The Really Open University (Leeds)

Here at the University of Leeds (UK) a new group called ‘The Really Open University’ has been set up.  The ROU aims to help resist the planned £35 million of cuts (in a record turnout the lecturers union, UCU, recently voted to strike), but also to inject a more general critique of the neoliberal university and link to wider social struggles.  Part of this will include the establishment of a ‘really open university’.

This is from the group’s website:

“Our struggle is not simply a defensive one. We do not wish to preserve the university as it is, an elite and insular institution that reproduces the inequalities found throughout our current society. We don’t care about theories of governance, corporate strategies, we don’t care for teaching or learning how to control our imaginations! The university is bankrupt: we must work to transform education, to open it up, give people the right to study what they want to study, and teach what they want to teach, restore the value of the idea and the quest for understanding. We must create a university which bases itself on entirely different values: we call this the ‘Really Open University’. How do we build this institution? Through the occupation of the spaces where we work, play and consume and the reappropriation of this time and space for our own ends. Imagine working to produce what we need, to learn so as to enrich our lives, to wake up looking forward to Monday. Imagine a world on our own terms”.

The first issue of the ROU newsletter ‘The Sausage Factory’ is available on the website:

http://www.reallyopenuniversity.org/

_______________________________________________

We gratefully acknowledge receipt of this news from the edufactory mailing list:
edufactory@listcultures.org
http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/edufactory_listcultures.org

For an overview of education-related protests worldwide in 2009, go here.

Reartikulacija: New Issues Online Now

IN DECEMBER 2009 THREE NEW NUMBERS OF REARTIKULACIJA WERE ISSUED

THE LAW OF CAPITAL: HISTORIES OF OPPRESSION

The starting point of Reartikulacija no. 7, no. 8, and no. 9 is the analysis of the present state of things in relation to the historical role of capital in (de)regulating all social political, labour, epistemological, and life processes. A permanent state of exception is being developed to reshape society; making it sterile, incapable of thinking alternatively, i.e. transforming it into a politically dead society. Fear of losing jobs and houses, fear of migrants, of diversity, of the crisis, etc., has started to function as the basic regulator of life. Therefore, Reartikulacija no. 7, no. 8, and no. 9 want to show that capital’s upgrading strategies call for its firm and consequent denigration, criticism and degradation. Reartikulacija no. 7, no. 8, and no. 9 present a new structure of producing interdisciplinary radical-critical discourses. Although every number is meant to function independently, they are in fact all connected through the international project The Law of Capital: Histories of Oppression. We define the latter as an International Research Project with Exhibition and Symposium that comprises the publishing of the 3 issues of Reartikulacija. It is through the conceptual base of the project that the collaboration of the exposed radical critical discourse of each issue starts to take place, thus unveiling not just the problematic side of capitalist exploitation, but also exposing all the strategies and modes of production by way of which capital has been subjugating people, territories, discourses, etc. The project The Law of Capital: Histories of Oppression is a critical intervention in the structure of contemporary capitalist societies, aiming to shed light on social inequalities, contemporary forms of colonization, commodification, marginalization of various sexual and ethnic groups, and general exploitation by capital, which has been faced by the major part of the worlds population for centuries. The project puts focus on the development of a discursive/intervention platform between art, theory, philosophy and activism, in order to fight racism, homophobic normalities, exploitation, expropriation and coloniality. A crucial point is being presented in the framework of the project, namely the De-linking from Capital and the Colonial Matrix of Power, that through its double role (as a supplement and a symposium), further connects the issues no. 7, no. 8, and no. 9 together into an intervention marked by its uniformed multilayered intermediality. In this issue, only the texts included in the supplement De-linking from Capital and the Colonial Matrix of Power are translated into Slovene, since the precarious situation by which we are restricted persists, and does not allow us to provide additional funds for the basic fees (small, almost symbolic, but still important) for our faithful translators and language editors. Nevertheless, we will continue to publish Reartikulacija, regardless of the precarious situation, since we are clearly convinced that only through the constant production of radical-critical discourse are we able to detect new as well as old forms of oppression, and most importantly, that we can propose some changes in the end. Certainly, this is what it is all about, and maybe the general time is favorable to such ideas, as there are more and more of those who have enough regarding all the these necro-governmentality procedures imposed on our studies, actions and lives. We can unite our forces. This is our power, and the three issues of Reartikulacija testify this clearly.
—Marina Gržinić and Sebastjan Leban, Editors of the journal Reartikulacija

