Tal como já anunciámos (AQUI) o museu de Arte Contemporânea de Serralves, no Porto, vai inaugurar no dia 20 de Novembro a exposição “Às Artes, Cidadãos!” comissariada por João Fernandes e por Óscar Faria, no início da qual se realizará um seminário non-stop de 48 anos sobre a relação entre arte e política com o título «Learning Play,Living politcally» pelo colectivo de artistas russos Chto Delat? (o que fazer?), e para o qual estão abertas as inscrições, limitadas a 25, de todos os interessados a participar na iniciativa.
A exposição “Às Artes, Cidadãos!” é composta por obras de trinta artistas, nascidos após 1961, ano marcado pelo surgimento do muro de Berlim, construção que continua a projectar a sua sombra no presente. Os trabalhos patentes na mostra, muitos dos quais concebidos para a ocasião, pretendem revelar diferentes perspectivas acerca das intersecções entre a arte e o político
A exposição tem um programa inaugural que incluirá o espectáculo “Work”, protagonizado por Thomas Meinecke e Move D (dia 20), uma performance concebida por Nicoline van Harskamp a partir dos arquivos do anarquista holandês Karl Max Kreuger (dia 21), o seminário “Learning Play, Living Politically” proposto pelo colectivo russo Chto Delat?, que irá decorrer, durante 48 horas non-stop, no auditório de Serralves (dias 22 e 23), a estreia do primeiro filme da artista palestiniana Ahlam Shibli (dia 24) e a primeira parte do colóquio “Política em Exposição”, com a participação de Catherine David e Chrissie Iles, responsáveis, respectivamente, pela X edição da Documenta de Kassel e pela Bienal de Whitney, “Day for Night” de 2006.
A exposição irá ainda estender-se à cidade, destacando-se a realização de dois murais – um por Rigo 23, outro por Nikolay Oleynikov – e uma acção concebida por Tom Nicholson, através da qual este artista aborda acontecimentos relacionados com a história recente de Timor-Leste. Refiram-se ainda as intervenções de Mariana Silva, no Teatro Nacional S. João, e de Sam Durant, que instalará um “electric sign” inédito na livraria Utopia.
Entre os projectos realizados com a comunidade local, podem sublinhar-se as intervenções “Diáspora”, de Carolina Caycedo, que trabalhará com imigrantes na concepção de um novo trabalho para a exposição, “Deus Pobre”, de Carlos Motta, uma obra que nasce da colaboração com padres de diferentes congregações, e ainda um outro mural de Rigo 23, projectado para a Escola da Pasteleira, num trabalho a realizar com jovens da freguesia de Lordelo do Ouro no fim do mês de Outubro.
No átrio e na biblioteca do Museu de Serralves será instalada uma secção histórica e documental paralela a “Às Artes, Cidadãos!”, com comissariado de Guy Schraenen, composta por catálogos, cartazes, filmes de artistas, etc.
Lista de artistas - Às Artes, Cidadãos!
1. Ahlam Shibli (Palestina)
2. Ahmet OÅNgüt (Turquia)
3. André Romão (Portugal)
4. Andrea Geyer (Alemanha)
5. António de Sousa (Portugal)
6. Asier Mendizabal (Espanha)
7. Bureau d’Études (França)
8. Carlos Motta (Colômbia)
9. Carolina Caycedo (Colômbia)
10. Chto Delat (Rússia)
11. Claire Fontaine (França)
12. Danh Vo (Vietname / Dinamarca)
13. Gardar Eide Einarsson (Noruega)
14. Gert Jan Kocken (Holanda)
15. João Sousa Cardoso (Portugal)
16. Mariana Silva (Portugal)
17. Matias Faldbakken (Noruega)
18. Nicoline van Harskamp (Holanda)
19. Pedro G. Romero (Espanha)
20. Rigo 23 (Portugal)
21. Rosella Biscotti (Itália)
22. Sam Durant (EUA)
23. Sharon Hayes (EUA)
24. Shilpa Gupta (India)
25. Simon Wachsmuth (Alemanha)
26. Stefan Brüggmann (México)
27. Tom Nicholson (Austrália)
28. Vangelis Vlahos (Grécia)
29. Zachary Formwalt (EUA)
30. Nikolay Oleynikov (Rússia)
Living politically or
On relations between theory and practice
48 hours seminar-commune /// obshezitie (*)
and Learning play
22-23 November; Serralves Museum
“Educate, entertain, inspire”
Bertolt Brecht
Obshezitie / seminar-commune is a series of 48 hour seminars initiated by the Chto Delat collective and the Socialist Movement “Vpered” in 2009, dedicated to the idea of political subjectivation through collective practices, and aimed at breaking the conventional formats of discussions and conferences and promote a dialogical, conflictual and personal relationship to knowledge production.
