"Dis-orders"

Dis-Orders

Assessorato alle Politiche Giovanili e alla Pace

Provincia di Venezia

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Comune di Venezia

Dis-orders

Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa

Palazzetto Tito Dorsoduro 2826, Venezia

Presidente Angela Vettese

Dis-orders A cura di Marco Baravalle

Consiglio di Amministrazione Giorgio Chiavalin Patrizia Magli Giampaolo Pavan Giandomenico Romanelli Angiola Tiboni Gianfranco Carlo Tramontin

Grafica catalogo Roberta Iachini CompuService Foto di copertina Luca Tommasi

Direttore Elisabetta Meneghel

Traduzioni testi Giuliana Racco Pamela Rech

Coordinamento generale Dora De Diana

Stampa Catalogo CompuService

Coordinamento curatoriale Marco Ferraris

In collaborazione con l'Assessorato alle Politiche Giovanili e alla Pace

24 ottobre 06 > 19 novembre 06

Curatori Stefano Coletto Marinella Venanzi Ufficio Stampa Giorgia Gallina Segreteria Tina Ponticiello Stagisti Valentina Silvestrin Giuditta Crovato

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L'arte è davvero capace di creare scompiglio? La sua attitudine è spesso stata cortigiana quando non mercenaria, ma la storia dei suoi rapporti con le utopie sociopolitiche è affascinante: un tracciato recente ma lunghissimo, in cui i momenti di esaltazione e fiducia si alternano all'abbandono del campo.

Is art truly capable of creating turmoil? Its attitude, when it wasn’t mercenary, has often been cavalier, yet the history of its relationships with socio-political utopias is fascinating: a recent but extremely long course, in which the moments of exaltation and faith alternate with the withdrawal from the field.

La Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa è lieta di potere ospitare un momento di riflessione ulteriore su questo tema: sapendo che non sono più i tempi di una speranza rivoluzionaria totalizzante, ma piuttosto di un negoziato elastico e continuo. La tradizione della Bevilacqua La Masa ha contemplato anche momenti di intenso ribellismo, di protesta che da prettamente artistica si faceva anche ideologica. Occasioni di riflessione sul disordine e sull'attivismo nelle arti visive non possono che essere, ancora oggi, di stimolo alla nostra riflessione sulla creatività giovanile e su quanto oggi la muove.

The Bevilacqua La Masa Foundation is pleased to host a moment of further consideration of this theme: aware that these are no longer times of all-encompassing, revolutionary hope, but rather of an elastic and continuous negotiation. The Bevilacqua La Masa Foundation’s tradition has, in the past, contemplated moments of intense ribellionism, of protest, which from the purely artistic have also become ideological.

Opportunities to reflect on disorder and activism in the visual arts can not, even today, help but stimulate our reflection on youth creativity and on the things which excite this creativity today.

Angela Vettese

Angela Vettese

DIS-ORDERS

L’attivismo radicale, nell’inesauribile varietà delle sue forme, comporta la produzione di disordini. Esso mina il discorso ufficiale, smuove le ceneri della pace sociale sotto cui cova il fuoco della battaglia, riconosce l’origine sanguinosa dell’ordine istituzionale.

Esso, nel rovesciare il celebre principio di Clausewitz, esprime la convinzione che la politica possa essere interpretata come la prosecuzione della guerra con altri mezzi.

E’ questa guerra che deve essere portata in superficie. Il dato di sopraffazione che fonda le nostre società, nascosto nei discorsi ufficiali, mascherato dalla presunta neutralità della giurisprudenza, viene riportato alla luce dall’attivista.

L’attivista è partigiano, nel senso che ha scelto da che parte stare e in virtù di tale scelta egli è costretto al conflitto.

Per gli artisti e i partecipanti di DIS-ORDERS, l’arte (e più in generale la cultura) è uno strumento di conflitto, un’arma.

Ovviamente, l’impiego di questa arma è definito, rispetto al passato, dall’attuale stato di prevalenza del capitalismo cognitivo e dall’integrazione del contesto (meglio del discorso) artistico all’interno di una rete produttiva più ampia ed articolata rispetto ad alcuni anni fa.

Il passaggio dal Fordismo al Postfordismo, dal predominio della produzione industriale a quello dell’economia dell’immateriale, ha determinato un corrispondente mutamento del modello organizzativo della produzione. Dove, in precedenza, questa era regolata attraverso una rigida verticalità gerarchica, oggi si osserva un’organizzazione di tipo orizzontale, a rete.

E’ la natura stessa del capitalismo cognitivo, con il peso sempre maggiore del settore dei servizi rispetto a quello dell’industria, con la sua dipendenza dalle tecnologie della comunicazione, a far sì che la produzione si strutturi come network.

La conoscenza in quanto merce esige di circolare e lo fa attraverso le complesse reti di relazioni di cui è intessuta la frammentata galassia del lavoro immateriale.

Il capitalismo cognitivo, qui sta lo scarto rispetto al passato, ha integrato nella figura del networker una serie di istanze di democratizzazione, alcuni degli aspetti che avevano caratterizzato le proteste dei movimenti per i diritti civili e la rivolta globale del Sessantotto.

Il networker sfugge all’irrigidimento all’interno di una gerarchia, non è soggetto alla pressione di un’autorità diretta, al contrario, nella rete vengono incoraggiati la varietà degli scambi e la loro bidirezionalità.

La flessibilità delle reti, assieme alla loro capacità di mutazione

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morfologica, rende possibile il superamento della standardizzazione del prodotto che, come afferma Brian Holmes, “era il segno visibile dell’alienazione dell’individuo sotto il regime della produzione di massa.”

In ultimo, il capitalismo cognitivo è affamato di differenza. La produzione sempre più sottilmente mirata e diversificata delle grandi compagnie multinazionali, richiede lavoratori, corpi, cervelli, e competenze altrettanto diversi tra loro.

Antipatia verso le gerarchie, sublimazione dell’alienazione del consumo, valorizzazione delle differenze: ecco la dimensione biopolitica del capitalismo globale, la messa a frutto delle conquiste di uno straordinario ciclo di lotte, ecco la nostra vita messa al lavoro.

Questa centralità della dimensione sociale aiuta a comprendere, ad esempio, il successo che il discorso dell’ Estetica Relazionale (indicando come campo dell’opera d’arte quello delle interazioni umane e del contesto in cui avvengono) ha registrato negli ultimi dieci anni. Esso, anche nella varietà delle sue manifestazioni artistiche, ha saputo cogliere la natura biopolitica, socio-reticolare del capitalismo cognitivo e sebbene non si presenti come uno strumento di critica diretta nei confronti dell’attuale modello organizzativo della produzione, il discorso dell’Estetica Relazionale sembra incapace di scrollarsi di dosso un’aura di ambiguità.

Più che una forma di resistenza, le dinamiche artistiche di stampo relazionale si sono dimostrate un efficace mezzo di interpretazione del capitalismo in rete.

Nel riconoscimento delle crescenti possibilità connettive del contesto artistico con altri settori produttivi, la “generazione relazionale” trova il proprio punto di maggior distacco rispetto alla critica istituzionale degli anni Settanta.

Dove l’arte concettuale sottolineava la specificità dello spazio espositivo al fine di farne una metafora della società intera, l’estetica relazionale preferisce sottolineare i nuovi link che quello stesso spazio è oggi in grado costruire con altri ambiti al di fuori del circuito artistico.

Tale frattura rispetto al passato non appare infondata, risponde ad una corretta osservazione dei processi capitalistici attuali, eppure rimane la sensazione che ad un’intuizione così importante non faccia seguito uno scarto adeguato.