From the Occupation at the University of Sussex

http://defendsussex.wordpress.com/2010/02/08/occupation-statement-1/

Occupation Statement 1

We have occupied the top floor of Bramber House, University of Sussex, Brighton. There are 106 of us.

The decision to occupy has been taken after weeks of concerted campaigning during which the university management have repeatedly failed to take away the threat of compulsory redundancies and course cuts.

We recognise that an attack on education workers is an attack on us.

The room we have occupied is not a lecture theatre but a conference centre. As such, we are not disrupting the education of our fellow students; rather, we are disrupting a key part of management’s strategy to run the university as a profitable business.

They’re occupying everywhere in waves across California, New York, Greece, Croatia, Germany and Austria and elsewhere – and not only in the universities. We send greetings of solidarity and cheerful grins to all those occupation movements and everyone else fighting the pay cuts, cuts in services and jobs which will multiply everywhere as bosses and states try and pull out of the crisis.

But we are the crisis.

Profitability mean nothing against the livelihoods destroyed, lost homes, austerity measures, green or otherwise. We just heard we’ve increased ‘operational costs’ - they’d set out the building for a meeting and now they’ll have to do it again.

We’ll show them “operational costs.“

Occupy again and again and again.

NO CUTS ANYWHERE.

THE UNIVERSITY IS A FACTORY. STRIKE. OCCUPY.

–All the occupiers of the 8th of February.

_______________________________________________

We gratefully acknowledge receipt of this news from the edufactory mailing list:
edufactory@listcultures.org
http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/edufactory_listcultures.org

For an overview of education-related protests worldwide in 2009, go here.

Anjelika Artyukh: Caucasian Lessons

(Guest post by our friend the Petersburg film critic and scholar Anjelika Artyukh. For more information about Russian Lessons, see the film’s official website.)

Anjelika Artyukh

CAUCASIAN LESSONS

Andrei Nekrasov and Olga Konskaya’s film Russian Lessons will never be shown on Russian television. Not, at least, until Russia becomes a democratic state with a free mass media. It is entirely possible that many western channels will refuse to buy it, because the issues that it touches on also concern the western world and the mass media in the West. The future of Russian Lessons lies at festivals, which makes the fact that its very first festival screening was in Rotterdam, a place where such films usually don’t go unnoticed, particularly important.

And so, what were we told of in Russian Lessons? If we were to put it briefly, then it’s about the cynicism of the Russian authorities, who have turned the mass media into a form of mass manipulation. Nekrasov and Konskaya’s film is an investigation into the lies surrounding the Georgian-Ossetian war that flared up in 2008 and how that war was billed by the Russian mass media as direct aggression on the part of Georgia against South Ossetia. The film on several occasions shows Vladimir Putin’s notorious announcement that in the bombing of the city of Tskhinvali on August 8, 2,000 civilians had been killed. This announcement became official information accepted as the truth not only by the majority of Russian citizens, but also by the western mass media, even including the BBC. Nekrasov and Konskaya refute this information. They do a simple and very brave thing: they head off through the conflict zone to meet up with one another (Nekrasov travels to Georgia, Konskaya to Southern Ossetia), collecting information about the events of the war and interviewing a multitude of victims and soldiers, as well as meticulously studying the official information sources. Their investigation convincingly demonstrates that prior to August 8 the majority of inhabitants of Tskhinvali were evacuated by Russian soldiers and that the horrifying figure of 2,000 was merely an anti-Georgian propaganda card played by the Russian authorities. And it was a card played not without the support of major cultural figures. Thus, for example, the conductor and artistic director of the Mariinsky Theater Valery Gergiev, as if echoing the conductor of genius Mravinsky during the Siege of Leningrad in the Second World War, performed Shostakovich’s renowned symphony in memory of the victims of Tskhinvali.

