february 2004 makeworld paper#4

n/NEURO-networkinge europe

THURSDAY 26-2-2004 FRIDAY 27-2-2004 SATURDAY 28-2-2004 SUNDAY 29-2-2004

18:00 MET Kunstarkaden 18:00 MET Muffathalle 11:00 MET Cafe 11:00 MET Cafe NEURO_STREAM Vernissage »Remaking Destiny« by NEURO_OPENING Greetings by Fred Schell NEURO_LOUNGE Breakfast with bavarian veal NEURO_LOUNGE Save image as? Matinee about Shahidul Alam (BD), »Der neue Mensch« by Armin (Managing Director, JFF, Munich), Renate Schmidt sausages compression, conservation and restauration of mov- Smailovic (DE), »Mobile« by Michaela Melián (DE) (German minister for youth, Berlin), Director Joao ing images with Enno Patalas (DE), Sebastian and videoinstallations by Ivan Grubanov (YU) Vale de Almeida (European Commission Directorate 13:00 MET Muffathalle Luetgert (DE) and Ralph Giles (GB) General for Education and Culture, Brussels), NEURO_PITCH New border review: The western Thomas Krueger (President of the Federal center for enlargement of east europe: Presentations by 13:00 MET Muffathalle political education, Bonn). Mama (HR), Cyberpipe (SI), Ljudmila (SI), RIXC NEURO_PITCH Tools for collaboration: Crowd LOCATIONS (LV), KUDA (YU), D MEDIA (RO) and many more Compiler, GForge, Fluter, OPENMUTE, Reboot FM, Muffathalle, Zellstr. 4, 81667 Muenchen 19:30 MET Muffathalle V2V, TamTam, TEXTZ.COM, XIPH.ORG Kunstarkaden des Kulturreferats der NEURO_TALK Networking against exclusion Shahidul 14:00 MET Cafe Landeshauptstadt Muenchen, Sparkassenstrasse. Alam (BD), Annetta Kahane (DE), Geert Lovink NEURO_TALK Female, young, migrant: Biopolitical 14:00 MET Cafe 3, 80331 Muenchen (NL), Florian Schneider (DE) researches on the transformations of labor: NEURO_TALK Social ontologies of open source: Die Bank, Muellerstrasse 42, 80468 Muenchen Precarias (ES), Valery Rey Alzaga (US), Thomas Strategic considerations and tactical collaborations 21:00 MET Cafe Atzert (DE), Nicholas Bell (FR), Andrew Paterson by David Berry (GB), Manse Jacobi (LB), Roland NEURO_TALK Civil society goes Empire: Critical (LV) and more Mas (FR), Giles Moss (GB), Alan Toner (IR) reflections by Andrej Grubacic, Joanne Richardson, BACKGROUND Soenke Zehle 15:00 MET Muffathalle 15:00 MET Muffathalle From February 27th to 29th young artists, filmmak- NEURO_LOUNGE Brothers Keepers: Presentation by NEURO_PITCH Migrations: APABIZ (DE), Collectif ers, musicians, theorists and activists from all over Precipite (FR), D-A-S-H (DE), Al-Jwarizmi (ES), Europe and many other parts of the world meet at Kanak Attac (DE), myBrandenburg (DE), THE VOICE the Muffathalle in Munich for NEURO; a number of FORUM (DE) events, speeches, discussions, presentations, per- formances, concerts and actions reflecting the 16:00 MET Cafe pulse of the age. About two years after the first NEURO_TALK Freedom of movement: Sandro make-world festival, NEURO will again interface with Mezzadra (IT), Manuela Bojadzijev (DE) current debates around migration and mobility, racism and nationalism, civil society and global 17:00 MET Muffathalle mobilisation, networking and new technologies, Ade Odukoya (DE) NEURO_PITCH Label-Talk: Bomb Mitte, DiskoB, informatisation and precarious labour, education 21:00 MET Muffathalle Kompakt, Loca-Records, Miklataklitim, Source and control society, common organising, and digital NEURO_LOG KIOSK for useful knowledge, Berlin 16:00 MET Cafe Records culture. (DE) featuring: Drazen Pantic (US) and Micz Flor NEURO_TALK The making of: The general intellect. (DE), Ted Byfield (US) and Zeljko Blace (HR) Round-table-talk with Ted Byfield (US), Antonio 18:00 MET Cafe But NEURO is not only a conference, nor is it just a Conti (IT), Thorsten Schilling (DE), Dieter NEURO_TALK Constitutive practices: Closing debate fair or a conventional festival. Rather it is a place 21:30 MET Muffathalle Schlönvoigt (DE), Jacqueline Ann Stevens (US) on ad-hoc-networking and virtual organising for three days of collaboration and common produc- NEURO_STREAM Random_Inc, Frankfurt (DE) tion. The challenge is to commonly use existing 17:00 MET Muffathalle 19:00 MET Muffathalle technological possibilities and to reclaim new forms 23:00 MET Muffathalle NEURO_PITCH Radical image exposures: Project NEURO_CINEMA The Corporation, Mark of a public that stays outside of the metaphors of NEURO_LOUNGE Open code: Conversations presentations by AgoraXchange (US), CandidaTV Achbar/Jennifer Abbott/Joel Bakan, , 2003, market and open-plan office and that does not dif- between Thomas Meinecke, Munich (DE) and David (IT), Egoboo.Bits (HR), Ivan Grubanov (YU), 145 min ferentiate between production and reception, cre- Moufang/Move_D, Heidelberg (DE) Hackitectura (ES), Bruno Kuhlmann (D), Dunia ation and distribution. NEURO is about a critical, Kukovec (SI), Sebastian Lütgert (DE), Undercurrents 22:00 MET Cafe connected practice and a practical critique of net- (GB), Zalea TV (FR) and more NEURO_LOUNGE Data Pop: Tobias Thomas, Koeln working: to present the results of present projects in D-A-S-H EUROPE (DE) and Ralph Christoph, Koeln (DE) order to make them available beyond the occasion 18:00 MET Cafe of this event, to discuss new ideas, plan and start NEURO--NETWORKING EUROPE has invited over 250 NEURO_CINEMA I love you all, Eyal Sivan, common project. people to come to munich: they are coming from /, 2003, 89 min Helsinki to Sevilla, from Dublin to Bukarest, Belarus Exhibitions First of all, NEURO stands for »Networking Europe«. to South Italy and have gathered valuable experi- 19:00 MET Muffathalle Parallel to the activities in Muffathalle NEURO is Only a few weeks before the official eastern ences in handling new media and technologies, in NEURO_STREAM Bukaka says: Another war is possi- presenting exhibitions and installations in the enlargement of the European Union, the central order to engage themselves politically, to exchange ble! Videoperformance by Publix Theatre Caravan, gallery »Kunstarkaden«, Sparkassenstrasse 3, near question concerns, at what point are the driving and network with each other. Wien (AT) Marienplatz (Open from 11 am to 7pm): powers of a virtual europe relating to each other, where the traces of this association runs and how NEURO will be opened with the launch of the 20:00 MET Cafe REMAKING DESTINY, a foto-exhibition and installa- they can be bundled into creative alliances. Though Internet-Platform D-A-S-H, which will be started on NEURO_TALK Crisis of representation and politics of tion by Shahidul Alam, fotografer from Dhaka, not an end in itself, networking is now raising more the 27th of February 2004 by the JFF, Institut for space: Presentations by Eyal Sivan (FR) and Brian Bangladesh, is about the expectations, dreams, than ever questions that cannot be answered at Mediaeducation in Research and Practice, after Holmes (FR) duties and needs that circumscribe the life of a straightaway: What does networking actually mean almost one year of preperation and in cooperation migrant. nowadays? What does networking have to do with with european youth initiatives and with support of 21:00 MET Muffathalle freedom of movement? How do social movements the EU-Commission as well as the federal youth NEURO_STREAM Dead , videoinstallation, DER NEUE MENSCH, a foto exhibition by Armin network? Or: how can technologies be used in ways ministry. Yanoon, Yanoon music- and video performance by Smailovic, fotografer from Berlin, maps the path- that they don't just change the self but the com- Eran Sachs, Aviad Albert, Ariel Efron, Niv Hachlili, ways of struggles around migration, movements and monality ? How do we conceptualise the common NEURO is presented by Multitude e.V., Muffathalle dispara!, shuffle, Jerusalem (IL) networking. that is created in and through networks whilst not and »D-A-S-H -- networking against exclusion«, a being reducible to them? Ten years after the start project of the JFF, Institut for mediaeducation in 21:00 MET Muffathalle A GUY I KNOW and THE CAGES are videoinstalla- of the internet boom, the crisis of the idea of net- Research and practice. With kind support of the NEURO_LOG KIOSK for useful knowledge, Berlin tions by Ivan Grubanov, artist from Belgrade. works is long overdue. Alongside the collapse of the program of action »Youth for tolerance and democ- (DE) featuring: Sandro Mezzadra (IT) and Geert new markets, the bombastic constructions about racy - against right winged extremism, xenophobia Lovink, James Stevens (GB) and Micz Flor (DE), MOBILE is an installation by Michaela Melian, artist media art, media theory and media activism have and antisemitism«, the program YOUTH of the Franco Bifo Berardi (IT) and Valery Rey Alzaga (US) from Berg, near Munich. MOBILE consists of 59 fallen like a house of cards. Nevertheless, in the European Union, the Federal Institute for Political oval panes of plexiglass, printed with sections of ensuing impasse, a new generation of media and Education and the Rosa Luxemburg foundation. 23:00 MET Muffathalle faces or items related to them taken from the IDEN- networking initiatives have formed and taken NEURO_LOUNGE Friendly noise in collaboration TIKIT program run by the State criminal bureau. onboard the discussion and reflection on everyday with Reboot.FM, Berlin (DE) feat.: Meme (UK), life, and new tasks, methods, functions, challenges Markus Hablizel (DE) and perspectives. Content MAKEWORLDS (2)

03 The Withering of Civil Society NAME 05 Notes on the State of Networking NEURO -- networking europe 07 Electronic Markets and activist networks

09 From Utopia to networks DATE

10 Struggle, event, media February 26-29, 2004

12 Ontological definition of multitude LOCATIONS 14 A Rift in Empire? Muffathalle, Zellstr. 4, 81667 Munich (Germany) 15 Polizeywissenschaft extended version Kunstarkaden des Kulturreferats der Landeshauptstadt Muenchen, Sparkassenstrasse. 3, 80331 Muenchen Die Bank, Muellerstrasse 42, 80468 Muenchen 16 On Human Rights

17 What is a people? SYNOPSIS 18 At the borders of europe A new generation of media and network initiatives from all over Europe and different parts of the world pres 20 Citizenship in motion ent and work on their projects in a broad interactive framework that explores the different conceptual and practical idioms used to articulate and create new social, political and artistic practices. 22 Precarious woman worker adrift

24 The work of art in the age of... Originating within the networking culture of open communications and free exchange the event aims to con 25 A Continuum of Knowledge nect contemporary debates on mobility, migration and social movements with new media instruments, infor 26 LibreSociety.org Manifesto mation and communication technologies.

27 Top 10 Open Source Tools for Activism WHAT'S NEW? 30 The Warrior, the Merchant and the Sage The new is emerging in unknown and multiple ways. It is emerging from the exhaustion and crisis of conven Distribution tional political concepts that are no longer adequate to the unstable, informatic and immaterial dimensions of the emerging division of labour. The new technologies of the common are not universal hierarchies of This free paper, a product of collaborative text political right but small scale and intimate practices of constitution. The new involves those who see the limi filtering, appeared in a circulation of 10,000 tations of individual social practices of self-realisation and desire to turn them into general and transferable and was produced as a collection of associat- social technologies of emancipation. ed or complementary or auxiliary text material BACKGROUND at the occasion of NEURO--networking europe, It is time for intellectual and political debates to merge with technology. Both to evaluate the current state of from February 26-29 in Munich (DE). But also social movements and to build on those orientations that are pushing the limits of what are individually con beyond the actual event the paper will be valu- sidered possible. NEURO sets out to create and map a new discursive terrain and practical horizon: the ideas of 'freedom of movement' and 'technologies of the common' draws into a synergetic perspective the able as a entry point to the various debates, range of irreducibly conflictual practices whereby society is reproduced. presentations, workshops and audio-visual pro- ductions during and around the festival. Without losing sight of the (translocal) constitution of the local as indispensable site of intervention, NEURO Previous papers appeared during the first seeks to review and research practices of networking that are already redefining the political geography of Europe. In the ongoing diversification of the social, processes of integration can no longer be clearly separat Make World festival (October 2001) and the ed from mechanisms of exclusion. The working out of these tensions at a political and economic level is pro first European Social Forum (November 2002) ducing new levels of complexity as well as new opportunities for provocative and experimental projects that and the NextFiveMinutes Conference challenge orthodoxy and convention. (September 2003). The focus on social reproduction is an acknowledgment that its various modes are proliferating across an ever-expanding terrain in a process that suggests that collective responses will themselves have to explore Editorial team some of the idioms and tools of the network in each of the subjects under discussion, whether human rights and citizenship, Empire and Europe, free and intellectual property regimes, the spectacle of civil Arianna Bove, Annett Busch, Erik Empson, society, or the institutional and bureaucratic mentalities present within post-governmental environments. Susanne Lang, Geert Lovink, Sebastian Luetgert, Florian Schneider, Mathias Wrba, Beyond the juridical parcelisation of people into discrete, sovereign and rights-bearing subjects, the present and Soenke Zehle offers a unique chance to express and form solidarities that catch up in political terms with the sociality of our being. For these struggles, networks and intercommunicative agency are not goals but their very condit Thanks to: Elke Stolzenburg ions of possibility. Thus the new sits in opposition to the current forms of exclusion because the appropria tion of subjective freedoms within Europe and beyond it are part of the foundations on which these political Fotos edifices themselves rest. Armin Smailovic TASKS After the thin promises of new markets and new media, what aspirations remain for evolving struggles for Imprint information, knowledge and communication? What is the role of civil society in the framework of global gov Publisher: Multitude e.V. erning practices of political mediation today? What is the impact of immaterial and affective labour for prac Breitscheidstr. 41 tices of migration and the reconfiguration of the global economy of biopolitical production? What projects of self constitution emerge from practices of refusal and exodus? How has the movement reposed the question D-16321 Bernau b. Berlin of the autonomy of the political in the midst of a crisis of representation? Is mapping the only way to Print: SV-Druckzentrum, Steinhausen express horizontal structures of cooperation and technologies of the common?

SEE ALSO http://www.makeworlds.org http://d-a-s-h.org http://www.kein.org http://www.generation-online.org 2 http://www.incommunicado.info urthermore, we must question whether the organization of abstract labor. of the institutions does not reveal the pluralistic the social foundations necessary for the effects of social forces on the State; instead, it F construction and sustenance of civil Education, Hegemony, Discipline highlights the State's capacities to organize, recu- The society are themselves present in contemporary The Hegelian conception of civil society persists perate, even produce social forces. Michel social formations. I want to argue, in fact, that in in various forms throughout modern and contem- Foucault's work has made dear that the institu- recent years the conditions of possibility for civil porary social and political theory. When we sur- tions and _enfermements_ or enclosures of civil Withering of society have progressively been undermined in vey the work of the wide variety of twentieth-cen- society - the church, the school, the prison, the North America, Europe, and elsewhere (if indeed tury authors who in some form or another take family, the union, the party, et cetera - constitute they ever existed outside the European world). ... up this notion of civil society, we quickly recog- the paradigmatic terrain for the disciplinary Civil Society The society we are living in today is more properly nize that the social dialectic of civil society is pre- deployments of power in modern society, produc- understood as a postcivil society. sented in two guises, one more democratic and ing normalized subjects and thus exerting hege- the other more authoritarian. Antonio Gramsci mony through consent in a way that is perhaps Michael Hardt Organization of Abstract Labor has perhaps gone furthest in theorizing the dem- more subtle but no less authoritarian than the In political philosophy, civil society is fundamen- ocratic and socialist potential of civil society. ... exertion of dictatorship through coercion. The dis- tally linked to the modern notion of labor, a con- As we have seen, Hegel conceives the end of ciplinary perspective, then, might recognize the Civil society is proposed as an essential fea- nection made most clear by G. W. F. Hegel. ... social movement and conflict, in both logical and same channels passing through civil society, but According to Hegel ... through needs, work, historical terms, as gathered together, subsumed, sees the flows moving argain in the opposite ture of any democracy: the institutional infra- exchange, and the pursuit of particular self-inter- and thus realized in the ends of State, the actu- direction. ... The social dialectic thus functions in ests, the »unorganized atoms of civil society« are ality of the ethical Idea. Gramsci casts the histor- order that antagonistic social forces be sub- structure for political mediation and public to be ordered toward the universal - not exactly ical movement or flow in the opposite direction, sumed within the prior and unitary synthesis of through the mysterious actions of Adam Smith's proposing instead »that the State's goal is its the State. exchange. However, while recognizing the dem- invisible hand, but rather through the competitive own end, its own disappearance, in other words, institutions of capitalist production and circula- the re-absorption of political society within civil ... Hegel's understanding of the historical rise of tion. ... The second innovation in Hegel's usage society«. The term _reabsorption_ indicates a civil society and the generalization of its educa- ocratic functions that the concept and reality of the concept of civil society, which is closely reversal of the social flow: what according to the tive social role does correspond in several tied to the first but specific to Hegel in its formu- Hegelian process of subsumption flowed from respects to the process that Michel Foucault calls of civil society have made possible, it is also lation, is the emphasis on the educative aspect society toward the State now is reversed from the the governmentalization of the State. The State of civil society. ... In other words, civil society State to civil society as a sort of inverted sub- of sovereignty which, according to Foucault, important to be aware of the functions of disci- takes the natural human systems of needs and sumption. Gramsci is able to understand the served as the dominant form of rule in Europe particular self-interests, puts them in relation with process of the withering or disappearance of the from the Middle Ages to the sixteenth century, pline and exploitation that are inherent in and each other through the capitalist social institu- State as a process of re-absorption because he positioned itself as a transcendent singularity tions of production and exchange and, thus, on conceives the State as existing only secondarily, with respect to its subjects. The transcendence of inseparable from these same structures. the basis of the mediation and subsumption of as if it were a placeholder filling the structural the sovereign State afforded it a certain detach- the particular, poses a terrain on which the State voici left by a not fully developed civil society. ment from the pressures of conflictive particular can realize the universal interest of society in When civil society does manage fully to fill its interests in society. In the passage to the modern »the actuality of the ethical Idea«. Hegelian edu- role, the State as such will no longer exist; or State, however, the transcendence and singulari- cation in civil society is a process of formal sub- rather, State elements will continue to exist only ty of the State were overturned through the rise sumption, a process whereby particular differ- as subordinated agents of civil society's hegemo- of what Foucault calls »governmentality.« The rule ences, foreign to the universal, are negated and ny. ... Expanding and reenforcing the scope and of the governmental State is characterized preserved in unity. powers of the various segments and institutions instead by its immanence to the population of civil society is thus central to a Gramscian through a multiplicity of forms. ... The manage- Hegel combines and highlights these economic strategy of social progress, which will eventually ment of people and things implied by this gover- and educative aspects in his conception that civil reverse the flow of the Hegelian process and fill nance involves an active engagement, exchange, sociey is primarily a society of _labor_. ... In his the dictatorial and coercive spaces now occupied or dialectic among social forces and between early writings on the State, in the Jena period, by the State with democratic forces organized in social forces and the State. The same educative Hegel conceived the process of the abstraction of terms of social hegemony and consent. This social processes that Hegel casts in terms of Iabor from its concrete instantiations as the hegemony is grounded finally on an Hegelian abstraction and organization, Foucault recognizes motor driving the civilizing social institutions. form of education, which gives the revolutionary in terms of training, discipline, and management. »Concrete labor is the elemental, substantial con- class or party its ability to »absorb« or »assimi- The channels or striae in which these processes version,« the basic foundation of everything, but late all of society« in the name of general inter- function, recognized as social institutions by it is also »blind and savage,« that is, uneducated ests. When the State has been effectively sub- Hegel, are characterized by Foucault in terms of in the universal interest. Concrete labor, which in sumed, Gramsci claims, the reign of civil society, deployments (_dispositifs_) and enclosures this early period Hegel imagines as the labor of or self-government, will begin. (_enfermements_). Civil society, from this per- peasants, is the human activity closest to nature. spective, is the productive site of modern econo- Just like nature, concrete labor cannot be simply Authors who, like Gramsci, highlight the demo- my (economy understood now in the large negated, since it is the foundation of all society, cratic aspects of civil society focus in general on sense); in other words, it is the site of the pro- but neither can it be simply integrated, since it is the pluralism of the institutions of civil society duction of goods, desires, individual and collec- savage and uncivilized. ... [W]e should say that and on the avenues or channels they provide for tive identities, et cetera. It is the site, finally, of civil society is not simply the society of labor, but input into the rule of political society or the the institutional dialectic of social forces, of the that it is specifically the society of _abstract_ State. ... Numerous other strategies of political social dialectic that gives rise to and underwrites labor. practice and scholarly analysis ... all emphasize the State. the possibility of democratic representation avail- This same educative process of abstraction is able through the passages opened by the ideo- In his extensive work on the nature of power, also at the center of Hegel's mature conception logical, cultural, and economic institutions of civil however, Foucault not only refuses Gramsci's of civil society, which he poses in his later writ- society. From this perspective, the social dialectic inversion of the priority between civil society and ings in less philosophical, more practical terms: in civil society and the possibilities of mediation political society (that is, civil society and the through labor the pursuit of the satisfaction of make the State open to the plurality of social State), he goes one step further and argues that one's particular needs is related to the pursuits flows channeled through the institutions. The acti- we can make no analytical distinction at all of others and thus »subjective self-seeking turns vation of the forces of civil society makes the between them. When Foucault argues that power into a contribution to the satisfaction of the State porous, destabilize its dictatorial powers or cannot be isolated but is everywhere, that it needs of everyone else.« Hegel finds this educa- rather »re-absorbing« them within the expanding comes from everywhere, that there is no outside tive role of labor, the transformation to the uni- hegemony of civil society. to power, he is also denying the analytical sepa- versal, organized and made explicit in the institu- ration of political society from civil society. ... In tional trade unions, the corporations, which struc- In the work of other authors, however, the media- the disciplinary and governmental society the turally orient the particular interests of workers tory institutions that define the relationship lines of power extend through social space in the toward the universal interest of society. Civil soci- between civil society and the State are shown to channels created by the institutions of civil socie- ety consists of not just the unions but all the function not toward democratic but authoritarian ty. The exertion of power is organized through institutions of capitalist society that organize ends. From this second perspective, then, the deployments, which are at once ideological, insti- abstract labor. ... [C]ivil society is the society of representation of interests through the channels tutional, and corporeal. This is not to say that

