<nettime-ann> first draft of ab-strike program in milan during expo

[Geert Lovink <geert@xs4all.nl>]

.
AB-STRIKE is a platform set up by S.a.L.E. Docks and MACAO, a practice of subversive imagination, a laboratory of commons, a hotbed of actions, artworks, talents and debates that will come into being from the 1st to the 8th of May 2015, in Milan and Venice.

A science-fiction platform for an abstract strike

May 1st-8th, 2015 Milan/Venice

The work of the artist has no defined boundaries, nonetheless it has become paradigmatic within a productive model increasingly oriented to linguistic, relational and performative skills in which creativity is an essential managerial asset and terms like innovation and culture attract each other like magnets. The artist and the cultural worker have questioned their own role in the light of Postfordism, Neoliberalism, cognitive capitalism and so on. Artists often work for free, someone says that they are always at work even if they read a book, visit an exhibition, chat with friends at the bar and use social networks. For them, as for many others, the word strike sounds like a conundrum. How do you block the industry of culture? How do you damage the âevent economyâ? How do you overthrow finance and the algorithms that produced the crisis, impoverishing the workers and enriching the lobbies of speculators? The control over big data allows a massive profiling of social behaviours: collective intelligence is the newest and more important  commodity for the capital. With algorithms, wealth is produced through a constant biopolitical monitoring. Is it possible to fight the financial abstraction with an abstract strike? AB-STRIKE is a platform set up by S.a.L.E. Docks and MACAO, a practice of subversive imagination, a laboratory of commons, a hotbed of actions, artworks, talents and debates that will come into being from the 1st to the 8th of  May 2015, in Milan and Venice. In tune with the international mobilisations against âEXPO Milano 2015â, the platform tackles two different urban dimensions both characterised by the same primacy of the so called event economy. It is not by chance that this year the Venice Biennale choses an early opening and will run parallel to the Expo in Milan. Letâs re-imagine the concept of festival and artistic events. If creativity is the fuel of capital, letâs invent new forms of artists organisations that challenge the power through new languages and new forms of self-governance.

TALKS

PANEL 1 (@Macao) // 4th May 2015, 2.30 - 7.30 pm
The political value of new technologies and cultural innovation. Is the future political?
Adam Arvidsson, Franco Berardi BIFO, Andrea Fumagalli, Stefano Lucarelli, Marco Sachy (D-Cent), Tiziana Terranova, Akseli Virtanen and Robin Hood Minor Asset Management Cooperative, and MACAO 
Can technological innovation and decentralized models of Governance build commonfare, fighting new forms of military biopolitical control by the capital?

PANEL 2 (@S.a.L.E. Docks) // 7th May 2015, 5.30 â 8.30 pm
Letâs Strike! Towards an inter-continental platform for art and cultural workers
Global Ultra Luxury Faction/Gulf Labor, Noah Fisher/Artists as Debtor,  Florian Schneider (Head of Trondheim Academy of Fine Arts), Roberto Ciccarelli (Researcher/Journalist), S.a.L.E. Docks, Macao and many othersâ 
This round table brings together different perspectives on the issue of artists and cultural workers organisation, from the U.S. to Northern and Mediterranean Europe. We will start from issues such as: the effect of debt over the life of the artist. The necessity of inventing new models of production and forms of life against the neoliberal frame. The role of multinational art brands in the new global division of labour. The need for new methods of struggle and networking to go beyond the capturing devices of art institutions and creative industries.

PANEL 3  (@S.a.L.E. Docks) // 8th May 2015, 18.30 â 20.30 
The Strike in the Age of Financial Abstraction
Antonio Negri (Philosopher), Matteo Pasquinelli (Independent Researcher), Marco Assennato (Independent Researcher), Florian Schneider (Head of Trondheim Academy of Fine Arts).
Abstraction is an ambiguous word, it doesnât only describe a peculiar attitude towards the artistic sign, but also the capitalistic propensity to see work as the general equivalent. Today the storage of metadata and the use of complex algorithms by the capital, forces the multitudes to ask new questions about the efficacy of their political, linguistic and artistic practices.


WORKSHOPS

Workshop 1 (@Macao) // May 1st-5th 
The famous Robin Hood Asset Management Cooperative opens office in Milan! 
Robin Hood is the black sheep of activist hedge funds which bends powers of finance to the production and protection of the common. It uses capacities of finance to reopen the economic space. It reengineers financial technologies to see what more can finance do. The Robin Hood service strategy is the same as it was 600 years ago in Sherwood: attack the routes of wealth appropriated from the people, distribute the booty, big party. But the methods are a little different. Robin Hood does now big data, uses algorithms and blockchains, follows transactions at the U.S. stock exchanges, makes databanks of market actors, deconstructs them from individuals into dividuals, and shares their most important means of production to everyone. The Robin Hood team comes to Macao to work on the launch of the Hood Notes. The Hood Notes are a first generation non-cryptocurrency cryptoasset (Collaterilized Equity Note) backed up by the Robin Hoodâs dynamic portfolio of stocks which imitates the emerging conventions of the financial oligarchy at the market. Nothing like has been done before. Welcome to the wild side of finance. The Milan office is open. 
You are welcome to join, follow or take part in the work. Robin Hood Milan office workers, among others: Akseli Virtanen, Brett Scott, Tiziana Terranova, Benjamin Lozano, Pekko Koskinen, Dan Hassan, Emanuele Braga, Teppo Vesikukka, Harri Homi, Ana Fradique, Tere VadÃn, Luca Guzzetti.