However, the filmmakers’ journey to the battlefield, crowned by their long-awaited meeting on the border of Ossetia and Georgia, unexpectedly provides another important discovery – once peaceful Georgian-Ossetian villages have become a zone of ethnic conflict not only thanks to the actions of Ossetian separatists and Georgian nationalists, but also thanks to the very significant involvement on the part of Russia, a country that is incapable of freeing itself of its imperialist ambitions and, equally, an historically formed complex which leads it to continue to regard itself as the master in the Caucasus. This “master complex” in the region, which for many years has inspired the hatred of the native populations there, was even written of by Lev Tolstoi in his novella “Hadji Murat,” lines from which Olga Konskaya aptly reads in the film’s off-screen narration.

Filmmaker Andrei Nekrasov

The filmmakers didn’t flinch at expanding the context and giving a wider explanation of the nature of the problem in the Caucasus. They remind us of the history of the Georgian-Abkhazian War of 1993, which in many ways became the template for Russia’s aggressive policies in the Caucasus, where Russia didn’t want to lose Abkhazia as a territory within its sphere of interest. They bravely demonstrated how western leaders, in exchange for economic advantages (primarily revolving around Russian gas), were prepared to close their eyes to Russia’s Caucasian policies, to this day not wishing to see the Abkhazian genocide of 1993 as an issue that could be compared with that of Kosovo. The west doesn’t want to get involved in the issue of the Caucasus, and thus leaves it under Russia’s control. However, this only deepens the Caucasian problem, because, as is usually the case with Russia, the human factor is given the very lowest level of importance.

Russian Lessons is perhaps not the most crafted of films in terms of its cinematographic form (although the first half of the filmmakers’ journey to the Caucasus is an achievement). It is, however, very brave and convincing in terms of its content. It poses a very important question, openly and honestly. What is more, it poses it in a way that none of the other documentary film directors in modern Russia are even attempting anymore. And never mind if in modern Russia the film is regarded as anti-Russian propaganda for doing so.

Translated by Tobin Auber

Free Umida Akhmedova!

• AICA (International Association of Art Critics) Open Appeal for Umida Akhmedova
• Stop the Criminal Suit against Prominent Photographer Umida Akhmedova (petition to Uzbek president Ismail Karimov)
• Umida Akhmedova’s documentary film The Burden of Virginity
• Sanobar Shermatova, “The Photos of Umida Akhmedova: An Unglamorous Look at Women and Men” (in Russian; includes photographs)
• BBC News: “Negative images of Uzbekistan?” (slideshow of ten photos by Akhmedova)
• The Photos of Umida Akhmedova (larger selection of her photographs with brief commentary in Russian)

Journalist charged with defaming Uzbeks, faces 8 years jail

New York, January 22, 2010—The Committee to Protect Journalists today called on the Uzbek authorities to immediately drop all charges against Umida Akhmedova, a prominent photojournalist and documentary filmmaker who covers gender, ethnic, and cultural issues, and allow her to continue to do her work without fear of reprisal.

On January 13, investigators with the city police department in the Uzbek capital, Tashkent, criminally charged Akhmedova with insulting and libeling the Uzbek people and its traditions through her work, according to international news reports. On Thursday, investigators informed Akhmedova’s lawyer that they had concluded their probe and the case will be transferred to court in the next few days, Akhmedova told CPJ. If convicted on both charges, she could serve up to eight years in jail. Akhmedova is prohibited from leaving the country, she told CPJ.

According to the independent regional news Web site Ferghana, the charges stem from a 2007 album of photographs depicting life in Uzbek villages and a 2008 documentary on the traditional ban on premarital sex. Both were produced with support by the Swiss Embassy in Tashkent, Akhmedova told CPJ. In the album, titled “Women and Men: From Dawn to Dusk,” Akhmedova showed men, women, and children in their daily routine and during traditional rituals. Her documentary—The Burden of Virginity—criticizes the pressure on young women in Uzbekistan to practice abstinence until marriage.