An enormous number of events occur within cultural and political spheres that aim to address ideas around collectivity and the politicized subject. Lectures are read, seminars are conducted and exhibitions installed, but nothing is really at stake at most of these events; there is no feeling of shared struggle and no sense of solidarity is established.
We should try to make it otherwise.
The perfomative format we have chosen for our experiment should serve to counter the increasing professionalization, normalization, and academicization of political knowledge, and its separation from anything what’s going on outside the institutional field.
In these seminars we are trying to establish an intensity of relations between its participants: through the exhausting duration of the seminar, performative talks, sleeping together in one space, morning exercises, collective cooking and eating, contact improvisation as a collective experience of dance, nighttime screenings and performances.
Living Politically will focus on the problem of how to combine theory and art with the militant political life (practice).
During the seminar participants we focus on three questions:
- How are the practices of various disciplines and their professional production methods conditioned by the political stances and activist practices of artists and researchers?
- How do the collective appropriation and generalisation of specific scholarly, artistic and activist work shape new models of politicisation?
Seminar participants will focus on what ‘living politically’ means for them. Which political categories do they invoke to make sense not only of their own work in research and art institutions, but also of their daily lives?
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* obshe-zitie (literally being together) is a Russian word for describing the organic form of communal living. Often used by Marx (in a form of obshina) in his writings discussing organization of peasant society in Russia.
The structure:
Day 1
22 November, 10 AM
Arrival of participants and breakfast.
11 AM
Short Introduction –
Why obschezhitie and what is it?
Representation of new issue of newspaper Chto Delat?
by Dmitry Vilensly (30 min)
1.1. Intro session (2:30 hours)
We offer a chance to each participant to deliver a small talk about her own activity and try to describe it in relations towards theory and practice. The main question that we put from the beginning is what kind of organizational structure (or the way of life) allow the most efficient and exciting way of bringing this fields together
Screening of any visual material is welcome – any length which make sense.
2 PM
Preparing and eating lunch (1.5 hour)
3:30 PM
1.2.
1 st Dialogue Session (1,5 hours)
Alexey Penzin & Oxana Timopheeva
Formation of political subjectivity: theory and praxis.
Today, the economic crisis and long term political crisis of the Left, unable to provide a consistent and effective response to it, are good pretext to revisit many questions of critical theory and praxis again. The most urgent question now is about the subject of struggle. The entire ensemble for the production of militant subjectivity (agitation, collective action and struggle, protest techniques, self-education, alternative modes of common daily living) is a vital part of nineteenth- and twentieth-century history, something that we still have to study, comprehend, and make relevant again. The session will be structured around the following questions – what is subjectivity and why this philosophical term matters for activists and engaged artists? How has the mechanism for producing traditional mass militant subjectivity been weakened or even partly destroyed? How is it changing now with the advent of new movements and experiences of resistance? How to politicize people in the reactionary time we live now?
