On March 10, 2007, citizens, social and cultural collectives and invisible creatives occupied the building Nosquera 9 and 11 in Málaga to begin an adventure that is celebrating its tenth birthday this month. In a context of touristification and rampant speculation in the city center of Málaga, during the early years of an urban planning model that claimed (and claims) to be cultural, which grants spaces and resources solely to large-scale museum and red-carpet festival operations, La Casa Invisible was born.
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Something new is taking shape in the world: in more than 30 countries, people are calling for an international women*s strike on the 8th of March.
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International Womensstrike
06 03 17
Ohne uns! Aufruf zum Publikumsstreik und zum strategischen Desinteresse an der Doppel-Veranstaltung «Die neue Avantgarde» am 10.03. und 17.03.17 in der Zürcher Gessnerallee
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Ein Publikum | http://ohneuns.ddns.net/
04 03 17
Die räumliche Imagination des Feindes
Der Krieg ist schon längst eine Frage der Städte geworden, und in diesem Sinne verlagert dieser sich auf neue Territorien. Dabei ist zu berücksichtigen, dass die Räume, in die militärische Apparate intervenieren, immer vorgestellte Räume sind, die in sozialen Prozessen fernab der betreffenden Regionen hervorgebracht werden. Ein wesentliches Element dieser Raumproduktionen ist gegenwärtig die artifizielle Stadt. In nie dagewesenem Maße vermittelt sie sozialräumliche und kulturelle Aspekte desjenigen Territoriums, auf dem der Gegner zu Hause ist. Es zeigt sich jedoch, dass diese Aspekte nicht authentisch oder neutral sind sondern immer schon mit kultureller Bedeutung über die gegnerischen Räume versehen.
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Andrea Kretschmann
21 02 17
In recent years, institutions of education have been transformed through an upsurge of policies and reforms. While such reforms have historically developed along various trajectories, more recent reforms have chiefly been advanced by two major aims. On the one hand, these reforms support the transformation of economies that have suffered from crisis. For instance, the OECD has declared that: “Knowledge is now recognised as the driver of productivity and economic growth” (1996, p. 3). On the other hand, the production of knowledge and research should tackle the “grand challenges” of our time posed by globalization – e.g. the energy crisis, limited resources, or climate change – essentially linking it to sustainability policy.
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Les violences policières émergent d’une expérience collective qui ne peut d’abord s’éclairer que par une intelligence collective. C’est pourquoi nous avons voulu écouter débattre avec nous et entre eux des acteurs très différents : des militants et des réfugiés, des racisés et des blancs, des hommes et des femmes, dont le point commun est d’abord d’avoir expérimenté dans leurs corps ces formes de violence. ---- Die Polizeigewalt entspringt einer kollektiven Erfahrung, die nur durch kollektive Intelligenz erhellt werden kann. Darum wollten wir mit sehr unterschiedlichen Akteur_innen sprechen und ihnen zuhören, wenn sie miteinander sprechen: Aktivist_innen und Refugees, Rassisierte und Weiße, Männer und Frauen, die alle Formen der Gewalt an ihren eigenen Körpern zu spüren bekommen haben. ----
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Table ronde organisé par la revue Vacarme avec Ardashir, Baqer, Barnard, Houssam, Julie & Olivier
13 11 16
Neuf ans sur le territoire français. Neuf ans pour rien. C’est ce qu’il répète souvent. Neuf ans dans l’air, comme les avions. ---- Neun Jahre auf französischem Territorium. Neun Jahre für nichts. Das wiederholt er oft. Neun Jahre verpuffen in der Luft, wie die Flugzeuge. ----
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Gegen die Re-Essentialisierung von Ausdrucks- und Protestformen
Sind Dreadlocks bei Weißen kulturimperialistisch? Offenbart der Protest gegen die Prekarisierung in Europa bloß die Heuchelei der Protestierenden, die ihre Privilegien nicht reflektieren? In den letzten Jahren sind verschiedentlich Stimmen laut geworden, die aus der Perspektive der postcolonial studies und des Critical Whiteness-Aktivismus Behauptungen dieser Art aufgestellt haben.
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Musings on the covert operation
Commemorating the first anniversary of the day on which north east Japan was struck by a threefold disaster, “The Wall Street Journal” released an online article on the 10 March 2012 entitled “March 11, One Year On: Occupy METI”. At the beginning, the journalist Obe Mitsuru describes a scene, in which a “shaky tent”, decorated with colorful placards and banners demanding Japan’s withdrawal from the nuclear energy program, stands on the corner in front of the comparatively mighty Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) in Kasumigaseki, the administrative district in Tôkyô.