A.network Ukraine. Representatives of different anti-fascist, Presently our main objective is foundation of dices. Although you may think these differences http://www.anetwork.org anti-racist and anti-totalitarian political tenden- antifascist school education. are just facts of life, these results are due to A.network is a regional initiative of new media cies are working consisting of our organization. laws. agoraXchange pays special attention to the centers which produce, present and reflect on We joined hands in our struggle against arising Act Up rules shaping and regulating families and citizen- contemporary media/culture/technology and it's fascism in Ukraine, because, according to our http://www.actupp.org ship because war and ethnic conflicts are a result impact on the society. The a. stands for opinion, it represents a great danger. Russian fas- We are the séropositifs, sick persons, activists of laws constructing beliefs about ancestry; and artistic/activistic/alternative cultural/social/tech- cism of Barkashov, Limonov and other Russian who are still fighting against Aids and their the resources one has from being born into a par- nological practices. fascists prolongs to intensify in eastern regions of accomplices continue. ticular family are responsible for between 50% Ukraine, Ukrainian fascism – in western and cen- and 80% of inequality in wealth. AgoraXchange AFIU Anti-fascist Initiative of Ukraine tral regions. It is necessary to indicate, that the Agoraxchange questions the prevailing sociobiological aesthet- Our group of young Ukrainian anti-fascists and center of Social-national Party of Ukraine (SNPU), http://agoraxchange.org ics on which laws legislating birthright are based. anti-racists exists about 2 years. Our organization the strongest fascist party in Ukraine are located You never chose where to be born or who you We wish to challenge the idea that our differ- is standing on anti-fascist and anti-racist posi- in Lvov. The members of this party slaughters on parents are, but just these facts alone will largely ences and social inequality are inevitable, that tions. Presently our organization includes 57 real the streets of activists of liberal-democratic, determine whether you are rich or poor and how such is human nature. We believe that those who members and about 100 followers in 8 cities of social-democratic and socialist movement. your life will be touched by war or ethnic preju- use evolutionary psychological models of 3natural there is no State, but rather that it cannot effec- production perfected in the factory now invests passage has only come to be generalized in the tively be isolated and contested at a level sepa- all forms of social production. The same might he most completely capitalist countries in our times. rate from society. ... On the contrary, the State as said also for the school, the family, the hospital, [6] According to Marx, in the first of these two such is better understood as the result, the con- and the other disciplinary institutions. ... Social phases, the formal subsumption, social labor solidation or molarization of forces of »statiza- space has not been emptied of the disciplinary processes are subsumed under capital; that is, tion« (_etatisation_) immanent to social power institutions; it has been completely filled with the they are enveloped within the capitalist relations relations. The causes and intentions that inform modulations of control. The relationship between of production in such a manner that capital inter- and order power relations are not isolated in society and the State no longer primarily involves venes as the director or manager. In this arrange- some headquarters of rationality but are imma- the mediation and organization of the institutions ment, capital subsumes labor the way it finds it; nent to the field of forces. Foucault thus prefers for discipline and rule. Instead, the relationship capital takes over existing labor processes that to use instead of _State_ the term _govern- sets the State in motion directly through the per- were developed in previous modes of production ment_, which indicates the multiplicity and petual circuitry of social production. or at any rate outside of capitalist production. .... immanence of the forces of statization to the Actually, as Hegel clearly recognized in his writ- social field. ... In particular, Foucault emphasizes We should be careful to point out, however, that ings ... capital cannot directly integrate concrete the »educational« aspect of civil society whereby the passage from disciplinary society to the soci- labor but must first abstract it from its concrete particular social interests are enlightened to the ety of control is not merely a shift in the institu- forms. The various processes of abstraction, the general interest and brought in line with the uni- tional structures of rule. ... What underlies the resistances these give rise to, and the potential versal. Education means discipline. More accu- various institutions is the diagram: the anony- lines of social conflict between concrete labor rately, Foucault reformulates the educational mous or abstract strategic machine, the and abstract labor are thus principle characteris- process of civil society in terms of production: unformed or nonstratified schema of power rela- tics of the phase of the formal subsumption. power acts not only by training or ordering the tions. The diagram transcends, or better subtends Capital tends, however, through the socialization elements of the social terrain but actually by pro- the various institutional assemblages. ... The dis- of production and through scientific and techno- ducing them - producing desires, needs, individu- ciplinary diagram runs throughout the various logical innovation, to create new labor processes als, identities, et cetera. ... The State, Hegel institutions defining the conditions of possibility, and to destroy old ones, transforming the situa- claims, is not the result but the cause; Foucault the conditions of what can be seen, said, and tions of the various agents of production. Capital adds, not a transcendent but an immanent known, the conditions of the exertion of power. thus sets in motion a specifically capitalist mode cause, statization, immanent to the various chan- The passage to a society of control, then, will cer- of production. Marx calls the subsumption of nels, institutions, or enclosures of social produc- tainly manifest symptoms at the institutional labor _real_, then, when the labor processes tion. level, but it should he grasped also and above all themselves are born within capital and therefore at the diagrammatic level. If we are to follow when labor is incorporated not as an external, ... Disciplinary society can be characterized as Foucault's method, then, we should ask, first, but an internal force, proper to capital itself. As civil society seen from a different perspective, what are the diagrams that define the conditions we move to the phase of the real subsumption, approached from underneath, from the micro- of possibility in the societies of control? And Marx explains, labor processes evolve so that, physics of its power relations. While Gramsci then, in what kinds of social assemblages will first of all, production is no longer a direct and highlights the democratic potentials of the institu- these diagrammatic forces be consolidated, and individual activitv but an immediately social activ- tions of civil society, Foucault makes clear that how? ity. ... In the _specifically_ capitalist mode of civil society is a society founded on discipline The metaphors available to us can at least give production, that is, in the phase of the real sub- and that the education it offers is a diffuse net- us an indication of the nature of this passage. ... sumption, productive labor - or even production work of normalization. From this perspective, The panopticon, and disciplinary diagrammatics in general - no longer appears as the pillar that Gramsci and Foucault highlight the two contrast- in general, functioned primarily in terms of posi- defines and sustains capitalist social organiza- ing faces of Hegel's civil society. ... tions, fixed points, and identities. ... The diagram tion. Production is given an objective quality, as if of control, however, is not oriented toward posi- the capitalist system were a machine that Infinite Undulations of the Snake tion and identity, but rather toward mobility and marched forward on its own accord, without When we look at the contemporary societies of anonymity. It functions on the basis of »the what- labor, a capitalist automaton. Western Europe and North America, it seems that ever,« the flexible and mobile performance of ... This is how we should understand the passage these various, rich, promising, and frightening contingent identities, and thus its assemblages from the formal to the real subsumption. The theoretical visions of civil society, both in the or institutions are elaborated primarily through society of the formal subsumption was character- Hegelian version and in the Gramscian and repetition and the production of simulacra. ... ized by the dialectic between capital and labor: Foucauldian reformulations, no longer hold - they Elaborate controls over information flow, exten- as a foreign force subsumed within capital, labor no longer grasp the dominant mechanisms or sive use of polling and monitoring techniques, had to be abstracted, recuperated, disciplined, schema of social production and social ordering. and innovative social use of the media thus gain and tamed within the productive processes. But The decline of the paradigm of civil society corre- prominent positions in the exertion of power. ... labor nonetheless was continually recognized as lates to a passage in contemporary society the source of all social wealth. ... In the society toward a new configuration of social relations Claiming the decline of civil sociey, of course, of the real subsumption this dialectic no longer and new conditions of rule. This is not to say that does not mean that all the mechanisms of rule holds the central role, and capital no longer the forms and structures of social exchange, par- and organization which characterized civil society needs to engage labor or represent labor at the ticipation, and domination that were identified by no longer exist or function. Similarly, recognizing heart of production. What is subsumed, what is the concept of civil society have ceased entirely a passage from disciplinary societies to societies accepted into the process, is no longer a poten- to exist, but rather that they have been displaced of control does not mean that disciplinary deploy- tially conflictive force but a product of the system from the dominant position by a new configura- ments and the attendant potentialities of resist- itself; the real subsumption does not extend verti- tion of apparatuses, deployments, and structures. ance have completely disappeared. Disciplinary cally throughout the various strata of society but Deleuze's notion [that we have recently experi- deployments remain, as do elements of sover- rather constructs a separate plane, a simulacrum enced a passage from a disciplinary society to a eignty in the regimes of control. ... What is prima- of society that excludes or marginalizes social society of control] can serve us here as a first rily at issue, though, is not simply the existence forces foreign to the system. Social capital thus attempt to understand the decline of the rule of of certain apparatuses, mechanisms, or deploy- appears to reproduce itself autonomously, as if it civil society and the rise of a new form of control. ments, but rather their predominance within a were emancipated from the working class, and Disciplinary societies, as I suggested earlier, are specific paradigm of rule. Our task is to discern labor becomes invisible in the system. ... characterized by the enclosures or institutions the salient characteristics of the social formation that serve as the skeleton or backbone of civil that succeeds civil society; the smooth spaces of ... The State of the real subsumption is no longer society; these enclosures define the striae of the societies of control constitute our first interested in mediation or »education« but in sep- social space. ... Deleuze insists, however, that attempt. aration, no longer in discipline but in control. The these social enclosures or institutions are today We can formulate a second, complementary State of the real subsumption operates on a sep- everywhere in crisis [and] suggests that it is more approach to this problematic by casting the pas- arate plane, a simulacrum of the social field, adequate, then, to understand the collapse of sage not in Foucauldian but rather in Marxian ter- abstract from labor itself. ... Once again, my gen- the walls defined by the enclosures not as some minology, which will highlight the contemporary eral point here is simply that in this passage the sort of social evacuation but rather as the gener- change in the social organization of labor. ... democratic and/or disciplinary institutions of civil alization of logics that previously functioned with- Marx recognized the passage from the formal to society, the channels of social mediation, as a in these limited domains across the entire socie- the real subsumption in nineteenth-century socie- particular form of the organization of social labor, ty, spreading like a virus. The logic of capitalist ty as a tendency, but it seems to me that this society politically have declined and been dis-

selection to defend the laws that create our pres- Al-Jwarezmi oping different interfaces that will allow its use by project. Al-jwarizmi is meant to be implemented ent flawed institutions of family and nation are http://hackitectura.net non expert participants, being its objective to as the live stream package of indymedia estrecho not bad scientists or politicians, but rather, bad AL-JWARIZMI is an ongoing prototype for distrib- become a tool to be deployed by all kind of per- in order to support experimentation and post-tex- artists. Their fictions create passive citizens who uted competence multimedia production, based sons and social organizations interested in open tual evolution of the independent media commu- accept the alliances of family and nation as a on Pure Data, a real-time graphical programming and participatory communication. Webcam and nication model. birthright or misfortune of birth. By collaboratively environment for audio and graphical processing. gamepad control have been already implement- designing a world, agoraXchange demonstrates Al-jwarizmi means algorithm in arab, and is part ed. During the last year we have been using Alaska the artifice and contingency of laws and institu- of the current development in new tools for social mainly three different dedicated multimedia http://www.outofthisworld.de/alaska tions. The experience of creating new rules toward cybernetics. Al-Jwarizmi mix live signals produced servers (ffmpeg, icecast) that are part of the proj- Alaska is a Magazine for Internationalismus new ends conveys that our present institutions by a geographically disseminated swarm of oper- ect: ayp.unia.es / hackitectura.net / xicnet.com. based in Bremen. promoting violence and inequality are not natural ators with static content from databases and Live Stream produced for We Seize! (Geneva03 / or inevitable, but rather a result of contingent stream it out to the internet. PD modularity will S-CONF, High Noon) was launched through these Amadeu-Antonio-Stiftung and ill-conceived design decisions. provide advanced levels of web interactiviy and servers. Hackitectura.net is part of the social net- http://www.amadeu-antonio-stiftung.de unexpected possibilities in recombining political works launching and developing indymedia estre- The Amadeu Antonio Foundation was established 4 & programing & media skills. Al-Jwarizmi is devel- cho/madiaq, the first transcontinental indymedia to promote a civil society which is able to face placed from the center of the scene. Not the digm of social relations. More important than the to investigate the form and nature of labor, or State, but civil society has withered away! In social elements and techniques that have faded creative social practices, in contemporary society. other words, even if one were to consider civil from prominence are those that have newly taken ... Social practices have certainly changed and society politically desirable ... the social condi- the dominant positions. The deployments of con- so too should our notion of what constitutes tions necessary for civil society no longer exist. trol and the social constitution of the real sub- labor - not just in the sphere of wage labor sumption give us a framework to begin to grasp (which indeed has undergone radical transforma- The Postcivil Condition the novelties of our situation. Instead of disciplin- tion in some sectors) but also in the sphere of ... Civil society, as we have seen, is central to a ing the citizen as a fixed social identity, the new desiring production, intellectual creativitv, caring form of rule, or government, as Foucault says, social regime seeks to control the citizen as a labor, kin work, and so forth. ... Even in the soci- that focuses, on the one hand, on the identitv of whatever identity, or rather as an infinitely flexible ety of control, labor is still the »savage beast« the citizen and the processes of civilization and, placeholder for identity. It tends to establish an that Hegel feared, refusing to he subjugated and on the other hand, on the organization of autonomous plane of rule, a simulacrum of the tamed - and perhaps its potential is even greater abstract labor. These processes are variously con- social - separate from the terrain of conflictive today when it is no longer engaged, mediated, ceived as education, training, or discipline, but social forces. Mobility, speed, and flexibility are and disciplined through the institutions of civil what remains common is the active engagement the qualities that characterize this separate plane society as it was in the previous paradigm. The with social forces (through either mediation or of rule. The infinitely programmable machine, the networks of sociality and forms of cooperation production) to order social identities within the ideal of cybernetics, gives us at least on approxi- embedded in contemporary social practices con- context of institutions. What has come to an end, mation of the diagram of the new paradigm of stitute the germs for a new movement, with new or more accurately declined in importance in rule. forms of contestation and new conceptions of postcivil society, then, are precisely these func- Analyzing the new techniques, of social control is lliberation. This alternative community of social tions of mediation or education and the institu- only worthwhile to the extent that it allows us to practices (call it, perhaps, the self-organization of tions that gave them form. grasp also the new potentialities for contestation concrete lahor) will be the most potent challenge The formulation _postcivil_ however, like _post- and freedom emerging witthin this new paradigm. to the control of postcivil society, and will point, modern_, is finally limited by its backward gaze; ... I would suggest that in order to begin thinking perhaps, to the of our future. it is too reactive to do justice to the new para- these new potentialities we should return again

he hype of networks reveals a conce tual crisis of or increase efficiency life becomes intrinsically Networked environments are inherently unstable collaboration and cooperation. Yet, the networking and networking comes alive as uncon- and its temporality is key, much like events. confusing aspect of networking is the ditional attribute of social existence. Networks are dense social structures on the brink T fact that large formations of power of collapse and it is questionable if there are sus- Notes on apparently defy networks. Business and The ultimate goal of networking has been, and tainable models that can 'freeze' them. other large institutions are still in the process of still is, to free the user from the bonds of locality opening up. The introduction of computer net- and identity. Power responds to the pressure of Maybe it is better to understand networking as a the State of works within organizations over the past decade increasing mobility and communications of the syncope of power, a temporary loss of conscious- has changed work flows but hasn't reached the multitudes with attempts to regulate them in the ness and posture, rather than a panacea against level of decision making. In this period of transi- framework of traditional regimes that cannot be corruption, commodification, resentment and the Networking tion and consolidation we get confusing answers abandoned, but need to be reconfigured from general dumbness of traditional hierarchies. The to the question whether 'new media' are part of scratch and recompiled against the networking result of networking often is a rampant will to mainstream pop culture. Whereas it is easy to paradigm: borders and property, labour and powerlessness that escapes the idea of collective see that networks have become the dominant recreation, education and entertainment indus- progress under the pretext of participation, fluidi- mode of power, this is still not the case for tries undergo radical transformations. Although ty, escapism and over-commitment. Gert Lovink & Florian Schneider 'power' in the narrow sense. This is why the call the promise of liberation still lures, and works at for openness, transparency and democracy, on times, shifting geographies and social layers, an Participants easily get lost in the overload of both micro and macro-levels, still potentially con- identity backflip has occurred. Its pretty hard email messages, weblogs and chat exchanges. tains progressive elements and should be seen these days to be a dog on the Internet. There The subjective feeling, having to swim against a No longer the society, the political party or as a counterpart to popular conspiracy theories. never was something like privacy on the Net, but tidal wave of noise and random tension, can no after 9.11 things definitely reached a new level. longer be explained by a lack of media literacy. even the movement, networks are the emerging A radical critique of the information society And once again, theory runs behind the facts or Software and interface solutions can be helpful, implies analyzing the passages from the state of it is satisfied with great gestures that occupy the but often only temporarily assist users to get a form of organization of our time. By marching territory and the state of population to the state moral high ground but reveal nothing but power- handle of complex information flows. This often of a networked globality or: Info-Empire. It is not lessness. results in the abandoning of collective communi- adequate to analyse this with Debord's Society of cation, somewhere half-way, leaving the online through the institutions the idea of networking the Spectacle. The networking paradigm escapes When within the nation state techniques of local- participants with the unsatisfactory feeling that the centrality of the icon to visual culture and its ization and identification, communication surveil- the online conversation got stuck, unable to has lost its mysterious and subversive charac- critics and instead focuses on more abstract, lance and motion control have been temporarily reach a conclusion. After an exciting first phase invisible, subtle processes and feedback loops. suspended it was the direct result of the social of introductions and debates, networks are put to ter. Sandpapered by legions of consultants, There is nothing spectacular about networking. struggles of a mass of individuals against the cor- the test: either they transform into a body that is And this is exactly why most of the leading theo- ruption of state sovereignty. Within the 'state of capable to act, or they remain stable on a flat- supervisors, and sociologists, as a buzzword rists are not aware of the current power transfor- networking' these techniques and technologies line of information exchange, with the occasional mations. They still sit in front of the television tend to become redundant. Furthermore Info- reply of an individual who dares to disagree. and watch the news or a rental VHS -- perhaps Empire is constituted by including and simultane- networking superseded the latest fashions of they have even bought a DVD player by now. ously excluding the tracks of localized and identi- At the same time we are facing a backlash fiable life. towards romantic and outdated forms of repre- sustainability, outsourcing, and lean organiza- The networking paradigm marks the threshold of sentation, hierarchies and command on many postmodernity and characterizes the global gover- Internet research, now having reached its ethno- terrains. Due to the 'conceptual wall' that online tion. nance scenarios of Info-Empire. This threshold graphic phase, has great difficulties in catching communities often find hard to cross, classic was crossed when digital communications up conceptually, let alone provide us with specu- 'informal' forms of representation fill up the gap. appeared in the political scene and created a lative visions that capture the permanent flux of This is part of a larger process of 'normalization' notion of the global that is essentially different global immaterial labour. in which networks are integrated in existing man- from the predominant values of 'solidarity' in agement styles and institutional rituals. internationalism or 'multiplicity' in trans-national The classical dichotomies of public/private, glob- corporations. Without referring to inferior senti- al/local, etc. become useless and even obsolete. But the progress of networking technologies is ments or noble feeling, a nuclear strike force or These binaries are replaced by flexible attitudes not that linear or unstoppable, as it appears in massive drug abuse it was suddenly possible, to of managing singularities and fluid differences: the techno-naivety of some NGO's. It is often think global in absolutely un-pathetic ways. rather than challenging power networking environ- hard to admit that the realm of power (agenda ments act as carriers for virtual self-management setting, decision-making) exists relatively Rather than a simple application to improve life and self-control, up to the point of crashing. autonomous of the techno-sphere as B2B

threads against democracy and to demand the Autonomous Time Sharing Collective years the work was concentratet in supporting and fascism in Brandenburg in the last two years. unrestrained protection of minorities. http://www.generation-online.org youthinitiatives in Brandenburg, that oppose fas- Youthgroups researched racism in their home- ATSC (off-line) library collection cism and racism in their small communities. For towns, made an action and a documentary. Apabiz a lack of support from townside, the Onces again we could empower the network as http://www.apabiz.de Bildungsoffensive Bildungsoffensive startet to organise antiracism well as local groups and realized an educational Apabiz is an antifascist press archive and educa- http://www.bildungsoffensive.org seminars; support for information events and input, especially on filming and media topics.By tion center in Berlin. Bildungsoffensive is an initiative in the concerts; searching for selfrunned selforganised now some initiatives grew to social centers, that Democratic YouthFORUM Brandenburg (www.djb- rooms for the single groups, to have some public are doing voluntary left youth-, selfdeterminate Autonomedia ev.de) and originated out of the campaign space, that is free of Nazis and free of fear of education and cultural work by themselves. The http://www.autonomedia.org »Aktion Noteingang« (www.aktion-noteingang.de) being attacked by them. Connectet with the cam- groups influence the towns youthpolitics, support Autonomedia is an autonomous zone for arts and in 1998. The campaign wanted to bring the dis- paign the different youthinitiatives startet acting refugees, are usually the only ones around with radicals in both new and old media. We publish cussions about a right wing mainstream, a nazi- together in networkstruktures.In 01/ 02 we real- alternative cultural events. The Bildungsoffensive books on radical media, poliltics and the arts problematic, daily racism and the discrimination ized our second campaign »research and action« is part in the network that empowers the projekts that seek to transcend party lines, bottom lines of refugees, non right youngsters and homeless (http://www.aktion-analyse.org). We wanted to as well as giving each other sup- and straight lines into the comunities daily lifes. During the last see if anything had changed in terms of racism port, sharing resources and 5 ((»breast to breast«) meetings. Instead, we would around. Instead of blaming the 'nettime' genera- tion and communication in order to turn the something that reaches out beyond the increas- all love to believe that decentralized networks tion one could also stress that theory can only whole discourse downside up. For instance one ing banality of networking? What happens after somehow dissolves power, over time. Meanwhile, grow out of reflected experiences. In that sense could research the impact of precarious and the excitement of encounter has faded away? networking environments also create specific dis- we might be too impatient. The question should migrant labour in hardware and software indus- Should the motor of creativity and subversion positives, that are coordinating new forms of rather be: how can theory come into being in an tries, within the service sector such as the call continue to be supplied with an ever-changing power and that consist of a variety of elements. age of real-time events? centres, with its temporary workers. This means focus on yet to-be discovered, soon to be exploit- To research these new statements, norms, stan- to tear down the exclusive notion of information ed cultural differences? dardizations, practices and institutions as an WSIS made evident that there are only few forces as something ephemeral, spiritual and immateri- ensemble that organizes the transactions from willing and able to analyse and then criticize the al, and reveal the dirty side of the technology. Does it make sense, as a possible way out, to power to knowledge and knowledge to power 'information society' concept. The air in Geneva demand a 'cultural exception' for the digital com- goes far beyond the current talk about the infor- was filled with the spirit of network naivety-no It would be a mistake to look at this other or, mons? How can the making of a digital public mation society as well as the attempts to find matter on what side. Both the hegemonic and better to say, the real information society with an domain be pushed out of beta, beyond the usual and replace information with knowledge or any the alternative view of the information society is attitude of charity and to commiserate these 'revolution or reform' choice? The digital com- attempt to locate and identify an object of net- characterized by a persistent transcendentalism, poor things who have to work so damned hard mons obviously have left the sandbox and are working, let alone a purpose. as if the spread of ICT would increase develop- that we can play with ever cheaper computers. out-there, in the wide world. As a 'high potential' ment, as if access to the Internet would improve Often this perspective comes along with a roman- meme the digital commons is growing at a pace In retrospect, one can say that the radical cri- living conditions, as if free software would over- tic, anti-technological attitude or full of ignorance way beyond the worthy Gutenberg project, which, tique of the information society does not yet ride capitalism, as if file sharing equals altruism, and resentment against informatization, de-regu- in the thirty years or more of its existence has exist. That was the lesson of the World Summit of as if open publishing would promote democracy. larisation and globalization. These processes that only added 10,000 book titles to the public the Information Society (WSIS), held in are constituting the current situation are direct domain. But this is exactly why digital commons December 2003 in Geneva. There is the NGO civil Instead of endlessly deconstructing the 'New and indirect results of struggles (against the is a potentially fragile concept. It involves risk society story about human rights and unequal Economy meets NGOs' agendas, we believe it the working day, for a better living, at for least a job taking, in terms of civil disobedience. It asks of access, but that's it. What's so weak about this task of the next media activists to investigate the etc.) that are disconnected and abstracted from digital artisans to take a firm stand when they approach is it's charity mentality: please donate limits of networking in order to be in a better a common, daily experience. negotiate with publishers and distributors. The us some computers and share some of your position to overcome those boundaries. This era creative multitudes have to wake up out their bandwidth. What is lacking is an informed auton- is blinded by the light. As technologies are still A radical critique always implies practical conse- numbed state and have the courage to refuse. omist perspective. Let's say, an 'Empire' for the an expanding universe it is hard to see its limits, quences. There is no other way out of the intel- No more bad contracts. Don't sign away your Internet generation. This programmatic work to recognize its damages, without falling back lectual stagnation than to stage unlikely encoun- rights. To publish under the creative commons should have been written during the raving into technophobia and cultural pessimism. ters and unexpected alliances, between coders licence is the very least one can do. This shift nineties. Instead, we got stuck with remnants of and solders, activists and researchers, artists not only requires public awareness; it also needs the '68 generation, and the mess they made, Quixotic projects and idealism pervaded the rhet- and unionists. We have to bring on irrelevant 'best practices' stories of those who stood up characterized by this particular blend of utopia, oric of the vast majority of those who have not moments and leave the programmed density of and actually tore up contracts. A critical mass of violence and sell-out. In the past decade collec- ignored the summit. That was the disappointment the event-time for what it is. IP- refuseniks will only come into being if such tive work on ideas has been replaced by informal of the WSIS process but it did not really come as individual stories can find the public forums and networking, a move away from politics towards a surprise. But what could it mean to put the Shouldn't a radical critique of the information inspire people to say no. Otherwise it will remain culture and the arts, shifting the focus towards information society under a radical critique? One society in the first instance confront the common everyone's individual problem. software, designing interfaces. and just playing has to track down the material basis of informa- notion of sovereignty and it's mediatisation with