5:00 PM
Break for 1 hour – free time
18:00
2nd Dialogue Session (2 hours)
Alexander Skidan & Dmitry Vilensky
Aesthetical vs. Political
Strategies of representing the critical (leftist) position in the art field
The institutional borders of the contemporary art field shifts. It now more and more includes what yesterday was seen as belonging to the totally different, non-artistic mode of activity, namely that of the social engagement or political protest. “Public art”, “street activism”, “interventionism”, and other kinds of such politically burden practices become the focus of the debates among the art-critics and theoreticians, as well as the hotspot for mass-media coverage, to a certain extent displacing the more conventional artistic forms of production. At the same time, the very notion of the “leftist” is blurring today, making it even harder to define and sustain. During our seminar we would like to address this troublesome disposition and try to figure out if there is any potential in such a medium as video or cinema, and if yes, what this potential is about regarding the representation of the “critical” (“leftist”) position here and now. Especially we are interested in questioning the relations between “aesthetical” and “political”, “elitist” and “democratic”, “closed” and “open” form. The discussion will be based on three examples of different artistic strategies: Jean-Marie Straub’s film “Toute révolution est un coup de dés” (1977), Jean-Luc Godard’s “Film Socialisme” (2010) and What Is To Be Done? recent video “The Tower: A Songspiel” (2010).
8 PM
Cooking & eating dinner together (pelmeny – russian dumplings, vegeterian and meat, salad)
10 PM
Start of the screenings (bar, drinks)
Screening program (not fixed yet, but as proposal):
Lutz Becker's film Cinema Notes (intro word by Jelena Vesic)
Zilnik Old School of Capitalism???
Marina Grzinic “Eastern House”
And other possible video examples of different learning plays documented on the video
1 AM or later
Collective sleep (anyone is welcome to stay the night at Serralves Museum– sleeping bags, pillows, mats will be provided but you are welcome to bring your stuff with)
Day 2
23 November, 10 AM
Wake up and militant aerobics (with Olga Egorova- Tsaplya)
11 AM
Breakfast
11:30 AM
2.1.
3rd Dialogue Session (2 hours)
Keti Chuchrov & Artyom Magun
Spontaneity vs Organisation
The current discussion of left-wing politics and of possible mass movements often turns around the role of ideas in politics. Indeed, the school of thought stemming from the Italian operaists
often emphasizes the spontaneous character of the multitude and its "exodus". In contrast, the tradition associated with A. Badiou and S. Zizek, while agreeing on the need to ground a political movement in the objective "situation", concentrate on the importance of "hypotheses" and other subjective principles for the formation of such movement. There is clearly truth on both sides: it would be damaging to reproduce the dogmatic ideocratic structure of the old communist parties and states, which functioned in an abstract way and were increasingly blind to the objective development of social situation. Meanwhile, a spontaneist approach to political
action risks to fail miserably since a unitary collective subject requires some sort of ideological hegemony to sustain itself. This debate is as old as the socialist movement itself, it goes back to the
arguments between Marx and Bakunin, between Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg, Lucacs and Brecht, etc. However, it must be creatively explored: there needs to be a middle way between the idealism of stalinists and fascists, and the spontaneism of Blanquists, anarchists, and operaists.
The debate will oppose the points of view of idealism and spontaneism in the current global situation, while also presenting to the audience some interesting issues of post-communist heritage.
1:30 PM
Preparing and eating lunch
3 PM
2.2 Conflict session (2 hours)
Between mission and commission
Moderator Dmitry Vilensky
Economy & Political engagement (money talks) (2.5 hours)
‘Who’s money is clean enough to take?’ - the question that hovers over all political groups.
What is better, to go into the market and attempt to self-finance your activity, or endlessly beg for grants? Or establish your own institutions – how should they be organized differently?
5 PM (2 hours)
Break and snacks.
Preparation for the learning play – how can we publicly stage a conflict between theory & practice and open up the resolution of it on the stage
General rehearsal with all participants.