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Introducing the Conference on Self-Government and Municipalism in Aragón: following what started at the #MacUno1 meeting, this conference is being planned as a space of movements, of people who, bearing in mind the institutional while not reducing all of politics to it, wish to continue developing and strengthening the #municipalist challenge.
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At the end of the year 2008 the global economy collapsed. It’s hard to say what will happen next, but it’s easy to guess that the recession is not going to go away anytime soon. The collapse of the global economy can be read as the comeback of the soul. The perfect machine of neoliberal ideology is falling to bits because it was based on the flawed assumption that soul can be reduced to mere rationality. The dark side of the soul, fear, anxiety, panic and depression has finally surfaced after looming for a decade in the shadow of the much-touted victory and promised eternity of capitalism. In this essay I want to consider two different meanings of the word depression. By this word we mean a special kind of mental suffering, but also the general shape of the global crisis that is darkening the historical horizon of our times. We are not dealing here with a linguistic trick; we are not dealing only with a metaphor, but with the interweaving and interacting of psychic flows and economic processes.
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Franco “Bifo” Berardi
16 09 16
On the early morning of July 21, police evicted “Point Break” in the neighborhood of Pigneto: a student house occupied and self-managed by members of the Roman student movement “l’Onda” that took to the streets of Italy in 2008 against the neoliberal reform and privatization of education.
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Dear friends, dreamers, rebels, composers of worlds, cosmopolitan diplomats from below, poets of life, autonomous astronauts, shamans of all sorts, breachers of stupid laws and animators of consensus, dear comrades from antiracist, antifascist, migrant, refugee, feminist groups, collectives, networks … all those that swarm and drill so that freedom of movement for everyone will prevail …
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Interview mit Jacques Rancière geführt von Joseph Confavreux
Der Philosoph Jacques Rancière, Denker der Gleichheit, erwägt, was die Bewegung der „Nuit Debout“ und die Mobilisierung gegen das Arbeitsgesetz auszeichnet, was sie trägt, aber auch wo ihre Grenzen sind.
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Jacques Rancière / Joseph Confavreux
01 06 16
Etwa hundert Intellektuelle prangern die Strategie der französischen Regierung an, „organisierte Gruppen“ zu isolieren und ihre Gewalttaten aufzubauschen, um so den Demonstrationen gegen das Arbeitsgesetz in Rennes und Paris ihre Glaubwürdigkeit zu nehmen.
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Sollten die Kouachi-Brüder und Amedy Coulibaly posthum doch noch die Schlacht der Ideen gewonnen haben? Die öffentliche Debatte richtet sich seit dem 7. Jänner 2015 an falschen Alternativen aus.
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The autonomous factory Rog is under threat of being evicted and destroyed by the municipal authorities which are pursuing their project of renovating the area into a centre for creative industries.
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Autonomous Factory ROG
25 05 16
Call for papers
Networks of protest and dissent, actual and virtual, were understood to have become increasingly centreless and leaderless across the 1990s, and beyond. Even the nature of protest and dissent fell away from previous models, as aligned to pragmatic demands and manifestos, single issues and norms of controlled civil disobedience. Now the masses were understood not to assemble behind any one position, or rally to one slogan, but more to stand in a kind of collective negative correlation to the faltering status quo: a crowd of singularities. This crowd or mass has been identified and explored in various ways as “the multitude” by theorists such as Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Paolo Virno, The Invisible Committee, Mauricio Lazzarato, and Franco Berardi among others.
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Benjamin Halligan / Alexei Penzin
19 05 16
The first edition of the Performance Biennial will take place on 23 June to 4 July in Greece. Emerging from DIY self-organised cultural practices appearing during these past years in Athens, in a present without a future, this event seeks to critically interrogate the role of performance, historically and in the present, in relation to political and social materialities and imaginaries. Playfully subverting the term ‘biennial’ into a self-organised practice, the event will test self-instituted forms of culture and politics. Under the title “No Future” this guerrilla biennial will bring together forms of artistic, political and theoretical practice and discourse questioning the potential of a collective refusal to a referred futurity.
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Performance Biennial
17 05 16
On the occasion of the new edition of Instituierende Praxen transversal texts publishes the new introduction to the book.
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Stefan Nowotny / Gerald Raunig
12 05 16
Abandoned hotel squatted for 400 refugees
In the morning of April 22nd, activists and refugees joined action to squat an abandoned hotel in the northern center of Athens. The “Hotel Plaza” is supposed to host up to 400 refugees, and hopefully in the upcoming week, they will be able to receive further room requests. Since the occupants have entered the building, the weekend has been a busy one: The rooms have been aired and cleaned, the kitchen cleaned and prepared for cooking, weeds and trash removed from the front entrance, the first meals cooked, assemblies held and plans made.
