Context seminar
"The metropolis is now the point of massive collision - dare we call it class struggle? - over the accumulation by dispossession visited upon the least well-off and the developmental drive that seeks to colonize space for the affluent . . . democratization of [the right to the city], and the construction of a broad social movement to enforce its will is imperative if the dispossessed are to take back the control which they have for so long been denied, and if they are to institute new modes of urbanization." - David Harvey
The conditions within which Chto delat & Ultra-red take up their work on the theme of 'the social', are those of the global financial crisis. The latter is often used to justify the dismantling of welfare states and the withdrawal of commitments to the notion of the commons that underlay their development in the first place. Now, it is every atom for itself; situated in a vortex driven by the fatal master-slave dialectic between the private and the common.
The social, is currently acknowledged as being a luxury we simply cannot afford. Thus, it must be sacrificed along with other public goods, including education, health care, infrastructure, and housing. This is more than simply a retreat from the social. It also permits the commodity value of former public goods to be realized and circulated within the systems of capitalist speculation. Volunteerism and self-help, once signatures of the social, are now co-opted to fill gaps resulting from the privatizing of property and services. In reaction to these dispossession citizens of cities in countries across the globe are occupying strategic urban spaces. These occupations - temporary productions of common space by the deterritorialized and expropriated on enemy terrain - are to be understood as an emphatic reclamation of rights repressed for decades. They direct us toward some fundamental questions: What is the social today? How has its construction changed? Why has it become so vulnerable to the attacks of capital and privatization? Why are ideas of the social so indispensable for the imagination of freedoms? How can we be at home in an alien world?
The platform Chto delat/What is to be done? was founded in the beginning of 2003 in St Petersburg (Russia), with the goal of merging political theory, art, and activism. The platform’s activity consists of developing a network of collective initiatives in Russia and putting them into an international context. The platform is coordinated by a workgroup with the same name. The collective initiatives developed inside the platform engage in a variety of art projects, including video works, installations, actions in public space, radio programs, and different forms of artistic research. During this seminar the platform is represented by David Riff, Tsaplya (Olga Egorova), and Dmitry Vilensky.
Founded in 1994 by two AIDS activists, Ultra-red has expanded to include artists, researchers and organizers from different social movements, including the struggles of migration, anti-racism, participatory community development, and the politics of HIV/AIDS. By exploring acoustic space as enunciative of social relations, Ultra-red utilizes sound-based research to directly engage political struggle. With ten associates working in North America and Europe, Ultra-red pursue a dynamic exchange between art and political organizing producing radio broadcasts, performances, recordings, essays, and installations. Ultra-red members are currently conducting investigations in Los Angeles, New York, London, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Berlin and Oslo. During this seminar Ultra-red is represented by Elliot Perkins, Robert Sember, and Leonardo Vilchis.
This collaboration between Chto Delat and Ultra-red is commissioned by SKOR | Foundation for Art and Public Domain. The seminar is part of the Symposium 'Actors, Agents and Attendants II: Social Housing - Housing the Social'.
Curators Fulya Erdemci (SKOR) and Andrea Phillips (Goldsmiths, University of London)
Associate curator and coordinator Vesna Madzoski (SKOR)
Architectural advisor Markus Miessen (Studio Miessen)
Curators Film Programme Yael Messer and Gilad Reich
Coordinator Art Collaboration Fleur van Muiswinkel
Research Group Arno van Roosmalen (director, Stroom Den Haag), Bregtje van der Haak (documentary filmmaker), Chris Keulemans (artistic director, Tolhuistuin Amsterdam), Ernst van den Hemel (philosopher and activist, University of Amsterdam), Huib Haye van der Werf (curator, SKOR), Nils van Beek (curator, SKOR), Partizan Publik (design and action collective, Amsterdam), and Theo Tegelaers (curator, SKOR)
Interns Laura Pardo and Michelle Franke
SKOR | Foundation for Art and Public Domain is an internationally operating art institution based in Amsterdam, which advises, develops and creates art projects in relation to public spaces. SKOR forms alliances and partnerships with art institutions, central and provincial governments, healthcare and educational institutions, project developers and architectural offices, in order to create a collective platform for art in public domain. The projects organized by SKOR react to socio-political changes in society and new developments in contemporary art, urban design and landscape architecture. Through addressing such current topics, SKOR contributes to the debate about the politics of the public domain.