ntervening mechanisms that may have lit- case: global networks and global agendas. Both level of liquidity as well as increased the possibil- tle to do with the technology per se can cases make legible how digitization can destabi- ities of liquefying forms of wealth hitherto consid- Electronic I re-shape what is, technically, a primary lize nested formalized hierarchies of scale: the ered non-liquid. Second, the distinctive features outcome of these networks. These two cases global is shown to be multi-scalar and, though in of digital networks can maximize the implications show us that the trajectory followed by what different manner, so is the local. The global capi- of global market integration by producing the Markets begins in each as the distributed power we asso- tal market is a particularly helpful case for exam- possibility of simultaneous interconnected flows ciate with computer-centered networks can take ining these dynamics of transformation and and transactions, as well as decentralized access on many forms. In the case of the global capital embeddedness. It represents an enormously for investors and for exchanges in a growing num- and Activist market it winds up as concentrated power. New complex series of imbrications that can actually ber of countries. technologies are partly embedded in institutional be traced given a high level of institutionalization The key background factor here is that since the environments that have the power to inscribe and a considerable amount of evidence. late 1980s, the trend has been for more and technology. As a result the outcome does not more countries to de- and re-regulate their Networks reflect exclusively the features of the particular Embeddedness of Markets economies according to a particular set of crite- technology at work. To capture the interactions There are two major sets of differences that dis- ria that has ensured cross-border convergence between the technical and social logics at work tinguish today’s global market for capital from and the global integration of their financial cen- Saskia Sassen in producing the distinct outcomes of each case that of earlier periods. One has to do with the ters. This non-digital condition amplified the new we need to identify appropriate indicators. One level of formalization and institutionalization of capabilities introduced by the digitization of mar- type of indicator is the counterfactual, that which the global market for capital today, partly an out- kets and instruments. Third, because finance is The two very different types of digital forma- disproves the logic at work in each case. come of the interaction with national regulatory particularly about transactions rather than simply systems that themselves gradually became far flows of money, the technical properties of digital Dynamics of Transformation tions examined here make legible the variable more elaborate over the last hundred years. The networks assume added meaning. For the global capital market, one such counter- second set of differences concerns the transfor- Interconnectivity, simultaneity, decentralized factual can be found in the fact that this elec- mative impact of digital networks and the possi- access, and softwared instruments, all contribute ways in which the socio-technical interaction tronic, trans-jurisdictional, globally interconnected bility of digitizing financial instruments. In combi- to multiply the number of transactions, the length market is actually embedded in a set of dense nation with the various dynamics and policies ref- of transaction chains (i.e. distance between between digital technology and social logics localized environments and specific social logics ered to as globalization they have constituted the instrument and underlying asset), and thereby rather than being a seamless global electronic capital market as a distinct institutional order, the number of participants. The overall outcome produce distinctive outcomes. These differ- space. The new technologies have had a deeply one different from other major markets and circu- is a complex architecture of transactions. These transformative effect but they do not dislodge the lation systems such as global trade. One of the three features of today’s global market for capital ences point to the possibility that networked fact of substantive agendas organizing market key and most significant outcomes of digitization are inextricably related to the new technologies. actors. Today’s global capital market is a com- in finance has been the jump in orders of magni- The difference they have made can be seen in plex formation markedly different from earlier tude and the extent of worldwide interconnected- two consequences. One is the multiplication of forms of power are not inherently distributive, global financial markets but its extensive digitiza- ness. There are basically three ways in which digi- specialized financial markets. It is not only a tion does not necessarily mean that it is disem- tization has contributed to this outcome. One is question of global markets for equities, bonds, as is often theorized when the focus is exclu- bedded. In the case of electronic activist net- the use of sophisticated software, a key feature futures, currencies, but also of the proliferation of works, the indicator would function in precisely of the global financial markets today and a con- enormously specialized global sub-markets for sively on technical properties. the opposite direction — how the local can be dition that in turn has made possible an enor- each of these. The second consequence is that embedded in the non-local, specifically in this mous amount of innovation. It has raised the the combination of these conditions has con- knowledge. We, as part of the network, are also ployed youth, further education for multipliers Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung people in Rome, Italy, fusing the experiences of active in the new campaign myBrandenburg. We (e.g. teachers and social workers). http://www.bpb.de self-managed squatted community centers and still follow the concept of participatory emancipa- The bpb supports citizens to take interest in poli- technical knowledge in the field of video produc- tory youthwork. Since October 2002 we are also Bomb Mitte tics. tion. part of the youtheducation network, that is look- http://www.bombmitte.com ing for an up to date theoretical term of educa- Bomb Mitte is an avant-hop recordlabel founded Bureau d'etudes Carava.net tion/ formation. by musician and journalist Markus Hablizel. http://bureaudetudes.free.fr http://www.carava.net The Caravan for the rights of refugees and Bildungsteam Brothers Keepers Candida TV migrants was founded following a series of http://www.bildungsteam.de http://www.brothers-keepers.de http://candida.thing.net demonstrations and campaigns during the pre- The Bildungsteam Berlin Brandenburg is a non- Brotherkeepers is a network of currently 23 Candida TV was born from the melting of differ- election period 1998 and later became a ger- profit association which is active in the following afrogerman musicians taking position in the ent realities: underground cinema, video produc- man-wide network of refugee organisations, fields of work: out-of-school political education, recent debate on racist motivated acts of vio- tion, rave parties, street theaters, independent migrants and progressive groups. The activities of international encounters, political lence. radios, subversive telemathic and counterculture the caravan since that time include refugee con- 6 education for trainees and unem- pop magazines. Candida is a core group of 7 gresses and summits (as in Jena in 2000), tri- tributed to the distinctive position of the global ment in academic economics (MacKenzie 2003, solidation in a few centers rather than massive capital market in relation to several other compo- Callon 1998). Digitization of transactions and dispersal.i) First, while the new communications nents of economic globalization. We can specify instruments has been central to this multiplica- technologies do indeed facilitate geographic dis- two major traits, one concerning orders of magni- tion of types of derivatives and their increased persal of economic activities without losing sys- tude and the second the spatial organization of complexity. The overall result has been a massive tem integration, they have also had the effect of finance. In terms of the first, indicators are the increase in the extent to which the financial strengthening the importance of central coordina- actual monetary values involved and, though industry has been able to securitize various forms tion and control functions for firms and, even, more difficult to measure, the growing weight of of what were previously considered untradeable markets. Indeed for firms in any sector, operating financial criteria in economic transactions, some- assets or were simply not considered as assets, a widely dispersed network of branches and affili- times referred to as the financializing of the econ- e.g. many forms of debt. At a macro-institutional ates and operating in multiple markets has made omy. Since 1980, the total stock of financial level, the proliferation of innovative derivatives central functions far more complicated. It is assets has increased three times faster than the has furthered the linking of national markets by increasingly evident that to maximize the benefits aggregate GDP of the 23 highly developed coun- producing specific types of incentives. One indi- of the new information technologies firms need tries that formed the OECD for much of this peri- cator is the growing importance of cross border not only the infrastructure but also a complex mix od; and the volume of trading in currencies, transactions measured in terms of their value as of other resources. In the case of financial mar- bonds and equities has increased about five a percentage of GDP in the leading developed kets we could make a parallel argument. Most of times faster and now surpasses it by far. As for economies.in the digital era: more concentration the value added that these technologies can pro- the second major trait, the spatial organization of than dispersal? duce for advanced service firms lies in so-called finance, it has been deeply shaped by regulation. externalities. And this means the material and The wave of deregulations that began in the mid- Locational concentration human resources —state of the art office build- 1980s has lifted many of the formal constraints In theory, the intensification of deregulation and ings, top talent, and the social networking infra- to the geographic spread of the industry and has the instituting of policies in various countries structure that maximizes connectivity. Financial brought with it a sharp increase in access to aimed at creating a supportive cross-border envi- centers provide the social connectivity that allows what were still largely national financial centers ronment for financial transactions, could have a firm or market to maximize the benefits of its and has enabled innovations which, in turn, facil- dramatically changed the locational logic of the technical connectivity. ii) Besides the familiar itated the industry ‘s expansion both geographi- transformation. Today we might expect the actual mergers and acquisitions of firms an important cally and institutionally. spatial organization of the industry to be a much trend in the global capital market is the »merger« better indicator of its market-driven locational of electronic exchanges that connect select Distinctiveness of Capital Market dynamics than was the case in earlier phases groups of centers. There are a number of net- If we measure the volume of long-term flows as a with more regulation and less digitization. But works connecting markets that have been set up share of national economies the large and empirically what stands out in the evidence in the last few years. In 1999 NASDAQ, the sec- dynamic international financial market from the about the global financial markets after a decade ond largest US stock market after the New York late 1800s to the inter-war period was as mas- and a half of deregulation, worldwide integration, Stock Exchange, set up NASDAQ Japan and in sive as today’s. The extent of its internationaliza- and major advances in electronic trading is the 2000 NASDAQ Canada. This gives investors in tion can be seen in the fact that in 1920, for extent of locational concentration and the premi- Japan and Canada direct access to the market in example, Moody’s rated bonds issued by about um firms are willing to pay to be in major finan- the U.S. Europe’s more than 30 stock exchanges 50 governments to raise money in the American cial centers. Large shares of many financial mar- have been seeking to shape various alliances. capital markets (Sinclair 1994). The depression kets are disproportionately concentrated in a few Euronext (NEXT) is Europe’s largest stock brought on a radical decline in the extent of this financial centers. This trend towards consolida- exchange merger, an alliance among the Paris, internationalization, and it was not till very tion in a few centers, even as the network of inte- Amsterdam and Brussels bourses. A novel pat- recently that Moody’s was once again rating the grated financial centers expands globally, is evi- tern is hostile takeovers, not of firms, but of mar- bonds of about fifty governments. Indeed, as late dent within countries. There is both consolidation kets, such as the attempt by the owners of the as 1985, only 15 foreign governments were bor- in fewer major centers across and within coun- Stockholm Stock Exchange to buy the London rowing in the U.S. capital markets. Not until after tries and a sharp growth in the numbers of cen- Stock Exchange (for a price of US$ 3.7 billion). 1985 did the international financial markets re- ters that become part of the global network as These developments may well ensure the consoli- emerge as a major factor. But there are signifi- countries deregulate their economies and the dation of a stratum of select financial centers at cant differences. One is the volume of short-term global economy expands accordingly. Bombay, the top of the worldwide network of 30 or 40 financial flows that has grown sharply and out- for instance became incorporated in the global global cities through which the global financial strips long-term flows, this has brought with it the financial network in the early 1990s after India industry operates. Taking an indicator such as rise of types of financial institutions almost exclu- (partly) deregulated its financial system. This equities under management shows a similar pat- sively involved in such flows and hence highly mode of incorporation into the global network is tern of spread and simultaneous concentration at speculative. More generally, there has been a often at the cost of losing functions that these the top of the hierarchy. These developments growing concentration of market power in institu- cities may have had when they were largely make clear a second important trend that in tions, including more conservatives ones such as national centers. Today the leading, typically for- many ways specifies the current global era. In pension funds and insurance companies. eign, financial, accounting and legal services the initial stages of deregulation in the 1980s Institutional investors are not new. What is differ- firms enter their markets to handle the many of there was a strong tendency to see the relation ent beginning in the 1980s is the diversity of the new cross-border operations.the continuing among the major centers as one of straight com- types of funds, the rapid escalation of the value utility of spatial agglomerationThere are at least petition when it came to international transac- of their assets, and the sharp rise of extremely three reasons that explain the trend towards con- tions. speculative institutions. Hedge funds are among the most speculative of these institutions; they sidestep certain disclosure and leverage regula- tions by having a small private clientele and, fre- quently, by operating offshore. While they are not new, the growth in their size and their capacity to affect the functioning of markets certainly grew enormously in the 1990s and they emerged as a major force by the late 1990s. It is particularly in the world of short-term flows and speculative investors that digitization has had transformative consequences. The increased digitization of both transactions and instruments discussed above has enabled the work of producing innovations and has enabled the workability of a variety of new but also older innovations. Today we have seen a multiplication of types of derivatives and a sharp increase in their complexity. This in turn has led to what we might describe as the growing embeddedness of financial instrument develop-

bunals (e.g. on Nigeria 2001 in Bremen) and a spoken or written word. such as exile, administration, work and life in the Consume is a collaborative strategy for the self wide range of campaigns against the racist In the beginning of January, 2003, in Paris, the shelters. Then, with some of the people who stay provision of a broadband telecommunications German asylum laws, against the deportation of Collectif Précipité* commenced a work of reflec- at the Emmaus shelter, we travelled around Paris infrastructure free from commercial limitations members of the caravan, or against the situation tion on the word «borders» in an Emmaus emer- and its suburbs looking for places where the bor- and guarded interests. in refugee camps. gency shelter (Centre d’Hébergement d’Urgence der continues to make itself felt. These «sound Emmaus) which primarily receives «sans-papiers» voyages» enabled us to locate and describe We work together to build clusters of intercon- Collectif Précipité and applicants for asylum. places in our shared space that mark an invisible necting 'nodes' using widely available networking http://vacarme.eu.org/article421.html For several years now, an increasing number of dividing line between those who have papers and products and optimise existing local services The Collectif Précipité is made up of video film- migrant persons seek refuge in this type of rights, and those who do not. Three ideas proved where possible to re-distribute network access makers, photographers, sound artists, graphic humanitarian structure. For most, the difficulty of useful in describing the condition of those who and free the exchange of information further. We artists, jurists and philosophers. Its objective is to finding housing is just one of many steps that reside inside the border : forced wandering, end- can realise some of the promises of modern com- design and create documentary objects (films, must be gone through in the long, drawn out less waiting and invisibility. munications on a local level at a fraction of the books, CDs, posters). An essential part of the process of crossing the border. commercial cost by building our own supple- projects we develop is to create collective Over a four month period, we organised work- Consume.net ments to the Internet. There is no processes of reflection and exchange through the shops for testimonies and discussion on themes http://www.consume.net single set of reasons why we 7 Strategic Collaboration mations and hence invite a reconceptualization region, it can serve to make them aware of neigh- of the local that can accommodate a set of boring communities, gain an understanding of New York, London and Tokyo, then the major cen- instances that diverge from dominant patterns. local issues that resonate positively or negatively ters in the system, were seen as competing. Key among these current conditions are global- with communities that are in the same city rather What we are seeing now is an additional pattern ization and/or globality as constitutive not only of than with those that are at the other end of the whereby the cooperation or division of functions cross-border institutional spaces but also of pow- world (Riemens and Lovink 2002). Recovering is somewhat institutionalized: strategic alliances erful imaginaries enabling aspirations to trans- how the new digital technology can serve to sup- not only between firms across borders but also boundary political practice even when the actors port local initiatives and alliances inside a locali- between markets. There is competition, strategic involved are basically localized. Computer cen- ty is important given the almost exclusive empha- collaboration and hierarchy. Together all of these tered interactive technologies facilitate multi- sis in the representation of these technologies of trends indicate the emergence of global forma- scalar transactions and simultaneous intercon- their global scope and deployment. Cyberspace tions where before there were interactions among nectivity among those largely confined to a locali- is a far more concrete space for social struggles national centers, but global formations partly ty. As has been widely recognized by now, new than that of the national political system. It embedded in networks of financial centers.iii) It ICTS do not simply replace existing media tech- becomes a place where non-formal political is important to recognize that national financial niques. For instance, a survey of local and grass- actors can be part of the political scene in a way centers have themselves been transformed by roots human rights NGOs in several regions of that is much more difficult in national institution- these developments. National attachments and the world found that the Internet makes al channels. Nationally, politics needs to run identities are becoming weaker for global firms exchange of information easier and is helpful in through existing formal systems: whether the and their customers. Global financial products developing other kinds of collaboration, but that electoral political system or the judiciary (taking are accessible in national markets and national it did not helps launch joint projects (Lannon state agencies to court). Non-formal political investors can operate in global markets. For 2002: 33). On the other hand, there is evidence actors are rendered invisible in the space of instance, some of the major Brazilian firms now of highly creative ways of using the new ICTs national politics. Individuals and groups that list on the New York Stock Exchange, and by-pass along with older media recognizing the needs of have historically been excluded from formal politi- the Sao Paulo exchange, a new practice which particular communities. A good example is using cal systems and whose struggles can be partly has caused somewhat of an uproar in specialized the Internet to send audio files that can then be enacted outside those systems, can find in cyber- circles in Brazil. While it is as yet inconceivable in broadcast over loudspeakers to groups who lack space an enabling environment both for their the Asian case, this may well change given the access to the Internet or are illiterate. There is lit- emergence as non-formal political actors and for growing number of foreign acquisitions of major tle doubt that the gathering, storage and dissemi- their struggles. We see here the potential trans- firms in several countries. It can be argued that nation of information are crucial functions for formation of actors »confined« to domestic roles, into actors in global networks without having to leave their work and roles in their communities. They do not have to become cosmopolitan in this process, and yet they are participating in emer- gent global politics.The most significant feature in both the case of global markets and in the case of activism is the possibility of expanded decen- tralization and simultaneous integration. The fact that local political initiatives can become part of a global network parallels the articulation of the capital market with a network of financial cen- ters. Among the technical properties that pro- duce the specific utility in each case is the possi- bility of being global without losing the focus on specific local conditions/resources. Insofar as the new network technologies strengthen and cre- ate new types of cross-border activities among non-state actors, they enable the constitution of a distinct and only partly digital condition. The non-digital variables differ sharply between these such denationalization is a necessary condition Human rights, large development, and environ- two cases, even as digitization is crucial to con- for economic globalization. The sophistication of mental organizations whom are at this point the stituting the specificity of each case. The diver- this system lies in the fact that it only needs to leaders in the effort to build online databases gence is evident in the fact that the same techni- involve strategic institutional areas —most nation- and archives. Adams (1996), among others, cal properties produced greater concentration of al systems can be left basically unaltered.a poli- shows us how telecommunications create new power in the case of the capital market and tics of places on global circuits: the local as linkages across space that underline the impor- greater distribution of power in the second case. multiscalarParticular instantiations of the local tance of networks of relations and partly bypass can actually be constituted at multiple scales older hierarchies of scale. The issue is one of and thereby construct global formations that tend orders of magnitude, scope and simultaneity: the towards lateralized and horizontal networks. technologies, the institutions and the imaginaries Local, often resource-poor organizations and indi- that mark the current global digital context viduals can become part of global networks and inscribe local political practice with new mean- struggles. These practices are constituting a spe- ings and new potentialities. Distributed access is cific type of global politics, one that runs through crucial: once an alert enters the network from no localities and is not predicated on the existence matter what point of access it spreads very fast of global institutions. Simultaneous decentralized through the whole network. Amnesty’s Urgent access can help local actors have a sense of par- Action Alert is such a system. The second form of ticipation in struggles that are not necessarily multi-scalar interaction is one where localized global but are, rather, globally distributed in that struggles are aiming at engaging global actors, they recur in locality after locality. The conceptu- e.g. WTO, IMF, or multinational firms, either at alization of the local in the social sciences has the global scale or in multiple localities. Local ini- assumed physical/geographic proximity and tiatives can become part of a global network of thereby a sharply defined territorial boundedness, activism without losing the focus on specific local with the associated implication of closure. Also, struggles. (E.g., Cleaver 1998, Espinoza 1999, partly a consequence of the first, there is a Ronfeldt et al. 1998, Mele 1999). strong tendency to conceive of the local as part of a hierarchy of nested scales, especially once Space for Social Struggles there are national states. These conceptualiza- Moreover, the architecture of digital networks, tions hold for most of the instantiations of the primed to span the world, can actually serve to local today, but there are also conditions that intensify transactions among residents of a city or contribute to destabilize these practices and for- should want to do this: one of Consume's snapshot. A fixed camera takes photographs at Cyberpipe ness and media production? The standardization strengths is that it is many different things to regular intervals which are then sequentially http://www.cyberpipe.org of TV, radio, print, & web to a few recognizable, many different people. processed by the software. Using a simple algo- Cyberpipe is an independent cyber/media/art widespread forms place the control over content rithm all the visual changes between the frames centre in Ljubljana/Slovenia. and over the methods of production in the hands Crowd Compiler are composited and made simultaneously visible. of an elite few. »Free media« is at its lowest point http://www.softhook.com The resulting images widen our senses to this Cyberrex since Ceausescu’s regime, with the majority of Ever since the very first photograph of a crowd normally invisible ‘temporal crowd’ which occu- http://cyberrex.org local newspapers, televisions and radios now was taken in 1848, these images have been con- pies public space. Is this just a special effect? Cyberrex cultural centre from Belgrad is a labora- owned by politicians or businessmen with direct troversial for what they purported to show and No, the images carry real information about the tory for research of new fields of culture. affiliations to political parties. As the situation what they did not show. Even today, most repre- effect of architecture and urban design on group deteriorates, the need for media freedom sentations of the crowd aim to rationalise and behaviour. Of equal importance is the fact that D Media becomes a necessity – but this means taking it quantify the crowd rather than show its curious the images are created by a process that is legi- http://www.d-media.tk beyond the elite who own the mainstream press, dynamics of both density and fluidity. The Crowd ble. The political and technical logic of the repre- The »democratization« of media in post-socialist and making it possible for everyone to become Compiler software tries to present the sentation becomes visible in the image itself Europe has been celebrated since 1989. Yet how »the media..« 8 ‘crowd in time’ rather than a static rather than being hidden away. democratic is the current state of media aware- 1. Access & Do It Yourself Ethic: The rise in new ather than of general intellect we should of the same medal that the precogs of debate, in the arts world, in philosophy, in media talk of general intellects. There are multi- Chainworkers.org describe in this way: »cognitive criticism, in network culture: that is Free R ple forms of collective intelligence. Some workers are networkers, precarious workers are Software. We hear it quoted at the end of each can become totalitarian systems, such as the networked, the former are brainworkers, the latter intervention that poses the problem of what is to From military-managerial ideology of the neocons or of chainworkers: the former first seduced and then be done (but also in articles of strategic market- Microsoft empire. Others can be embodied in abandoned by companies and financial markets, ing.), whilst the twin metaphor of open source social democratic bureaucracies, in the appara- the latter dragged into and made flexible by the contaminates every discipline: open source archi- Utopia to tus of police control, in the maths of stock mar- fluxes of global capital«.[ii] tecture, open source literature, open source ket speculators, in the architecture of our cities The point is that we are searching for a new col- democracy, open source city... (every day we walk on concretions of collective lective agent and a new point of application for Networks as megamachines Networks intelligence). In the dystopias of 2001 Space the rusted revolutionary lever. The success of the Odyssey and The Matrix, the brain of machines concept of multitude also reflects the current dis- are immaterial machines. The evolves into self-consciousness to the point of orientation. Critical thought continuously seeks to metaphor of Free Software is so simple for its Matteo Pasquinelli getting rid of the human. 'Good' collective intelli- forge the collective actor that can embody the immateriality that it often fails to clash with the gences, on the other hand, produce international Zeitgeist and we can go back to history recon- real world. Even if we know that it is a good and networks of cooperation such as the network of structing the underlying forms of each paradigm right thing, we ask polemically: what will change What is knowledge sharing? How does the knowl- the global movement, of precarious workers, of of political action: the more or less collective when all the computers in the world will run free free software developers, of media activism. They social agent, the more or less vertical organisa- software? The most interesting aspect of the free edge economy function? Where is the general also produce the sharing of knowledge in univer- tion, the more or less utopian goal. Proletariat software model is the immense cooperative net- sities, the Creative Commons open licenses and and multitude, party and movement, revolution work that was created by programmers on a glob- intellect at work? Take the cigarettes machine. participative urban planning, narrations and and self-organisation. al scale, but which other concrete examples can imaginaries of liberation. we refer to in proposing new forms of action in The machine you see is the embodying of a sci- In the current imaginary the general intellect (or the real world and not only in the digital realm? From a geopolitical perspective we could figure whatever you want to call it) seems to be the col- In the '70s Deleuze and Guattari had the intu- ourselves in one of Philip Dick's sci-fi paranoia: lective agent, its form being the network, its goal ition of the machinic, an introjection / imitation entific knowledge into hardware and software Earth is dominated by one Intelligence, but creating a plane of self-organisation, its field of of the industrial form of production. Finally a inside of it a war unfolds between two action being biopolitical spectacular cognitive hydraulic materialism was talking about desiring, components, generations of engineering stratified Organisations of the general intellect, opposed capitalism. revolutionary, celibate, war machines rather than yet intertwined. Used to the traditional represen- We are not talking about multitude here, because representative or ideological ones.[iii] for commercial use: it automatically manages tative forms of the global movement we fail to it is a concept at once too noble and inflated, Deleuze and Guattari took the machine out of the grasp the new productive conflicts. Concerned as heir of centuries of philosophy and too often factory, now it is up to us to take it out of the fluxes of money and commodities, substitutes a we are about the imperial war, we do not appre- called for by marching megaphones. The concept network and imagine a post-internet generation. ciate the centrality of this struggle. Following of multitude has been more useful to exorcise the Cognitive labour produces machines of all kinds, Manuel Castells, we define the movement as a identitary pretences of the global movement, not only software: electronic machines, narrative human with a user-friendly interface, defends pri- resistance identity that fails to become a project than as a constructive tool. The pars construens machines, advertising machines, mediatic identity. We are not aware of the distance will be a task for the general intellect: philoso- machines, acting machines, psychic machines, vate property, functions on the basis of a minimal between the global movement and the centre of phers such as Paolo Virno, when they have to social machines, libidinous machines. In the capitalist production. Paraphrasing Paolo Virno, find a common ground, the lost collective agent, XIXth century the definition of machine referred control and restocking routine. Where has the we say that there already is too much politics in reconstruct the Collective Intelligence and to a device transforming energy. In the XXth cen- new forms of production for the politics of the Cooperation as emerging and constitutive proper- tury Turing's machine - the foundation of all com- tobacconist gone? Sometimes he enjoys free movement to still enjoy any autonomous ties of the multitude. puting - starts interpreting information in the form dignity.[ii] of sequences of 0 and 1. For Deleuze and time. Other times the company that owns the The events of 1977 (not only in Italy but also in A global radical class Guattari on the other hand a desiring machine the punk season) sanctioned the end of the 'rev- In a different paranoid fable, we imagine that produces, cuts and composes fluxes and without olutionary' paradigm and the beginning of that of technology is the last heir of a series of collective rest it produces the real. chain of distribution has replaced him. In his movement, opening new spaces of conflict in the agents generated by history as in a matryoshka Today we intend by machine the elementary form fields of communication, media and the produc- doll: religion - theology - philosophy - ideology - of the general intellect, each node of the network place one often meets the technician. Far from tion of the imagery. These days we are discover- science - technology. This is to say that in infor- of collective intelligence, each material or imma- ing that the 'movement' as a format needs to be mation and intelligence technologies the history terial dispositif that organically interlinks the flux- emulating Marx's Fragment on machines with a overcome, in favour of that of network. of thought is stratified, even though we only es of the economy and our desires. remember the last episode of this series, i.e. the At a higher level, the network can itself be regard- Fragment on cigarette machines, this unhealthy Three kinds of action, well separated in the XIXth network that embodies the dreams of the previ- ed as a mega-machine of assemblage of other century - labour, politics and art - are now inte- ous political generation. machines, and even the multitude becomes grated into one attitude and central to each pro- How did we come to all this? We are at the point machinic, as Negri and Hardt write in Empire: example is meant to show how postfordist theo- ductive process. In order to work, do politics or of convergence between different historical »The multitude not only uses machines to pro- produce imaginary today one needs hybrid com- planes: the inheritance of historical vanguards in duce, but also becomes increasingly machinic ries live around us and that material or abstract petences. This means that we all are workers- the synthesis of aesthetics and politics; the strug- itself, as the means of production are increasing- artists-activists, but it also means that the figures gles of '68 and '77 that open up new spaces for ly integrated into the minds and bodies of the machines built by collective intelligence are of the militant and the artist are surpassed and conflict outside of the factories and inside the multitude. In this context reappropriation means that such competences are only formed in a imaginary and communication; the hypertrophy having free access to and control over knowl- organically chained to the fluxes of the economy common space that is the sphere of the collec- of the society of the spectacle and the economy edge, information, communication, and affects tive intellect. Since Marx's Grundrisse, the gener- of the logo; the transformation of fordist wage because these are some of the primary means of and of our needs. al intellect is the patriarch of a family of concepts labour into postfordist autonomous precarious biopolitical production. Just because these pro- that are more numerous and cover a wide range labour; the information revolution and the emer- ductive machines have been integrated into the of issues: knowledge-based economy, information gence of the internet, the net economy and the multitude does not mean that the multitude has society, cognitive capitalism, immaterial labour, network society; utopia turned into technology. control over them. Rather, it makes more vicious collective intelligence, creative class, cognitariat, The highest exercise of representation that and injurious their alienation. The right to reap- knowledge sharing and postfordism. In the last becomes molecular production. propriation is really the multitude's right to self- few years the political lexicon has got rich of Some perceive the current moment as a lively control and autonomous self-production«.[iv] interlaced critical tools that we turn over in our world network, some as an indistinct cloud, some In other words in postfordism the factory has hands wondering about their exact usefulness. as a new form of exploitation, some as an oppor- come out of the factory and the whole of society For the sake of simplicity, we only accounted for tunity. Today the density reaches its critical mass has become a factory. An already machinic multi- the terms that inherited an Enlightenment, specu- and forms a global radical class on the intersec- tude suggests tha t the actual subversion of the lative, angelic and almost neognostic approach. tion of the planes of activism, communication, productive system into an autonomous plane But reality is much more complex and we wait for arts, network technologies and independent could be possible in a flash, by disconnecting new forms to claim for themselves the role that research. What does it mean, to be productive the multitude from capital command. But the within the same field is due to desire, body, aes- and projectual, to abandon mere representation operation is not that easy in the traditional terms thetics, biopolitics. We also remember the quar- of conflict and the representative forms of poli- of 'reappropriation of the means of production'. rel of cognitive vs. precarious workers, two faces tics? There is a hegemonic metaphor in political Why?