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We, the undersigned, support the struggle to defend the integrity of the art project Park Fiction and to keep the Golden Pudel Club as a part of the park and Gesamtkunstwerk Park Fiction.
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Park Fiction Komitee
21 04 16
A Conversation with Stefano Harney and Fred Moten on The Undercommons
On the occasion of publishing the German edition of
The Undercommons, transversal texts spoke with the authors about the book’s central concepts.
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Stefano Harney / Fred Moten
01 04 16
Introduction to DIVIDUUM. Machinic Capitalism and Molecular Revolution, Part 1
Semiotext(e) / MIT Press has announced the publication of Gerald Raunig’s new book DIVIDUUM. Machinic Capitalism and Molecular Revolution, Part 1:
https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/dividuum.
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The Institute for Democracy and Municipalism (Institute DM) introduced itself this morning in Madrid. The initiative’s objective is "to stimulate the cycle that was started by 15M beyond its current limits, or to work so that the democratic revolution continues its course,” as its promoters point out. The think tank, as one of its founders, the sociologist and historian Emmanuel Rodríguez, describes it, “aims to become a space of reference at the levels of debate, education, research and political discussion.” Ultimately: “to animate and promote the emergence of ideas that stimulate a change in the political cycle.”
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Periódico Diagonal
27 02 16
Demonstration: Köln, 12. März, 13:00
Statement des Demobündnisses zum offenen Brief über die Zustände bezüglich der Frauen in der Unterkunft Westerwaldstraße
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Demobündnis zum Weltfrauentag 2016 in Köln
25 02 16
Solidarity with the Golden Pudel Club and Park Fiction in Hamburg
Late Saturday night, the Golden Pudel Club stood in flames. The roof structure is destroyed. The improvisational shelter of a homeless refugee burned as well, including his papers. The Park Fiction Archive housed on the building’s top floor is drenched in extinguishing water.
Demonstration: Friday, February 19, 8:30 pm, from: FC St. Pauli, South side areaway, to: Golden Pudel Club / Gezi Park Fiction
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The inconceivable struggle of refugees and migrants we have been witnessing has resulted in the opening of the corridor of hope across the fortified borders of the European Union. Consequently, European forces started turning the Balkan Route into a detention route, leaving behind their democratic masks. The ruling classes of “Europe without borders” started erecting razor blade fences all over the Balkan Route.
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Social Centre Rog Ljubljana
09 02 16
We find out with dismay that a provision of the management of the Municipality of Rome calls for the eviction of the self-managed atelier Esc. We also discover that dozens of other social centres and cultural associations are facing this measure.
All this is a very serious mistake, that hits to the heart of the virtues that still survive in the city of Rome, that has always stood out for an unequalled proliferation of self management, mutualism, and independent cultural production.
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A conversation with Miguel Mellino
Can we conceive of any universal idea of man, or of so-called rights, of man without the anticolonial struggles, without the struggles and resistances of slaves, without the movements of decolonization or of national liberation in the whole world, without the struggles of women, without the antiracism of black or non-occidental women? It is something that generally remains unsaid when people speak of “human rights” in mass political and televised debates. And yet it is something that would help to revise the material and discursive limits of European humanism. In Europe, this deficiency is very pronounced. The thread that unites humanism, racism and colonialism is not clear in public debate... The point is not to perform a mea culpa about the colonial past of Europe, but rather to understand the material legacy of colonialism in the material constitution of postcolonial European social and political space.
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An ‚Tagen wie diesen‘ scheint es mir wichtig, die Fähigkeit, zu staunen, sich zu wundern, zu kultivieren. Allzu schnell normalisieren sich unwahrscheinlichste Politikwechsel, wie derjenige der massenhaften Aufnahme muslimischer Flüchtlinge in Deutschland Ende 2015, in veralltäglichte politische Prozesse. Dabei gäbe die Tatsache, dass eine solche Schubumkehr in einem Land möglich ist, das im europäischen Vergleich neben Ungarn und Polen 2011 die höchsten Quoten islamfeindlicher Einstellung aufzuweisen hatte, Anlass zum Überdenken politischer Potenzialitäten. Radikale Transformation ist möglich, auch wenn sie, wie im zu diskutierenden Fall, ‚von oben‘ kommt.
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It was this moment of “debordering” that pushed the “crisis” onto a completely new level. What became clear at this moment was that there was indeed a crisis. But this was the crisis of European migration policies.