Infatti, una volta riconosciuto il carattere generico della galleria, il suo status di luogo di produzione “tra gli altri” (orizzontalmente connesso agli altri), anziché interrogarsi sulla natura del nuovo modello organizzativo della produzione, sulla struttura reticolare del capitalismo contemporaneo, il discorso dell’Estetica

DIS-ORDERS

Relazionale ci si tuffa in modo acritico, occupando molte varietà di nodi (gallerie, musei, club, negozi, ecc.) e navigando gli infiniti canali della rete.

Sempre mantenendo l’innocente fluidità della merce, avida di circolazione, l’opera che risponde ai canoni dell’Estetica Relazionale produce interazioni e riflette sul contesto, incurante però dei rapporti di produzione che continuano a strutturarlo, incurante, inoltre, della propria posizione in quanto opera all’interno di questi, delle relazioni di potere che scorrono nella trama della rete e, in definitiva, del fatto che il network continui ad essere attraversato da una tensione binaria, dal conflitto tra capitale e moltitudine.

Questa riflessione mancata, questo disinteresse nei confronti di una presa di posizione, costringe l’Estetica Relazionale ad una condizione paradossale. Pur riconoscendo la potenzialità connettiva del modello a rete, pur volendo produrre interazioni umane (realizzate o evocate), essa è sostanzialmente invisibile al di fuori del circuito dell’arte contemporanea. La mancanza di un’impostazione critica, espressa a tratti nella teoria, ma mai concretizzata, le impedisce in realtà di generalizzarsi e di contribuire a costruire quei canali della rete sottratti dagli attivisti all’ingordigia del capitale.

Il paradosso dell’Estetica Relazionale è tutto qui, il suo condivisibile entusiasmo nei confronti delle microtopie, dei modelli realizzati di comunità alternative, delle strutture precarie della socialità e così via, non riesce a realizzarsi se non al livello del mercato.

L’attivista, dal canto suo, sa di non potersi permettere alcuna ambiguità nei confronti del capitalismo cognitvo, la sua riflessione lo spinge ad analizzare la propria posizione all’interno dei rapporti di produzione, a riconoscere lo sfruttamento biopolitico del capitalismo in rete e, infine, ad agire di conseguenza.

Nella situazione attuale, la pratica dell’attivista, sebbene guidata da una logica partigiana, non può assumere le forme di uno scontro frontale. Prima di tutto abbiamo visto come la valorizzazione delle differenze sia una caratteristica del network, ciò implica che nessuna diversità è al sicuro, semmai essa è in pericolo di essere messa a profitto, di subire un livellamento nell’esaltazione del mercato.

Inoltre, se la formula linguistica “capitalismo globale” trova riscontro nella realtà, ciò implica la definitiva sparizione dal pianeta di zone non colonizzate dal capitalismo stesso.

Viene a cessare la possibilità di un “fuori”, la possibilità che una resistenza possa essere articolata a partire da uno spazio dalle caratteristiche alternative. Ciò non significa che non vi sia più alcuna via d’uscita, bensì che ogni luogo è oggi inserito nel rapporto di forze tra capitale e moltitudine.

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L’opposizione, dunque, viene necessariamente dall’interno.

Gli attivisti di DIS-ORDERS contestano la natura del capitalismo cognitivo attraversandolo, investono di significato biopolitico la loro pratica delle reti e l’uso delle tecnologie della comunicazione, denunciano la drammatica frammentazione del lavoro immateriale e tentano di ricomporla attorno alla galassia del precariato (la cui complessità va ben oltre la mera opposizione alle forme della nuova precarietà contrattuale e la cui natura non prevede rigurgiti nostalgici), attorno ad una lotta contro la solitudine del networker e l’espropriazione della sua creatività.

L’adozione di una prospettiva interna di lotta ha direttamente influenzato anche la riflessione curatoriale intorno a DIS-ORDERS. Accanto a realtà chiaramente attiviste, cioè impegnate su un terreno d’azione o di riflessione eminentemente politico, la mostra propone una serie di lavori sintomatici di una volontà di rovesciamento espressa nei confronti di elementi storico-artistici.

Si tratta di disordinare, con intelligenza ed ironia, le cifre stilistiche di alcuni autori ormai storicizzati, ma si tratta anche, implicitamente, di accettare che il discorso storico-artistico istituzionale, abbia cittadinanza in una mostra che si occupa di attivismo. Ciò non esprime, ovviamente, un anelito verso quel principio di autonomia che, per valorizzare l’arte, la vorrebbe estranea ai fatti del mondo.

La presenza di questi lavori, invece, suggerisce che solo attraverso una riflessione sull’arte come istituzione, sulla storia dell’arte come disciplina, solo prendendo in esame questi aspetti, l’arte attivista può oggi pretendere di articolare una strategia di resistenza interna.

La riflessione sui linguaggi è importante se si accetta, come facciamo noi, che tutti i linguaggi siano espressi dentro ad un contesto che li influenza.

A questo proposito, è indiscutibile l’effetto dirompente che le teorie poststrutturaliste esercitano sull’arte e sulla teoria dell’arte fin dalla loro affermazione a partire dal 1968.

La scoperta, dovuta a Michel Foucault, della falsa autonomia delle discipline in cui la conoscenza è divisa, il disvelamento della loro cornice istituzionale, delle relazioni di potere e sopraffazione che la attraversano, rovesciano, nella critica istituzionale, il rapporto tra spazio espositivo e opera, la quale cessa di essere oggetto ingenuo e comincia ad indagare sugli aspetti meno nobili della cornice in cui è inserita.

E’ nota la lettura del White Cube come spazio dell’affermazione dello status quo, della legittimazione dei valori e della cultura delle classi sociali più abbienti ed è nota l’attitudine di determinate cor-

DIS-ORDERS

renti artistiche ad abitare quello spazio con disinvoltura (dissimulata nel caso della pittura modernista di matrice greenbergiana, programmatica negli artisti figli del boom del mercato degli anni Ottanta).

E’ quasi dimenticato, invece, l’aspetto direttamente politico che spinse un gruppo di artisti a metà degli anni Sessanta a concepire la de-materializzazione dell’opera come corrispettivo artistico delle grandi lotte sociali del Civil Rights Movement.

Questi pochi esempi vogliono dimostrare l’esistenza, all’interno della storia dell’arte (e quindi non rintracciabile altrove), di molte contro-storie che l’attivista è chiamato a scrivere e di cui l’artista attivista deve farsi interprete contemporaneo. Queste contro-storie ci illuminano rispetto alla natura politica di alcuni mutamenti linguistici.

Esiste, a mio parere, una storia politica della struttura (dei mutamenti avvenuti all’interno dell’arte modernista intesa essenzialmente come sistema linguistico) che non è ancora stata scritta.

L’attacco all’autonomia dei sistemi linguistici portato da Michel Foucault (sostenuto dal lavoro di studiosi quali Oswald Ducrot e Mikhail Bakhtin) alla soglia degli anni Settanta ha influenzato un’intera generazione di artisti, ma ha parallelamente costretto gli storici dell’arte ad una curiosa storicizzazione del fenomeno che non riesce a prescindere dal chiamare in causa, spesso superficialmente, le rivolte studentesche del 1968. Strano atteggiamento se si pensa che la posta in gioco è la descrizione della vicenda teoretica di un pensiero linguistico. Strano, ma giustificato, visto che il poststrutturalismo ha spinto l’arte a trasformarsi da sistema linguistico autonomo a contesto, ha costretto l’esperienza estetica al di fuori della dimensione privata verso quella più complessa del discorso (con il suo corollario di elementi apparentemente extralinguistici).