technologies and cheap consumer electronics ducing something for others who don’t know how, 2. Software as Social Principle: ethic of sharing, and the freedom of users to con- has made possible the growth of independent but by passing down the knowledge and skills so Most of the computerized world in Romania, and trol and customize products to fit their own media production and global networks of collabo- that others can learn how to do it themselves. South-east Europe in general, is living off pirated needs. To encourage the use of free software, we ration. In principle, everyone has the power to do Our first two projects – Radio Fara Frecventa Microsoft software. While piracy might diminish plan to produce informative publications and to it themselves. In reality, cheap consumer elec- (Zero Frequency Radio) , a community net.radio some of the economic control of corporate organize training workshops on and various tronics are not so cheap everywhere, and real with an open door policy and Realitatea SF monopolies, it lives under the threat of being dis- OS content management systems. inequalities of technical knowledge have not (Reality SF) , a team producing experimental digi- covered and fined, and it does nothing to change 3. Information Campaign: placed media production in the hands of the vast tal video documentaries about youth cultures and the forms of mind control which take orwellian The meaning of a public domain, the advantages number of people. One of our main goals is to civil society in Romania – seek to open up the restrictions on freedom as something normal. A of using free software, and the ways Intellectual promote a form of organization based on shared field of media production and to promote the use real alternative to Microsoft’s monopoly is not Property law is used not to promote the freedom work and collaboration and to prevent inequali- of new technologies among young people. Our theft through unlicensed use of its software, but and creativity of producers but primarily to bene- ties of knowledge which lead to an atmosphere long term goal is to create a public access media choosing operating systems and software which fit the pockets of large corporations … are issues of passivity as people wait for someone else who production lab for the local community of Cluj, are not based on distinctions between payment still relatively unknown in Romania. They are not is more »expert« to do it for them. We believe in which would open the possibilities of »free and theft and on rules of private property, but are promoted either on the level of a the necessity of helping each other - not by pro- media« beyond our own production teams. based instead on freedom of distribution, an national IT policy nor even dis- 9 Whilst it is true that today the main means of agers have seized command: »Capitalism is dis- are those who, whether consciously or not, plan labour is the brain and that workers can immedi- appearing, but Socialism is not replacing it. What and control machines made up of human beings ately reappropriate the means of production, it is is now arising is a new kind of planned, cen- assembled with one another. The dream of also true that control and exploitation in society tralised society which will be neither capitalist General intellect brings forth monsters. have become immaterial, cognitive, networked. nor, in any accepted sense of the word, demo- Compared with the pervasive neoliberal techno- Not only the general intellect of the multitudes cratic. The rulers of this new society will be the management, the intelligence of the global move- has grown, but also the general intellect of the people who effectively control the means of pro- ment is of little importance. What's to be done? empire. The workers, armed with their computers, duction: that is, business executives, technicians, We need to invent virtuous revolutionary radical can reappropriate the means of production, but bureaucrats and soldiers, lumped together by machines to place them in the nodal points of as soon as the stick their nose out of their desk- Burnham, under the name of managers. These the network, as well as facing the general intel- top they have to face a Godzilla that they had not people will eliminate the old capitalist class, lect that administers the imperial meta-machines. predicted, the Godzilla of the enemy's general crush the working class, and so organise society Before starting this we need to be aware of the intellect. that all power and economic privilege remain in density of the 'intelligence' that is condensed in their own hands. Private property rights will be each commodity, organization, message and Social, state and economic meta-machines - to abolished, but common ownership will not be media, in each machine of postmodern society. which human beings are connected like appen- established. The new managerial societies will Don't hate the machine, be the machine. How dixes - are dominated by conscious and subcon- not consist of a patchwork of small, independent can we turn the sharing of knowledge, tools and scious automatisms. Meta-machines are ruled by states, but of great super-states grouped round spaces into new radical revolutionary productive a particular kind of cognitive labour which is the the main industrial centres in Europe, Asia, and machines, beyond the inflated Free Software? administrative political managerial labour, that America. Internally, each society will be hierarchi- This is the challenge that once upon the time runs projects, organizes, controls on a vast scale: cal, with an aristocracy of talent at the top and a was called reappropriation of the means of pro- a form of general intellect that we have never mass of semi-slaves at the bottom«.[v] duction. considered, whose prince is a figure that appears At the beginning we mentioned two intelligences Will the global radical class manage to invent on the scene in the second half of the XXth cen- that face one another in the world and the forms social machines that can challenge capital and tury: the manager. in which they manifest themselves. The multitude function as planes of autonomy and autopoiesis? functions as a machine because it is inside a Radical machines that are able to face the tech- Be the Machine! scheme, a social software, thought for the no-managerial intelligence and imperial meta- As Bifo tells us recalling Orwell, in our post-dem- exploitation of its energies and its ideas. Then, machines lined up all around us? The match mul- ocratic world (or if you prefer in empire) man- the techno-managers (public private or military) titude vs. empire becomes the match radical machines vs. imperial techno-monsters. How do we start building these machines?

Matteo Pasquinelli [email protected] Berlin - Bologna, February 2004 Web + PDF: http://www.rekombinant.org/article.php?sid=2257 (translated by Arianna Bove)

Notes [i] Paolo Virno, A Grammar of the Multitude, Semiotext(e), New York 2003. Orig. ed. Grammatica della moltitudine, Derive Approdi, Roma 2002. [ii] Chainworkers, Il precognitariato. L'europrecariato si è solle- vato, 2003, published on www.rekombinant.org/article.php?sid=2184. See also http://www.chainworkers.org and http://www.inventati.org/mailman/listinfo/precog. [iii] Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari, L'anti-Oedipe, Les Éditions De Minuit, Paris 1972. [iv] Michael Hardt, Antonio Negri, Empire, Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA 2000. [v] George Orwell, Second Thoughts on James Burnham, 1946, quoted in: Franco »Bifo« Berardi, Il totalitarismo tecno-manage- riale da Burnham a Bush, 2004, published on http://www.rekombinant.org/article.php?sid=224

I will attempt to answer these questions its sensibility. The difference between this and play a strategic role in this twofold becoming: by using a paradigm that imagines the other political events of the previous century is they contribute to allowing the possible to Struggle, I constitution of the world from the rela- radical. For example, the event of Seattle no emerge, and they contribute to its realization. It is tionship between event and multiplicity. longer refers to class struggle and the necessity at this point that the »conflict« is confronted with Representation is conversely founded on the sub- of taking power. It does not mention the subject the dominant values. The implementation of new ject-work paradigm. In this paradigm the images, of history, the working class, its enemy capital, or possibilities for living runs into the existing organ- Event, Media the signs and the statements have the function the fatal battle that they must engage in. It ization of power and the established values. In of representing the object, the world, whereas in restricts itself to announcing that »something the event, one sees what is intolerable about an the paradigm of the event, images, signs and possible has been created«, that there are new era and the new possibilities for living that it con- statements contribute to allowing the world to possibilities for living, and that it is a matter of tains at the same time. The mode of the event is Maurizion Lazzarato happen. Images, signs and statements do not realizing them; that a possible world has been the problematic. The event is not the solution to represent something, but rather create possible expressed and that it must be brought to comple- a problem, but rather opens up what is possible. Why can the paradigm of representation not worlds. I would like to explain this paradigm by tion. We have entered into a different intellectual For Mikhail Bakhtin, the event reveals the nature using two concrete examples: the dynamic of the atmosphere, a different conceptual constellation. of being as a question or as a problem - specifi- function in politics, nor in artistic modes of emergence and the constitution of post-socialist cally in such a way that the sphere of the being political movements and the way television func- Before Seattle, a different world was merely virtu- of the event is simultaneously that of »answering tions, in other words, signs, images and state- al. Now it is actual or possible, but it is some- and questioning«. expression, and here especially in the produc- ments in the contemporary economy. thing actual, something possible that has to be The days of Seattle involve a corporeal arrange- realized. The transformation of subjectivity must ment, a combination of bodies (with their actions tion of works that employ moving images? Metamorphosis invent time-space arrangements that watch over and passions) composed of individual and collec- of Subjectivity this re-evaluation of values, which was able to tive singularities (multiplicity of individuals and The days of Seattle were a political event, which - bring forth a generation that has grown up after organizations - Marxists, ecologists, union like every event - first generated a transformation the fall of the Berlin wall, in the period of major activists, Trotskyists, media activists, »witches«, of subjectivity and its own mode of sensibility. American expansion, and in the New Economy. Black Bloc, etc., which practice specific corporeal The motto »a different world is possible« is symp- Twofold creation, twofold individuation, twofold relations of co-functioning); and there is an tomatic of this metamorphosis of subjectivity and becoming. The signs, images and statements arrangement of statements, a regime of state- cussed within the system of higher education. (radio, video production, streaming software, countries. In a Romanian context, for 2004 we is not just a media experiment but a social labo- And despite some lipservice to how far the electronic sound) have been part of this media are planning a series of documentaries about ratory. As people become used to doing things »democratization« of Romania has advanced, education campaign during the previous year. In NGOs with similar profiles in Romania, as well as for themselves rather than relying on experts, to also unknown and unpromoted are forms of addition to local events, we are developing an creating a network between such NGOs through claiming their right to take control of their own organization based on collaboration between online magazine which can bring these issues to the use of mailing lists and collaborative publica- lives and participate actively in politics and cul- equal members of a team rather than on hierar- a wider Romanian speaking audience. tions. On an international level, we are currently ture, to using technologies that promote sharing chies, as well as a deeper understanding of civic 4. Networking & Cooperation: working to develop a series of exchanges with and cooperation rather than privatization and engagement in the political and cultural sphere. To overcome the culture of isolationism, one of NGOs from Central and Eastern Europe, which competition, old forms of passivity and social For these reasons we consider it necessary to our main goals is to promote real social links and includes the participation of D Media members in control will begin to wither away and a true civil establish another type of »university« which working collaborations between media producers extended residencies at Multimedia Institute in society can emerge. would promote a deeper understanding of civic and individuals active in social, political and eco- Zagreb, Croatia (http://mama.mi2.hr) and K@2 engagement, the public domain, and media free- logical struggles, as well as between NGOs from in Karosta Latvia, (http://www.karosta.org). D-A-S-H dom. Conferences and symposia (on media different cities in Romania who don’t yet know THE VISION: It is not through opposition that http://d-a-s-h.org democracy and the public sphere) as each other, and between Romanian groups and alternatives emerge, but through new values and Networking against exclusion. Young people from 10 well as hands on training workshops those with similar interests and activities in other new forms of cooperation. In this sense D Media all over Europe struggle against racism and exclu- does it generate the subject (worker and con- enhanced value. For the enterprise the »event« demonstrated. ments formed from a multitude of statement sumer), but rather the world in which the subject means advertising (or communication or market- However, the realization in bodies, the possibility regimes (the statements of the Marxists are not exists. ing). We will analyze this particular aspect of of buying and living with one's body among the the same as those of the media activists, the In contemporary capitalism, we must first distin- enterprise strategy in relation to the constitution services and goods that are expressed by the ecologists or the »witches«, etc.). The collective guish the enterprise from the factory. Two years of the consumers, its customers. Enterprises now signs as possible worlds, does not always follow statement arrangements are not expressed solely ago a large French multinational corporation invest up to 40% of their turnover in marketing, (and not at all for the majority of the world popu- through language, but also through the techno- announced that it would part with eleven produc- advertising, styling, design, etc. These invest- lation), occasioning expectations, frustrations logical expression machines (Internet, telephone, tion sites. This separation between enterprise and ments in the expression machine can far surpass and rejection. In conjunction with the observation television, etc.). Both arrangements are con- factory is a borderline case, but one that is investments in »labor«. of this phenomenon in Brazil, Suely Rolnik structed in terms of the current relationships of becoming increasingly frequent in contemporary speaks of two subjective figures, which represent power and desire. capitalism. In the majority of cases, these two Advertising - like every »event« - first distributes two extremes, in which the variations of the soul functions are mutually integrated; we presume, modes of perception in order to prompt ways of and the body are articulated, that are produced Non-corporeal Transformations however, that their separation is symbolic of a living; it actualizes modes of affecting and being by the logic just described: the glamour of »luxury The event turns away from historical conditions, more profound transformation of capitalist pro- affected in souls, in order to realize them in bod- subjectivity« and the misery of »trash subjectivi- in order to create something new: a new combi- duction. What will this multinational corporation ies. With advertising and marketing, the enter- ty«. nation of bodies (actions and passions, which retain? What does it understand as »enterprise«? prise effects incorporeal transformations (the slo- are strung together among the demonstrators, for All the functions, all the services and all the gans of advertising), which are stated through Twofold Encounter example) and that which is expressed, the verbal employees that allow it to create a world: market- bodies and only through bodies. The incorporeal The West is horrified by the new »Islamic« subjec- statement as result, as effect of the corporeal ing, service, design, communication, etc. transformations first produce a change in sensi- tivities. But it has created this »monster« itself combination: a different world is possible. What bility (or that is what they would like to produce), and specifically with the help of its most »peace- is expressed (the meaning) does not describe the The enterprise generates a service or a product. a change in our way of making value judgments. ful«, most seductive techniques. What we are fac- bodies nor represent them. The possible world In its logic, the service or the product exists, just The incorporeal transformations have no refer- ing here are not remnants of traditional societies exists completely, but it does not exist outside like consumers and producers, for its world, the ents, because they are self-referential. There are in need of modernization, but in fact cyborgs that that through which it is expressed (the slogans, world of the enterprise; the latter must be inter- no antecedent needs, no natural necessities that conjoin the »oldest« with the »most modern«. the TV reports, the Internet communications, the nalized in the souls and bodies of the workers would satisfy production. The incorporeal transfor- The incorporeal transformations happen first and newspapers). The event actualizes itself in souls and consumers. In contemporary capitalism, the mations pose the valuations and their object at faster than the corporeal transformations. Three in the sense that it generates a change in sensi- enterprise does not exist outside the producers the same time that they produce them. quarters of humanity are excluded from the latter, bility (as a non-corporeal transformation), which and consumers that give it expression. Its world, Advertising represents the spiritual dimension of but they have easy access to the former (first brings forth a new valuation: one recognizes what its objectivity and its reality mix with the relation- the »event«, which the enterprise and the adver- and foremost through television). Contemporary is intolerable about an era and the new possibili- ships that the enterprise, the workers and the tising agencies invent using images, signs and capitalism does not arrive first with the factories: ties for living that it implies. The possible world consumers have with one another. statements, and which must be realized in bod- these follow later, if at all. It first arrives with has already been imbued with a certain reality ies. The material dimension of the event, its real- words, signs and images. And specifically these through talking, through communicating, but this Communication/Consumption ization, is completed when the ways of living, technologies precede not only the factories today, reality must now be completed, it must be made Let us start with consumption, because the rela- ways of eating, of having a body, dressing, resid- but also the war machine. by making new corporeal arrangements. The tionship between supply and demand has been ing, etc. are incarnated in bodies: one lives mate- The event is an encounter and it is even a event constitutes the relationship between the reversed: the customers are the pivotal point of rially among the goods and services that one twofold one: one time it meets the soul, the other two types of arrangements; it is the event that the enterprise strategy. In reality, this definition buys, in the houses, among the furniture, with the body. This twofold encounter can make space distributes the subjectivities and objectivities that from political economy does not even touch the the objects and services that one has seized as for a twofold shift, because it is only one opening will overthrow the configurations of bodies and problem: the sensational rise, the strategic role »possible«, in the flows of information and com- of possibilities in the modality of the »problemati- signs. played in contemporary capitalism by the expres- munication, in which we have submerged our- cal«. Advertising is only one possible world, a sion machine (of opinion, communication, mar- selves. We go to bed, we rush to do this and fold sheltering virtualities. Unfolding what is Everyone came with their own corporeal machine keting and thus the signs, images and state- that, while that which is »expressed« continues to enveloped in it, unfolding the fold, can bring and their own expression machine and returned ments). circulate (it »insists«) in the hertz waves, in the forth completely heterogeneous effects, because home with the necessity of defining these anew Consumption is not reduced to the act of buying telematic networks, and in the newspapers. It on the one hand they encounter monads, which in relation to that which was done and said. The and carrying out a service or a product, as politi- doubles the world and our existence as »some- are all autonomous, independent and virtual sin- forms of political organization (of the co-function- cal economics and its criticism teach, but instead thing possible«, which is, in fact, already a com- gularities. On the other - as we have seen in neo- ing of the bodies) and the statement forms (the means, first of all, belonging to a world or a uni- mand, an authoritarian slogan expressing itself monadological ontology - a different possible theories and statements about capitalism, the verse. Which world is this? It is enough to turn through seduction. world is always virtually present. The bifurcation subjects, forms of exploitation, etc.) are to be on the television or the radio, go for a walk in a of divergent series haunts contemporary capital- weighed and related to the event. Even the city, buy a weekly or daily newspaper, to know In which form does marketing produce actualiza- ism. Incompatible worlds unfold in the same Trotskyists are compelled to ask: What hap- that this world is constructed through a state- tion in the soul? Which type of subjectivation is world. For this reason, the capitalist process of pened? What is happening? What will happen? ment arrangement, through a sign regime, the mobilized by advertising? The design of an adver- appropriation is never closed in itself, but is And to report what they do at the event (the expression of which is called advertising, and tisement, the concatenation and rhythm of the instead always uncertain, unpredictable, open. organization) and what they say (the discourse what is expressed (the meaning) is a prompt, a images, the soundtrack are organized like a kind »To exist means to differ«, and this differentiation they conduct). command, representing per se a valuation, a of »ritornello« or a »whirlwind«. There are adver- is newly uncertain, unpredictable and risky each At this point we see that the order of verbal judgment, a view of the world, of themselves and tisements that reverberate in us like a musical time. statements is what is problematic. All are com- others. What is expressed (the meaning) is not theme or a refrain. You have probably already Capitalism attempts to control this bifurcation, pelled to open themselves to the event, i.e. to an ideological valuation, but rather an incentive been surprised to find yourself whistling a musi- which is virtually always possible through varia- open themselves up to the area of questions and (it gives signs), a prompt to assume a form of liv- cal theme from advertising (it certainly happens tions and continuous modulation: neither the pro- answers. Those who hold answers prepared in ing, i.e. a way of dressing, having a body, eating, to me, at least). The Leibnizian distinction duction of a subject nor the production of an advance (and there are many of those), miss the communicating, residing, moving, having a gen- between actualization in souls and realization in object, but rather subjects and objects in contin- event. That is the political drama that we lived der, speaking, etc. Television is a stream of bodies is very important, because these two uous variation guided by the technologies of after 1968, missing the event, because the ques- advertising that is regularly interrupted by films, processes do not coincide and can result in com- modulation, which are in turn continuously var- tions already had their predetermined answers entertainment programs and news programs. pletely unpredictable effects on the subjectivity ied. (Maoism, Leninism, Trotskyism). According to the way Jean-Luc Godard depicts it, of the monads. The event insists, which means it continues to if you take out all the pages of a newspaper that The television networks recognize no national bor- Control is expressed in Western countries not have an impact, to produce effects: the discus- contain advertising, it is reduced to the editorial ders, no differences in class, status or income. only through modulating brains, but also through sions about what capitalism is and about what a by the editor-in-chief. And radio is just as much a Their images are received in non-Western coun- forming bodies (in prisons, schools and hospi- revolutionary subject is today, are making good stream of advertising and programs, in which it is tries or by the poorest classes of the Western tals) and through life management (»workfare«). progress all over the world in light of the event. increasingly difficult to distinguish where one population, who have little or no buying power. We would be doing our capitalist societies a Language, signs, and images do not represent begins and the other ends. Unfortunately, we The incorporeal transformations work well on the favor, if we think that everything happens through something, but rather contribute to making it must agree with Deleuze in his conviction that souls of the television viewers (of these coun- the continuous variation of subjects and objects, happen. Images, languages and signs are consti- the enterprise has a soul, that marketing has tries, as well as on the souls of the poor in rich through modulating brains and by means of the tutive of reality and not of its representation. become its strategic center, and that advertising countries) by creating a new sensibility, because occupation of memory and attention by signs, specialists are »creative«. something possible certainly exists, even if not images and statements. The control society inte- Let us turn now to the question of how signs, The enterprise exploits to its own advantage the outside the medium of its expression (the televi- grates the »old« disciplinary dispositive. In non- images and statements are used by corporations dynamic of the event and the process of consti- sion images). For what is possible, in this sense, Western societies, where disciplinary institutions in contemporary capitalism. The corporation does tuting difference and repetition by distorting them it is enough to be expressed through a sign in and »workfare« are weaker and less developed, not generate the object (the commodity), but and making them dependent on the logic of order to have a certain reality, as Deleuze control immediately means the logic of war, even rather the world in which the object exists. Nor