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Manuela Bojadžijev & Sandro Mezzadra
12 12 15
Seit heute dem 1. Dezember 2015 befinden sich Gefangene in der JVA Butzbach im Hunger- oder Bummelstreik, sie fordern für ihre Arbeit im Gefängnis unter anderem das Recht auf gewerkschaftliche Organisierung, den Mindestlohn und die Einzahlung in die Rentenversicherung.
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Netzwerk für die Rechte inhaftierter Arbeiter_innen
01 12 15
Welcome or Detention?
Europe is in movement, Europe needs to move - Moving Europe!
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Versuch über zwei internationale Foucaultsymposien in Zürich und Wien 2015
Es gibt Foucault noch nicht – so der Hinweis von Werkbiograph und Historiker Philipp Sarasin auf die Tatsache, dass noch nicht alles von Foucault publiziert worden ist. So fehlen in der deutschen Übersetzung noch zwei weitere Vorlesungsreihen am Collège de France, im Französischen ist das Werk seit diesem Frühjahr erstmals vollständig verfügbar. Schon die jüngsten Übersetzungen zur Strafgesellschaft und der Regierung der Lebenden eröffnen neue Facetten und Zusammenhänge, aber auch neue Begrifflichkeiten.
Gemessen an den beiden Symposien in Zürich und Wien in diesem Jahr fällt nicht primär ins Auge, dass es «Foucault noch nicht», sondern vielmehr, dass es längst verschiedene Foucaults gibt.
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In ganz Europa macht sich die Prognose breit, welche die Kanzlerin Angela Merkel für ihr Land formuliert hatte: „Diese Ereignisse werden unser Land verändern“. Ich meinerseits würde sagen, sie werden Europa verändern. Aber in welchem Sinn?
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Schon wieder ein Schiffbruch, Sonntag, also. Montag schließt Deutschland seine Grenzen, die anderen europäischen Länder sollen reagieren, es ist von überlaufen, von überfordert die Rede. 15 Kinder sind am Sonntag ertrunken. Die deutschen Städte sind überfordert. Ungarn und sein Zaun.
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Since yesterday, when Hungary attempted to close its borders, by
bringing army and heavy police force at the newly built fence, and the
new law criminalising migrants has stepped into force, up to 5000
migrants have been stuck at the border.
This is a call out to all activists, for an emergency intervention at
the border – we need people to show solidarity with those stuck at the
Horgoš 2 border crossing.
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No Border Serbia Collectif
15 09 15
Auf Initiative Barcelonas mobilisieren sich „empörte“ Städte, um mehr Geflüchtete aufzunehmen, und lancieren Solidaritätskampagnen. Ihre Ziel: Den Druck auf die rechte Regierung von Mariano Rajoy aufzubauen, die sich im Vorfeld der allgemeinen Wahlen in das Thema verbeißt.
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Some notes on the end of economy, the reinvention of political economy, and Randy Martin’s last book Knowledge LTD
Eight years after the beginning of subprime crisis it seems more than urgent to develop new approaches of economic theory, on the basis of the further hightening of social inequality between Northern and Southern regions and emerging signs of the transformation of machinic capitalism towards sharpened authoritarianisms.
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On continuous failures. On continuous struggles.
On the 19th of June, 2015 a group of artists, theoreticians, and cultural workers occupied Green Park cafe in the Pedion tou Areos, one the two central parks of Athens. Almost 4 years after the occupation of Embros theatre in November 2011 this new occupation emerged from and sought to build on the failings of collective struggles during recent years; both failings in the face of mechanisms of repression and failings from within the emergent collective formations of resistance.
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Gigi Argyropoulou
07 09 15
Some months before transversal texts will release the German version of Stefano Harney’s and Fred Moten’s book
The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning & Black Study, we are publishing Stefano Harney’s poetico-philosophical piece “Jay-Walker” on the intertwining logics of logistics, consulting, and racism.
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Statement from the organisers of the international meeting Peripheralizing Europe, which discussed the commonalities, differences and prospects for common struggles on the eastern and southern peripheries of Europe.
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Peripheralizing Europe organizing group
20 08 15
Experiences of resistance and discussions on abolitionism from Latin America
The International Conference on Penal Abolition (ICOPA) is a bi-annual gathering of activists, academics, journalists, practitioners, people currently or formerly imprisoned, survivors of state and personal harm, and others from across the world who are working towards the abolition of imprisonment, the penal system, carceral controls and the prison industrial complex.
