theory and institutional organisation and who make use of culture and art in their work. They are working within and around the liberal democratic nation state and the public sector, often looking for the opportunities it affords for dissent and for taking democratic power. How to use or access the languages of art and culture to question democracy or hold the state to its stated ideals? What is the relationship between democracy and public cultural institutions and subsidies? What is needed to reshape existing liberal democracy away from its apparent capture by the conservative and revolutionary right? 10:00–11:00 Conversation (zoom): Manuel Borja-Villel and Joanna Mytkowska Towards the Museum of the Commons.
What is the use of apparently democratic public institutions today? Moderator: Zdenka Badovinac
COFFEE BREAK
11:00–13:00 The Use and Abuse of Existing Structures
Asta Vrečko Tomislav Medak Aleksei Borisionok
Moderator: Bojana Piškur
13:00–14:00 – Lunch
14:00- 17:30 Constituting and reconstituting: practices and repairs
15:20-15:40 Rolando Vasquez 15:40-16:10 Marcelo Expósito 16:10-16:30 Jonas Staal
16:30-17:30 Questions and open discussion
Moderator: Corina Oprea
COFFEE BREAK
18:15 EVENING LECTURE, Tomaž Mastnak
11 March, Day 3
Kakšna sramota! (What a shame!) The Case of Slovenia
The case of Slovenia: what is happening here and why? What is to be done about it in the cultural field? Artists, cultural workers, and activists from Slovenia are invited to discuss their role in the fight for democracy as it is currently threatened in Slovenia. The day will be dedicated to the sustainability of such resistance – to its economy, structure, networking, and archiving.
10:00 Introduction of the Historical Context Oto Luthar, historian and director ZRC SAZU (introduction by Zdenka Badovinac)
COFFEE BREAK
11:00–12:30 Artists and Activists – Panel I
NON-GRUPA Protestna ljudska skupščina (The Protest People’s Assembly) Aktiv delavk in delavcev v kulturi (The Culture Workers Active): Petja Grafenauer, Miha Zadnikar Vladozlom (via Zoom) 12:30-14:00 LUNCH 14:30–15:30 Artists and Activists – Panel II Miha Blažič, N’toko Tjaša Pureber COFFEE BREAK 15:30-17:30 WORKSHOPS Workshop 1: Artistic approach as basic tool of non-violent protests, Jaša Jenull (representative of The Protest People’s Assembly) The workshop will discuss the mechanisms, experiences, and practical approaches that have helped us carry out more than 90 mass protests and a large number of small artivist interventions over the past two years of struggle against the far right government in Slovenia. Through practical examples, we will present our answers to some of the key questions we have faced in our two years of constant presence on the street. Among others: How to make the invisible visible? How to effectively utilize mass media? How to maintain protest mobilization with the help of art in the long run? How to empower and connect the wider community of protesters using artistic approaches. The second part of the workshop will present a concrete protest action that will take place on the same day and offer participants the opportunity to participate in the protest itself.
Workshop 2: Culture, art, and political activism – key problems today, Miha Zadnikar (representative of the Culture workers active) This workshop will touch on crucial points of the (quite changed) activism / art / culture relationship that are critically seen from a critical perspective today.
The main topics will be:
a) older, recent, and unconscious traps of liberal / illiberal democracies
b) aggressive times of biopolitics; radical state repression and “predatory capitalism”
c) disintegrated subjects within the so-called cultural and creative sectors; cultural fetishism; defetism; recent unexpected difficulties in shaping heterogeneous political movements
d) questioning the “activism of names and family names”; personal career-making activism; grass-roots vs. NGO trends; autonomy and non-hierarchical politics
e) spontaneous inclinations towards a liberal political worldview / liberal jargon
f) opportunities and obstacles in attempts to move away from ideological struggles (with using reorganized and sharpened “national culture”) towards more productive (class) ways of struggle.
Participants:
Antifascist Year (Bogna Stefanska and Jakub Depczinsky), Nika Autor, Zdenka Badovinac, Miha Blažič – N’toko, Aleksei Borisionok, Tania Bruguera, Charles Esche, Marcelo Expósito, Iskra Geshoska, Petja Grafenauer and Miha Zadnikar (representatives of The Culture workers active), Hazal Halavut, Sandi Hilal, Jaša Jenull (representative of The Protest People’s Assembly), The Protest People’s Assembly, Nikita Kadan, Peter Klepec, Oto Luthar, Tomaž Mastnak, Tomislav Medak, Joanna Mytkowska, NON-GRUPA, Corina Oprea, Tjaša Pureber, Gabriella Riccio, Jonas Staal, Eszter Szakács, Rolando Vásquez, Dmitry Vilensky, Asta Vrečko, Miha Zadnikar (representative of the Workers in Culture Task Group), Vladozlom
art is political prefiguration | political prefiguration is art
