“It’s just the simple thing that’s hard, so hard to do.”(B.Brecht)

The year of 1990 stands for the triple defeat of the Left: the retreat of the social-democratic Welfare State politics in the developed First World, the disintegration of the Soviet-style Socialist states in the industrialized Second World, and the retreat of emancipatory movements in the Third World. A certain epoch was thereby over, the epoch which began with the October Revolution and was characterized by the Party-State form of organization. Does this mean that the time of radical emancipatory politics is over?

In recent years, there are multiple signs which indicate the need for a new beginning. The utopia of the 1990, the Fukuyamaist “end of history” (liberal-democratic capitalist as the finally found natural social order) died twice in the first decade of the XXIst century. While the 9/11 attacks signaled its political death, the financial crisis of 2008 signals its economic death. In these new conditions, the task is not only to reflect on new strategies, but to radically rethink the most basic coordinates of emancipatory politics. One should go well beyond the rejection of the Party-State Left in its “Stalinist” form – a common place today -, and extend this rejection to the entire field of the “democratic Left” as the strategy to reform the system from within its representative-democratic state form. Much more than the debacle of the Really-Existing Socialism, the defeat of 1990 was the final defeat of this “democratic Left.” This defeat raises the question: is “Communism” still the name to be used to designate the horizon of radical emancipatory projects? In spite of their theoretical differences, the participants share the thesis that one should remain faithful to the name “Communism”: this name is potent to serve as the Idea which guides our activity, as well as the instrument which enables us to expose the catastrophes of the XXth century politics, those of the Left included.

The symposium will not deal with practico-political questions of how to analyze the latest economic, political, and military troubles, or how to organize a new political movement. More radical questioning is needed today – this is a meeting of philosophers who will deal with Communism as a philosophical concept, advocating a precise and strong thesis: from Plato onwards, Communism is the only political Idea worthy of a philosopher.

“The communist hypothesis remains the good one, I do not see any other. If we have to abandon this hypothesis, then it is no longer worth doing anything at all in the field of collective action. Without the horizon of communism, without this Idea, there is nothing in the historical and political becoming of any interest to a philosopher. Let everyone bother about his own affairs, and let us stop talking about it. In this case, the rat-man is right, as is, by the way, the case with some ex-communists who are either avid of their rents or who lost courage. However, to hold on to the Idea, to the existence of this hypothesis, does not mean that we should retain its first form of presentation which was centered on property and State. In fact, what is imposed on us as a task, even as a philosophical obligation, is to help a new mode of existence of the hypothesis to deploy itself.” (Alain Badiou)

Speakers:
Judith Balso, Alain Badiou, Bruno Boostels, Terry Eagleton, Peter Hallward, Michael Hardt, Jean-Luc Nancy, Jacques Ranciere, Alessandro Russo, Alberto Toscano, Gianni Vattimo, Wang Hui, Slavoj Zizek

For more information: here
Cost for all three days: Standard = £100 Birkbeck Staff and all Students = £45

Public booking form for Standard – £100 and Non-Birkbeck students – £45
Birkbeck booking form (login required) for Birkbeck Staff and Students – £45

To pay by cheque please click here for a form.

Friday 13th March Room B33 Birkbeck Main Building
Saturday 14th March Room B34 Birkbeck Main Building
Sunday 15th March Room B34 Birkbeck Main Building

There will be an overflow room on each day with a video/audio link. Bookings will be taken on a first come first served basis.

The presentation introduces the work of the Foundation for Peer-to-Peer Alternatives – a clearing house for open/free, participatory/p2p and commons-oriented initiatives. The interest is in how P2P networks challenge hierarchical server-client relations and provide an alternative organisational principle for understanding cultural production and the creation of value. In discussion we aim to explore the potential of this way of thinking to re-energise the production of art following the principle that emergent and radical arts practices can be found in social energies not yet recognised as art.
http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/about

I’ve been to Picnic 08 in Amsterdam, kindly invited by Planetart, that will have a big show on Friday at the final party of the festival.
The bad news news, although anyone knows about, because on Picnic program there was nearly nothing about Planetart activities, for the Picnic attenders is that on that night there won’t be the Tesla Coils show due to security problems.

The good news is there was the sun for three days.
Anyhow from the photo you see a little of the atmosphear there,fizzy and vibrant, in line with the talks: always brilliant and looking forward, with a lot of assertion and few questions. It’s a festival emotioned by technology.
Really well curated in all the details, a little bit tooo much..

Coming at picnic i thought it would be more focused on creativity, where it’s much more about making business with creativity or sometimes entertain guests.

A lot interesting talkers between them Adam Greenfield, that presented his idea of “Long here and Big Now”, about the explosion the time/place coordinates in or contemporary cities, Michael Tchao, general manager of the Nike Tech Lab, that presented the ideas of Nike to connect physical objects, the shoes, to online services and communities, talking a lot about “motivation within motivation”, so looking at technology as a force of motivation. ( to run and to use your running shoes…).
Today there was the director of Business Developmnent of Goggle Europe: the room was thrilled and also the presetators, that was always perfect, seemed a little bit nervous. My impression was that Google has a strong corporate message and she delivered it precisely. Then she did’nt tell anything really itneresting about Google. What was clear is that Goggle is betting on open platforms, letting the user decide how to use it and that’s good for them i think. I think their operationl keyword now is OPEN, meaning that they want to enter everywhere.