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International Conference on Penal Abolition
19 08 15
At the beginning of July, activists of different networks and organizations were in Linz. The refugees summarized their claims in an open letter and demand that this letter will be presented to the Austrian population, the government as well as international organizations in order to inform the public and the persons responsible about their situation.
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Refugees in the tent camp in Linz
18 08 15
For the last four weeks, asylum seekers have regularly met with human rights activists from Freedom not Frontex Vienna in order to call attention to their situation and their observations; these observations are documented by photos and videos. The asylum seekers have expressed the wish to make their difficult situation in the camp visible to the public so that improvements and more human living conditions will be implemented soon.
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Freedom not Frontex Vienna
18 08 15
We have yet to come to terms with the full meaning and implications of the Marikana tragedy. Although the report released by the Marikana Commission of Inquiry goes some way towards this goal, the foundational moral dilemmas raised by the loss of every life in this conflict have yet to be properly articulated.
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Beginning to work in art is never a decision, says Jimmie Durham. The artist, poet and activist born 1940 in Arkansas began to work as a sculptor in 1964, while he was active since the early 1960s in the American civil rights movement. In 1973, he graduated in Fine Arts in Geneva and returned to the U.S. In the 1970s, he was a co-founder and chairman of the International Indian Treaty at the United Nations, where his work led to the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. In 1987, Durham left the U.S., settled in Mexico and since 1994 in Europe, where he has lived in Dublin, Marseille, Rome and Berlin.
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Teobaldo Lagos Preller
16 08 15
Wir veröffentlichen hier einen Text von Abdel Hafed Benotman, Atheist, der im Februar 2015 viel zu früh verstorben ist. Er selbst veröffentlichte diesen Text im Jahr 2008 auf seinem Blog. Ebenso wie L’Envolée finden auch wir, dass er auf so manche gegenwärtige Diskussionen passt.
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Abdel Hafed Benotman
15 08 15
Ein Brief von Abdel Hafed Benotman, der im Juli 2005 in der Zeitschrift L’Envolée veröffentlicht wurde. Als bewaffnete Männer und andere magis-rats es für gut befanden, ihn für einige Diebstähle in der Versenkung verschwinden zu lassen. +++ Une lettre d’Hafed publiée dans l’Envolée N°14, en juillet 2005. Lorsque quelques hommes en armes et autres magis-rats, avaient jugé bon de le recoller au placard pour quelques vols …
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Abdel Hafed Benotman
14 08 15
Er war Dieb, Räuber, Krimischriftsteller, Drehbuchautor, Theatermensch, Dichter und Schauspieler. Abdel Hafed Benotmans Herzmaschine hat ihn am 20. Februar 2015 abends losgelassen und lässt uns in unendlicher Trauer zurück. Aber sein wirkliches Herz wird uns nie verlassen. ++ Il fut voleur, braqueur, écrivain de polars, auteur de scénarios de films, homme de théâtre, poète et acteur. La machine cardiaque d’Abdel-Hafed Benotman l’a lâché le 20 février 2015 au soir, nous laissant dans une infinie tristesse. Mais son vrai cœur ne nous lâchera jamais.
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Mathieu Léonard (CQFD)
13 08 15
Last Sunday a funeral took place. Thousands of people gathered in the governmental area of Berlin for the so-called March of the Determined, which could be called a demonstration though it was more than just another political protest. The Center for Political Beauty had announced the event to lay to rest the bodies of those who died while attempting to escape war, crossing the Mediterranean Sea in the hope of finding refuge in Europe.
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Jule Jakob Govrin
29 06 15
The system of constitutional democracy in the most recent postwar era in Europe was organized around a model of rotating the exercise of government between left and right in all countries (and, after 1978, also in Spain, complemented by the nationalist and/or independentist forces). This took place within the framework of a capitalist system in evolution that was subject to reforms – but not subject to discussion of fundamental issues. The terms were those of Yalta. This model is in crisis. In fact, third forces have already emerged in the electoral fields of many European countries that disrupt this dual scheme. In this regard we must ask ourselves if the construction of the new constitutional structure of the European Union did not begin precisely from the moment of foreseeing the crisis of the postwar constitutional model – and, at any rate, from the moment of perceiving incontinence already visible in the classical democratic model.
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Antonio Negri / Raúl Sánchez Cedillo
27 04 15
10 points to really end the deaths of migrants at sea
On April 20, the Joint Foreign and Home Affairs Council of the EU released a ten-point action plan outlining their response to the recent deaths of migrants in the Mediterranean Sea. Many other proposals have also been made over the last few days. We are activists who have been involved in the struggles against the European border regime for several years and who have been in touch on a daily basis with hundreds of people who have crossed the Mediterranean through Watch The Med and the Alarm Phone project. Faced with the hypocrisy of the “solutions” that have been proposed so far, we feel compelled to undermine their falsity and attempt to open up an alternative space for reflection and action.