Workshop 2 (@S.a.L.E. Docks) // 6th May 2015, 2.30 â 6.30 pm
Points of Interruptions. A Strike Preparation Camp
Daniel Blanga-Gubbay (Aleppo)
A strike starts with the body: it starts from the position that a body takes in respect to the one it had to take. [â]Then, an interruption is not simply the refusal to go along with the normal flow of things: the same gesture refigure the inclinations of the surface. It creates a deviation in the normative flows of things, opening up a gap between the permitted and the possible. Aleppo opens for a day a âStrike Preparation Campâ, a set of questions, readings and videos on the power of interruptions and the role of art as strike. The day is articulated as three Points of Interruption.

	â Introduction: is the strike an action or the interruption of an action? On flux and violence (introduction, video session and a reading group)
	â âArt Strike / Art as a Strikeâ. Discussion with Florian Schneider on â10 working points for artists in new divisions of laborâ.
	â The Continuous Interruption: thinking interruption beyond the idea of exception.

ACTIONS

- Robin Hood Minor Asset Management Cooperative, minor asset management and MACAO. The parasite: stealing money to financial markets  in order to create the common
The Milano Operation takes on a critical issue: the systematic exploitation of volunteer work, with 8000 workers serving for Expo, their only payment being free meals.

- Global Ultra Luxury Faction/Gulf Labor
âWe have yet to hear the Guggenheimâs public statement about this disturbing eventâ

- ZEBRA (a laboratory on abstract strike in Macao) 
Letâs imagine a future in which all we can create is already probably expected. The machines can calculate our behavior, our desire, our time. This future is now. How can we suspend this time, what is the point now for a strike? It means interrupting this cycle, forging an unexpected plot, changing the point of view. ZEBRA is a collective experiment that during Expo 2015 will explore the art of disappearing,  of not being seen, of not being neither the rule nor the abnormal. We want to be out of the catalogue, besiege the imagination, reaffirm the force of desire and reclaim the future. 
Co-created by Sara Leghissa and Francesca de Isabella (Strasse), Emanuele Braga and Maddalena Fragnito (Landscape Choreography), Camilla Pin, Luca Chiaudano, Cristina Rizzo, Monica Gentile, Leonardo Delogu and Valerio Sirna, Benno Steinegger, Nhandan Chirco and Branko Popovic, Isabella Mongelli, Livia Porzio, Paolo Gerbaudo, Roberta Bonetto, Silvia Calderoni and Ilenia Caleo, GianMaria Di Pasquale, Flora Vannini, Sarah Barberis.

- Urban Image of a Citizen
Small urban actions appear in the crowds passing through the city. As sudden events, they generate breaks that qualify the time and the place where they happen, opportunities to destabilize flows relating them with a part that ceases to be invisible. The city as a permanent laboratory where cohabitation of artists, students and residents creates new paths, open spaces of suspension and new possibilities to the unexpected.The actions will be repeated in five different points of the city, adjacent to bridges and passageways. 
Performers: Marianna Andrigo, Roberta Da Soller, Carlotta Bisello, Michela Solinas, Gea Polimeni. Part of OPEN# 7 Project in collaboration with Marianna Andrigo and the support of LiveArtsCultures.

- Curandi Katz
The work of Curandi Katz actualizes dynamics of interaction that move from private and intimate scale of personal desire towards a warm openness of mutuality,  accountability and transparency between individuals, in formal and informal community, and in relation to intentional or unintentional institutions. It focuses on taking care with strategies that weave artistic forms with radical actions related to the realm of activism.

DISPLAY

@Sale Docks and @Macao
Global Ultra Luxury Faction/Gulf Labor, ZEBRA (a laboratory on abstract strike in Macao), Open#7/Spatial Device Group, Open#7/Awakening (photographers movement), Open#7/Scioper@! X Inciso

- Spatial Device
The assembly is read as an introductory tool in search of new strike methodologies. S.a.L.E. Docks spaces are interpreted as suitable for the creation of a permanent assembly. The space is reconfigured in reference to the Minoan theater, ancient place of meeting and cultural exchange. Assemblies, panel discussions, performances and artworks will enrich and complete the space.
OPEN#7 / Spatial Device group: Francesca Modolo & Alessandro Zorzetto (Rural Boxx), Roberto DellâEva, Piter Perbellini, Michela Solinas, Denise Bianco, Altea Bacchetti.

All the materials used during the construction are offered by ReBiennale project.

////////////////////////////////// by Festival FOLLE/Macao and S.a.L.E Docks

http://ab-strike.tumblr.com/who ////////////////////////////////// 


_______________________________________________
nettime-ann mailing list
nettime-ann@nettime.org
http://www.nettime.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nettime-ann