7PM
Break
8PM
The learning play “Living politically or On relations between theory and practice”
Moderator Dmitry Vilensky
10 PM
Cooking and eating dinner 10pm-12pm
11PM
Closing session - Collective dance
END
The platform Chto delat/What is to be done? was founded with the goal of merging political theory, art, and activism in early 2003 in Petersburg by a workgroup of artists, critics, philosophers, and writers from Petersburg, Moscow, and Nizhny Novgorod. It originally consists of following members
Olga Egorova/Tsaplya
(artist, Petersburg),
Artiom Magun
(philosopher, Petersburg),
Nikolai Oleinikov
(artist, Moscow),
Natalia Pershina/Glucklya
(artist, Petersburg),
Alexei Penzin
(philosopher, Moscow),
David Riff
(art critic, Moscow),
Alexander Skidan
(poet, critic, Petersburg),
Kirill Shuvalov
(artist, Petersburg),
Oxana Timofeeva
(philosopher, Moscow),
and Dmitry Vilensky
(artist, Petersburg).
The platform Chto delat is coordinated by a temporary collectives operating under the same name Chto delat works through collective initiatives organized by "art soviets," inspired by the councils formed in revolutionary Russia during the early 20th century. These "art soviets" want to trigger a prototypical social model of participatory democracy, translating an open system for the generation of new forms of solidarity into the realm of contemporary cultural work. The "art soviet" takes on the function of a counter-power that plans, localizes and executes projects collectively.
Usually, this process results in artistic interventions, exhibitions, or artworks (video films, radio plays, performances), which, in turn, trigger new issues of the newspaper. Most of these projects have a two-fold intent: on the one hand, we are interested in the translatability and actualization of left theory (classical Marxism, post-structuralism, post-operaism, critical theory) and artistic practice (situationism, documentalism, urbanism, realism) under post-Soviet conditions and how this relates to parallel efforts elsewhere. On the other hand, we have also often focused on actualizations of the potential of the Soviet past repressed in the course of Soviet history, floating signifiers that need to be captured and used before they are subsumed totally by the present mode of production.
To give a few examples: in 2004-2005, Chto delat carried out an artistic examination of a working class neighborhood in Petersburg, attempting to actualize the communitarian utopias of its constructivist urbanity through the community, adrift with an enactment of Debord's derive. This research into the Fordist utopia of the late 1920s and its incomplete, uneven transition to late capitalism was presented in two exhibitions and a newspaper. Another actualization of the Soviet legacy can be found in the project "Builders" (2005), in which the group restaged a classical socialist realist masterpiece from the late 1950s, which then falls apart and comes back together. In September 2006, Chto delat collaborated on a project called "Self-Educations", an international exhibition and seminars-program at the NCCA in Moscow, dedicated to alternative, community-based forms of self-learning as emancipatory practices.
All of these projects have been accompanied by newspapers. The most of newspapers are fully bilingual (English/Russian). The editorial process draws artists, critics, activists and philosophers into a heated editorial debate, which results in theoretical essays, art projects, open-source translations, questionnaires, dialogues, and comic strips. This take-away publication is distributed for free at congresses or exhibitions, social forums and rallies where it reaches a broader cultural public. A complete set of issues, as well as documentations of art projects and current information can be found on this site.
A Declaration on Politics, Knowledge, and Art
Our Principles: Self-Organization, Collectivism, Solidarity
The Chto Delat platform unites artists, philosophers, social researchers, activists, and all those whose aim is the collaborative realization of critical and independent research, publication, artistic, educational and activist projects. All of the platform’s initiatives are based on the principles of selforganization and collectivism. These principles are realized through the political coordination of working groups—the contemporary analogue of soviets.
The projects undertaken by any of these groups represent the entire platform and are closely coordinated with one another. At the same time, the existence of the platform creates a common context for interpreting the projects of its individual participants. We are likewise guided by the principle of solidarity. We organize and support mutual assistance networks with all grassroots groups who share the principles of internationalism, feminism, and equality.