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It seems, there is nowadays an accumulation of diverse voices, who push the call for verticality. For example, the tendency to describe (pseudo)horizontal post-Fordist modes of production, and their valorisation of affects, cooperation and communication, as ubiquitous; and subsequently denunciating any form of horizontal exchange. And when once again the lack of depth in contemporary cultural thinking is emphasized, it is mostly to recycle an old topos. The recurring lamenting of the superficiality of the world, which makes us mediocre and produces new forms of assimilation, is nothing other than the boring repetition of a cultural-pessimistic figure, which consistently affirms the old elites or the desire for new elites.
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The comrades who have given life to Podemos say: we have managed to move past the limits of the horizontality of the movement, so rich yet often ineffective. We managed to do this with a political gesture of self-constitution, organization and representation. We had the intelligence to understand that the space between the municipal and the general elections, between May and the end of the year, was our only chance to “break the lock of ‘78”: during election periods the adversary is forced to spread out into the territory; constitutional guarantees work better than under other conditions and thus become possible zones of rupture of the current regime, so deeply discredited and divided. Moreover, at the end of 2015 the capitalist front will perhaps be busy preparing its attack, regrouping after having responded to, and possibly demolished, viciously, our resistance. Such would the historic window of opportunity again be closed for a long time.
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Antonio Negri / Raúl Sánchez Cedillo
27 03 15
Kamion. Zeitschrift. Heft Nummer 1.
Die neue Kamion#1 'Aus den Kreisläufen des Rassismus' fragt nach den Verhältnissen von Rassismus und Ökonomie, so wie sie sich in ihren Verfahren und Aktivitäten gegenwärtiger Zirkulation präsentieren. Die Fragen der Logistik, beziehungsweise logistischer Formen des Kapitalismus, nehmen eine zentrale Stellung ein. Die Autor_innen suchen nach widerständigen Aktualisierungen, das heisst nach Möglichkeiten die Schließung von Subjektivitäten und Körpern zu sabotieren und zu queren um einen materiellen Beitrag gegen den permanenten Zugriff zu leisten.
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Well, then, keynesianism or post-keynesianism? Once we have recognised the reactionary nature of ordoliberalism and the same constitution of the ECB under the command of the Bundesbank, what economic and business framework should be favoured? And who should be the fundamental actor of this economic revival, which is at the same time a democratic one? The problem is difficult, and this is because it is new.
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Antonio Negri / Raúl Sánchez Cedillo
20 03 15
The hour of the lord, writes the Apostle Paul, comes like a thief in the night. This line is taken from a letter to the Thessalonians, a community where today’s Saloniki in Greece is located. An incredible coincidence – as today we are also faced with a new era, one that has broken out rather suddenly with its origin in Greece. The challenges of this new era do not simply depend on one government’s ability to fulfil voters’ expectations, because the great changes that are approaching and which were ushered in by the Greek elections cannot be handled by a government, and certainly not by one government alone.
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“A spectre is haunting Europe”. The Italian newspaper Il Manifesto used this headline a few days ago for its homepage, commenting on the visits of Tsipras and Varoufakis to European governments. A real nightmare for the ordoliberal Germans, a Geisterfahrer, to be precise, a suicidal conductor looking to collide with the European bus, as Der Spiegel described on its front page. Imagine what could happen with the victory of Podemos in Spain: what a magnificent spectre would then be seen lurking about, a real monster created by the exploited and the productive forces of the fourth European economy!
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Antonio Negri / Raúl Sánchez Cedillo
22 02 15
Am Dienstag, 10.02.2015 gingen ca. 100 Geflüchtete gegen die deutsche Asylpolitik und die Bedingungen in der Gemeinschaftsunterkunft in Neuburg an der Donau auf die Straße. Mit selbstgebastelten Plakaten und Bannern zog die dreistündige Demonstration von der Gemeinschaftsunterkunft zum Landratsamt und dem Neuburger Rathaus. Die Geflüchteten äußerten dort lautstark ihren Unmut über die miserablen Bedingungen, forderten ein Ende der Lagerpflicht, „gleiche Rechte für alle“ und prangerten das Lagersystem als Gefängnissystem an.
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This campaign stems from the preliminary framework of Errar de Dios (Erring from God), a participatory installation created by Etcetera collective together with Franco Berardi "Bifo," featuring works by Leon Ferrari created on the occasion of the 31st Sao Paulo Biennial, How to talk about things that do not exist.