sion. Day after day, country by country. In order oped collaboratively by over one thousand peo- Waag Society is a knowledge institute operating Africa and Latin America have joined the original to exchange experiences and share skills, ple around the world. These people communi- on the cutting edge of culture and technology in group. All of them share a common vision; one ressources and capacities the online platform D- cate mostly using the Internet, which removes a relation to society, education, government and that sees the majority world, not as fodder for A-S-H has been set up. With D-A-S-H you can few barriers and allows for networking to be very industry. disaster reporting, but as a vibrant source of access information and make information acces- fluid: work groups are not dependent on geo- human energy and a challenge to an exploitative sible, you find all kind of services and support. graphical proximity, and can evolve with very little Drik global economic system. Having pioneered the You can hook up with open-minded people and overhead. Again, the limit between »user« and http://www.drik.net introduction of email into Bangladesh, Drik con- start networking. You can present your activities »developer« tends to be very thin and blurry, It was fourteen years ago. A small group of peo- tinues to take the lead in new media, through not and get to know about what others are planning. which we consider a positive point: users can ple set up a picture agency in the unlikely loca- only the launch of the nation's first webzine (and do) contribute back to the project, and they tion of Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh. Named Meghbarta, the web portal Orientation, and the Debian also help other users through our many mailing- Drik, the Sanskrit word for vision, the agency set country's human rights portal Banglarights, but http://www.debian.org lists. out to represent a group of media professionals also through its broad band direct satellite link. Debian is a free operating system for various that other agencies did not cater for, practitioners Drik's social commitment is central to its work types of computers. It consists only of free soft- De Waag living and working in the majority world. In the ethos. While its professional team ware (also known as open source), and is devel- http://www.waag.org years that have followed, many others from Asia, making up the library, darkroom, 11 in times of »peace« (see Brazil, still). ties of an effect of television at a distance: the labor). impact of television is due to example rather Steering of Behavior than discipline, to imitation rather than coercion. Images, signs and statements are thus possibili- The paradigmatic body of Western control soci- It is the steering of behavior, the influence on ties, possible worlds, which affect souls (brains) eties is no longer represented by the imprisoned possible activities. His film trilogy about bodies and must be realized in bodies. Images, signs body of the worker, the lunatic, the ill person, but was rejected, because it did not take up this and statements intervene in both the incorporeal rather by the obese (full of the worlds of the transformation. It still spoke of the body before and the corporeal transformations. Their effect is enterprise) or anorectic (rejection of this world) the modulation of brains and, with regard to cer- that of the creation and realization of what is body, which see the bodies of humanity scourged tain aspects, even before disciplinary societies. possible, not of representation. They contribute to by hunger, violence and thirst on television. The the metamorphoses of subjectivity, not to their paradigmatic body of our societies is no longer These incorporeal transformations that come into representation. the mute body molded by discipline, but rather it our heads again and again like ritornelli, which is the bodies and souls marked by the signs, are circulating all over the world at the moment, (Translated by Aileen Derieg) words and images (company logos) that are penetrating into every household, and which rep- inscribed in us - similar to the procedure, through resent the real weapon for the conquest, the which the machine in Kafka's »Penal Colony« occupation, the seizure of brains and bodies - inscribes its commands into the skin of the con- they are simply incomprehensible to Marxist the- demned. ory and to economic theories. We face a change In the 70s Pasolini very precisely described how of paradigms here, which we cannot grasp start- television had changed the soul and the body of ing from labor, from practice. On the contrary, it the Italians, how it was the main instrument of could well be that the latter supplies a false an anthropological transformation that first and image of what production means today, because especially affected youth. He used practically the the process we have just described is the precon- same concept as Tarde to describe the modali- dition for every organization of labor (or non-

obbes, Rousseau and Hegel have, each Note here that the 'modern' conception of c) The freedom and joy (as well as crisis and in his own account and in different ways, exploitation (as described by Marx) is functional fatigue) of this innovative shift, that comprises Towards an H produced a concept of the people start- to a notion of production the agents of which are within itself both continuity and discontinuity, in ing from sovereign transcendence: in these individuals. It is only in so far as there are labour- other words, something can be defined as sys- authors' view the multitude was chaos and war. ing individuals that labour is measurable by the toles and diastoles in the recomposition of singu- Ontological The thought of modernity operates in a twofold law of value. Even the concept of the mass (as larities. way on these grounds: on the one hand, it an indefinite multiple of individuals) is a concept It is still necessary to insist on the difference abstracts the multiplicity of singularities and, in a of measure, or, rather, has been construed in the between the notion of multitude and that of peo- transcendental gesture, unifies it in the concept political economy of labour for this purpose. In ple. The multitude can neither be grasped nor Definition of the people; on the other hand, it dissolves the this sense the mass is the correlative of capital explained in terms of contract (here contractari- whole of the singularities that constitute the mul- as much as the people is that of sovereignty - we anism is understood as relying on transcendental titude into a mass of individuals. The modern need to add here that it is not by coincidence philosophy rather than empirical experience). of theory of natural right, whether empirical or ideal- that the concept of the people is a measure, Most generically, the multitude is diffident to rep- ist at origin, is a theory of transcendence and of especially in the refined Keynesian and welfares resentation because it is an incommensurable dissolution of the plane of immanence all the version of political economy. On the other hand, multiplicity. The people is always represented as Multitude same. On the contrary, the theory of the multi- the exploitation of the multitude is incommensu- a unity, whilst the multitude is not representable, tude requires that the subjects speak for them- rable, in other words, it is a Power (potere) that because it is monstrous vis a vis the teleological selves, and that what is dealt with are unrepre- is confronted by singularities that are out of and transcendental rationalisms of modernity. In sentable singularities rather than individual pro- measure and a cooperation that is beyond meas- contrast with the concept of the people, the con- Toni Negri prietors. ure. cept of multitude is a singular multiplicity, a con- 2) The multitude is a class concept. In fact, the If this historical shift is defined as epochal (onto- crete universal. The people constituted a social multitude is always productive and always in logically so), then the criteria or dispositifs of body; the multitude does not, because the multi- 1) The multitude is the name of an imma- motion. When considered from a temporal point measure valid for an epoch will be radically put tude is the flesh of life. If on the one hand we of view, the multitude is exploited in production; under question. We are living through this shift, oppose the multitude to the people, on the other nence. The multitude is a whole of singulari- even from the spatial point of view, the multitude and it is not certain whether new criteria and dis- hand we must put it in contrast with the masses is exploited in so far as it constitutes productive positifs of measure are being proposed. and the plebs. Masses and plebs have often ties. On these premises we can immediately society, social cooperation for production. been terms used to describe an irrational and 3) The multitude is a concept of power (potenza). passive social force, violent and dangerous pre- Exploitation of Multitude Through an analysis of cooperation we can cisely by virtue of its being easily manipulated. begin to trace an ontological definition of what The class concept of multitude must be regarded already see that the whole of singularities pro- On the contrary, the multitude is an active social as different from the concept of working class. duces beyond measure. This power not only agent, a multiplicity that acts. Unlike the people, is left of reality once the concept of the people The concept of working class is a limited one wants to expand, but, above all, it wants to take the multitude is not a unity, but as opposed to both from the point of view of production (since on a body: the flesh of the multitude wants to the masses and the plebs, we see it as some- is freed from transcendence. The way in which it essentially includes industrial workers) and transform itself into the body of the General thing organised. In fact, it is an active agent of from that of social cooperation (given that it only Intellect. self-organisation. Thus, a great advantage of the the concept of the people took shape within comprises of a small quantity of the workers who concept of the multitude is that it displaces all operate in the complex of social production). Masses and plebs modern arguments premised on the 'fear of the the hegemonic tradition of modernity is well Luxemburg's polemic against the narrow-minded It is possible to conceive of this shift, or rather, masses' as well as those related to the 'tyranny workerism of the Second International and the of this expression of power, by following three of the majority ', arguments that have often func- theory of labour aristocracies was an anticipation lines: tioned as a kind blackmail to force us to accept known. of the name of the multitude; unsurprisingly a) The genealogy of the multitude in the shift (and sometimes even ask for) our servitude. Luxemburg doubled the polemic against labour from the modern to the postmodern (or, if you aristocracies with that against the emerging like, from Fordism to Postfordism): a genealogy Making of the Multitude nationalism of the worker's movement of her constituted by the struggles of the working class From the perspective of power (potere), what to time. that have dissolved the »modern« forms of social make of the multitude? Effectively, there is really If we pose the multitude as a class concept, the discipline. nothing that power can make of it, since here the notion of exploitation will be defined as exploita- b) The tendency towards the General Intellect: a categories that power is interested in - the unity tion of cooperation: cooperation not of individu- tendency, constitutive of the multitude, towards of the subject (people), the form of its composi- als but of singularities, exploitation of the whole ever more immaterial and intellectual modes of tion (contract amongst individuals) and the type of singularities, of the networks that compose the productive expression that wants to configure of government (monarchy, aristocracy and whole and of the whole that comprises of the itself as the absolute recuperation of the General democracy, separate or combined) - have been networks etc. Intellect in living labour. put aside. On the other hand, that radical modifi-

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Its training programmes Dyne Egoboo.Bits equal position of interpretation and reinterpreta- range from providing education for working class http://dyne.org http://tamtam.mi2.hr/EgobooBits tion of the work. EGOBOO.bits sets up a decon- children to training the region's brightest young Dyne.org is lead by a grassroot committee of Gathers producers of digitally creative goods taminated zone of freedom. The market/public photojournalists through Pathshala, its education hackers sharing their researches in solidarity to (music, video, text, software) who continue the determines its popularity. Criticism evaluates the wing, where top professionals from Magnum, achieve common goals: for the knowledge, for tradition and culture of the distribution of quality. You can freely utter, publicly perform, National Geographic, Time, Contact Press Images the freedom of speech, for an aesthetic vocation, free/libre and open-source software and whose burn, modify, make free and no costs downloads and other leading media organisations make up for a sustainable model in free software develop- minimal common denominator is known as GNU of all EGOBOO.bits products on http://www.egob- the visiting faculty. The launch of the first festival ment, for a better sharing of free technologies GPL (General Public Licence). The user licence of oobits.net of photography in Asia, Chobi Mela, and informations among who has less opportuni- an EGOBOO.bits production offers free use, copy- 12 and Drik Partnership, a global con- ties to access them. We are available to run for- ing, distribution and modification of works, with larities. Of course, someone insinuates that the bodies are at stake, with all their vital dimen- attributed to the production of the multitude will cation of the mode of production that went multitude is (substantially) an ineffable concept sions and determinations. In production the activ- be practically determinable. through the hegemony of the immaterial labour or even a metaphor, because one can give unity ity of bodies is always productive force and often force and cooperating living labour -a real onto- to the multiple only through a more or less primary matter. In fact there could be no discus- It seems possible to us, from a theoretical point logical, productive and biopolitical revolution- has dialectical transcendental gesture (just as philos- sion of exploitation, whether it is concerned with of view, to develop the axiom of the ontological turned all the parameters of 'good government' ophy has done from Plato to Hobbes and Hegel): commodity production or with life reproduction, power of the multitude on at least three levels. upside down and destroyed the modern idea of a even more so if the multitude (i.e. the multiplicity that does not directly touch upon bodies. Then, The first one is that of the theories of labour community that would function for capitalist that refuses to represent itself in the dialectical the concept of capital (on one side the produc- where the relationship of command can be accumulation, just as the capitalist desired it Aufhebung ) also claims to be singular and sub- tion of wealth, on the other the exploitation of demonstrated (immanently) as groundless (insus- from the outset. jective. But this is a weak objection: here the the multitude) must always be realistically looked sistente): immaterial and intellectual labour, in dialectical Aufhebung is ineffective because the at also through the analysis of how far bodies are other words knowledge does not require com- Unformed life force unity of the multiple is for the multitude the made to suffer, are usurped or mutilated and mand in order to be cooperative and to have uni- The concept of multitude introduces us to a com- same as that of the living, and life can hardly be wounded, reduced to production matter. Matter versal effects. On the contrary: knowledge always pletely new world, inside a revolution in process. subsumed by dialectics. Moreover, the dispositif equals commodity. We cannot simply think that exceeds with respect to the (trading) values that We cannot but imagine ourselves as monsters, of the production of subjectivity that finds in the bodies are commodified in the production and are meant to contain it. Secondly, a demonstra- within this revolution. Gargantua and Pantagruel, multitude a common figure, presents itself as col- reproduction of capitalist society; we also have to tion can be directly provided on the ontological between the 16th and 17th century, in the mid- lective praxis, as always renewed activity and insist on the reappropriation of goods and the terrain, on that experience of the common (that dle of the revolution that construed modernity, constitutive of being. The name »multitude« is, at satisfaction of desires, as well as on the meta- requires neither command nor exploitation), are giants whose value is that of emblems as once, subject and product of collective praxis. morphoses and the empowerment of bodies, that which is posited as ground and presupposition of extreme figures of liberty and invention: they go the continuous struggle against capital deter- any human productive and/or reproductive through the revolution and propose the gigantic Against the concept of people mines. Once we recognise this structural ambiva- expression. Language is the primary form of con- commitment to become free. Today we need new Evidently, the origins of the discourse on the mul- lence in the historical process of accumulation, stitution of the common, and when living labour giants and new monsters who can join together titude are found in a subversive interpretation of we must pose the problem of its solution in and language meet and define themselves as nature and history, labour and politics, art and Spinoza's thought. We could never insist enough terms of the liberation of bodies and of a project ontological machine, then the experience that invention in order to show the new power attrib- on the importance of the Spinozist presupposi- of struggle to this end. In other words, a material- founds the common is realised. Thirdly, the power uted to humanity by the birth of the General tion when dealing with this theme. First of all, an ist dispositif of the multitude can only start from of the multitude can be exposed on the terrain of Intellect, the hegemony of immaterial labour, the entirely Spinozist theme is that of the body, and the primary consideration of the body and of the the politics of postmodernity, by showing how no new abstract passions and the activities of the particularly of the powerful body. 'You cannot struggle against its exploitation. conditions for a free society to exist and repro- multitude. We need a new Rabelais, or, better, know how much a body is capable of'. Then, mul- duce itself are given without the spread of knowl- many of them. titude is the name of a multitude of bodies. We Ad3) We talked of the multitude as the name of edge and the emergence of the common. In fact, dealt with this determination when we insisted on a power (potenza), and as genealogy and ten- freedom, as liberation from command, is materi- To conclude we note again that the primary mat- the multitude as power (potenza). Therefore, the dency, crisis and transformation, therefore this ally given only by the development of the multi- ter of the multitude is the flesh, i.e. that common body comes first both in the genealogy and in discussion leads to the metamorphosis of bod- tude and its self constitution as a social body of living substance where the body and the intellect the tendency, both in the phases and in the ies. The multitude is a multitude of bodies; it singularities. coincide and are indistinguishable. Maurice result of the process of constitution of the multi- expresses power not only as a whole but also as Merleau-Ponty writes: 'the flesh is not matter, nor tude. But this is not enough. We must reconsider singularity. Each period of the history of human At this point, I would like to reply to some of the mind, nor substance. In order to designate it we all the hitherto discussion from the point of view development (of labour, power, needs and will to criticisms that have been levelled against this need the old and new term element, in the same of the body, that is to say we must go back to change) entails singular metamorphoses of bod- conception of the multitude, in order to move for- sense as this term was used to speak of water, points 1), 2), 3) of the preceding section, and ies. Even historical materialism entails a law of ward in the construction of the concept. air, earth and fire, i.e. in the sense of a general complete them in this perspective. evolution: but this law is anything but necessary, A first set of criticisms is linked to the interpreta- thing.a sort of embodied principle that brings a linear, and unilateral; it is a law of discontinuity, tion of Foucault and its use made in the defini- style of being where there is a fragment of being. Ad1) Once we define the name of the multitude leaps, and unexpected syntheses. It is Darwinian, tion of the multitude. These critics insist on the The flesh is in this sense an element of Being.' against the concept of the people, bearing in in the good sense of the word: as the product of improper homology supposedly given between Like the flesh, the multitude is then pure poten- mind that the multitude is a whole of singulari- a Heraclitean clash and an aleatory teleology, the classical concept of proletariat and that of tiality, unformed life force and an element of ties, we must translate that name in the perspec- from below; because the causes of the metamor- multitude. Such homology, they insist, is not only being. Like the flesh, the multitude is oriented tive of the body and clarify the dispositif of a phoses that invest the multitude as a whole and ideologically dangerous (since it flattens the towards the fullness of life. The revolutionary multitude of bodies. When we consider bodies, singularities as a multitude are nothing but strug- postmodern onto the modern: just as the authors monster that is named multitude and appears at we not only perceive that we are faced with a gles, movements and desires of transformation. of late-modernity do, who sustain the decadence the end of modernity continuously wants to trans- multitude of bodies, but we also understand that of modernity in our time), but also metaphysically form our flesh into new forms of life. each body is a multitude. Intersecting the multi- Ontological machine so, because it poses the multitude in a dialecti- tude, crossing multitude with multitude, bodies By saying this we do not wish to deny that sover- cal opposition against power. I completely agree We can explain the movement of the multitude become blended, mongrel, hybrid, transformed; eign power is capable of producing history and with the first remark, we do not live in a 'late from the flesh to new forms of life from another they are like sea waves, in perennial movement subjectivity. However, sovereign power is a dou- modernity', but in 'postmodernity': where an point of view. This is internal to the ontological and reciprocal transformation. The metaphysics ble-face power: its production can act in the rela- epochal rupture is given. I disagree with the sec- shift and constitutes it. By this I mean that the of individuality (and/or of personhood) constitute tion but cannot eliminate it. At first, sovereign ond observation, because if we refer to Foucault, power (potenza) of the multitude, seen from the a dreadful mystification of the multitude of bod- power (as relation of force) can find itself con- I cannot see how we can think that his notion of singularities that compose it, can show the ies. There is no possibility for a body to be alone. fronted with the problem of an extraneous power power excludes antagonism. On the contrary, his dynamic of its enrichment, density and freedom. It could not even be imagined. When man is that obstructs it. Secondly, sovereign power finds conception has never been circular, and in his The production of singularities does not simply defined as individual, when he is considered as its own limit in the very relation that constitutes it analysis the determinations of power have never amount to the global production of commodities autonomous source of rights and property, he is and in the necessity to maintain it. Therefore, the been trapped in a game of neutralisation. It is and reproduction of society, but it is also the sin- made alone. But one's own does not exist out- relation presents itself to sovereignty firstly as not true that the relation amongst micropowers is gular production of a new subjectivity. In fact, side of the relation with an other. Metaphysics of obstacle (where sovereignty acts in the relation), developed at all levels of society without institu- today - in the mode of immaterial production that individuality, when confronted with the body, secondly as limit (where sovereignty wants to tional rupture between dominant and dominated. characterises our epoch -it is very difficult to dis- negate the multitude that constitutes the body in eliminate the relation but does not succeed in In Foucault, there are always material determina- tinguish the production of commodities from the order to negate the multitude of bodies. doing so). On the other hand, the power of the tions, concrete meanings: there is no develop- social reproduction of subjectivity, since there are Transcendence is the key to any metaphysics of multitude (of the singularities that work, act, and ment that is levelled onto an equilibrium, so neither new commodities without new needs nor individuality as well as to any metaphysics of sometimes disobey) is capable of eliminating the there is no idealist schema of historical develop- reproduction of life without singular desire. What sovereignty. On the other hand, from the stand- sovereign relation. ment. If each concept is fixed in a specific interests us at this point is to underline the glob- point of the body there is only relation and archaeology, it is then open to a genealogy of a al potential of this process: in fact, it lays process. The body is living labour, therefore, We have two assertions here. The first is: 'the future unknown. The production of subjectivity in between globality and singularity according to a expression and cooperation, therefore, material production of sovereign power goes beyond the particular, however produced and determined by first rhythm (synchronic) of more or less intense construction of the world and of history. obstacle whilst not being able to eliminate the power, always develops resistances that open up connections (rhyzomatic, as they have been limit that consists in the relation of sovereignty'; through uncontainable dispositifs. Struggles real- called) and another rhythm (diachronic), of sys- Ad2) When we speak of multitude as class con- the second is: 'the power of the multitude can ly determine being, they constitute it, and they toles and diastoles, of evolution and crisis, of cept, hence of multitude as subject of production eliminate the sovereign relation because only the are always open: only biopower seeks their totali- concentration and dissipation of the flux. In other and object of exploitation -at this point, it is production of the multitude constitutes being'. sation. In reality, Foucault's theory presents itself words, the production of subjectivity, i.e. the pro- immediately possible to introduce the corporeal These can ground the opening to an ontology of as an analysis of a regional system of institutions duction that the subject makes of itself, is simul- dimension, because it is evident that in produc- the multitude. This ontology will start being of struggles, crossings and confrontations, and taneously production of the density of the multi- tion, in movements, in labour and in migrations, exposed when the constitution of being that is these antagonistic struggles open up on omnilat- tude - because the multitude is a whole of singu-

