Art Production
The gap that has traditionally existed between artistic and non-artistic labor is increasingly narrowing, with artistic labor becoming more representative of society’s functioning as a whole. As the Internet has become the main worksite for art production and thus has become controllable in ways it never was before, this current raises new questions concerning the political dimensions of art and the role of the artist in contemporary society.
Infrastructure
When we in the West, or in the industrialized, technologized societies, congratulate ourselves on having a well-functioning infrastructure, we forget the degree to which these have become protocols that bind and confine us in their demand to be conserved and resisted. In recognition of the need to think far beyond the models of organizational structures needed for the operation of a society or institution, this current offers a starting point from which to develop new pathways to understand infrastructure.
Insurgent Cosmopolitanism
Our comprehension of the polity has long been centered on the assumption of a consensual political contract between citizen and state. Recent insurgent upheavals, however, have unmasked this consensus as fiction, retrieving the ideal of cosmopolitanism as an active and critical strategy that sets itself against the grain of national(ist) restrictions. This current explores the continuing presence of a revolutionary hope of achieving solidarity through identifying points of affinity, shared criticality, and common affirmation.
Dissident Knowledges
Defying conventional fictions and their established doctrines and institutions requires tapping into knowledges that offer new archives from which to read our contemporary moment. Often kept hidden in the cracks of our attention economy, this current uncovers and formulates knowledges that, by being at once embedded and excluded, have the power to both resist the known and propose new imaginaries of how things could be otherwise.
With contributions by: Maria Thereza Alves and
Jimmie Durham,
Daniel Baker, Neil Beloufa,
James Benning,
Ethel Brooks,
Tania Bruguera,
Chen Chieh-jen, Chto Delat?/What is to be done?,
Phil Collins,
Josef Dabernig,
Ekaterina Degot,
Manthia Diawara,
Marlene Dumas,
Marcus Geiger,
Nida Ghouse,
IRWIN, Hassan Kahn,
Július Koller,
Nicolas Kozakis and Raoul Vaneigem,
Li Ran Thomas Locher,
Sharon Lockhart,
Teresa Margolles, Radhouane El Meddeb,
Aernout Mik,
Nástio Mosquito,
Rabih Mroué,
Marion von Osten,
Stefan Panhans,
Piotr Piotrowski,
Rasha Salti,
Christoph Schlingensief with
Nina Wetzel, Matthias Lilienthal, and
Paul Poet,
Keiko Sei,
Mladen Stilinović, Christopher Kulendran Thomas, and
Tom Trevatt,
Ultra-red
FORMER WEST Berlin Public Editorial Meeting moderated by
Simon Sheikh
Learning Place
During a week-long educational performance around 150 students from institutes around the world engage on topics such as the commodification of knowledge, critique of creativity, and functioning of edu-industries in today’s cognitive capitalism. Learning Place sets out to strip the dominant educational practice of its self-evident normality and so foster its critique and necessary transformation.
With contributions by:
Bini Adamczak,
Ute Meta Bauer,
Beatrice von Bismarck,
Arianna Bove,
Tania Bruguera,
Julie Burchardi,
Chen Chieh-jen, Chto Delat?/What is to be done?,
Keti Chukhrov,
Katja Diefenbach,
Helmut Draxler,
Köken Ergun, Nina Fischer and Maroan el Sani,
Tom Holert,
Antonia Josten,
Gal Kirn,
Adi Keter,
Brigitta Kuster,
Maurizio Lazzarato,
Dieter Lesage,
Li Ran,
Maria Lind,
Isabell Lorey,
Esther Lu,
Katja Mayer,
Angela Melitopoulos,
Andrea Milat,
Stefan Nowotny, Ahmet Oğüt,
Alexei Penzin,
Ozren Pupovac,
Tihana Pupovac,
Gerald Raunig,
David Riff,
Theo Röhle,
Katya Sander, Ashkan Sepahvand,
Simon Sheikh,
Judith Siegmund, Société Réaliste:
Ferenc Gróf and
Jean-Baptiste Naudy,
Jon Solomon,
Felix Stalder,
Mladen Stilinović,
Zoran Terzić,
Oxana Timofeeva,
Samo Tomšič,
Tom Trevatt,
Füsun Türetken,
Ina Wudtke, Dolores Zinny and Juan Maidagan