Over the course of a three-month campaign in San Pablo, we have collected more than 15,000 signatures on sheets of paper, to be sent directly to the Vatican in Rome. We are now pleased to announce the launch of the petition online, and invite you to sign and to spread the word. The collection of signatures will continue through 2015 while we continue to wait for an official confirmation from the Vatican for a personal meeting between representatives of International Errorist and His Holiness.
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Etcetera collective
27 12 14
Not too long ago, we ran into some strange and worrying news from Poland. The story happened during a recent public talk of renowned philosopher and political commentator Slavoj Žižek. The discussion was moderated by Sławomir Sierakowski, the leader of the Polish journal and collective “Political Critique” (Krytyka Polityczna), which enjoys wide reputation as a leading Polish left-leaning think tank. After Žižek’s talk, the discussion turned to the most pressing issues of the ongoing escalation between Russia, Ukraine and the West.
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Der Schriftsteller Michael Köhlmeier redet über Demokratie und demonstriert dabei vor allem paradigmatischen Intellektuellendünkel
Es gibt eine Verherrlichung des „Volkes“, in einigen Teilen der (antiimperialistischen) Linken ebenso wie in ethnologischen und anthropologischen Theorieansätzen. Sicher. Aber muss man, um dies zu thematisieren, gleich ein Maximum an klassistischem Ressentiment auffahren und historische Tatsachen verdrehen, wie der Schriftsteller Michael Köhlmeier es in seinem Text „Was wir meinen, wenn wir von Demokratie reden“ tut?
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On March 17th 2014 the trial against eight persons accused of “Schlepperei/human smuggling in the frame of a criminal association” started at Landesgericht Wiener Neustadt. On the December 4 shortly before midnight the sentences were passed.
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solidarityagainstrepression.noblogs.org
08 12 14
(Against Groys)
Boris Groys, philosopher and art theorist, has recently published a text entitled ‘On Art Activism’ (e-flux) or ‘Kunstaktivismus’ in German (Lettre International) in two reputable journals. In this text he makes a claim that can only really be described as being totally false.
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Oggi 14 novembre è sciopero sociale. Come lavoratrici e lavoratori della cultura, dello spettacolo e della conoscenza, come spazi occupati e indipendenti, come esperienze di autorganizzazione aderiamo alla giornata di mobilitazione europea.
Heute, 14. November 2014, ist Tag des sozialen Streiks. Als Kultur- und Wissensarbeiter_innen, als besetzte und freie Räume, als Erfahrungen der Selbstorganisation beteiligen wir uns am Europäischen Aktionstag.
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We are sorry it has taken so long to get back to you, but this letter has not been an easy one to write and things have been difficult here. We are also sorry that what began as a letter has perhaps become a long “manifestos against a world that we hate”.
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The Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination
31 10 14
An appeal by researchers involved in the production of knowledge on migration
Day after day we keep receiving updates on that uncanny war which is ongoing in the Mediterranean: updates on how many migrants were rescued and how many have died since the beginning of “Mare Nostrum,” the “military and humanitarian” operation that the Italian government enlisted in the Mediterranean as a response to the shipwreck of October 3, 2013. At that time, the island of Lampedusa was swamped by a wave of dead bodies - of women, men, and children. We are asked to form our opinion on Italian and European policies – those policies made also in our name - based on the statistics of deaths.
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Gruppo ricercatrici e ricercatori migrazioni
31 10 14
Ce qu’il y a de stupéfiant dans l’affaire du barrage de Sivens depuis plus d’un an, c’est la scandaleuse disproportion entre les prétendues finalités de ce projet et les moyens mis en oeuvre par les autorités tarnaises pour l’imposer. [...] Dans la nuit de samedi à dimanche, vers 2 heure du matin, Rémi, 21 ans, est tombé sous les tirs de cet État de droit. Selon divers témoignages, il aurait reçu en tir tendu (ce qui est formellement interdit) une grenade de dés-encerclement à l’épaule.
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La coordination du 25 octobre
31 10 14
Ein breites Bündnis von NachbarInnen, KünstlerInnen und WissenschaftlerInnen ruft zum zivilen Ungehorsam gegen die Räumung der Gerhart-Hauptmann-Schule auf.
Wir würden uns freuen wenn ihr diesen Aufruf mit unterzeichnet. Schreibt einfach an
zwangsraeumungverhindern@riseup.net. Die Zeit drängt, Solidarität jetzt!