“We call on the authorities in Tashkent to drop the absurd charges against Umida Akhmedova at once,” said CPJ Europe and Central Asia Program Coordinator Nina Ognianova. “It is unthinkable that a documentarian should go to prison because the state interprets her work as insulting.”

The indictment, obtained by CPJ, and signed by Tashkent police investigator K. Kh. Akbarov, said that results of a “complex expert review” of Akhmedova’s work revealed that “with her unscientific, unsound, and inappropriate comments, which contain hidden implications, are directed at discrediting values and traditions of our people, and hold negative information that can affect moral and psychological conditions of the youth”—she insulted “traditions of the Uzbek people, which is viewed as defamation, scornful, and disrespectful attitude towards national traditions.”

According to Ferghana, in mid-November, Akhmedova learned that a criminal case concerning her work was filed by Uzbekistan’s State Agency for Press and Information, a government media regulator. Investigator Nodir Akhmadzhanov with the Mirabad District Police Department in Tashkent called and asked her to come and testify as a witness in the case. After the visit, Akhmedova told Ferghana she was perplexed at the authorities’ claims. She said Akhmadzhanov was unable to answer her question how the visual depiction of traditions could defame an entire nation. A month later, the same investigator told Akhmedova that, as an author of the documentary and album, she was no longer a witness in the criminal case but has been upgraded to a suspect; he suggested that she seek a lawyer, Ferghana reported.

In their conclusion, the state-sponsored panel of experts who reviewed Akhmedova’s work said it left a negative impression on viewers unfamiliar with Uzbek traditions, Ferghana reported: “Looking at the pictures, a foreigner who had not seen Uzbekistan comes to the conclusion that this is a country where people live in the Middle Ages. The author intentionally focuses on life’s hardships.”

Akhmedova deems the charges against her unsubstantiated but told CPJ she feared for her subjects. “I am not scared of being prosecuted but hope they will spare the people I have documented and worked with,” Akhmedova told CPJ.

Akhmedova is the author of several documentaries on Uzbekistan; her photos have been shown in exhibitions at home and abroad. She is the first female documentary filmmaker in Uzbekistan, the regional press reported. See a slide show of her work on the CPJ Blog.

Photographer who showed Uzbek reality to be tried for “insulting the people”

Reporters Without Borders condemns the upcoming trial of photographer and documentary filmmaker Umida Akhmedova as an absurd and flagrant violation of free expression that is all the more disturbing for having unleashed an all-out campaign of nationalist and conservative hysteria.

Two months after being summoned for the first time to a Tashkent police station, Akhmedova was officially notified on 23 January that the authorities had completed their investigation and would soon try her in connection with her work showing women and poverty in Uzbekistan. She is accused of slandering and insulting the Uzkbek people under articles 139 and 140 of the criminal code – charges that carry a maximum sentence of three years in jail.

The authorities have focused on her documentary “The Burden of Virginity” and a collection of 100 photos called “Woman and Man: From Dawn till Night.” Showing individuals and scenes from daily life, the book was published in 2007 with support from the Swiss embassy’s gender equality programme.

“This is the first time in Uzbekistan that a documentary filmmaker is going to be tried for films and photographs which, furthermore, are about subjects that are not political but social and ethnographic,” freelance journalist Aleksey Volosevich wrote in a recent article.

The prosecution case file includes the supposedly “scientific” analysis of Akhmedova’s photographs that a group of “experts” released on 13 January. In Soviet-era prose, the report accuses her of presenting a deliberately distorted picture of Uzbekistan that emphasizes the negative aspects.

Reporters Without Borders is amazed by the absurdity and bad faith of the report’s arguments: “Ninety percent of the photos were taken in isolated and under-developed Uzbek villages (…) Why does she not show nice places, modern buildings or prosperous villages?” At another point, Akhmedova is accused of “trying to portray Uzbek women as victims (…) giving the impression that Uzbekistan does nothing but housework (…) describing Uzbeks as barbarians.”