Ecco perché anche una prospettiva storico-artistica deve oggi informare l’arte e la teoria sull’arte di stampo attivista. C’è bisogno di una contro-storia che dissipi l’imbarazzante semplificazione della narrazione ufficiale nel riferire dei rapporti tra lotte sociali ed arte. C’è bisogno di un’arte attivista che continui la tradizione modernista della riflessione sulla propria natura, ovviamente superando la missione ontologica del concettualismo analitico e tenendo presente la mutazione del contesto artistico e dello spazio espositivo (che non possono più essere affrontati come negli anni Settanta, ma che, proprio per questo, necessitano di nuovi modelli interpretativi).

Lo spazio espositivo istituzionale oggi necessita di essere attraver-

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sato (non esiste più un luogo esterno completamente al riparo dalle logiche ufficiali) e la storia dell’arte diventa strumento necessario di questo percorso conflittuale.

Come l’analisi del modello produttivo in rete mette in guardia l’attivista rispetto alla familiarità di quello nei confronti delle differenze, allo stesso modo, lo studio della storia dell’arte, della natura del rapporto tra opera e spazio espositivo, dell’evoluzione della concezione dello spazio museale, conduce alla consapevolezza della variazione di status del museo: da dispositivo di storicizzazione a luogo di produzione dell’arte, cioè del suo inserimento all’interno del circuito capitalistico della produzione.

Paradossalmente, si può dire che nessun attivista sia al riparo dalle biennali, la scommessa è far sì che nessuna biennale sia al riparo da noi.

Quando studiamo questa storia dell’arte, scorgiamo la contro-storia in filigrana, il nostro compito, come attivisti, è quello di farla emergere.

Certo, messi di fronte ad una contro-storia dell’arte, ci sembra di dover fronteggiare un racconto di sconfitte: della sussunzione dell’anti-arte dadaista, dell’accademicizzazione dell’arte concettuale, della trasformazione, ma non del superamento dei limiti del White Cube, dell’inserimento dell’arte attivista nei programmi ufficiali delle istituzioni artistiche (vd. DIS-ORDERS). Eppure, proprio grazie alla prospettiva dell’attivista contemporaneo, il quale sfugge allo stereotipo del bombarolo come a quello dell’artista da studio, è possibile guardare al presente senza rassegnazione.

Infatti, la doppia consapevolezza dell’artista-attivista della controstoria dell’arte e della natura globale del capitalismo in rete, lo porta a riconoscere la necessità di una prospettiva di resistenza interna, di un attraversamento consapevole e conflittuale delle istituzioni e dei linguaggi istituzionali.

Nel tempo della smaterializzazione della ricchezza, della finanziarizzazione dell’economia, dello zen applicato al management, il capitale possiede i doni della velocità, del silenzio, dell’invisibilità, dell’ordine apparente. A noi, attivisti, spetta il compito di scontrarci con le contraddizioni della rete perché si palesino, a noi tocca il piacere di strutturare una geografia del disordine.

Marco Baravalle

DIS-ORDERS

Through the inexhaustible variations of its forms, radical activism entails the production of disorders. This undermines official discourse, stirring up the ashes of social peace under which the battle flames smoulder. It recognizes the bloody origins of institutional order. Inverting Clausewitz' famous principle, it expresses the conviction that politics can be interpreted as the continuation of war with other means.

It is this war which must be brought to the surface. The amount of abuse of power which is at the base of our societies, hidden within the official discourses, masked by the presumed neutrality of jurisprudence, is brought back into light by the activist.

The activist is partisan, in the sense that he or she has taken a stance and by virtue of this decision is compelled to participate in the conflict.

For the artists and participants of DIS-ORDERS, art (and more generally, culture) is an instrument of conflict, a weapon.

Naturally, the use of this weapon is determined, with respect to the past, by the current state of predominance of cognitive capitalism and by the integration of the artistic context (or rather, the discourse) within a productive network, which is larger and more pronounced than it was several years ago.

The cross-over from Fordism to PostFordism, from the predominance of industrial production to that of the economy of the immaterial, has determined a corresponding shift in the organizational model of production. Where, in precedence, this was regulated through a rigid hierarchical verticality, today we find a horizontal web-like structure.

It is the very nature of cognitive capitalism, with the increasing weight on the service sectors with respect to that on industry, with its dependence on communication technologies, which ensures that production structures itself as a network.

Knowledge as a commodity demands circulation, and does so through the complex networks of relationships in which the fragmented galaxy of immaterial work is interwoven.

The main difference, with respect to the past, is that cognitive capitalism has integrated a series of instances of democratization, some of the aspects which characterized the protests of Civil Rights Movements and the global revolt of 1968, into the figure of the networker, The netwoker escapes crystallization within a hierarchy. He or she is not subject to pressure from a direct authority. On the contrary, the variety of exchanges and their bidirectionality are encouraged within the network.

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The flexibility of the networks, together with their ability to morphologically mutate, make it possible to overcome the standardization of the product which, as Brian Holmes confirms, "was the visible sign of the alienation of the individual under the regime of mass production."

Moreover, cognitive capitalism is hungry for difference. The evermore subtly aimed and diversified production of the large multinational companies requires workers, bodies, brains, and competence to be as different amongst themselves.

Aversion to hierarchies, sublimation of the alienation of consumption, exploitation of differences: this is the biopolitical dimension of global capitalism, which makes use of the conquests of an extraordinary cycle of struggles. Here is our life put to work.

This centrality of the social dimension helps us to understand, for example, the success that the discourse of Relational Aesthetics (which defines human interactions and the context in which they occur as the field of the work of art) has registered in the last ten years. This current, through the variety of its artistic manifestations, has also known how to embrace the socio-reticular, biopolitical nature of cognitive capitalism. Yet even though it does not present itself as an instrument of direct criticism with respect to the actual organizational models of production, the discourse of Relational Aesthetics seems incapable of shaking off the aura of ambiguity.

More than a form of resistence, the relational-type artistic dynamics have proven themselves to be an effective means of interpreting network capitalism.

The "relational generation" finds its greatest divergence, with respect to the institutional critique of the Seventies, in the recognition of the growing connective possibilities of the artistic context with other productive sectors.

Where conceptual art underlines the specificity of the exhibition space with the aim of creating a metaphor of society on whole, Relational Aesthetics prefers to underline the new links that this same space is today able to construct with other fields, outside of the artistic circuit.

Such a fracture with regards to the past does not seem unfounded.

It responds to an accurate observation of current capitalist processes. The sensation remains that an intuition of such importance did not lead to an adequate gap.

In fact, once the generic character of the gallery is acknowledged, its status as a space of production "amongst others" (horizontally connected to others), rather than questioning itself on the nature of the new organizational models of production, on the reticular struc-

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ture of contemporary capitalism, the discourse of Relational Aesthetics dives into it, in an acritical manner, occupying many variations of the nodes (galleries, museums, clubs, shops etc.) and navigating the infinite channels of the network.

Always maintaining the innocent fluidity of commodities, eager for circulation, the work which fits into the canons of Relational Aesthetics produces interactions and reflects on the context, yet it is heedless of the relations of production which continue to structure it. Morevover, it is heedless of its own position as work within these, of the relations of power which run through the weave of the web and, definitively, of the fact that the network continues to be crossed by a binary tension, by the conflict between capital and multitude.

This missed reflection, this disinterest with regards to taking a stance, forces Relational Aesthetics into a paradoxical position.

Although recognizing the connective potentialities of a web model, as well as desiring to produce human interactions (both accomplished and evoked), it is substantially invisible outside of the circuit of contemporary art. In reality, the lack of a critical definition, at times expressed in the theory but never really concretized, impedes it from generalizing itself and contributing to the construction of those web channels, removed by the activists from the voracity of capital.