Besides the conferences i saw a lot of people having fun and joking, presenting a playful attitude to technology not so much critical.
The only critical content be found inside the free Books printed by Institute of Network Cultures, distribuited at the bookshop.
Then a part from the main room conference i think more interesting insights can be found in the other locations, where there were interesting and more foucsed speech about the impact of newtechnologies in Africa, about RFID, about digital art.

Talking about the e-art exhbition i found it a little bit too clean, I think it’s Picnic style this neat attitude, but personally it brings everything too much on the side of business and less of creativity.

From 24 to 26 September 2008, thousands of creative minds from all over the world will come together in Amsterdam for the third PICNIC.

In the LIFT08 opening keynote, science fiction writer Bruce Sterling looked in his rear mirror to see the near future, and predicts a boring 2008.

Joshua Davis and John Maeda talk about design, programming and the world that exists somewhere inbetween at the FITC Festival in Toronto in 2007.

16,17,18 maggio
S.a.L.E. DOCKS
VENEZIA

L’arte non sfugge alla centralità che beni immateriali, saperi e attitudini relazionali assumono per le forme contemporanee della produzione.
L’arte e la produzione culturale, all’interno della metropoli, spazio sociale produttivo per eccellenza, sono elementi costitutivi nei processi di soggettivazione e contemporaneamente, rappresentano un fattore decisivo per definire il posizionamento strategico di ciascuna area metropolitana nella competizione economica tra città globali.
Inoltre, l’arte mantiene un rapporto paradossale con il capitale finanziario.
Ciò che Multiversity ha deciso di affrontare problematicamente si chiama “fabbrica della cultura”, ovvero il luogo della valorizzazione del capitalismo cognitivo, ma che tale è solo nella misura in cui è, prima di ogni altra cosa, il luogo della potenza della soggettività creativa, dell’espressione delle moltitudini, e, di conseguenza, lo spazio di un quotidiano corpo a corpo tra libertà della creazione e autonomia della cooperazione, da un lato, e dispositivi del dominio e dello sfruttamento di questa potenza produttiva, dall’altro.
Infine, verranno presentati e discussi i primi risultati, seppur parziali, di un’inchiesta sul precariato cittadino legato all’arte contemporanea e al lavoro immateriale. La posta in gioco è la possibilità che una composizione sociale centrale a livello produttivo possa trasformarsi in una composizione politica.

PROGRAMMA

1) Venerdì 16
ore 17 Arte e Attivismo
Marco Baravalle, Claire Fontaine, José Pérez de Lama (Osfa),
Brian Holmes, Marko Stamenkovic

ore 21 Performance: Margine Operativo.

2) Sabato 17
ore 9.30 Arte e Attivismo (seconda sessione)
Marco Scotini, Giovanna Zapperi, Judith Revel, Maurizio Lazzarato

ore 14 Arte e Mercato
Adam Arvidsson, Chiara Bersi Serlini, Anna Daneri, Matteo Pasquinelli, Pier Luigi Sacco, Angela Vettese.

17.30 Arte e Moltitudine
Antonella Corsani, Antonio Negri, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Pascal Nicolas le Strat.

ore 21 Performances DJ Stra

3) Domenica 18
ore 9.30 Arte e moltitudine.(seconda sessione)
Alberto de Nicola, Gigi Roggero, Devi Sacchetto.

ore 18 Massimo Cacciari :
una lectio su:
“Brodway Boogie-Boogie” di Piet Mondrian
“One: Number 31″ di Jackson Pollock

Parteciperanno inoltre alla discussione nel corso del seminario:
Beppe Caccia, Octavi Comeron. Andrea Fumagalli, Cristina Morini, Margine Operativo, Sandro Mezzadra, Alessandro Petti.

Durante tutta la durata del seminario e fino al 16 giugno il S.a.L.E. ospiterà una selezione di opere di: Claire Fontaine, Marcelo Exposito, Andrea Morucchio, Lab. Cartografia Partecipata.

Per info e aggiornamenti del programma: www.sale-docks.org

Site:

The first India-China-Russia Trilateral Conference held in New Delhi- organized by FICCI and CII in partnership the Ministry of External Affairs, government of India – saw V.I. Trubnikov, Ambassador, Russian Federation, Nalin Surie, Secretary (West) Ministry of External Affairs, Bu Jian Guo, Charge d’Affaires, Chinese Embassy and G.G. Petrov, vice-president, Chambers of Commerce engage on strengthening economic cooperation in a range of sectors.

Nalin Surie, Secretary (West), Ministry of External Affairs, pointed out that the Conference was aimed at giving an economic, trade and business content to the ongoing process of strengthening the political relations amongst the three countries, with sectoral focus on energy, infrastructure, biotechnology, chemicals, pharmaceuticals and nanotechnology.

It was agreed that the conference should be an annual event and the next meeting would be held in China in 2009.

The meeting was a follow-up to the deliberations of the Foreign Ministers of India, China and the Russia, most recently in China, where Lavrov said Russia has no plans to enter into a military alliance with China and India. He added: “We advance cooperation in the bilateral format, in the trilateral format, within the Shanghai Cooperation Organization framework and in other structures. We also seek to resolve key security issues through multilateral discussions by politicians,” reported Chinadaily.

India, China and Russia constituted 40% of the world’s population and therefore was one of the largest markets in the world.