The persecution of Akhmedova was taken to a new stage by the “Current Affair” talk-show on the main public TV station two evenings ago. After screening extracts from her documentary, the programme showed guests denigrating her work and calling for her to be given the severest sentence for “offending the national traditions and sentiments of the Uzbek people.” Quoting President Islam Karimov at length, participants also described her work as part of “an information war waged against the country.”

Since Uzbekistan gained independence in 1991, a nationalist rhetoric glorifying an identity based on myths and traditions has been used instead of a communist discourse to legitimise President Karimov’s autocratic regime.

No discussion of the country’s social problems is permitted and the regime seems to be using Akhmedova as a scapegoat to whip up paranoia and perhaps to appease a conservative and religious segment of the population which is itself persecuted. By branding Akhmedova as agent of destabilisation in foreign pay, the authorities are making it clear that any debate about Uzbek society is unthinkable.

Nonetheless, civil society exasperation with the repeated attacks on civil liberties has begun to make itself felt in an unprecedented manner for a country that is such a police state (see this RFE/RL report on the reactions to journalist Khayrullo Khamidov’s arrest). In Akhmedova’s case, a broad campaign of support is under way and a petition has been launched on her behalf that has been relayed by the Ferghana.ru news agency, Radio Free Europe and many international NGOs.

The International Association of Art Critics has appealed to the Uzbek authorities to acquit Akhmedova while art critics in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan have even issued a scathing alternative report disputing the findings of the official “expert” report and ironically calling for its authors to be tried for “lack of professionalism, incompetence (…) and ignorance, liable to discredit the Uzbek justice system.”

In a recent charm offensive targeted at the international community, President Karimov said he was determined to promote democratisation and went to so far as to criticise the “compliant” parliament and the “tame” press. It is time for him to turn these words into actions.

Photographs © Umida Akhmedova

Utrecht Students Occupy Administration Building

This morning at 7:05 a group of students occupied the main building of the University of Utrecht. The students are protesting against the university’s board decision to stop publishing the paper version of the university newspaper. The action is the first of a series of national initiatives to stop budget cuts in education.

Website: http://studentenprotestutrecht.wordpress.com/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/stuproutrecht
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=278859536924&ref=mf

—
Communiqué

University of Utrecht, the Board of Directors building, February 1st 2010

The Board of Directors crossed the line this time, and this is unacceptable! Despite all efforts to save the paper version of the Ublad (the University newspaper) with the support of thousands of students,professors and the complete U-raad (Council of representatives of the University community), they continue to impose their controversial policies. In the meantime, the quality of our education is at risk and our student grants are about to be cut. This is why we, the occupiers of the building of the Board of Directors at the University of Utrecht, feel obliged to take action and take a stand in favor of an independent, paper version of the Ublad, for the democratization of our University government, and against the cuts on our education imposed by the Dutch government.

By cancelling the paper version of the Ublad, it has become impossible to keep the University community informed and to guarantee a democratic voice. The University should be a place for independent thinking and should always provide space for criticism. An independent University newspaper is precisely what we need in order to move the university community to start a dialogue and become engaged with each other and society.

In our view, this issue concerning the Ublad is one out of many attempts to transform the University into a company where the Board and her professional managers have their way at the expense of democracy, quality, diversity and scientific integrity. These core values which the University must represent, should be reflected in the way the University is governed. In fact, the University should be directly governed by the University community itself, instead of a non-democratically chosen clique.

Our concerns are not limited to Utrecht, because we are faced with drastic nationwide reforms such as the budget cuts on education, the possible cutting of student grants, the implementation of BSA (Binding Study Advice), and our minister of Education’s neglect to defend the proposition for a ‘student assessor’(a student in the Board of Directors). The position of the University and education in society is too important to be left up to and controlled by market mechanisms. This global process is negatively affecting education worldwide and has to be stopped immediately!