This, in brief, is the paradox of Relational Aesthetics. Its shareable enthusiasm regarding microtopias, realized models of alternative communities, precarious structures of sociality and so on, is not able to realize itself, if not on the level of the market.

The activist, for his part, knows that he cannot permit any ambiguity with respect to cognitive capitalism. This consideration pushes him to analyze his or her own position within the relationships of production, to recognize the biopolitical exploitation of capitalism in the network and, finally, to act in consequence.

In the current situation, the activist's practice, even if guided by a partisan logic, cannot assume the form of a head-on collision. First of all, we have seen how the exploitation of the differences is a characteristic of the network. This implies that no difference is safe, rather it is in danger of being made use of, of undergoing a levelling in the exaltation of the market. Moreover, if the linguistic form "global capitalism" finds its match in reality, this implies the definitive disappearance from the planet of zones not yet colonized by capitalism.

The possibility of an "outside" ceases, as does the possibility of the articulation of a resistance starting from a space with alternative

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characteristics. This does not mean that there are no longer any escape routes. Rather, it means that, today, every place is absorbed into the power relationship between capital and multitude.

Therefore, opposition must necessarily come from within.

The activists of DIS-ORDERS challenge the nature of cognitive capitalism by crossing through it, They invest biopolitical meaning into their network practices and their use of communication technologies, exposing the dramatic fragmentation of immaterial work and attempting to reconstitute it around a galaxy of the precarious (whose complexity goes well beyond the mere opposition to forms of new contractual precariousness, and whose nature does not foresee nostalgic resurgences), around a struggle against the solitude of the networker and the expropriation of his or her creativity.

The adoption of an internal perspective of struggle has also directly influenced the curatorial considerations of DIS-ORDERS. Next to clearly activist realities, that is, realities occupied on the terrain of action or with mainly political considerations, the exhibition proposes a series of works symptomatic of a desire to overthrow, expressed with respect to historic-artistic elements.

It, intelligently and ironically, deals with messing up the stylistic codes of some of the now historified authors. It also implicitly deals with accepting that the institutional historic-artistic argument belongs within an exhibition treating activism. Obviously, this does not express the yearning for that principle of autonomy which, in order to increase the value of art, would have it be extraneous to the facts of the world.

Rather, the presence of these works suggests that only through a consideration of art as an institution, of art history as a discipline, only by examining these aspects, can the activist art of today expect to articulate a strategy of internal resistance.

The reflection on languages is important if one accepts, as we do, that all languages are expressed within a context which influences them.

For this matter, it is impossible to deny the disruptive effects that poststructuralist theories have exerted on art and art theory since their assertion, dating back to 1968.

Michel Foucault's revelation of the false autonomy of the disciplines into which knowledge is divided, the uncovering of their institutional framework, of the relationships of power and abuse which run through them, in the context of institutional criticism, upsets the relationship between exhibition space and work, which thus ceases to be a naive object and begins to investigate the less noble aspects of the frame in which it is placed.

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The reading of the White Cube as a space of assertion of the status quo, of the legitimation of the cultural values of the more affluent social classes is well known, as is the bent of specific artistic currents to occupy that space with nonchalance (disguised, as in the case of Greenbergian-style modernist painting, programmatic of the artists who were children of the Eighties market boom).

Almost forgotten however, is the directly political aspect which, in the mid-Seventies, pushed groups of artists to conceive of the dematerialization of the work of art as the artistic counterpart of the great social struggles of the Civil Rights Movement.

These few examples wish to demonstrate the existence, within art history (and therefore not traceable elsewhere), of many counterhistories which the activist is called to write and which the activist artist must become the contemporary interpreter. These counterhistories enlighten us to the political nature of certain linguistic shifts.

It seems to me that their exists a political history of the structure (of the shifts which occurred within modernist art understood essentially as a linguistic system) which has not yet been written.

The attack on the autonomy of liguistic systems brought on by Michel Foucault (supported by the work of scholars such as Oswald Ducrot and Mikhail Bakhtin), on the threshold of the Seventies, has influenced an entire generation of artists. Yet, it has also likewise pushed art historians to a curious historification of the phenomenon which does not manage to exempt the mentioning, often superficially, of the student revolts of 1968. Strange behaviour if one thinks that the position at stake is the description of a theoretical succession of a linguistic thought. Strange but justified seeing as poststructuralism has pushed art to transform itself from an autonomous linguistic system into context, has pushed the aesthetic experience out of the private dimension toward a more complex one, that of discourse (with its corollary of seemingly extra-linguistic elements).

This is why even a historic-artistic perspective today must inform activist art and art theory. There is a need for a counter-history to dispel the embarrassing simplification of the official narration when referring to the relations between social struggle and art. There is a need for an activist art which continues the modernist tradition of the questioning of its own nature, obviously overcoming the ontological mission of analytic conceptualism, and keeping in sight the shift of artistic context and of exhibition space (which can no longer be approached as they were in the Seventies, but which, for this very reason, require new interpretive models).

21

Institutional exhibition space today needs to be crossed (there no longer exists an external place completely safe from official logic), and art history becomes the necessary instrument for this conflictual journey.

As the analysis of the productive network model warns the activist with respect to the familiarity of that regarding differences, in the same way, the study of art history, of the nature of the relation between work and exhibition space, of the evolution of the conception of museum space, leads to an awareness of variations of the status of the museum: from a device of historification and to a place of art production, that is, of its insertion within the capitalist circuit of production.

Paradoxically, one could say that no one activist is safe from the biennales. The wager is to make it so that no biennale is safe from us.

When we study this art history, we catch sight of counter-history in filigree. Our task, as activists, is to make it surface.

Of course, placed in front of a counter-history of art, it seems we must face up to a tale of failures: of the acceptance of dadaist antiart, of the institutionalization of conceptual art, of the transformation, but not the overcoming of the limits of the White Cube, of the insertion of activist art in official programmes of art institutions (see DIS-ORDERS). And yet, due precisely to the perspective of the contemporary activist, who eludes the stereotype of the bomber as well as that of the studio artist, it is possible to look at the present without resignation.

In fact, the activist artist's double awareness of the counter-history of art and of the global nature of network capitalism, brings him or her to acknowledge the need for a perspective of internal resistance, of an aware and conflictual crossing of the institutions and institutional languages.

In a time of the dematerialization of wealth, of the financialization of economy, of zen applied to management, capital possesses the gifts of speed, silence, invisibility and apparent order. The task which awaits us activists is that of clashing against the contradictions of the network so that they become manifest. The pleasure of structuring a geography of disorder is left to us.

Marco Baravalle

indice

23

Andrea Morucchio Fiambrera Barroca Gaston Ramirez Feltrin Giuliana Racco Globalproject hackitectura.net Indymedia estrecho+Fadaiat Serpica Naro Trash band Uni.Nomade Nordest Nemanja Cvijanovic GLR

Andrea Morucchio THE MARS PAVILION EXPERIENCE, VIDEO 2006 TALK SHOW, VIDEO 2006 (pagine seguenti)

(pagina a fianco)

Fiambrera Barroca

(pagina a fianco)

(pagina a fianco)

(pagina seguenti)

Calleconpistas, sevillaolimpica1 e sevillaolimpica2. 1999.

Progetto che consisteva nel plagiare il sito web del Comune di Siviglia in cui si annunciavano i giochi di atletica di Siviglia ’99. Qui sono riprodotti il logo ufficiale e quello modificato.

Alameda Kit. 2001.

Un progetto editoriale nato a Siviglia, pensato per creare uno spazio dalla portata comunicativa in grado di unire controinformazione e possibilità di una rivista-oggetto con i propri strumenti d’azione. Formato da un consiglio di redazione di cinque persone, il lavoro collettivo consisteva nell’elaborazione, pubblicazione e distribuzione del Kit in bar, negozi e attraverso un punto vendita nel mercatino della domenica della Alameda.