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Bündnis Zwangsräumung Verhindern
30 10 14
Save the Collège international de philosophie
In November 2014, if an arm of the state does not decide to intervene, the Collège international de philosophie will close its doors after 30 years of activity and production in substantial international networks. A space of experimentation, of innovative research and original training, will disappear.
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The Collegial Assembly of the Collège international de philosophie
21 10 14
20 years of maiz | call for papers - deadline 30.09.2014
To give more space to utopias and to the discussions surrounding the epistemic dimension of our praxis, maiz decided to found the University of Ignoramuses. The starting point of our university is the realization that everyone is ignorant, as long as bodies of knowledge are possessed and knowledge continues to be produced without a critical reflection of the power dimension and the violent processes of legitimization and de-legitimization of knowledge and without implementing the resulting consequences in praxis.
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La Electrodoméstica is an associative project that comprises a working space bringing together research and self-education through feminist trajectories, the production of situated knowledges and the desire to experiment with composition and organization based on embodied practices of reproduction, work and the material conditions of life in common.
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This issue brings together a series of commentaries, interventions and projects centred on the theme of workers’ inquiry. Workers’ inquiry is a practice of knowledge production that seeks to understand the changing composition of labour and its potential for revolutionary social transformation. It is a practice of turning the tools of the social sciences into weapons of class struggle.
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With a sharp tug the soot-covered tire slides free from a pile stacked over my head. Then another. And another. Soon I have fifteen tires loosened. It’s April 22, 2014, and along with local curator Larissa Babij I am standing on the battle-charred northeast corner of Kyiv's Independence Square known locally as Maidan (square).
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Greg Sholette with curators Olga Kopenkina and Larissa Babij
21 07 14
In March 2014, more than a hundred activists from various parts of Europe gathered in Madrid for the conference ‘El nuevo rapto de Europa: deuda, guerra, revoluciones democráticas’. The conference participants developed both the foundations and a preamble for a Charter for Europe. In the following months, a first version of this Charter was composed via mumbles, skype-conferences, wikis and diverse other virtual communication channels and spaces. This version is planned to proliferate and get distributed over the next few months to discuss and further develop it. Rather than considering this proposition as a text for a future constitution, it is supposed to operate as an impulse for a potential constituent process in Europe — in a way, it is already a component of such a process.
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Exodus and Tiger’s Leap
The representation- and identity-critical movements of occupying squares since 2011 have been inventing new forms of democracy for which I have proposed the term ‘presentist’. Presentist democracy does not mean simply the negation or the other side of political representation. The presentist is not in a dichotomous relation to re-presentation, but rather it emerges through a break with identitarian confrontations between ‘us’ and ‘them’, through an exodus from dualisms between refusal and engagement or consensus and conflict. In the midst of the presentist, such an exodus opens up a breach for transversal constituent processes.
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new issue of transversal web journal
The publishing industry is in a fundamental crisis. In its final hours it is beginning to lash out, but only hits itself. As much as academic apparatuses and cultural industries wrestle with conformity, the traditional forms of knowledge production remain just as incompatible with the new media conditions as with future emancipatory concatenations of writing, translating and publicly negotiating publications. “The Insurrection of the Published” emerges in these concatenations beyond the domestication of styles, forms and formats, beyond valorization and self-valorization, beyond the hegemonic mechanisms of exclusion like peer reviews, impact factors, ranking, and rigid copyright regimes.
http://transversal.at/transversal/0614
Eine neue Zeitschrift zu sozialen Bewegungen, politischen Kunstpraxen und kritischer Intellektualität
Kamion ist eine Zeitschrift für politische Theorien und nützliche Nachrichten aus dem Alltag von Prekarisierung und Krise. Sie forciert den Verkehr, die Übersetzungen, die Vernähungen zwischen sozialen Bewegungen, Kunstpraxen und kritischer Intellektualität. Sie eröffnet Raum für entspannt theoretische, essayistische, nicht-akademische Schreibweisen und experimentelle Erzählformen. Sie entwickelt Taktiken und Strategien der Verkettung, Neuzusammensetzung und Bildung von Allianzen. Zentrale Themenfelder sind politische Kunstpraxen, Aktivismus, Medienkritik, Kulturpolitik, Wissensproduktion/Bildungspolitik. Die Redaktionen in Wien, Zürich und Berlin beleuchten transnational relevante Themen (nicht nur) aus europäischer Perspektive.
http://diekamion.org
Statement of the Refugees on the Roof of Former Gerhart-Hauptmann-Schule, Berlin
We are now on the roof since six days. The last days have been very hard and exhausting to us, not only because of being on the roof, but more because we are facing harrassment by the police again and again.
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