In Europe and the rest of the world, protests against this process are visible evidenced by the almost hundred occupations and mass demonstrations in the Global Week of Action in November 2009. Now it’s our turn and we demand the following:

* The Ublad in its current paper format with an independent editor must be permanently secured by the Board of Directors of the University of Utrecht.

* The U-raad of the University of Utrecht has the right to demand binding referenda, facilitated by the University of Utrecht, for issues they consider important. This will be recorded in the statutes.

* The U-raad of the University of Utrecht will get a direct voice in all decisions made by the Board of Directors of the University of Utrecht by a right to a fixed vote by U-raad majority and a veto right in case of unanimity of the U-raad.

* All participants and others involved in the occupation of the University of Utrecht on the 1st of February 2010 will be exempted from all charges, now and in the future, by the University of Utrecht and other parties and may leave the occupied building and terrain without involvement of other parties.

* The current minister of Education, Culture and Science, Mr. Ronald Plasterk, will publically offer his apologies to the Dutch people for the deterioration of education during his watch.

* The cabinet will publicly announce to stop the budget cuts and ensure more investment in higher education per capita.

Our duty as student activists will not be over until we are heard and our demands are met. Therefore, we encourage all students, teachers and parents to resist the structural deterioration of our education and take a stand for decent public education that everyone is entitled to. Save our education!
_______________________________________________
We gratefully acknowledge receipt of this news from the edufactory mailing list:
edufactory@listcultures.org
http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/edufactory_listcultures.org

For an overview of education-related protests worldwide in 2009, go here.

January 19 Anti-Fascist Demo in Moscow: Video

Here is a short compendium of video footage of the January 19 march against neo-Nazi terrorism in Moscow and other videos connected with that action. Thanks to Vlad Tupikin for assembling and posting these in his LiveJournal blog, as well as providing the following annotations to each video (which we have adapted slightly). We apologize for the lack of subtitles throughout.

Memorial Video about Stanislav Markelov

This video was edited specially for screening at the demonstration on January 19, 2010. The authorities did not give organizers permission to set up a screen and a video project at the demonstration, however. This video is also accessible on the January 19 Committee website.

A World Where Many Worlds Fit (Sherbrooke, Canada)

A WORLD WHERE MANY WORLDS FIT
An exhibition on the counter-globalization movement

Foreman Art Gallery of Bishop’s University
Sherbrooke, Canada
January 27 to March 20, 2010
http://www.ubishops.ca/foreman/english/exhibitions/2009-2010/worlds/index.html

Artists: ATSA (Canada), Zanny Begg (Australia), Etcétera (Argentina), Petra Gerschner (Germany), John Jordan (England), Oliver Ressler (Austria), ®TMark (United States), Gregory Sholette (United States), Nuria Vila + Marcelo Expósito (Spain), Dmitry Vilensky (Russia)

Curated by Oliver Ressler

The trope “A World Where Many Worlds Fit” goes back to the Subcomandante Marcos, when talking about the Zapatistas’ struggles in the Lacandonian Rainforest in Mexico. Since their uprising in 1994 the Zapatistas have been fighting for a less-hierarchic autonomous world where more options exist for involvement in democratic decision-making processes. They fight against an existing world, which calls itself “democratic,” but should rather be seen as a form of sophisticated oligarchy that functions in favor of the interests of the political and economic elite. While the Mexican army and paramilitary mercenaries are brutally defending this exclusive world of the elite in Chiapas, in the part of the world where I am coming from (Austria/Europe) the stick that punishes people who envision another world is usually not so visible. But this can change suddenly in times when those in power assemble in the framework of the summits of World Bank, International Monetary Fund, World Trade Organization, World Economic Forum or the G8. Though the decisions made by the politicians and business leaders at these meetings affect the lives of all people in the world, the negotiations take place hidden from the public gaze behind fences and ten-thousands of riot-police, becoming, therefore, a symbol for the undemocratic and illegitimate formation of global capitalism.