El Tinglao del Gran Pollo de la Alameda, instalache autoaviográfico del deseo perturbador. 2006. È un progetto espositivo di carattere collettivo, una scommessa sperimentale per visualizzare nell’ambito del Cas (Centro delle arti di Siviglia) alcuni dei metodi a cui abbiamo tentato di dare spazio nel libro El Gran Pollo de la Alameda. Cómo nació, creció y se resiste a ser comido. Una docena de años de lucha social en el barrio de la Alameda, Sevilla. (Il grande pollo della Alameda. Come è nato, cresciuto, e resiste a essere mangiato. Una dozzina d’anni di lotta sociale nel quartiere della Alameda. Siviglia). Primavera del 2006.

Calleconpistas, sevillaolimpica1 e sevillaolimpica2.jpg 1999 The project consisted in the plagiarizing of the website of the Municipality of Seville which publicized the Athletic Games of Seville 1999. The official logo and the modified one are reproduced here.

Alameda Kit. 2001 An editorial project born in Sevilla which was planned to create a space of communicative significance capable of linking counter-information to the possibility of a magazine-object with its own tools of action. Formed by an editorial council of five members, the collective work consisted in the elaboration, publication and distribution of the Kit in bars, shops and through a salespoint in the Sunday market.

El Tinglao del Gran Pollo de la Alameda, instalache autoaviográfico del deseo perturbador. 2006.

An exhibition project of collective nature. An experimental wager to manifest, in the Cas (Seville Centre for the Arts), some of the methods that we have attempted to make room for in the book El Gran Pollo de la Alameda. Cómo nació, creció y se resiste a ser comido. Una docena de años de lucha social en el barrio de la Alameda, Sevilla (The Big Chicken of Alameda. How it was born, raised, and resisted being eaten. A dozen years of social struggle in the neighbourhood of Alameda). Spring 2006.

Gaston Ramirez Feltrin LA

CULEBRA, INSTALLAZIONE

2006

Giuliana Racco SURVIVAL ENGLISH : THE PRACTICE

OF

EVERYDAY ENGLISH

Edition of 21 x 25 cm books, 36 pages Venice, 2006

Survival English proposes itself as something that lies between a manual and an exercise book, which can actually function as a tool for learning the English language, but which touches upon some of the most critical issues related to surviving in contemporary Italy, with a particular focus on the anomalies of Venice. In order to be as accurate and current as possible, the exercises are largely based on research and interviews conducted with locals and foreigners (both legal and illegal), residing in the Venice area. And though it is possible to learn English by applying oneself to the tasks proposed in the book, the intention of the work lies in the diffusion of useful information and the relation of actual conditions, in order to help open up space for discussion and also to inform users of websites and places to go to find or provide assistance. It is my hope to raise the consciousness of those, who perhaps are not on the edge of survival, of the current situation. I expect that this work, which I intend to distribute free of charge throughout the city, can also open up a space for discussion about the issues, which are becoming increasingly pressing. In contemporary Italy, the lack of structure and support for both actual citizens and arriving foreigners, predominantly in terms of secure and legal work and accessibly priced housing, can potentially lead to an explosive situation, while at the moment it is the cause of much suffering, unease, racism and social tension.

The Survival English workbook that I have produced, at this point, consists of five modules: Survival Tactics, Immigration, Work, Housing and Criminality. The chapters of this text are divided into the same module structures. Each module contains a page alluding to Richard Serra’s Verb List, in which the artist wrote with pencil on paper a series of verbs related to the concept of work. In my pages, I have constructed lists of verbs, placed in traditional tense grids, which refer to the subjects of each module. The other pages of the book are divided between vocabulary building and grammar exercises, juxtaposed with images taken in Venice, from the Internet or from books. The combination of text, linguistic structures and images is intended to instigate reflection on the issues presented by giving them a visible form.

hackitectura.net (KERNEL: SERGIO MORENO AKA CHASER, JOSÎ PÎREZ DE LAMA AKA OSFA, PABLO DE SOTO) CADIZ - SEVILLE - BARCELONA Hackitectura.net does not manage to clearly distinguish art, politics and work (Pasquinelli, Radical Machines). At times we use the idea of biopolitical production to describe what we are trying to do. Raoul Vaneigem’s definition of qualitative referred to the artistic act fascinates us. According to him, the artistic act produces itself in those moments or situations that change the world and transform life. In all our production the construction of situations connected in real time (audio/visual through the Internet) plays a fundamental role.

We are used to having difficulties explaining what we do to Òordinary peopleÓ, moreover we don’t usually leave sellable objects or materials, and even more rarely, works of art in the traditional sense. More likely, we leave traces of lipstick (Marcus, 199).

We try to explore the becoming cyborg of the masses in spatio-temporal terms, of constructing spaces that base themselves on social cooperation and on collective intelligence.

We don’t work as authors in the traditional sense, but as assistants within the networks in which artists, activists, programmers and web technicians collaborate. One of the aims of these networks of production is the attempt to strengthen the single entities which constitute it.

The materials with which we operate are of at least three types: • physical space • electronic streams/networks • social bodies/networks What call cyborg territory takes shape in the interactions between these three factors, a space in continuous construction which, as with every traditional space, becomes a site of competence of different social groups and a theatre of different battle fronts. In most cases, it entails experimental work, more often than not, ephemeral, while on other occasions, we have participated in projects which already were part of, or hoped to be part of, the daily reality of our communities. In accordance with these ideas of cooperation and collective intelligence, we use free software, often altered by ourselves and by our friends.

2006: [Liberty Square], Seville (project) One of the works in which we are currently involved is in the Plaza de las Libertades in Seville. This project is aimed at organizing a permanent public space within which we put into practice a series of ideas that surfaced over the course of our processes of experimentation.

The project in the square – of whose name we are not responsible – was carried out through a competition announced by the Municipal Administration of City Planning of the City of Seville. It entails the transformation of a space of 30, 000 m2, where the new space incorporates information and communications technologies and the global dimension of the contemporary world.

The project conceived of in collaboration with MGM (JosÎ Morales and Sara Giles, respected architects of Seville) and with the visual artist Esther Pizzaro, won.

Our proposal consisted in the creation of a soft and accessible ÒtopographyÓ, which organizes the space in multiple environments devoid of hierarchy. In as much as the cyborg

aspects on which our contribution focalizes, the square, through interactions between hardware, software, wetware (bodies) and spaceware (spaces), charges itself with a complex series of valencies which push toward a consideration regarding its nature as public space. > The public space as an active core of the web of networks (connection in real time to other places). > The public space as interface (social and physical: screens and interactive systems). > The public space as an Operating System (a reticular and modular infrastructure which allows the working of different applications and the connection of different devices). > (Faced with video-surveillance) the public space as Mille Plateaux (cameras, sound systems and other equipment permanently available in order to broadcast on the web that which occurs in the square: meetings with friends, school performances, art festivals, political debatesÉ). > A public space as an emerging system (which implies a conception of this same space as an open situation available for the production, within itself, of the interaction between different social and mechanized subsystems). > A public space as “wiki” (wiki square), a public space resulting from the cooperation between many social networks, exactly as a “wiki” (for example, wikipedia.org).

Since January 2006, when the project was awarded, we have continued to develop these concepts and their realization, but overall (and in spite of a certain skepticism), we have begun to weave webs which can, in the future, manage to realize this new form of space, an urban electromagnetic field, a laboratory of cyborg citizenship. We don’t know what will happen, and this is what drives us forwardÉ We only think of making our wishes contagious until they become collective desireÉ JosÎ PÎrez de Lama, aka osfa September 2006 Links: http://estrecho.indymedia.org http://mcs.hackitectura.net Plaza de las Libertades, Seville (project, 2005). MGM, hackitectura.net and collaborators.