European Civic Forum European Newsreel tion started in 2001 as »everyone is an expert« enviroments and in the geopolitical context of http://www.forumcivique.org http://www.beyondtv.org with the focus to redefine and to reclaim the south gate of europe. Time between the two The initiative to form a european civic forum after Beyondtv.org is an open publishing site for on- social dimensions of migration... meetings of the World Summits of The the fall of the Berlin wall emanated from the line video, audio, text news, positive projects, Information Society, Geneve december 2003 and necessity to establish a »third way« of communi- underground events, and other interesting bods Fadaiat Tunisia 2005 also help us to set up the interna- cation between east and west. The main focus is like us. a source of low-cost digital/internet video http://hackitectura.net/lamultitudconectada/fad tional flow and interlocucion. a diplomacy of citizens that is able to: - counter- technical knowledge a distribution network for a aiat.html act the assaults of neoliberalism in the east. - wide variety of films for screenings and inspiring In summer of 2001 the Goverments of and Firstfloor bring forward civic participation in sense-making club visuals both on-line, and via CD-Rom and Morocco moved troops to little piece of land, an http://www.firstfloor.org processes regarding a common political and not populated island near. It was a military two Firstfloor is a culture jamming project using exist- social future. - establish concrete collaborations, Everyone is an expert ways operation. At the same time the hopes and ing mass media to comment on those very media e.g. exchange and educational programs. - http://www.expertbase.net lifes of several magriebs disapperead when the themselves, using the original medium's commu- conbtribute to the prevention of conflicts. refering to the shift in official immigration-policy battery of their mobiles died. This proyect tries to nication method. and an increasing importance of migrant labour answer the question »what technology for?« in forces for the economic development our associa- nowdays not linked arab and european media 13 eral horizons. This concerns both the surface of the people and identified as pure power, risks of the multitude presents itself as a powerful singu- represents the exact opposite of the first set of the relations of force and the ontology of our- being reduced to an ethical figure (one of the larity that cannot be flattened in the Bergsonian criticisms. In this case, then, the response can selves. It is not the case to go back to an opposi- two sources of ethical creativity, as seen by alternative of a possible and repetitive vitalistic only recall that the multitude has nothing to do tion (in the form of a pure exteriority) between Bergson). Concerning this theme (but from an function; neither can it be attracted to its press- with the reasoning logic dependent on the power and the multitude, but to let the multitude, opposite side) the concept of the multitude is ing opponent, i.e. sovereignty, because the multi- friend/enemy couple. The multitude is the onto- in the countless webs that constitute it and in also criticised for its inability to ontologically tude, by existing, concretely dissolves the con- logical name of full against void, of production the indefinite strategic determinations that it pro- become 'other' or to present a sufficient critique cept of sovereignty. This existence of the multi- against parasitical survivals. The multitude does duces, free itself from power. Foucault denies the of sovereignty. In this critical perspective, the tude, does not seeks a foundation outside of not know instrumental reason either on its out- totalisation of power but not the possibility that constituent power of the multitude is attracted by itself, but only in its own genealogy. In fact, there side nor for its use within. And since it is a whole insubordinate subjects endlessly multiply the 'foy- its opposite: therefore, it cannot be taken as radi- is no longer a pure or naked foundation or an of singularities, it is capable of the maximal ers of struggle' and of production of being. cal expression of innovation of the real, nor as outside: these are illusions. amount of mediations and compromising consti- Foucault is a revolutionary thinker; it is impossi- thematic signal of a free people to come. So long tutions within itself, when these are emblems of ble to reduce his system to a Hobbesian epis- as the multitude does not express a radicalism of A third set of criticisms, of a sociological rather the common (whilst still operating, exactly as lan- temic mechanics of equipollent relations. foundation that subtracts it from any dialectics than philosophical character attacks the concept guage does). A second group of criticisms is directed against with power, -they say- it will always risk being for- of multitude by defining it as 'hypercritical drift'. the concept of the multitude as potency and con- mally included in the political tradition of moder- We let the fortunetellers interpret what this Translated by Arianna Bove. This article was pub- stituent power (potenza e potere costituente). nity. 'hypercritical' means. As far as the 'drift' is con- lished on the journal Multitudes numero 9 as The first criticism to this conception of powerful cerned, this consists in seeing the multitude as 'Pour une definition ontologique de la multi- multitude is that it involves a vitalist idea of the Whole of Singularities fixed in a place of refusal or rupture. As such, it tude'.(p. 36-48) constituent process. According to this critical Both these criticisms are insubstantial. The multi- is incapable of determining action, whilst destroy- point of view, the multitude as constituent power tude, as power, is not a figure that is homolo- ing the very idea of acting since, by definition, cannot, be opposed to the concept of the people gous and opposed to the power of exception of starting from a place of absolute refusal, the as figure of constituted power: this opposition modern sovereignty. The constituent power of the multitude would close the possibility of relations would make the name of multitude weak rather multitude is something different, it is not only a and/or mediations with other social agents. The than strong, virtual rather than real. The critics political exception but also a historical exception, multitude, in this view, ends up representing a who defend this point of view also assert that the it is the product of a radical temporal discontinu- mythical proletariat or an equally mythical pure multitude, once detached from the concept of ity, and it is ontological metamorphosis. Then, acting subjectivity. It is obvious that this criticism

he multitude is a figure of political phi- on talent, virtuosity, the production of the self... tudes: as an ontological concept, and as a con- losophy. But it is inseparable from the the more these capabilities tend to overflow their cept of class. As an ontological concept, the mul- T actual pathways of the multitudes, as a limited application to any determinant task.« titude indicates a plane of immanence where A Rift in set of singularities that comes into being through Therefore the worker »will locate his dignity in the human singularities discover their fragile potential productive activity. What's new is the intersection free exercise of his capacities, outside of the - that is, the possibility of developing their own of thinking and production. Labor - the simple working context: journalists writing books, ad individuation through cooperation with others. activity of earning a living - is no longer an object designers creating artworks, computer program- But as a class concept, the multitude points to Empire? of politics, but its departure point, its language or mers demonstrating their virtuosity as hackers everything that stands in the way of this develop- its very principle. and developers of free software, etc.« One might ment. That obstacle is Empire: i.e. the sum total feel tempted to laugh at this image of »ad of control techniques forged by the corporations The It is known that contemporary labor involves lin- designers creating artworks.« The results have and states. These control techniques come to guistic creativity, the expression of affects, spon- been mixed, to say the least. We have seen an bear on our flesh as biopower: the capacity to taneous cooperation. These are the sources of outpouring of collective narcissism, a facile ideal- manage, channel and parasitically exploit the Multitudes innovation, indispensable for cognitive capital- ization of expressivity and interactivity - particular- creative power of cooperating singularities. Today, ism. But no boss can command creativity, expres- ly in the magazine-gallery-museum world, where biopower increasingly takes on the explicitly sivity, cooperation - these things cannot be sub- »ad designers creating artworks« had their day in repressive forms of surveillance and the police. mitted to any disciplinary regime. On the con- the sun, throughout the 1990s. But something Not only will workers be surveilled on the job; but in the Face trary, a certain kind of insubordination must be seems to have changed since then. the entire population will be surveilled, while actively encouraged, in the very interest of pro- moving through the open systems of transport, ductivity. And the possibilities of cooperation The immaterial laborer who thinks, speaks and exchange and communication. And surveillance of War must be extended, so that everyone can cross creates on the job, then finally leaves that job is necessarily followed by the police. For the mul- the geographic, cultural and economic distances behind to practice a form of creative expression, titudes of the movements against capitalist glob- that separate the participants in a contemporary very soon feels the fragility of her position. alization, Imperial power has taken on the per- work group. Modern managerial technique con- Nothing permits her to survive while doing what fectly standardized face of the »robocops« who Brian Holmes sists in establishing a flexible framework for pro- she had nonetheless been consistently encour- carried out the repression in Seattle, Nice, ductive relations. Clearly, the paradigmatic frame- aged to do. Reflecting on her own predicament, Gothenborg, Genoa, etc. But through the visor of work for contemporary labor is the Internet. The she can meet all kinds of people: similar individ- the robocop, what we see - in addition to their After the war in Iraq, I still think the multi- advantage of such networked systems, for con- uals marginalized by the effects of the same con- eyes - is an organizational mutation that gives temporary managers, is to isolate the individuals tradiction, then many others who have never rise to the Imperial state. tudes can produce a rift in Empire. But that they link. Yet the ties of optical fiber are real, like been fully integrated into the productive system. the cooperation they encourage. And the estab- By making the comparison between one's own Here I refer to the book by Rob Jessop, The rift must be produced, in Europe and through- lishment of this productive framework took net- situation and those of others, one attains a Future of the Capitalist State. Jessop analyzes workers by surprise, because it allowed so much broader understanding of contemporary social the paradigmatic shift from a Keynesian national out the world. How to seize the opportunity of freedom. Now we see that this freedom is always relations, with their hierarchies of inclusion/exclu- welfare state, to a postnational Schumpeterian associated with highly personalized control of the sion extending across the earth. A personal expe- workfare state. What do these words mean? The employees, via advanced techniques of surveil- rience of marginality, of precarious labor condi- contemporary state no longer cares about the refusal that revealed itself during the war? lance. Everything that happens in the productive tions, can encourage all kinds of solidarities, »effective demand« of the workers, nor about any framework will also be surveilled, and the ideas, near or far. This moment of politicization implies kind of Keynesian social insurance; its preoccu- How to go much further? Here I'll look into the expressions and collective behaviors that prove at least a partial exit from the productive frame- pation is with encouraging entrepreneurial inno- harmful to the business will be repressed. work imposed by capitalist management. What vation, which for Schumpeter was a major source meaning of these words, multitudes, rift and then becomes interesting is to continue putting of surplus value. But this kind of innovation, nec- Between insubordination and surveillance, cre- thinking to work. With this difference, that the essary for competition, is done by a fairly small Empire - in hopes that some work with words ativity and control, you have one of the internal work has become autonomous: it consists in part of the population, marked by a strong ten- contradictions of the new production regime. The weaving alternative networks, in view of solidari- dency toward exit. They tend to leave the con- fact that it puts thought to work guarantees the ties and dissenting expressions. straints of the productive system. As soon as might help prolong the movements against war. extension of the contradiction beyond the limits people quit working, the state's problem is no of salaried activity. As André Gorz writes in his It is at this point that the concept of the multi- longer that of their welfare; on the contrary, they recent book, L'immatériel: »The more work calls tude can become doubly useful for the multi- must be pushed back into the most servile and

Fluter shouldn’t you belong to those who think a little social power is balanced and equally distributed time, only more informed about the dangers of http://www.fluter.de bit more critical about it? Did you ever react, instead of the centralisation and institutionalisa- internal oppression and exploitation, and less Fluter is a non-profit media platform offering con- reading one of these ads like >buy 2 webmasters tion of power. Showing up here and there (being religious about progress, rationality and the state. tent from the fields of politics and culture to ado- or political leaders now, get 1 for free!<, with a not dependend on a special articulation), free lescents age 16 to 22. spontaneous >why can’t I have zeroMore equal than others< by http://www.scan-line.org/foobar Foobar cooperation, is already a fact at many places, but Christoph Spehr (I know this piece because I You are kindly invited to Foo Bar, a series of http://www.scan-line.org/foobar it is enclosured and fixed as marginal. To override wrote it; there may be many other attempts that I events related to technology, music, sound, mov- the dominant systems of forced cooperation and do not know, too). Geert Lovink and Trebor Scholz ing pictures and the Internet. Staged once a Free cooperation replace them with structures of free cooperation are preparing a conference on >Networking, Arts month, these events promote various uses of While the rest of the world still thinks about is an utopia. Contrary to common systems, free and Cooperation< for April 2004 at SUNY, technology. They include laboratory and experi- cooperation in the style of viagra-ads (>Enlarge cooperation is based on a structure where all Buffalo. In their approach they also deal explicitly mental audio and video production, like your cooperation now!<, >50% more internation- rules can be challenged and changed; where with the idea of free cooperation. While some say freespeech TV, as well as events conceived and al within 30 days!<, or simply people can quit, withdraw, refuse their coopera- free cooperation is an undercover twin of neolib- carried out by individual artists. 14 >Cooperate now, think later!<) – why tive activity in order to influence the rules; where eralism, others see it as the communism of our exploited positions, by way of the coercive pro- and intense criticism over the conditions of his France, Germany and Belgium will form a falsely grams that Tony Blair calls workfare. The state election, G.W. Bush took the September 11 ter- social-democratic center, constructed around a takes on the role of a collective manager for the rorism and the state of exception it justifies as core of protected industries, armament above all flexible labor force - an imperative role under the the ideal means to consolidate his shaky presi- - while living in reality off the exploitation of transnational regime of networked competition. dency - and more broadly, to realize the discipli- peripheries, internal or external. The danger is Thus it becomes postnational, adapting to the nary vision of the American neoconservatives. For that the political class will use familiar hegemon- extended frameworks of capitalist productivity. it is war, and no doubt war alone, that allows the ic formulas to reinstate the existing hierarchies of Yet like the economy it serves, this Imperial form state to impose its discipline on an autonomous inclusion/exclusion, but on a continental scale. of the state is not stable, or even viable. It is labor force, after it has been mobilized and These hierarchies, forged according to the old shot through with grotesque contradictions, deceived by the untenable promises of a contra- Fordist model, are protected at gunpoint today. whereby technical and organizational innovation, dictory production regime. And so France, Germany, Belgium and the new mainspring of capitalist competition, Luxembourg held meetings on April 29, 2003, to leads to the political rationality of unlimited war. So we come to the question: What is to be speak about founding a common military force. done? As soon as the US took the warpath In the newspaper Le Monde of that same day, a Here, to my mind, lies one of the greatest ironies toward the Iraqis and their oil, the multitudes text appeared under the title: »European Defense: of the current period. The multitudes, as Toni reacted, overflowing all the bounds of political Time to Take Action!« The authors were four CEOs Negri has never ceased to explain, are incom- consensus, and infiltrating all the networks. In from the European defense lobby - our familiar mensurable: their immaterial expressions and Europe the mobilizations were particularly strong: representatives. cooperative innovations are irreducible to the because people remember the 1930s, and they measure of labor time, and therefore to the recognize the state of exception, the attempt to Life is elsewhere. The politics of the multitudes hourly wage. This disproportion of the multitudes impose a new discipline. Great Britain saw the consists in opposing the techniques of control, in can be understood from several different angles. largest demonstration of its history; Italy and escaping them - but in such a way that the pro- On the one hand, it translates the enormous cre- Spain were shaken by repeated mobilizations and duction of this exodus is itself linguistic, coopera- ative potential of scientific knowledge, particular- direct actions; and France, Germany and Belgium tive, affective. What's interesting in the networked ly as it accumulates in the form of technology: translated public opinion into political opposition, demonstrations is exactly that: what André Gorz and how shall we evaluate the »productivity« of within the arenas of the UN, NATO and the called the »free exercise« of each one's creative the finger that activates a machine? On the other European Union. These dissensions at the heart faculties. But this self-organization is just a fore- hand, it brings the indeterminacy of aesthetic of the political and military command are new: taste of deeper resistance. A real rift in Empire experience into play at the very heart of social they mark a first step, a fragile chance to be will require a transformation of the specific forms relations: and how shall we judge the »value« of seized. But can one really speak of a rift in of redistribution and coercion put into operation different expressions? Thus work is uncoupled Empire? by the state, and the creation of more viable from wages, and tends to become autonomous. frameworks for productive existence. We must But throughout the 1990s, this uncoupling, this First, look at the reality: since the early 1990s, dissolve the Schumpetarian postnational work- absence of any viable measure, acted in favor of the European Union has increasingly become a fare state, which upholds unlimited competition financial speculation, encouraging the most exag- distorted mirror of the United States. That is to and war. And that means carrying out political gerated valuations of certain sectors, notably say, a regional free-trade bloc built up according struggles on the measured ground of representa- where high technology is the vehicle of human to the rules of Imperial competition. This neolib- tive democracy, without forgetting that the power expression. The irony lies here. The krach of the eral turn may be cloaked in social charters, but of the multitudes overflows all the borders. The new economy in spring 2000 was followed by a at this point, they count for very little. And the challenge of the 21st century, in Europe and general slowdown throughout the world, putting risk that appears with each bout of European elsewhere, is to construct social infrastructure an end to the »roaring nineties.« Shortly there- chauvinism, whatever its pacifist or anti-American that can sustain the incommensurable - outside after, in the face both of an inevitable recession overtones, is that under its cover, countries like any technique of capture and control.

uch has been written on »revolution in ative potentials. And instrumentalism is to be »just war« is a moment of global politics that military affairs«, on weapon technologies, found on the side of those believing that it would bears its legitimation in itself. Unlike the conflicts M on historical and sociological aspects be enough to define the condition of war based of the second half of the 20th century, the con- Polizey- regarding the »new« warfare. But in doing so, most upon the categories of political economy and cept of »just war« combines two elements: the authors did hardly get out of mere typology: there some analysis of geopolitical interests, in order legitimacy of the military apparatus as ethically is warfare led by a bunch of warlord militias, as in to identify imperialist rivals and different strategic grounded – think of the human rights discourse wissenschaft, Somalia and Afghanistan, and their only objective objectives. We have our doubts, if it may be pos- against rogue states – and the legitimacy (qua seems to be a prolongation of the war, because sible to analyse current international warfare ade- its effectiveness) of the military action to estab- warlord power stems from war. There is war lead- quately with such arguments, let alone resist it. lish the desired Order and the so-called peace. ing to nation building as well as to breaking-up A different point of view is provided by Michel The war, just like the enemy, comes to be at once extended nations, as it is the case with Armenia and Foucault’s displacement of Clausewitz. In order to banalized and absolutized, it comes to be Azerbaijan, or again with Yugoslavia. There are civil define the dispositifs of power Foucault writes reduced to an »object of routine police repres- wars and wars involving nations, not to mention »that politics is war continued by other means«. sion« and, at the same time, presented as an version the many undeclared wars of low intensity. And we Foucault turns Clausewitz’s dictum upside down, absolute threat to the ethical order. observe asymmetric wars, as the one in Palestine, describing power as war. This point of view no as the wars waged against Afghanistan, against longer focuses on the relation of objectives and The synthesis of both moments creates a contin- Thomas Atzert & Jost Müller Iraq, and the so-called war on terrorism. But we means, but on struggles and relations of power, uum making it impossible to distinguish between speak of a new form of war; and we do not mean on lines and dynamisms of social conflict. War police measure and military action, thus creating Talking – and writing – about a new form of war, typology, because the latter isn’t able to go establishes an order. a crucial feature for the world order of Empire. beyond a confusing ensemble of motivations and The secularized »just war« leads to a diffuse but and new types of warfare, didn’t start recently. legitimations, searching an historical precedent for War establishing Order permanent warfare – the propaganda and the every type of war. The contemporary imperial wars are part of the measures in the »war on terrorism« gives us an passage towards the political order of global cap- impression of it. The war itself shows no begin- Actually we can trace back this debate to the Continuation of War italism, the sovereign order of Empire. War is nei- ning nor end. Waging war against Iraq was just a Predominant in all of the debate is an instrumen- ther »means« of expansion of a constituted order stopover in the passage towards a global society gulf war of 1991, it accompanied the wars in for- talist notion of war, taking for true Clausewitz’s nor of its restructuring, war is neither roll back of control wiping off step by step remnants of the famous dictum: »War is regarded as nothing but nor containment. War is not the continuation of old East-West conflict. Existing war economies mer Soviet Union and last but not least those in the continuation of politics by other means.« One politics by other means, it becomes the funda- are wiped out, like in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and can find such an instrumentalism on the side of ment of politics and legitimation. War is actually Iraq, if they represent an obstacle for the capital- former Yugoslavia. a bellicist left speaking as advocates of civilisa- what Toni Negri calls »guerra ordinativa«. ist accumulation or the political order of Empire. tion simultaneously neglecting the destructive The resurgence of the concept of bellum iustum Waging war means the destruction of societies forces operating against the promised civil liber- (the »just war«) leads towards an understanding and the recomposition of populations, tearing ties and forcing civil society to militarize its cre- of this new form of war. Today the secularized down borders and creating new ones. The new

