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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|   \/| kunstraum

| _ /\| lakeside

Christian Kravagna, Hedwig Saxenhuber | Curators

Anja Werkl | Coordination

Lakeside Science & Technology Park GmbH

Lakeside B02 | 9020 Klagenfurt

T (+43-463) 22 88 22-20

M (+43-664) 83 99 305

www.lakeside-kunstraum.at

Communisms’ Afterlives (Brussels)

COMMUNISMS’ AFTERLIVES

Saturday, 13 February 2010, 15:00 – 18:00

WIELS

Av. Van Volxemlaan 354, Brussels

http://www.wiels.org/site2/event.php?event_id=345

Yevgeniy Fiks, Song of Russia no. 17, 2005-2007. Oil on canvas, 36 x 48″

A conference curated by Elena Sorokina and Nataša Petrešin-Bachelez for The Public School. With contributions from Adrian Rifkin, Marko Stamenkovic, Oxana Timofeeva, Grant Watson.

Through a series of polemic dialogues, we would like to trace different generations of intellectuals (artists, curators, philosophers, art historians) from the former East and West of Europe that deal with “shades of red,” the afterlives of Communism and its (un)expected turning points in its most recent philosophical and artistic reception following the financial and, more generally, post-Fordist crisis.

After the collapse of the Soviet bloc, communism as idea, image or problem has been regarded as “outmoded, absurd, deplorable or criminal, depending on the case.” Today, it is often presented by the mainstream media as a parenthesis of history, an aberration of the 20th century, as “a completely forgotten word, only to be identified with a lost experience.” Although the communist hypotheses of previous eras may no longer be valid, their histories, narratives and key notions have never ceased to spark attention and inform recent discussions such as the communal versus the common, and material versus immaterial property, to name just a few. Perceived from a greater distance today, communism has re-emerged as a topic for investigation in artistic and exhibition production, that reflects it in diverse ways, addressing the relevance of the term today or inviting provocative comparisons with the present.

This seminar aims at presenting various works that recast ideas related to communism and revisit it as a complex and diverse arena of political and aesthetic attitudes, which varied between nations, communities and historical periods. By no means does the seminar intends to take a nostalgic tour through the past decades, but rather seeks to address the topic through concrete art and exhibition projects realized recently. All of them are trying to deconstruct the idea of monolith, still very present in today’s reception, and to recuperate various episodes, stories and notably, the “communist apocrypha” — texts, music, visual production — which have never been part of the established ideological canon, and whose intellectual patterns shed new light on what the contemporary uses of the notion of communism might be. Instead of treating communism as pure political abstraction, the projects presented by the seminar deal with concepts, events and/or particular personalities related to communism and its history which have survived the Bildersturm of the recent past and can be artistically reactivated.

The conference is part of The Public School Brussels, a permanent project by the curatorial collective Komplot.

Principio Potosí. Modernidad y la llamada acumulación originaria (Madrid)

(For the announcement in Spanish go here.)

Melchor María Mercado, Álbum de Paisajes, Tipos Humanos y Costumbres de Bolivia.
Lámina 22. Carnaval, 1841-1869. Archivo y Biblioteca Nacionales de Bolivia, Sucre.

Principio Potosí. Modernidad y la llamada acumulación originaria

PUBLIC SEMINAR

February 4–5, 2010

Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía

Nouvel Building, Auditorium 200

Plaza del Emperador Carlos V, s/n

28012 Madrid

Tel: (+34) 91 774 10 00

Free Entry

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Marx describes primitive accumulation as the destruction of solidarity and power structures in traditional society as a consequence of the dynamics of exploitation triggered by capitalism. As Immanuel Wallerstein emphasizes, this does not entail a historical fact at the origins of capitalism, but persists in global society today in the same way it occurs at the origins of modernity. This condition defines a cyclical, traumatic process of expropriation and social disarticulation, which at the same time involves the mobilization of new, vital flows and complex processes of subjectification.

Principio Potosí, an exhibition curated by Alice Creischer, Max Jorge Hinderer and Andreas Siekmann (Museo Reina Sofía; Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin and Museo Nacional de Arte and Museo de Etnografía y Folklore in La Paz), contends that modernity does not have it origins or foundation in rationalism and the Enlightenment’s promises of liberty, but in the process of expansion and exploitation initiated in the sixteenth century with the discovery of primordial wealth in colonial territory. The process instigated a mechanism of instrumentalizing the Other that in many ways is far from having ended. Even greater than Paris during the French Revolution or London during the industrial revolution, Potosí in the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries marks a paradigm of globalized modernity in its concentration of capital and machinery to produce hegemony. It constitutes a principle that has operated with continuous reterritorialization throughout history. This seminar, the first public presentation of Principio Potosí, will debate the foundations, transformations and continuity of the accumulation principle as key to understanding the relationships of domination and resistance, moving beyond arguments that have led debates on anti-globalization in the previous decade.