Demanding the (Im)possible
At this reactionary historical moment, when elementary demands for the possible are presented as a romantic impossibility, we remain realists and insist on certain simple, intelligible things. We have to move away from the frustrations occasioned by the historical failures to advance leftist ideas and discover anew their emancipatory potential. We say that it is natural for each person to be free and live a life of dignity. All that we have to do is to find the strength within ourselves to fight for this. The first thing that motivates us is the rejection of all forms of oppression, the artificial alienation of people, and exploitation. That is why we stand for a distribution of the wealth produced by human labor and all natural resources that is just and directed towards the welfare of everyone.
We are internationalists: we demand the recognition of the equality of all people, no matter where they live or where they come from.
We are feminists: we are against all forms of patriarchy, homophobia, and gender inequality.
Capitalism Is Not a Totality
We believe that capital is not a totality, that the popular thesis that “there is nothing outside capital” is false. The task of the intellectual and the artist is to engage in a thoroughgoing unmasking of the myth that there are no alternatives to the global capitalist system.We insist on the obvious: a world without the dominion of profit and exploitation not only can be created but always already exists in the micropolitics and microeconomies of human relationships and creative labor. We have to reveal this joyous space of life to the greatest number of people. The historical becoming of this economic, political, intellectual, and creative emancipation is communism.
The Communist Decoding of Capitalist Reality
The person who is genuinely free, who lives in the fullness of their being, is a person who is alive to various sciences and disciplines, who critically examines themselves and the world. However, the narrow specialization of scientific knowledge in capitalist society places knowledge in the service of the dominant class. Individual research serves private interests, while research of society, research based on the universality of critical utterance, is not supported institutionally. We affirm that there is only one form of knowledge—knowledge that enables the discovery that the calling of human beings is to be free with other human beings. Critical knowledge should not be a commodity, and its maximally widespread distribution— enlightenment and education—is the cause of each intellectual and cultural worker. This synthesis of theory and practice, knowledge of the world and its transformation, we call the communist decoding of capitalist reality. We repeat along with Marx: “We do not say to the world: Cease your struggles, they are foolish; we will give you the true slogan of struggle. We merely show the world what it is really fighting for, and consciousness is something that it has to acquire, even if it does not want to.” (Letter to Arnold Ruge, September 1843.)
Faithfulness to the Intellectual and Artistic Avant-Gardes of the Twentieth Century
We recognize the importance of twentieth-century avant-garde thought for the rethinking and renewal of the leftist philosophical and political tradition. We believe that in order for this renewal to happen we need a maximally open, non-dogmatic approach that presupposes a critical reception of ideas, concepts, and practices that have formed outside the framework of doctrinal Marxism. Our urgent task is to reconnect political action, engaged thought, and artistic innovation.
Class Composition
One of the basic problems of theory remains the definition of contemporary society’s class structure. At present, when labor relations are in a process of radical transformation, the very notion of classes is changing as well. We can no longer rely wholly on the previous definitions of proletariat and bourgeoisie, or on old forms of organizing the struggle for liberation. We believe that we have to continue to re-examine class theory by considering the contemporary development of the antagonism between labor and capital. We affirm that this antagonism remains the central one. The transformation of society has not only not made it disappear; on the contrary, this antagonism has only been exacerbated and therefore needs to be interpreted anew. We are also faced here with the question of rethinking the strategies and tasks of the critical intellectual in a conjuncture where the configuration of productive forces is changing.
The Tasks of Contemporary Art
Contemporary art that is produced as a commodity form or a form of entertainment is not art. It is the conveyor-belt manufacture of counterfeits and narcotics for the enjoyment of a “creative class” sated with novelty. One of our most vital tasks today is unmasking the current system of ideological control and manipulation of people. The pseudocreativity of this system is no more than the commodification not only of the fruits of their labor, but also of all forms of life. We are convinced that genuine art is art that de-automates consciousness— first, that of the artist, then that of the viewer. And because art is an activity open to everyone, neither power nor capital can have a monopoly on the “ownership” of art.