Futuresonic helping development, and it's specifically goal is similar: to help For us it is a way of collating information, note- http://www.futuresonic.com designed for collaborative projects. That includes, become part of the community working on taking and seeing how the connections between Futuresonic is an open forum for the exploration but is not limited to, open source software devel- . Of course, Gforge itself is devel- things develop. The quality of the information of horizons in sound, providing a focus for new opment projects. It can of course be used for pro- oped by a group of individuals who use Gforge as varies as widely as its coverage, but we are confi- initiatives and opening hybrid spaces for sonic prietary software development, but also for non- a collaborative development tool. We find it sig- dent it will grow and improve. There is no system- and visual pleasure. futuresonic aims to develop computer-related projects and groups. It's basi- nificant that although only there are only ten peo- atic approach and the information is characteris- novel perspectives on sonic art through both the- cally a collection of a set of communication tools ple in the »core« development team, almost two tically eclectic and one-sided. ory and practice, with a dual interest in promot- adapted to various tasks: news, forums, file shar- thousand have created an account on gforge.org, ing original work and exploring innovative configu- ing, project management, task tracking, etc. The and a number of these people have participaded Guerillamarketing rations of sound, artist and audience. idea is to eaase the participation of people and in one way or another to improving Gforge. http://www.guerrigliamarketing.it remove artificial obstacles to that end, so that 1. Guerriglia Marketing è un insieme di tec- GForge people can use their valuable time and energy Generation Online niche di comunicazione non convenzionale http://gforge.org towards useful goals rather than boring stuff. In http://www.generation-online.org che consente di ottenere il massimo della Gforge is a free collaborative development envi- the case of software, we want to help users What on earth are we doing here? - This section visibilità con il minimo degli ronment. That means, it's free software, it's a tool become contributors, but in other use cases the is destined to an eternal life of ‘work in progress’. investimenti 15 form of war leads to the foundation of global and Manichaean alternative »us« or »them«, an European-style imperialism«. But the American an avant-garde role in global accumulation like mechanisms of control aiming at the mobility and »good« or »evil«. model of sovereignty based on »white decoloniza- the British bourgeoisie did once. The petrol and the productivity of living labour. Thus the war tion« marks nonetheless a historical difference in military industries won’t be able to play that role. becomes a central element in the formation of Imperialism and Empire contrast to European nation-state imperialism. the currently developing bio-political mode of pro- Today we witness the decadence of the nation- Indeed we should not mix up strategic options of Against the Order of War duction. form of sovereignty and the crisis of the institu- an administration and their think tanks talking of To resist the war cannot be identified with taking At stake is the enforcement of a society of con- tions of the nation-state. Nation-states are no »American Empire« and a »New American sides for one rival party. Anti-militarist politics will trol on a global scale, and to link single political longer main actors on the stage of international Century« with the conditions of world order. The not have to choose imperial from imperialist regimes to the world order. At stake is the politics. Imperial world order is a stratified sys- archipelago of Empire has no monocratic centre, strategies, but will resist the logic of warfare, the process of capitalist globalization, and to protect tem of rule organized along networks, without any but is characterized by relations of rivalry con- regime of panic that is imposed on civil society. this process against its own risks and crises. At outside or centre. State apparatuses and nation- fined by the political requirements of capitalist Yet it seems clear that neither pacifism nor NGO- stake is the real subsumption of society under form are losing their links and the codification of accumulation on global scale. The constitutional activism alone will be able to do so. But the capital. Most governments have passed legisla- national sovereignty given by international law de process of the European Union, the rivalry of dif- demonstrations of February 15 and other metro- tion that enforce the developing order of war. facto expires. Yet this decline does not mean that ferent countries in this process, and the relations politan actions against the war in on Iraq showed There is no mass mobilization setting free enthu- the nation-state disappears without a word: we with the United States are to be seen within the up the possibilities of leaving behind some siasm for the war like in the world wars and colo- witness the replacement of the centrality of realms of imperial sovereignty. However the Bush restrictions, like the reference on nation-states. nial wars of the last century. Nevertheless state national sovereignty as it developed in Europe administration articulates national interests in The authoritarian dispositifs of the society of con- apparatuses are set up carefully – think of and spread all over the world by colonialism and waging war against Iraq, it is nor in command trol, enforced by the war, are aiming against the preparing the army for police action in several imperialism. Yet imperialism is not followed by over world order, and thus has to follow its zigzag lives and the creativeness of the multitudes. European countries or tracing down immigrants Empire in the sense of a sequence of ages, both path between multilateralism and unilateralism. Resisting it first of all means resisting global capi- descending from so-called rogue states. The fig- distinctly and positively, the »Age of Empire« There is no chance to reinstall political control by tal and its world order. Thus in effect, we have to ureheads today are secularized versions of »God« does not simply follow the age of imperialism. military means. Such strategic objectives aren’t go through Empire, to find not merely internation- and »My Country«, it is a regime of panic integrat- Obviously the United States lead by George W. backed economically considering the internation- al but trans-national perspectives of liberation. ed by the war on terrorism that leads to the Bush Jr. try to pick up the thread of Ronald alization of capital under U.S. hegemony after authoritarian collectives of today, beyond the Reagan and George Bush Sr., heading for imperi- world war II and its crisis starting in the 1970s, vanishing sovereignty of the nation-state, forcing alist politics. The U.S. was, as Hardt and Negri and there is – from the point of view of the ruling civil society to gather around the catastrophic point out, again and again »tempted to engage in class – no national bourgeoisie that could play

t's pure abstraction, it's empty. It's That's not a human rights issue, and it's not a So, taxis. There was this guy who didn't want to I exactly what we were talking about justice issue. It's a matter of jurisprudence. All be forbidden from smoking in taxi. So he took On Human before about desire, or at least what I of the abominations through which humans have the taxi driver to court. I remember it very well: was trying to get across about desire. Desire is suffered are cases. They're not denials of the taxi driver was ruled guilty. If the trial were to not putting something up on a pedestal and say- abstract rights; they're abominable cases. One take place today, the taxi driver wouldn't be Rights ing, hey, I desire this. We don't desire liberty and can say that these cases resemble other, have guilty, it would be the passenger who'd be the so forth, for example; that doesn't mean any- something in common, but they are situations for guilty party. But back then, the taxi driver was thing. We find ourselves in situations. jurisprudence. found guilty. Under what pretext? That, when someone took a taxi, he was the tenant. So the Gilles Deleuze Take today's Armenia, a recent exam- The Armenian problem is typical of what one taxi passenger was likened to a tenant; the ten- ple. What is the situation there? If I understand might call a problem of jurisprudence. It is ant is allowed to smoke in his own home under correctly -- please let me know if I don't, though extraordinarily complex. What can be done to the right of use and support. It's as though he The reverence that people display toward that's not the point either -- there's an Armenian save the Armenians, and to enable the was an actual tenant, as though my landlord told enclave in another Soviet republic. So there's an Armenians to extricate themselves from this situ- me: no, you may not smoke in my home. And I'd human rights -- it almost makes Armenian republic, and then an enclave. Well, ation? And then, on top of things, the earth- say: yes, if I am the tenant, I can smoke in my that's a situation. First, there's the massacre quake kicks in. An earthquake whose unfolding own home. So the taxi was made out to be a that the Turks, or the Turkic people, I'm not sure, also had its reasons, buildings which weren't well sort of mobile apartment in whcih the passenger one want to defend horrible, terrible positions. massacre the Armenians once again, in their built, which weren't put together as they should was the tenant. enclave. The Armenians take refuge in their have been. All of these things are jurisprudence It is so much a part of republic -- I think, and again, please correct my cases. To act for liberty, to become a revolution- Ten years later, it's become almost universal: errors -- and then, there, an earthquake hits. It's ary, this is to act on the plane of jurisprudence. there is almost no taxi in which one can smoke, the softheaded thinking that marks the shabby as if they were in the Marquis de Sade. These To call out to justice -- justice does not exist, and period. The taxi is no longer made out to be like poor people went through the worst ordeals that human rights do not exist. What counts is renting an apartment, it's a public service. In a period we were talking about. they could face, and they've only just escaped jurisprudence: *that* is the invention of rights, public service, forbidding smoking is permitted. into shelter when Mother Nature starts it all up invention of the law. So those who are content All that is jurisprudence. There's no issue of It's pure abstraction. Human rights, after all, again. to remind us of human rights, and recite lists of rights of this or that. It's the matter of a situa- human rights -- they are idiots. It's not a ques- tion, and a situation that evolves. And fighting I mean, we say »human rights«, but in the end, tion of applying human rights. It is one of invent- for freedom, really, is doing jurisprudence. what does that mean? that's a party line for intellectuals, and for odious ing jurisprudences where, in each case, this or intellectuals, and for intellectuals without any that will no longer be possible. And that's some- So there you have it, the Armenian example ideas of their own. Right off the bat, I've noticed thing quite different. seems typical to me. Human rights -- what do that these declarations of human rights are never they mean? They mean: aha, the Turks don't done by way of the people that are primarily con- Smoking in Taxis have the right to massacre the Armenians. Fine, cerned, the Armenian associations and communi- I'll take an example I quite like, because it's the so the Turks don't have the right to massacre the ties, and so on. Their problem isn't human rights. only way to get across what jurisprudence is. Armenians. And? It's really nuts. Or, worse, I What is it? People don't really understood, well, not every- think they're hypocrites, all these notions of one. People don't understand very well. I human rights. It is zero, philosophically it is zero. There's a set-up! As I was saying, desire is remember the time when it was forbidden to Law isn't created through declarations of human always through set-ups. Well, there's a set-up. smoke in taxis. The first taxi drivers who forbade rights. Creation, in law, is jurisprudence, and What can be done to eliminate this enclave, or to smoking in their taxis -- that made a lot of noise, that's the only thing there is. So: fighting for make it livable? What is this interior enclave? because there were smokers. And among them jurisprudence. That's what being on the left is That's a territorial question: not a human rights was a lawyer. about. It's creating the right. question, but a qusetion of territorial organisa- I have always been passionate about jurispru- tion. What are they going to suppose that dence, about law. Had I not done philosophy, I [...] Gorbachev is going to get out of the situation? would have done law, but indeed, jurisprudence, How is he going to arrange things so that there's not human rights. Because that's life. There are L'Abécédaire de Gilles Deleuze, avec Claire no longer this Armenian enclave delivered into no human rights, there is life, and there are life Parnet, Vidéo Éd. Montparnasse, 1996 the hands of the hostile Turks all around it? rights. Only life goes case by case.

Hackitectura I love you all Incommunicado Indymedia Croatia http://hackitectura.net http://www.zerofilm.de http://www.incommunicado.info http://indymedia.mi2.hr A documentary by Eyal Sivan and Audrey Marion. Incommunicado is first of all the follow-up Independent mediacenter croatia HUB - eur@ction project Mr S. has spent twenty years working as an offi- to the Solaris list, founded late 2001 by http://hubproject.org/en/?l=en cial »in the service of society«. He performs his Geert Lovink and Michael Gurstein. At some Indymedia Italy Around the European Social Forum of Florence duties out of love; unconditional, total love for stage Solaris ran into serve trouble and from http://www.indymedia.it (Italy, November 2002) international activists of »his people«. In Eyal Sivan’s and Audrey the beginning has been plagued by spam independent mediacentre italy the movement against capitalist globalisation cre- Maurion’s film, Mr S’s testimony serves as the problems. Also the quest for a critique of 'ICT ated an autonomous space for political pro- background for a disturbing montage. His report & Development' seemed to be too narrow, Indymedia duction and experimentation on forms of expres- is interwoven with unique original footage of the too premature.With 'incommunicado' we hope http://www.indymedia.ch sion and communication. The hub was a place cellars of the ‘Gauck’ building, which housed the to continue and extend the Solaris debates. independent mediacentre switzerland where transversal relations between activists, col- authority that dealt with the winding up of the lectives, movements and networks came into Stasi, but also with images from various private Indymedia Belgien Indymediaestrecho being and common projects and and public archives. http://www.indymedia.be http://estrecho.indymedia.org 16 shared tracks were developed. Belgium Independent Media Centre »Disobey the Border to build a territory ›other‹« is he Italian term _popolo_, the French political structure: naked life (_people_) and time because it coincides with the biopolitical term _peuple_, and the Spanish term political existence (_People_), exclusion and plan to produce a people without fracture. T _pueblo_ - along with the corresponding inclusion, _zoe_ and _bios_. _The concept of adjectives _popolare_, _populaire_, _popular_ - people always already contains within itself the When seen in this light, the extermination of the What is a and the late-Latin terms _populus_ and _popu- fundamental biopolitical fracture. It is what can- Jews in Nazi Germany acquires a radically new laris_ from which they all derive, designate in not be included in the whole of which it is a part meaning. As a people that refuses integration in common parlance and in the political lexicon as well as what cannot belong to the whole in the national body politic (it is assumed, in fact, People? alike the whole of the citizenry as a unitary body which it is always already included._ that its assimilation is actually only a feigned politic (as in »the Italian people« or in »giudice one), the Jews are the representatives par excel- popolare« [juryman]) as well as those who Hence the contradictions and aporias that such a lence and almost the living symbol of the _peo- Giorgio Agamben belong to inferior classes (as in _homme du peu- concept creates every time that it is invoked and ple_, of that naked life that modernity necessari- ple_ [man of the people], _rione popolare_ brought into play on the political stage. It is what ly creates within itself but whose presence it is Any interpretation of the political meaning of [working-class neighborhood], _front populaire_ always already is, as well as what has yet to be no longer able to tolerate in any way. We ought [popular front]). Even the English _people_ - realized; it is the pure source of identity and yet it to understand the lucid fury with which the whose sense is more undifferentiated - does has to redefine and purify itself continuously German _Volk_ - representative par excellence of the term _people_ ought to start from the retain the meaning of ordinary people as according to exclusion, language, blood, and ter- the people as integral body politic - tried to elimi- opposed to the rich and the aristocracy. In the ritory. It is what has in its opposite pole the very nate the Jews forever as precisely the terminal peculiar fact that in modern European lan- American Constitution one thus reads without any essence that it itself lacks: its realization there- phase of the internecine struggle that divides sort of distinction: »We, the people of the United fore coincides with its own abolition; it must _People_ and _people_. With the final solution - guages this term always indicates also the States ...«; but when Lincoln in the Gettysburg negate itself through its opposite in order to be. which included Gypsies and other unassimilable Address invokes a »government of the people, by (Hence the specific aporias of the workers' move- elements for a reason - Nazism tried obscurely poor, the underprivileged, and the excluded. the people, for the people,« the repetition implic- ment that turns toward the people and at the and in vain to free the Western political stage itly sets another people against the first. The same time aims at its abolition.) The concept of from this intolerable shadow so as to produce extent to which such an ambiguity was essential people - brandished each and every time as the finally the German _Volk_ as the people that has The same term names the constitutive political even during the French Revolution (that is, at the bloody flag of reaction and as the faltering ban- been able to heal the original biopolitical frac- very moment in which people's sovereignty was ner of revolutions and popular fronts - always ture. (And that is why the Nazi chiefs repeated so subject as well as the class that is excluded - claimed as a principle) is witnessed by the deci- contains a more original split than the one obstinately that by eliminating Jews and Gypsies sive role played in it by a sense of compassion between enemy and friend, on incessant civil war they were actually working also for the other de facto, if not de jure - from politics. for the people intended as the excluded class. that at once divides this concept more radically European peoples.) Hannah Arendt reminds us that: than any conflict and keeps it united and consti- tutes it more firmly than any identity. As a matter Paraphrasing the Freudian postulate on the rela- »The very definition of the word was born out of of fact, what Marx calls class struggle - which tion between _Es_ and _Ich_, one might say that compassion, and the term became the equiva- occupies such a central place in his thought, modern biopolitics is supported by the principle lent for misfortune and unhappiness - _le peu- even though he never defines it substantially - is according to which »where there is naked life, ple_, les malheureux m'applaudissent_, as nothing other than this internecine war that there has to be a _People_,« as long as one Robespierre was wont to say; _le people toujours divides every people and that shall come to an adds immediately that this principle is valid also malheuereux_, as even Sieyès, one of the least end only when _People_ and _people_ coincide, in its inverse formulation, which prescribes that sentimental and most sober figures of the in the classless society or in the messianic king- »where there is a _People_, there shall be naked Revolution, would put it.« [1]. dom, and only when there shall no longer be, life.« The fracture that was believed to have been properly speaking, any people. healed by eliminating the people - namely, the But this is already a double concept for Jean Jews, who are its symbol - reproduced itself Bodin - albeit in a different sense - in the chapter If this is the case - if the concept of _people_ anew, thereby turning the whole German people of _Les Six Livres de la Republique_ in which he necessarily contains within itself the fundamental into sacred life that is doomed to death and into defines Democracy or _Etat Populaire_: while the biopolitical fracture - it is possible to read anew a biological body that has to be infinitely purified _menu peuple_ is that which it is wise to exclude some decisive pages of the history of our centu- (by eliminating the mentally ill and the carriers of from political power, the _peuple en corps_ is ry. If the struggle between the two peoples has hereditary diseases). And today, in a different intended as entitled to sovereignty. always been in process, in fact, it has undergone and yet analogous way, the capitalistic-democrat- in our time one last and paroxysmal acceleration. ic plan to eliminate the poor not only reproduces Such a widespread and constant semantic ambi- In ancient Rome, the split internal to the people inside itself the people of the excluded but also guity cannot be accidental: it surely reflects an was juridically sanctioned by the clear distinction turns all the populations of the Third World into ambiguity inherent in the nature and function of between _populus_ and _plebs_ - each with its naked life. Only a politics that has been able to the concept of _people_ in Western politics. It is own institutions and magistrates - just as in the come to terms with the fundamental biopolitical as if, in other words, what we call people was Middle Ages the division between artisans split of the West will be able to arrest this oscilla- actually not a unitary subject but rather a dialec- [_popolo minuto_] and merchants [_popolo tion and put an end to the civil war that divides tical oscillation between two opposite poles: on grasso_] used to correspond to a precise articu- the peoples and the cities of the Earth. the one hand, the _People_ as a whole and as lation of different arts and crafts. But when, an integral body politic and, on the other hand, starting with the French Revolution, sovereignty is [1] Hannah Arendt, _On Revolution_ (New York: the _people_ as a subset and as fragmentary entrusted solely to the people, the _people_ , 1963), p. 70. multiplicity of needy and excluded bodies; on the become an embarrassing presence, and poverty one hand, an inclusive concept that pretends to and exclusion appear for the first time as an be without remainder while, on the other hand, intolerable scandal in every sense. In the modern an exclusive concept known to afford no hope; at age, poverty and exclusion are not only economic one pole, the total state of the sovereign and and social concepts but also eminently political integrated citizens and, at the other pole, the categories. (The economism and »socialism« that banishment - either court of miracles or camp - seem to dominate modern politics actually have of the wretched, the oppressed, and the van- a political, or, rather, a _biopolitical_, meaning.) quished. »There exists no single and compact ref- erent for the term people anywhere: like many From this perspective, our time is nothing other fundamental political concepts (which, in this than the methodical and implacable attempt to respect, are similar to Abel and Freud's fill the split that divides the people by radically _Urworte_ or to Dumont's hierarchical relations), eliminating the people of the excluded. Such an _people_ is a polar concept that indicates a dou- attempt brings together, according to different ble movement and a complex relation between modalities and horizons, both the right and the two extremes. This also means, however, that the left, both capitalist countries and socialist coun- constitution of the human species into a body tries, which have all been united in the plan to politic comes into being through a fundamental produce one single and undivided people - an split and that in the concept of _people_ we can ultimately futile plan that, however, has been par- easily recognize the conceptual pair identified tially realized in all industrialized countries. The earlier as the defining category of the original obsession with development is so effective in our

the slogan of this grass-roots diplomacy project JFF its new official title is »JFF - Institute for media with support from our communities. Over the called Indymedia Estrecho/Madiaq (Strait of http://www.jff.de research and media education«.The JFF is sup- years, Justice for Janitors has worked to provide Gibraltar). The challenge is a question of political On the 21st. December 1949 the »Arbeitskreis ported by the non-profit society »JFF - Jugend better wages, basic benefits, and job security for engeniering, to build a bridge between the two Jugend und Film« was established in Munich, a Film Fernsehen e.V.«. Its members come from all janitors who clean buildings in major cities and sides of one of the main border of fortress project designed to research the field of youth fields of media re-search, media education, edu- suburbs. Europe. To build a common territory, a common and film. Several years later a research institute cation in active media work and pro-duction as body with the movements of Morocco, Canary was founded (Wissenschaftliches Institut für well as school and university education. They Jux Islands and Andalucía. One of the sons of this Jugendfilmfragen) with the same aim. In 1976 work not only in Germany but also in other http://jux.netbridge.at proyect is Radio Madiaq wich is part of Global these two joined forces to become the Institute European countries. JUX offers proposals for the use of Linux. Radio (www.globalradio.it). for Youth, Film and Television (Institut Jugend Furthermore it is a contact point for project coor- Film Fernsehen) in short JFF. The Institute has Justice for Janitors dination and encourages its users to edit their Intermitents just celebrated its 50th anniversary in December http://www.seiu.org/building/janitors own contents. http://cip-idf.ouvatop.org 1999 and is proud to be the oldest institution in Formed in Denver in 1985, Justice for Janitors is Ger-many, combining media education and media in its 18th year. The campaign is about hard- Kinetik research. Although still known by the name of JFF working janitors uniting for fair working conditions http://www.inventati.org/kinetix 17 he term border is extremely rich in signi- whereas others saw a mercenary utilization of On one hand, Yugoslavia (as well as to varying fications. One of my hypotheses is that it American power by the European states in the degrees the whole Balkan area, including At the T is undergoing a profound change in service of continental objectives. And so on. Albania, Macedonia, Bulgaria . . .) was consid- meaning. The borders of new sociopolitical enti- ered an exterior space, in which, in the name of ties, in which an attempt is being made to pre- I do not presume to resolve these dilemmas. But a »principle of intervention« that I will not discuss borders of serve all the functions of the sovereignty of the I want to state here my conviction that these here but that clearly marked a reciprocal exteriori- state, are no longer entirely situated at the outer events mercilessly reveal the fundamental contra- ty, an entity called Europe felt compelled to inter- limit of territories; they are dispersed a little dictions plaguing European unification. It was not vene to block a crime against humanity, with the europe everywhere, wherever the movement of informa- by chance that they occurred when Europe was aid of its powerful American allies if necessary. tion, people, and things is happening and is con- set to cross an irreversible threshold, by institut- On the other had, to take up themes proposed Etienne Balibar trolled--for example, in cosmopolitan cities. But it ing a unitary currency and thus communal con- by the Albanian national writer Ismail Kadaré,2 is also one of my hypotheses that the zones trol of economic and social policy and by imple- for example, it was explained that this interven- called peripheral, where secular and religious cul- menting formal elements of »European citizen- tion was occurring on Europe's soil, within its his- tures confront one another, where differences in ship,« whose military and police counterparts are torical limits, and in defense of the principles of I am speaking of the »Borders of Europe« in economic prosperity become more pronounced quickly perceived. Western civilization. Thus, this time the Balkans Greece, one of the »peripheral« countries of and strained, constitute the melting pot for the found themselves fully inscribed within the bor- formation of a people (demos), without which In reality, what is at stake here is the definition of ders of Europe. The idea was that Europe could Europe in its traditional configuration--a config- there is no citizenship (politeia) in the sense that the modes of inclusion and exclusion in the not accept genocidal population deportation on this term has acquired since antiquity in the European sphere, as a »public sphere« of bureau- its own soil, not only for moral reasons but above uration that reflects powerful myths and a democratic tradition. cracy and of relations of force but also of com- all to preserve its political future. long-lived series of historical events. munication and cooperation between peoples. Beyond Technocratic Appearances Consequently, in the strongest sense of the term, However, this theme, which I do not by any Thessaloníki is itself at the edge of this border In this sense, border areas--zones, countries, and it is the possibility or the impossibility of means consider pure propaganda, did not corre- cities--are not marginal to the constitution of a European unification. In the establishment of a spond to any attempt to anticipate or accelerate country, one of those places where the dialec- public sphere but rather are at the center. If protectorate in Kosovo and, indirectly, other the integration of the Balkan regions referred to tic between confrontation with the foreigner Europe is for us first of all the name of an unre- regions of the Balkans, as in the blockade of in this way into the European public sphere. The solved political problem, Greece is one of its cen- Slobodan Milosevic's Serbia, the elements of failure of the stillborn »Balkan conference« testi- (transformed into a hereditary enemy) and ters, not because of the mythical origins of our impossibility prevailed obviously and lastingly-- fies eloquently to this. There was no economic civilization, symbolized by the Acropolis of even if one thinks, as is my case, that an inter- plan of reparations and development involving all communication between civilizations (without Athens, but because of the current problems con- vention one way or another to block the ongoing the countries concerned and the European com- which humanity cannot progress) is periodical- centrated there. »ethnic cleansing« could no longer be avoided munity as such. Nor was the notion of »European and even if one is skeptical, as is my case, of citizenship« adapted--for example, by the issuing ly played out. I thus find myself, it seems, right Or, more exactly, the notion of a center confronts self-righteous positions concerning a people's of »European identity cards« to the Kosovo us with a choice. In connection with states, it right to self-determination in the history of politi- refugees whose identification papers had been in the middle of my object of study, with all the means the concentration of power, the localiza- cal institutions. The unacceptable impasse that destroyed by the Serbian army and militias, along resultant difficulties. tion of virtual or real governing authorities. In this we had reached on the eve of the war in the the lines of the excellent suggestion by the sense, the center of Europe is in Brussels, whole of ex-Yugoslavia was fundamentally the French writer Jean Chesneaux.3 Nor were the Strasbourg, or in the City of London and the result of the powerlessness, inability, and refusal steps and criteria for entrance into the »union« Frankfurt stock exchange, or will soon be in of the »European community« to propose political redefined. Berlin, the capital of the most powerful of the solutions of association, to open possibilities of states that dominate the construction of Europe, development for the peoples of the Balkans (and Thus, on the one hand, the Balkans are a part of and secondarily in Paris, London, and so on. But more generally of the East), and to assume Europe and, on the other, they are not. this notion has another, more essential and elu- everywhere its responsibilities in an effective Apparently, we are not ready to leave this contra- sive meaning, which points to the sites where a struggle against human rights violations. It is thus diction behind, for it has equivalents in the east- people is constituted through the creation of civic Europe, particularly the primary European pow- ern part of the continent, beginning with Turkey, consciousness and the collective resolution of ers, that is responsible for the catastrophic devel- Russia, and the Caucasus regions, and every- the contradictions that run through it. Is there opments that subsequently took place and for where takes on a more and more dramatic signif- then a »European people,« even an emergent the consequences they now may have. icance. This fact results in profoundly paradoxical one? Nothing is less certain. And if there is not a situations. First of all, the colonization of Kosovo European people, a new type of people yet to be Crystallizing the Power (if one wants to designate the current regime this defined, then there is no public sphere or But, on the other hand, if it is true that the way, as Régis Debray, with whom I otherwise European state beyond technocratic appear- Balkan War manifests the impasse and the totally disagree, suggested by his comparisons ances. This is what I meant when I imitated one impossibility of European unification, it is neces- with the Algerian War) is an »interior colonization« of Hegel's famous phrases: Es gibt keinen Staat sary to have the courage (or the madness) to ask of Europe (with the help of a sort of American in Europa.1 But the question must remain open, in today's conditions: under what conditions foreign legion). But I am also thinking of other and in a particularly »central« way at the border might it become possible again? Where are the situations, such as the fact that Greece could points. potentialities for a different future? How can they wonder if it was interior or exterior to the domain be released by assigning responsibility for the of European sovereignty, because its soil served There are more difficult issues. We are meeting in past but avoiding the fruitless exercise of repeat- as a point of entry for land-occupation forces in the aftermath of the war in Kosovo, the Balkans, ing it? An effort of this kind alone can give which it did not want to take part. I can even or Yugoslavia, at a moment when the protec- meaning to a project of active European citizen- imagine that when Turkish participation in the torate established at Pristina by the Western ship, disengaged from all myths of identity, from operation was discussed, certain Greek »patriots« powers is being put into place with difficulty and all illusions about the necessary course of histo- asked themselves which of the two »hereditary for dubious ends, while in Belgrade uncertain ry, and a fortiori from all belief in the infallibility enemies« was more interior to political Europe, maneuvers are unfolding for or against the future of governments. It is this effort that I would like on its way to becoming a military Europe. of the current regime. It is not certain that we all to call on and contribute to. We must privilege have the same judgment about these events, the issue of the border when discussing the All this proves that the notions of interiority and from which we will not emerge for quite some questions of the European people and of the exteriority, which form the basis of the represen- time. It is even probable that we have profoundly state in Europe because it crystallizes the stakes tation of the border, are undergoing a veritable divergent opinions on the subject. The fact that of politico-economic power and the symbolic earthquake. The representations of the border, we do not use the same names for the war that stakes at work in the collective imagination: rela- territory, and sovereignty, and the very possibility just took place is an unequivocal sign of this. It tions of force and material interest on one side, of representing the border and territory, have is possible--it is probable--that some of you con- representations of identity on the other. become the object of an irreversible historical demned the intervention of NATO for various rea- »forcing.« At present these representations consti- sons, and that still others, also for various rea- I see a striking indicator of this in the fact that tute a certain conception of the political sphere sons, found it impossible to take sides. It is pos- during the new Balkan War that has just taken as a sphere of sovereignty, both the imposition of sible--it is probable--that certain of us saw strik- place the name of Europe functioned in two con- law and the distribution of land, dating from the ing proof of the subordination of Europe to the tradictory ways, which cruelly highlighted the beginning of the European modern age and later exterior, hegemonic power of the United States, ambiguity of the notions of interior and exterior. exported to the whole world--what Carl Schmitt in