Image: MGM.

Indymedia estrecho + Fadaiat Loro costruiscono muri, noi ponti. Loro propongono paura, noi contagio. Loro sono ordine, noi movimento. La lotta per la cittadinanza globale è aperta. 14 km separano le due sponde dello stretto. 14 km separano (il mondo) Europa e (il mondo) Africa.

Ci è più facile capire questo paesaggio se comprendiamo che da alcuni punti della costa si scorge con chiarezza l’altro lato, l’altro mondo. La sensazione di prossimità, di vicinanza creata dalla vista di un altro continente suscita uno strano e tangibile desiderio di attraversare queste acque. Madiaq, una terra di frontiera, una terra di forze in conflitto, una terra dove si respirano la logica della guerra e del controllo.

Indymedia estrecho / indymedia madiaq è una rete di attivisti della comunicazione organizzati in forma orizzontale e partecipativa e integrati nella rete indymedia globale.

Questo indymedia si caratterizza per la sua capacità di affrontare problematiche già prese in esame da distinti progetti politicocomunicativi e dai restanti nodi della rete indymedia.

Indymedia estrecho è un progetto di comunicazione transfrontaliera, un progetto che utilizza la frontiera come centro d’osservazione e di lavoro.

Abbiamo scelto il territorio dello stretto come spazio dove intervenire, dove ricercare le linee di fuga, i processi emergenti di una diversa soggettività, dove la disobbedienza comporti l’immediata costruzione di spazi alieni alla logica di comando, dove si possa camminare verso la costruzione di un movimento unico e molteplice allo stesso tempo. Parliamo della costruzione di un corpo comune e crediamo che si stia formando, un corpo comune che abita un territorio lontano dalla logica dello stato-nazione, un territorio che è al di là di ciò che la parola Andalusia può definire.

Si tratta della messa in pratica di uno spazio direzionale più che dimensionale,o meglio, di uno spazio che non è retto da determinazioni metriche, dimensionali, bensì stabilito dai “vettori direzionali” che lo compongono, flussi intersoggettivi in grado di costruire un rizoma- una struttura decentralizzata ed eterogenea- che prende le distanze dalla logica geo-politica dello stato-nazione.

Un rizoma è composto da piani collegati da micro-fessure.

Pensiamo che questi piani siano già lì e siano infiniti. Il compito che i soggetti implicati in questo processo devono svolgere è quello di produrre le micro-fessure che collegano i diversi piani.

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Indymedia estrecho/madiaq è uno spazio in mutazione, in continuo divenire.

In questo modo Indymedia estrecho/madiaq non è mai identico a se stesso e i punti che compongono i suoi vettori direzionali dipendono dal tragitto che si compie. In questo senso è uno spazio nomade…

Indymedia estrecho è un laboratorio di produzione biopolitico. Le collaborazioni e le creazioni che il progetto ha coniugato e reso possibili comprendono un lavoro cartografico tradotto in una mappa, la produzione di un ricco e nuovo immaginario riguardante le forme ibride nate dagli incroci tra culture e forme di vita, alcune collaborazioni e collezioni artistiche legate al fenomeno della frontiera e dello stretto (come il progetto dell’ archivio multimedia Transacciones) ed il lavoro di istituzioni pubbliche e professionali che si occupano di un trattamento diverso dell’informazione.

Indymedia estrecho non è solo una pagina web, bensì un collegamento strategico, uno strumento comunicativo che fa parte di un processo di coesione ed auto-organizzazione sociale il cui perno è rappresentato dalle rivendicazioni per la libertà di movimento e di conoscenza nella frontiera meridionale dell’Europa ed in quella settentrionale dell’Africa.

Forse è tutto quello che nel sito non si vede a costituirne la maggiore ricchezza: gli incontri, le alleanze, le nuove reti che si creano, le connessioni tra progetti che fino ad allora, pur condividendo alcune delle rispettive tematiche, non avevano considerato la possibilità di collaborare gli uni con gli altri.

Fadaiat fadaiat: una nuova forma di spazio pubblico. Fadaiat, in arabo, significa satellite, piattaforma spaziale e antenna parabolica! È un evento nomade realizzato per 3 anni consecutivi tra Tarifa, Tangeri e Barcellona come esperimento di un Ateneo interdisciplinare e biopolitico. Un laboratorio tecnologico, artistico, politico e architettonico basato sulla relazione tra libertà di movimento e libertà di conoscenza nel territorio geopolitico dello stretto di Gibilterra, frontiera tra la Fortezza-Europa e l’Africa popolare / delle moltitudini.

Indymedia estrecho + Fadaiat Il progetto è stato promosso da gruppi e persone che lavorano nel campo multimediale, dell’arte, dei mezzi di comunicazione indipendenti, dei principali movimenti sociali per lo stimolo della creatività, del pensiero e delle attività riguardanti le idee di libertà di conoscenza e di movimento nel contesto della recente storia geopolitica della zona. Il progetto si avvale della collaborazione di diverse università, enti statali e municipali. Abbiamo disposto di una rete di streams audio e video, provenienti da Tarifa, Tangeri e altre parti del mondo, per costruire un ponte virtuale sopra lo Stretto, documentando gli eventi che si sono succeduti nei due luoghi.

L’interesse del progetto sta nella sua capacità di assemblare moduli, laboratori e attività dalle caratteristiche diverse ma sempre legate dal leitmotiv della libertà di movimento e di conoscenza oltre che da quello dello scenario delle naturali trasformazioni del lavoro e della frontiera. In particolare, il progetto Transacciones consisteva nella compilazione di un archivio multimediale di opere artistiche e narrative sul tema dello stretto. Inoltre, con Transacciones tv, fu realizzata una trasmissione televisiva sperimentale (della durata di 3 giorni) del lavoro realizzato negli incontri di Fadaiat e di una serie di materiali alternativi. Il tutto fu trasmesso per 4 ore al giorno dalla tv locale della città di Tarifa.

In generale Fadaiat è stato un modo di creare un’intelligenza collettiva, contro-immagine della guerra globale permanente e dello scontro di civiltà. http://www.hackitectura.net/osfavelados/2006_venezia/imagenes/indymedia_fadaiat/

They construct walls, we build bridges. They spread fear, we diffuse contagion. They are order, we are movement. The battle for global citizenship is open. 14 km separate the two shores of the straits. 14 km separate (the world) Europe and (the world) Africa.

It is easier for us to understand this landscape if we understand that from some points of the coast, the other side, the other world, is clearly visible. The sensation of proximity, or closeness, created by the view of the other continent stirs up a strange and tangible desire to cross these waters. Madiaq, a border land, a land of conflicting powers, a land where one breathes the logic of war and control.

Indymedia estrecho / indymedia Madiaq is a network of communications activists organized in a horizontal and participatory structure and integrated into the global indymedia network.

This indymedia is characterized by its ability to confront problems which are already being analyzed by distinct political-communications projects and by the remaining knots of the indymedia network.

Indymedia estrecho is a cross-border communications project, a project which uses the frontier as an observation and work centre.

We have selected the territory of the straits as the site of intervention, to search for the vanishing points, the emerging processes of a different subjectivity, where disobedience entails the direct construction of spaces alien to the logic of control, where one can move toward the construction of a movement which is both single and multiple at the same time.

We are talking about the building of a mutual body, which we believe is forming, a mutual body which inhabits a territory far from the logic of the nation-state, a territory which is beyond that which the word Andalusia can define.