At each of these summits individual and collective singularities from all over the world come together to express that they – we – are opposed to this way of making decisions and ruling the world. These mobilizations against the summits form the movements’ most visible public appearance, movements that according to most narratives, originated at the 1999 protest against the World Trade Organization in Seattle. These articulated forms of resistance and protest in the center of capitalism, were strong enough to shut down the WTO summit in Seattle. Since 1999 this global movement has been showing up at each meeting of World Bank, IMF, WTO, WEF – unless, that is, the scared politicians decided to meet in the mountains, in deserts or in dictatorships in order to avoid the public manifestations of dissent at their summits. Even though this movement is the first that is truly globalized, it is usually being called counter-globalization movement. I prefer calling it the “movement of the movements.”

At the demonstrations, counter-summits and mass blockades many individuals and collectives come together: media activists, clown army, pink block, naked block, black block, anarchists, socialists, Trotskyists, members of ATTAC, human rights activists, feminists, migrants, indigenous people, artists, etc. All these singularities have their own images, banners, different public appearance and slogans, which not only represent something, but contribute to the creation of effective blockades and to the creation of a space. This space of representation is also a space for action that in the best cases spreads to other areas such as the local neighborhoods of the activists. This new social subject, sometimes referred to as “the multitude,” builds horizontally organized networks and has a radial transformation of society in mind.

The exhibition A World Where Many Worlds Fit at the Foreman Art Gallery of Bishop’s University in Sherbrooke is based on a section I curated for the Taipei Biennial in 2008 that presents the global movement as the brilliant example of collective intelligence it is through a variety of artistic practices. The exhibition features the work of 10 artists that focus directly on the counter-globalization movement. All artists show a strong commitment to the social movement and do not position themselves as “neutral” in relation to the movement. Many of the works focus on one of the cities whose name has become shorthand for demonstrations, counter-summits and/or blockades: Seattle, Prague, Québec City, Genoa, Buenos Aires, Gleneagles, St. Petersburg or Heiligendamm.

For further information on the participating artists and images from the pervious exhibition at the Taipei Biennial 2008 please check:

http://www.ressler.at/a_world_where_many_worlds_fit/

on the eastern front: video art from central and eastern europe 1989-2009 (Budapest)

…on the eastern front │video art from central and eastern europe 1989–2009
January 22 – March 7, 2010

Ludwig Museum – Museum of Contemporary Art
Palace of Arts
Komor Marcell u. 1, Budapest

Gordana Andjelić-Galić, Apsolutno, Azorro, Yael Bartana, Pavel Braila, Egon Bunne, Chto Delat, Kaspars Goba, Gusztáv Hámos, Ana Hušman, Kai Kaljo, Šejla Kamerić, Szabolcs KissPál, Damir Nikšić, Adrian Paci, Radek Community + Dmitry Gutov, Józef Robakowski, Anri Sala, András Sólyom, Milica Tomić, Artur Żmijewski

Curators: Rita Kálmán, Tijana Stepanović

The exhibition examines the effects of the changes taking place in the region of the former Soviet Bloc on the individual and on various groups of society from the aspect of socio-psychology. It focuses on the human dimensions of the transition beginning from the end of the eighties and on, micro-processes involved.

The period since the demolition of the Berlin Wall is characterised by democratisation throughout the region. However, the rate, timing, technique and extent of this transition vary from country to country. Consequently, the challenges of transition are addressed in a multiplicity of ways by individuals, groups and by society as a whole. The exhibition uses a psychological viewpoint to examine the relations and dynamics of the various groups of society and the individuals.

Video art proved to be a perfect tool for documentation and analysis of the radical political, social and economic changes, and it began to develop and become widespread in the region during the same period of changes. The exhibition takes advantage of this coincidence, when using this medium to introduce the processes dominating the recent past of the region.

As opposed to the conventions of film production, which required complex technical apparatus, video art appearing during the 60s represented a novel alternative. With to the mass appearance of easy-to-handle, so-called portable video cameras and VHS, from the 80s increasingly wider groups of amateurs and professionals were able to record motion pictures. After photography and film, the genre of video art also offered novel possibilities of extending – and manipulating – private and historic remembrance. The methods of forming public opinion and influencing the public have changed irreversibly, and the commencement of an information society was not simply an accompanying event of the political changes taking place in the region, but the promoter of such changes.