One answer to the perennial debate on art’s autonomy is the possibility that it can be produced independently of art institutions, whether state or private. In the contemporary conjuncture, the selfnegation essential to art’s development happens outside institutional practices. As a public form of the unfolding of each person’s creative potential, the place of art during moments of revolutionary struggle has always been and always will be in the thick of events, on the squares and in the communes. At such moments, art takes the form of street theater, posters, actions, graffiti, grassroots cinema, poetry, and music. Renewing these forms at this new stage in history is the task of the genuine artist.
What Is the Place of Revolutionary Art in a Time of Reaction?
Although mass movements for the transformation of society are temporarily absent, art’s place is nevertheless still on the side of the oppressed. Its central task is the elaboration of new forms for the sensual and critical apprehension of the world from the perspective of collective liberation. Art should exist not for museums and dealers but in order to develop and articulate a new mode of “emancipated sensuality.” It should become an instrument for seeing and knowing the world in the totality of its contradictions. The museums and institutions of art should function as depositories and laboratories for the aesthetic exploration of the world. We should, however, shield them from privatization, economization, and subordination to the populist logic of the culture industry.
That is why we believe that right now it would be wrong to refuse to work in any way with cultural and academic institutions—despite the fact that the majority of these institutions throughout the world are engaged in the flagrant propaganda of commodity fetishism and servile knowledge. The political propaganda of all other forms of human vocation either provokes the system’s harsh rejection or the system co-opts it into its spectacle.
At the same time, however, the system is not homogeneous—it is greedy, stupid, and dependent. Today, this leaves us room to use these institutions to advance and promote our knowledge. We can bring this knowledge to a wide audience without succumbing to its distortion. That is why we need to develop clear criteria for deciding in which venues we can conduct our struggle, which projects should be boycotted and denounced, and with whom and on what conditions we can collaborate.
Our Basic Program
In the current situation, we propose that self-governed collectives use the following basic program as their guide:
– Don’t allow external factors to intervene as you develop your ideas and realize your projects. Don’t give away exclusive rights to the distribution of your work. Don’t directly or indirectly advertise the institutions of power and capital within your projects.
– Economic relations have to be built in a political way. You need to collectively demand that your labor be compensated fairly and with dignity. By entering into a working relationship with the institutions of power, you demonstrate their capitalistic, exploitative nature.
– Don’t participate in projects whose results (symbolic capital, surplus value) can be instrumentalized for political ends that contradict the internal tasks of your collective’s work.
– As you realize your project you should try to make your work as “non-transparent” as possible. At the same time, you should strive to produce situations whose meaning can be fully manifested only outside the limited frame of concrete relations of production. This means that you should construe the use value of the work in such a way that institutions of power will be hard pressed when they try to convert it into exchange value.
At the same time, we insist on an uncompromising critique of and struggle against all institutions of culture that base their work on corruption and the primitive servicing of the interests of commercial structures, the state, and ideology. We must constantly “slap” these dimwits and prostitutes “on the wrist” and show them their shameful place in history. We will use all the means at our disposal to make this happen.
The Local Aspect of the Struggle
We demand, as a minimum, the abolition of tacit censorship and an end to all repression of political and cultural activity. It follows from this demand that we need state and public support for social research projects and critical art practices in Russia that are independent of private interests.
Avoiding the traditional choice between “reformism” and “radicalism,” we insist on the search for a specific, local configuration of demands and transformational programs. For a start we demand a few concrete things. Public funds should be transparently distributed for the support of research and art in the public space, as well for grassroots initiatives. They should also be used to support work based on the harsh criticism of contemporary institutions of power, both in culture and in politics. On the other hand, this is possible only as part of a radical social transformation that would undermine the entire system of authoritarian capitalism. In order to foster conditions for this transformation, we need new forms of coordination with all other fronts of the struggle—with workers, trade unions, environmentalists, feminists, and anti-authoritarian activists. We have to propagate models of activist self-education and the politicization of artistic and intellectual practices. These are the bases for a future broad consolidation of leftists and the hegemony of our ideas in society.
December 2008, first published at the newspaper "When Artist Struggle Together"