It means the putting into practice of a directional space rather than a dimensional one, or better yet, of a space which is not supported by metric or dimensional coordinates, but is established by the "directional vectors" which form it, inter-subjective streams capable of constructing a rhizome / a decentralized and heterogeneous structure- which takes its distance form the geo-political logic of the nation-state.

A rhizome is composed of planes connected by micro-fissures. We believe that these planes are already there and are infinite. The task

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53

that the subjects implicated in this process must undertake is that of producing the micro-fissures which connect the different planes.

Indymedia estrecho/madiaq is a space in mutation, in continuous becoming.

In this way Indymedia estrecho/madiaq is never identical to itself, and the points which compose its directional vectors depend on the trajectory which is followed. In this sense, it is a nomadic space...

Indymedia estrecho is a laboratory of biopolitical production. The collaborations and the creations which the project has combined and made possible involve a cartographic work translated into a map, the production of a new and rich imagination regarding the hybrid forms born from the crisscrossing between culture and life forms, some collaborations and artistic collections tied to the phenomenon of the border and of the straits (like the multimedia archives Transacciones project), and the work of public and professional institutions interested in a different handling of information.

Indymedia estrecho in not just a web page, but a strategic connection, a communication tool which is part of the process of cohesion and social self-organization whose axis is represented by the demands for the freedom of movement and knowledge on the southern border of Europe, as well as the northern border of Africa.

Perhaps it is all that is not visible on the site which gives it its greatest richness: the encounters, the alliances, the new networks which are created, the connections between projects which until then, though sharing certain respective themes, had not considered the possibility of collaborating with one another.

Fadaiat fadaiat: a new form of public space. Fadait, in Arabic, means satellite, space platform and parabolic antenna!

It is a nomadic event carried out over three consecutive years between Tarifa, Tangier and Barcelona, as an experiment of an interdisciplinary and biopolitical university. It is a technological, artistic, political and architectural workshop based on the relationship between freedom of movement and freedom of knowledge in the geopolitical territory of the Straits of Gibraltar, the frontier between Fortress-Europe and the people's Africa / of the moltitudes.

The project has been promoted by a group of individuals who work in the multimedia field of the arts, of independent communication means, of the primary social movements for the stimulation of creativity, thought and activities regarding the ideas of freedom of knowledge and of movement in the context of the recent geopolitical history of the area. The project is assisted by collaborations with different universities and national and municipal organizations.

We have a network of audio and video streams at our disposal, from Tarifa, Tangier and other parts of the world, which will help us build a virtual bridge over the Straits, documenting the events which will happen in both places.

The project's interest is to assemble modules, workshops, activities of different characteristics, yet always tied to the leitmotif of freedom of movement and knowledge, and also to that of the scenario of the natural transformations of the work and of the border.

In particular, theTransacciones project consisted in the compilation of a multimedia archive of artistic and narrative works on the theme of the straits. With Transacciones tv an experimental televised screening was carried out, over three days, of the works produced during the Fadaiat meetings and other alternative contents, broadcasted for four hours a day by the local television station of the city of Tarifa. In general, Fadaiat was a means of creating a collective intelligence, a counter-image of the permanent global war and of the clash between civilizations. http://www.hackitectura.net/osfavelados/2006_venezia/imagenes/indymedia_fadaiat/

Serpica Naro SPERIMENTAZIONI

DI UN META-BRAND,

VIDEO

INSTALLAZIONE,

2006

Serpica Naro does not exist.

Serpica Naro is a MetaBrand.

Serpica Naro is a overtaking of the centrality of the trademark, all those who recognize themselves in it can participate in it.

Serpica Naro is a space where imagery and autonomous production meet, creativity, style and radicalism.

Serpica Naro claims an imagery, a methodology, an opening through which social production and conflict can be expressed.

Serpica Naro is the autonomous production of sense and symbols, it is a method of sharing, a public cracking of codes, freedom is placed in a network of competence and intelligence.

Serpica Naro is a condition of relations, in a reticular, continuous and completely open form.

Instability becomes active wealth, the continuous becoming makes us move and create new styles.

Creativity and social experimentation go together.

Serpica Naro as a MetaBrand is the response with which we declare the closure of the week of fashion and the beginning of the season of precarious conspiracy.

Yvonne Brenta of settimanadellamoda.it interviews Serpica Naro 1. Since February 26th, the day on which Serpica revealed itself as a product of precarious nature, the Chamber of Fashion, which manages an impressive system of indirect lobbying, can do nothing but withdraw its troupes in subdued silence. The forces of order, that intercepted you or followed you step by step, throughout the week of fashion, confirm that it was not possible to understand or predict an idea so complex, which in its infinite articulations seemed simply to be the chaotic sum of thousands of different events. How did you come up with the idea of the operation?

We have always sensed a feeling very much like that of a shopping centre in the week of fashion: it is an ideological outpost, that is, a logistic network through which a social organization based on trivial and reiterated consumption, on an imagery of which the values are competition, atomization of the individual and the superfluous, is propagated and encouraged.

If you live in Milan, you can always find a way to scrape a living doing something related to fashion or design. But these aren't those glamorous jobs that people imagine...In fact, in the brief week of fashion, hundreds of precarious employees work 12-15 hours a day installing, taking down and running something which produces a movement of 10 billion euros, yet from which only a small segment profits.

The objection to the week of fashion was in our hearts and in our minds for some time. We were just looking for the right point to insert ourselves into its mechanism.

Therefore, we tried to understand what would have been the best way to show this during the week of fashion, without risking being silenced by mainstream media, which in those days, busies itself with everything but this problem. Making anagrams out of the name San Precario, champion of all us precarious workers, we selected Serpica Naro among the numerous combinations.

Since the beginning, Serpica Naro contained San Precario within itself. The name already concealed its true essence. The operation had many levels of action which in themselves involved different groups of people: the creation of the virtual character and its emanation in the media, the construction of the fashion show, the inclusion of autonomous production, the logistic management of the tensiostructure and of the permits, the relations with the workers within the fashion circuit...After the disclosure, all these levels were made evident, and moreover it became clear that being accepted in the official calendar of the National

Chamber of Fashion was not the ultimate aim, but rather the goal was the establishment of relationships between precarious creative people and the precarious employees and their own creativity, the values that were shared within a framework of conflict. From the Serpica Naro experience we have understood that for many precarious workers it became possible to practice conflict even in front of apparently unassailable business giants, since the apparent potential to be blackmailed had been bypassed by safeguarding the anonymity of those who helped circulate the information or who offered their own competence and abilities for the success of the operation. The precarious networks, active and in solidarity, did the rest. The mechanism is simple but explosive. Faced with flexibility and exploitation, there is no loyalty to the firm which stands strong. One can create complicity and relationships in the tone of anti-corporation quite easily: a terrible virus for those who advocate the fragmentation of every social and working relationship.

2. There is still one question left to be answered: was it a colossal hoax or an explosive vision of the future? Or rather, what happened afterward?

The Serpica Naro label that we created, which we had to register in order to officially participate in the Calendar, was then freed in 2006 through a license, which in its principles refers to the license for software and music elaborated by Creative Commons. The Serpica Naro label is therefore free to be used by all, as long as the creations connected to the label are freely reproducible, and the resulting products are issued in accordance with the same license. This makes the creativity, the ability, and also the capacity and the decision to not make use of practices which exploit workers in the production/distribution chain, available and sharable, as well as the necessity to reinsert the value of those who produce into the social.

After Serpica Naro, many people asked where the Serpica items could be purchased. A rather glamorous fascination with respect to the operation itself, but which also proved a desire to exit from the serial, from the anxiety of being universally branded, to reappropriate a more personal style, more ethical and "clean", without necessarily stuffing oneself in fair-trade jute sacks.