The exhibited works addressing society with severe criticism, document, analyse and contextualise this complex region and period. But rather than offering definite answers, they probe issues that were typically avoided or swept under the carpet in the public common discourse of the countries in the region.

What is our attitude to our historical past? What are the consequences of the changes in national identity and national stereotypes? How can individual lives be carried on amidst all these rearrangements in society? What intergroup relations and conflicts have played a defining role in the last twenty years?

The artists convey numerous individual viewpoints, which provide a personal tone to the aesthetic and critical discourse concerning the political changes and the period of transition.

Ground Floor America (Klagenfurt, Austria)

Ground Floor America

Exhibition

January 14 to February 26, 2010

Kunstraum Lakeside

Lakeside Park, Klagenfurt, Austria

with: Vyacheslav Akhunov, Factory of Found Clothes (Gluklya & Tsaplya), Yuri Leiderman, Vlado Martek, Jinoos Taghizadeh, Škart, Yelena Vorobyeva & Viktor Vorobyev

curated by: What, How and for Whom/WHW

“Ground Floor America” is the title of a travel book by Soviet writer duo Ilf and Petrov, written in 1936. Traveling as official Soviet writers through the USA during the Depression, and describing the American culture and way of life with their characteristic humor and satirical approach, they criticize both American reality in the 1930s as well as Soviet prejudices against “decadent American capitalism.” As an exhibition, Ground Floor America takes Ilf and Petrov’s approach as a starting point for questioning the notion of “curatorial research” within the broader field of cultural translation, looking at the parallels between the burgeoning liberal economy’s capacity to erode a hitherto existing social consensus — both in the crisis era of the 1930s and at present. Today, as then, one of the consequences of the economic crisis has been the massive rightward shift of the (European) electoral body. The post-89 conservative backlash, the dismantling of the welfare state, rampant anti-terror legislation and the black world of “security” agencies are all slowly eroding what was built up over two centuries of emancipatory struggles.

Ground Floor America reflects on the research undertaken by the curatorial collective WHW in the course of the two-year preparations for the 11th International Istanbul Biennial (September to November 2009) in the regions of the Middle East, Central Asia, Eastern Europe and the Caucasus, regions to various degrees struggling with their imposed and/or internalized “marginal” position in relation to the Western or Soviet project of modernism, in which contemporary art stands in a certain tension to the ideas of “authentic,” “autochthonous” national cultures. Against the growing professionalism geared exclusively towards the staging of the exhibition, disregarding processes of knowledge production that entail more than merely acquiring and interpreting information, as well as the intentional and unintentional effects of ideologies in the process, Ground Floor America focuses on those elements of “curatorial research” that stay hidden and outside of the international circulation of contemporary art. It is critical towards hegemonic cultural and geopolitical relations and investigates oppositional strategies, dealing with issues of discrepancy between local and international reception and questioning the very possibility of knowledge production under global conditions of contemporary cultural production.

ABOUT WHW: What, How & for Whom/WHW is a curatorial collective formed in 1999 and based in Zagreb, Croatia. Its members are Ivet Ćurlin, Ana Dević, Nataša Ilić and Sabina Sabolović, and designer and publicist Dejan Kršić. WHW organizes a range of productions, exhibitions and publishing projects and directs Gallery Nova in Zagreb. What, how and for whom, the three basic questions of every economic organization, concern the planning, concept and realization of exhibitions as well as the production and distribution of artworks and the artist’s position in the labor market. These questions formed the title of WHW’s first project, dedicated to the 150th anniversary of the Communist Manifesto, in 2000 in Zagreb, and became the motto of WHW’s work and the title of the collective. In 2002 WHW published Brian Holmes’s first book, Hieroglyphs of the Future.

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Christian Kravagna, Hedwig Saxenhuber | Curators

Anja Werkl | Coordination

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