We need a space where we know that we are buying clothing free from exploitation, items produced by craftspeople. In particular, if you work in the field of fashion, social communication, mass media, or entertainment, it could be very interesting to spread the clothing and accessories connected to Serpica (but this is true for any work environment in which precariousness strangles the workers) as a sign of the irreducible relations to the logic of the businesses which impose precariousness.

There is a desire for a space, real or virtual, where one can go to find clothing in which one knows that everything purchased is produced by craftspeople, small producers or spinnerettes which guarantee production, respecting job security as much as possible. A space where free and nonprofit exchanges, be it of clothing or of ideas, are favoured and encouraged. A style which permits one to recognize oneself and to enter into contact with a network of relations which foresees the precarious in the spotlight.

Today, fighting precariousness does not only mean participating in the labour struggle, but also removing the neo-liberal yoke from one’s neck in order to experiment with diverse economies.

3. A free license of a registered label: nothing similar has ever been attempted? A social idea of the future or artistic license?

Licensing a label for us implied sharing all the rights that the law reserves for the owners of registered brands. The real owner of a social process is the community which understands to share know how and experience, and through this method is able to move something in the institution of precariousness.

Serpica Naro has always made reference to the hacker community which led to the experience of freesoftware as a liberation of knowledge, through the gpl license. But software isn't a sweater! We wouldn't have been able to issue a label under a free license, characteristic of software: we had to elaborate a license which kept in consideration the problem of the freedom of a material product. The registered trademark is different from both a patent or a copyright, even though it is an integral part of the laws on intellectual property. The passage from immaterial work to real production forces us to take into consideration, on the one hand, serialization and, on the other hand, the relationship between free and autonomous production and industrial production, since that which we would like to develop through the Serpica Naro brand is not the article of an established designer, but the virality of the mechanisms of participation in social processes. Serpica Naro is a MetaBrand! And for this reason the licence was written ex novo taking our cue from the experiences of Creative Commons.

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4. What exactly is the crossover from mainstream media to Social Media, what is the MetaBrand?

Social Media is born from the consideration that Communication constitutes a strategic field of conflict. The experience has shown us how mainstream media is not a field on which to hold a confrontation, accepting its rules in order to then attempt to creatively break them: we believe that this is no longer enough, actually, it’s unnecessary.

Social Media is a form of Communication which is born from the participation of the precarious workers, which can not be traced back to the reproduction of goods. It is capable of representing them and simultaneously building a form of conspiracy which cannot be summed up and re-elaborated by the instruments of neo-liberalist production.

Social Media surpasses mainstream media, infiltrating every crack and appearing as something which cannot be standardized or reduced to profit. Serpica Naro is an example of what we imply by social media. Social media is an instrument for inserting new values within the dominant ones.

Compared to a brand like all the others created expressly for the market in order to determine the (empty) relations which channel consumption, Serpica has revealed itself to be the opposite: that is, a MetaBrand created by real relations which auto-represent themselves in it, producing social improvement (for who produces it) and value (which must be rechannelled in the social).

The possibility to activate mechanisms of material and symbolic production, which in the end take away ability, fascination, relationships and consumption - unbridled and bored – from the society of brands, in order to place them back into circulation under the form of political production in the positive, social, relational and material, while at the same time weakening the companies’ grasp on workers (blackmail) and the dictatorship of the state on the social (selective and punitive social state).

The label, which safeguarded the quality of the Brand, has transformed itself into an instrument for the maintenance of a monopoly over the production of everyday objects with a high margin of profit.

Therefore the brand places itself at the apex of a pyramid which concentrates wealth and produces exploitation in the three levels of creativity, of production and of sales, emanating imagery and values constructed in the company boardroom.

On the contrary, the MetaBrand dissolves that pyramid and inserts a virtuous circle which uses the construction of a Brand as a tool, starting from the values and imagery embodied in precarious complicity, values which are immediately redistributed by its License, the multiplier of relations and acquaintances between creative people, producers and salespeople (figures often present in the same person).

Serpica Naro is an idea for the retraining of the social, for the improvement of the relations which are established within it. Unlike the Brand which sucks the lifeblood of the social with the aim of redefining it in the image and semblance of the necessity of consumption, Serpica Naro is born from the social itself. A Social Media returns to the social that which belongs to it: the soul and the ideas, the body and the relationships

Trash band

What is Trash Band? Trash Band is a collective of musicians, visual artists and performers who sing modern folk songs and mount high-energy stage shows. Trash Band uses only the world’s most plentiful resource, YOUR TRASH, to fabricate instruments, cars, puppets, bicycles, stilts, costumes and props for their shows.

Trash Band has performed street theater, club shows, educational engagements, in museums, in parades, on television and film throughout California since 2000.

“Bananagun (Padre Brown contro i vampiri cowboy di venezia)” is the second film made by the Trash Band collective. Their first movie “ The Pirates Versus the Unicorn “, completed in 2004, follows the escapades of a band of dry-land pirates sailing the lonely desert on the hunt for the fabled Booty of the Unicorn. This film, completed on an out of pocket budget, uses live action video, Super 8 film, shadow puppetry, and stop-motion animation to tell the story. No money is allotted for props, sets or costumes. All of what budget there is goes to film supplies, gas, food and beer.

This tradition has been carried over into the making of Bananagun.

All props and costumes were found or acquired second hand, or are made of food. All scenery was provided by the beautiful city of Venice.

Trash Band is based in and around Los Angeles, CA, USA. They can be reached through their website at www.trashband.net for performance bookings, DVD sales, to purchase jewelry, and to send fan mail.

“BANANAGUN, (PADRE BROWN

CONTRO I VAMPIRI COWBOY DI VENEZIA)”

Bananagun is the story of one man’s holy journey to rid the City of Venice of the evil demons that lurk there. Told in the classic style of the spagetti western, on location among the gothic architecture of Venice, our hero must hold true to his personal mission and draw stregnth from his personal relationship with god. The fate of Venice rests upon the shoulders of this leatherfaced crusader, absolving the savagries he must commit to defend the innocents from the demons that walk the streets. God bless you, and lord save us as the canals run red with sangue di pomodoro.

Bannagun was shot on location in Venice by Michael Gump, Christine Gump, Alessandro Thompson, Micheal Rabbit, Micaela O’Herlihey, Joel Fox; affiliated in America as a performance group called Trash Band. Our Italian actors Milena Colperto, Count Forkula, were drawn from the streets of Venice. Many thanks to the many activists of Labortorio Morion and to the innocent people of Venice whose support for this movie was boundless, though, to us, paradoxical.

After spending a few weeks completing a contract job building a hippopotomous of mud for a few artists in the Venice Biennial, the collection of Americans and Italians decided to shoot a movie.

They had a free place to stay and a lot of free time. The Americans are all professional filmmakers, sculptors, clowns and artists in Los Angeles.

They were also very afraid of getting lost in the spooky streets of Venice at night. This is how Bananagun was born.

Nemanja Cvijanovic UNA

E TRE SEDIE, INSTALLAZIONE 2003 Dimensione reale *Sedia sul quale e' stato fucilato il partigiano Vjekoslav Duki´c 5.XII.1941 a Trsat dai fascisti Italiani.

La sedia appartiene alla collezione del ex "Muzj narodne revolicije", adesso "Muzej grada Rijeke".

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AND THREE CHAIRS, INSTALLATION 2003 Real Size *Chair on which partisan Vjekoslav Duki’c was shot by the Italian Fascists in Trsat (December 5, 1941).

Courtesy of collection ex “Muzj narodne revolicije”, now “Muzej grada Rijeke”.