Do it yourself theatre and games is a d.i.y. proj- an archive, an office, and a bar. In the KIOSK for social backgrounds, who are fed up with being Thus an ever increasing number of people is ect with rom and semi nomadic children living in useful knowledge, the professional knowledge told that they are supposed to sit on the fence. forced into illegality. Borders do not only separate urban environments. It is d.i.y because it is and theoretical discourse of two dialogue part- Kanak Attak wants to breach the assignments of territories, they separate people. Borders exist realised with recuperated materials on or close to ners respectively - specialists, protagonists, and ethnical identities and role-models. everywhere: at social welfare centres, at stations, site, and is based on the stories and interests of functionaries of their respective fields - will in city centres as well as at the state border. the children for play and to make short impro- encounter the practice of everyday life and indi- Kein mensch ist illegal Wherever people have to prove their identity there vised performances. The first part is on site in vidual narration. The KIOSK conveys narrated the- http://www.contrast.org/borders/kein is the border. three different locations, Dublin, Rome and ory and debate into public space. Migrants and refugees are not wanted in Europe. Amsterdam; the second part is on the net. Here it is nearly impossible for them to find a Kompakt Kanak Attak legal form of refuge or immigration, so crossing http://www.kompakt-net.de KIOSK http://www.kanak-attak.de state borders will always be an »illegal« offence Kompakt is a Cologne based recordlabel for mini- http://www.ersatzmedia.info Kanak Attak is not asking for passports or her- and often entail risking ones life. An »illegal« per- mal techno The KIOSK for useful knowledge is a trans- itage but instead questioning these concepts. son is someone who stays even though it isn’t portable installation (designed by Kanak Attak offers a platform for Kanaken (ger- permitted or accepted. The possibilities of immi- 18 Stephan Craig) containing a cinema, man vilifying term for foreigners) with different gration or residence are systematically reduced. his great book from 1950, The Nomos of the ground of the »Turkish menace.« Rather, it hap- demographic and cultural structure typical of Earth, called the Jus Publicum Europaeum.4 pened a little later, when two conceptions of this European populations today, which are all post- European order confronted each other: the hege- colonial communities or, if you will, projections of But, as we also know, this representation of the monic conception, represented by the French global diversity within the European sphere--as a border, essential as it is for state institutions, is monarchy, and the republican conception, in the result of immigration but for other causes as well, nevertheless profoundly inadequate for an sense of a regime of formal equality among the like the repatriation of displaced peoples. account of the complexity of real situations, of states, which coincided with the recognition of the topology underlying the sometimes peaceful certain civil rights in the interior order, embodied The second development that I would like to dis- and sometimes violent mutual relations between by the coalition put in place by the English and cuss concerns the evolution of the notion of a the identities constitutive of European history. I the Dutch.7 people, and it goes in the opposite direction from suggested in the past that (particularly in that of the preceding one, creating a strong ten- Mitteleuropa but more generally in all Europe), Drawing Borders sion that may become very violent on occasion. without even considering the question of »minori- It was then, in the propagandistic writings com- The historical insertion of populations and peo- ties,« we are dealing with »triple points« or missioned by William of Orange, that the term ples in the system of nation-states and of their mobile »overlapping zones« of contradictory civi- Europe replaced Christendom in diplomatic lan- permanent rivalry affects from the inside the rep- lizations rather than with juxtapositions of mono- guage as a designation of the whole of the rela- resentation of these peoples, their consciousness lithic entities. In all its points, Europe is multiple; tions of force and trade among nations or sover- of their »identity.« it is always home to tensions between numerous eign states, whose balance of power was materi- religious, cultural, linguistic, and political affilia- alized in the negotiated establishment of borders. In the work that I published in 1988 with tions, numerous readings of history, numerous We also know that this notion never ceased fluc- Immanuel Wallerstein, Race, Nation, Class,8 I modes of relations with the rest of the world, tuating, sometimes toward a democratic and cos- used the expression »constitution of a fictive eth- whether it is Americanism or Orientalism, the mopolitan ideal (theorized by Kant), sometimes nicity« to designate this characteristic nationaliza- possessive individualism of »Nordic« legal sys- toward surveillance of the movement of peoples tion of societies and peoples and thus of cul- tems or the »tribalism« of Mediterranean familial and cultural minorities by the most powerful tures, languages, genealogies. This process is the traditions. This is why I have suggested that in states (which would triumph at the Congress of very site of the confrontation, as well as of the reality the Yugoslavian situation is not atypical Vienna, after the defeat of Napoleon). But I reciprocal interaction, between the two notions of but rather constitutes a local projection of forms would like rather to direct attention to two evolv- the people: that which the Greek language and of confrontation and conflict characteristic of all ing trends, which affect this system more and following it all political philosophy calls ethnos, of Europe, which I did not hesitate to call more deeply as we approach the present the »people« as an imagined community of mem- European race relations, with the implicit under- moment. bership and filiation, and d emos, the »people« standing that the notion of race has no other as the collective subject of representation, deci- content than that of the historical accumulation The first of these comes from the fact that the sion making, and rights. It is absolutely crucial to of religious, linguistic, and genealogical identity European balance of power and the correspon- understand the power of this double-faced con- references.5 ding national sovereignty are closely tied to the struction--its historical necessity, to some degree-- hegemonic position of Europe in the world and to understand its contingency, its existence The fate of European identity as a whole is being between the seventeenth and mid-twentieth cen- relative to certain conditions.9 played out in Yugoslavia and more generally in turies--the imperialist division of the world by the Balkans (even if this is not the only site of its colonialist European powers, including of course Systems of Exclusion trial). Either Europe will recognize in the Balkan »small nations« like Holland and Belgium and This construction resulted in the subjective interi- situation not a monstrosity grafted to its breast, a peripheral nations like Russia, later the USSR. orization of the idea of the border--the way indi- pathological »aftereffect« of under-development This point has been insisted on in various ways viduals represent their place in the world to or of communism, but rather an image and effect by Marxist and non-Marxist theoreticians such as themselves (let us call it, with Hannah Arendt, of its own history and will undertake to confront Carl Schmitt, who saw in it the origins of the cri- their right to be in the world ) by tracing in their it and resolve it and thus to put itself into ques- sis of »European public law,« but before him imaginations impenetrable borders between tion and transform itself. Only then will Europe Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg, later Hannah Arendt, groups to which they belong or by subjectively probably begin to become possible again. Or else and closer to us, the historians Fernand Braudel appropriating borders assigned to them from on it will refuse to come to face-to-face with itself and Immanuel Wallerstein. high, peacefully or otherwise. That is, they devel- and will continue to treat the problem as an exte- op cultural or spiritual nationalism (what is some- rior obstacle to be overcome through exterior Drawing »political« borders in the European times called »patriotism,« the »civic religion«). means, including colonization. That is, it will sphere, which considered itself and attempted to impose in advance on its own citizenship an appoint itself the center of the world, was also But this construction also closely associates the insurmountable border for its own populations, originally and principally a way to divide up the democratic universality of human rights--including whom it will place indefinitely in the situation of earth; thus, it was a way at once to organize the the right to education, the right to political metics, and it will reproduce its own impossibility. world's exploitation and to export the »border expression and assembly, the right to security form« to the periphery, in an attempt to transform and at least relative social protections--with par- I would now like to broaden this question of the whole universe into an extension of Europe, ticular national belonging. This is why the demo- European citizenship as a »citizenship of borders« later into »another Europe,« built on the same cratic composition of people in the form of the or confines, a condensation of impossibility and political model. This process continued until nation led inevitably to systems of exclusion: the potentials that we must try to activate--without decolonization and thus also until the construc- divide between »majorities« and »minorities« and, fearing to take things up again at a distance, tion of the current international order. But one more profoundly still, between populations con- from the point of view of plurisecular history. could say that in a certain sense it was never sidered native and those considered foreign, het- completely achieved--that is, the formation of erogeneous, who are racially or culturally stigma- Let us remember how the question of sovereignty independent, sovereign, unified, or homogeneous tized. is historically bound up with the questions of bor- nation-states at the same time failed in a very ders, as much political as cultural and »spiritual,« large part of the world, or it was thrown into It is obvious that these divisions were reinforced from the classical age to the crisis of imperialism question, not only outside Europe but in certain by the history of colonization and decolonization in the mid-twentieth century, and which we have parts of Europe itself. and that in this time of globalization they inherited after the dissolution of the »blocs.« We become the seed of violent tensions. Already dra- know that one of the origins of the political signif- This probably occurred for very profound reasons matic within each nationality, they are repro- icance of the name of Europe, possibily the most that we need to consider. It is possible that that duced and multiplied at the level of the postna- decisive, was the constitution in the seventeenth form of »absolute« sovereignty of nation-states is tional or supranational community that the and eighteenth centuries of a »balance of pow- not universalizable and that in some sense a European Union aspires to be. During the inter- ers« among nation-states, for the most part »world of nations,« or even »united nations,« is a minable discussion over the situation of immi- organized in monarchies.6 Contrary to what one contradiction in terms. Above all, this connection grants and »undocumented aliens« in France and often reads in history books, this did not occur among the construction of European nations, in Europe, I evoked the specter of an apartheid exactly with the Treaty of Westphalia (1648), their stable or unstable »balance of power,« their being formed at the same time as European citi- signed to put an end to the Thirty Years' War, internal and external conflicts, and the global his- zenship itself. This barely hidden apartheid con- which had ravaged the continent by opposing tory of imperialism resulted not only in the per- cerns the populations of the »South« as well as Protestant and Catholic forces against the back- petuation of border conflicts but also in the the »East.«

Kuda.org Labornet invest in new talent or to enable musicians to sounds to enable them to create truly innovative http://www.kuda.org http://www.labournet.de experiment. They do this by trying to enforce legal music. LOCA believes that the fight over Kuda.org is a non-profit organisation of artists, Labornet serves as a virtual meetingpoint for lefts control using copyright law that give them owner- Free/Libre and Open Content and Media is a theorists, media activists and researchers in the in unions and the workplace. ship of music created by musicians in perpetuity. struggle over the freedom of expression and the field of ict (information and communication tech- But they go much further in their attempts to con- freedom of speech, radically opening up the pos- nologies). It explores critical approaches towards Libresociety.org trol every derivative of the music, including sam- sibilities of media. To this end LOCA is attempting (mis)using of ict and emphasizes creative rethink- http://www.libresociety.org ples, lyrics, melodies, rhythms and imagery. to release music under so-called »Copyleft;« a ing in a raising network society. Kuda.org is a The Libre Society is committed to theorising the Anybody breaking their copyright is dealt with license that enables music writers to develop content providing platform for new cultural prac- copyleft, free/libre and open-source movements. harshly and ruthlessly in the courts. When these music collaboratively and equitably and then tices, media art production and social layout. companies have finally achieved their aims of release it into the public domain. Using these Kuda.org wants to establish media literacy and Loca Records preventing us from being able to create our own licenses LOCA hopes to provide the control nec- digital ecology in the age of information satura- http://www.locarecords.com music we will live in a corporate world where we essary to prevent cynical exploitation of work that tion and stimulate debates on many issues that MISSION The multinational media corporations can be only consumers of music. In contrast, is released in this open way and to encourage arise around electronic media art and emerging believe that music is a product to be squeezed of LOCA believes that creativity requires that musi- others to do the same. We hope forms of creative uses of technology. every last vestige of profit without any need to cians reappropriate and reinterpret music and that musicians who contemplate 19 munities (ethnos) and the continued creation of antiquity and first designating a little region of democratize the borders of Europe, to overcome Does Europe as a future political, economic, and citizenship (d emos) through collective action Asia or Asia Minor--has been connected to cos- its interior divisions, and to reconsider completely cultural entity, possible and impossible, need a and the acquisition of fundamental rights to exis- mopolitan projects, to claims of imperial hegemo- the role of European nations in the world. The fictive identity? Through this kind of construction, tence, work, and expression, as well as civic ny or to the resistance that they provoked, to pro- issue is not principally to know whether the can Europe give meaning and reality to its own equality and the equal dignity of languages, grams dividing up the world and expanding »civi- European Union, too, will become a great military citizenship--that is, to the new system of rights classes, and sexes. Today every possibility of giv- lization« that the colonial powers believed them- power, charged with guaranteeing a »regional that it must confer on the individuals and social ing a concrete meaning to the idea of a selves the guardians of, to the rivalry of »blocs« order« or with »projecting« itself outward in groups that it includes? Probably yes, in the European people and thus of giving content to that disputed legitimate possession of it, to the humanitarian or neocolonial interventions; rather, sense that it must construct a representation of the project of a democratic European state runs creation of a »zone of prosperity« north of the it is whether a project of democratization and its »identity« capable of becoming part of both up against two major obstacles: the emptiness of Mediterranean, of a »great power in the twenty- economic construction common to the East and objective institutions and individuals' imagina- every European social movement and of all first century.« West, the North and South, of the Euro- tions. Not, however (this is my conviction, at social politics and the authoritarian establish- Mediterranean sphere will be elaborated and will least) in the sense that the closure characteristic ment of a border of exclusion for membership in The difficulty for democratic politics is to avoid gain the support of its peoples--a project that of national identity or of the fictive ethnicity Europe. Unless these two obstacles are confront- becoming enclosed in representations that have depends first on them. Europe impossible: whose origin I have just described is as profound- ed together and resolved one by the other, this historically been associated with emancipatory Europe possible. ly incompatible with the social, economic, tech- project will never happen. projects and struggles for citizenship and have nological, and communicational realities of glob- now become obstacles to their revival, to their Lecture delivered October 4, 1999, on the invitation of the alization as it is with the idea of a »European Persistance of names permanent reinvention. Every identification is Institut français de Thessalonique and the Department of Philosophy of Aristotle University of Thessaloníki. French text right to citizenship« understood as a »right to citi- The persistence of names is the condition of subject to the double constraint of the structures first published in Transeuropéennes 17 (1999-2000): 9-17. The zenship in Europe«--that is, an expansion of every »identity.« We fight for certain names and of the capitalist world economy and of ideology translation of this essay, by Erin M. Williams, originally democracy by means of European unification. against others, to appropriate names (Europe, (feelings of belonging to cultural and political appeared under the title World Borders, Political Borders, PMLA 117 (2002): 71-78. The heart of the aporia seems to me to lie pre- Yugoslavia, Kosovo, Macedonia but also France, units). What is currently at stake does not consist cisely in the necessity we face, and the impossi- Great Britain, Germany). All these battles leave in a struggle for or against European identity in bility we struggle against, of collectively inventing traces, in the form of nostalgic longings and bor- itself. After the end of »real communism« and the a new image of a people, a new image of the ders or utopias and transformational programs. taking of sides, the stakes revolve instead around relation between membership in historical com- Thus, the name of Europe--derived from distant the invention of a citizenship that allows us to

alibar's recent interventions have would make of Europe a 'fortress' and that thus sation'. On the one hand, borders are projected stressed the strategic importance of creates the possibility for an 'other' European citi- to the outside and cast their shadow hundreds of B including the history of colonial expan- zenship while also providing it with a material miles further from the geographical lines that Citizenship sionism in any critical reflection on the question example? What are the resonance effects of this delineate an area such as Europe (or the US or of European citizenship. This inclusion, not exclu- social movement on other social practices and ). Tony Blair's latest proposal to institute sive to academic controversy, is a fundamental other questions of citizenship that are equally Transit Processing Centres is a metaphor for real in motion issue of everyday life in Europe due to the cancelled out of the institutional configuration detention centres in key conflict areas such as 'increasingly larger and legitimate presence, that European citizenship is contradictorily taking Asia and Africa, where to assess asylum-seeking despite the suffered discriminations, of popula- on? What are the constituent perspectives applications of potential refugees. It is the most Sandro Mezzadra tions of colonial origins in the old metropolises'. opened up on this terrain for the movements recent instance in a process that for the last fif- present in Europe today, which in the context of a teen years has permitted an increasingly invasive Lessons in Otherness? global movement of insubordination struggle intervention of national and European authorities Etienne Balibar's recent interventions have Reflecting on colonial history then is ridden with against 'neoliberalism' and war? In my view, in the policies of borders control and migration 'new tensions and violence' while potentially writ- these are the issues worth exploring. movements in strategically placed Third World stressed the strategic importance of including ing what Balibar calls a 'lesson of otherness' into countries. On the other hand, borders are contin- the fibre of European citizenship: the European European Borders uously decomposed and recomposed; they proj- the history of colonial expansionism in any crit- recognition 'of otherness as an indispensable ele- Regarding the war, while a discussion on the con- ect their shadow onto the heart of 'cities' and no ment of its own identity, its virtuality, its 'power'' stitution of a new European border police ensues longer simply signal its external perimeter. (Balibar, L'Europe, l'Amérique, la guerre. p. 38) and the 'war against terrorism' opens an internal Detention centres for migrants awaiting expulsion ical reflection on the question of European citi- war trench of which migrants (in Europe as in the are placed all over Europe. They can no longer be Balibar's valuable considerations prompt a num- US) are the first victims, the struggle continues seen as an anomaly but as a founding institution zenship. This inclusion, not exclusive to aca- ber of questions: what is new in this 'lesson of on the European borders. Human rights organisa- for an emerging European citizenship. They are otherness?' In post-colonial studies otherness is tions calculate that in the last ten years almost only the most visible forms of a complex process demic debating, is a fundamental issue of widely recognised as an 'essential element' of four thousand refugees and migrants have lost through which the European apartheid that European identity since the beginning of moderni- their lives, drowned in seas and rivers, exploded Balibar has relentlessly denounced in the last everyday life in Europe due to the 'increasingly ty. As Bhabha or Spivak taught us, a movement on mine fields, suffocated in containers while try- few years is taking shape. The word apartheid of contamination, transits, and metissage contra- ing to cross those borders. It is hard to quantify must be taken literally, because what needs to dictorily coexist within colonial experience and the similar fate of those in the process of be put at the centre of the theoretical and politi- larger and legitimate presence, despite the suf- anticipate the 'postcolonial' present. approaching European borders, crossing the cal debate is 'the process of constitution of a Sahara for instance. What is this if not a war, population made inferior (in rights and thus in fered discriminations, of populations of colo- In themselves, metissage and 'hybridisation' - and a much dirtier one in not being waged in dignity) that is the object of violent forms of rather than exclusively referring to experiences of conventional terms? Is indignation enough when 'security' control and coerced into permanently nial origins in the old metropolises'. emancipation - can also describe particularly bru- one is faced with the reality of this war and with living 'at the border', neither wholly inside nor tal manners of exercising domination and articu- the cruelty of 'human traffickers' and 'new mer- outside'. (É. Balibar, Noi cittadini d'Europa? p. lating exploitation. Instead of the constitutive chants of slaves '? Is it more opportune to under- 139). European policies on migration, despite relation between otherness and European identi- line that unlike traditional slaves the majority of their rhetoric, do not aim to hermetically seal ty, the question then is a recognition of otherness women and men on rafts and broken fishing European borders. Their objective, and their that historically would entail a self-criticism of boats did not choose to be there? effect, is the establishment of a system of dams Europe. There is no trace of this self criticism and and eventually the production of an active recognition in the manner in which political Around this issue we place the question of recog- process of inclusion of migrant labour by means Europe relates to contemporary migration: neither nition: the recognition of contemporary move- of its criminalisation (it. clandestinizzazione). If in national legislations on the issue, nor in the ments of migration as social movements that are we look at the legislation of individual European directives of the Commission, nor on the articles motivated, though faced with conditions of pover- countries on this matter that have been shaped on European citizenship in the project of a consti- ty and social and political devastation, by specif- under the pressure of European dictates, it tutional treaty discussed and not approved at the ic stances of freedom and demands for citizen- becomes apparent that by regulating the condi- Brussels intergovernmental conference of last ship. What happens on the European borders is tion of migrants these laws have directly inter- December. The only signal of a counter-trend is far from being of 'marginal' importance. The very vened in the regulation of the labour market. The the very presence of migrants in Europe. Shall we notion of border - the practices of its government Italian Bossi-Fini law that binds the residency interpret this presence as that of a social move- as much as its 'localisation' - seems to have permit to the possession of a regular work con- ment that keeps challenging the policies that changed fundamentally in the course of 'globali- tract is a fully European law in this respect and using the work released in this manner will hon- the music... So although they are Copyleft and your own copies and to use the samples. rights in copyright law last forever. The calculation our the license and release their work under a Open Music in as much as you can copy them However they are big... very big... at 740Mb... so is purely and simply to make as much money as public license resulting in a radical rejection of and resell they are not as open as we aspire to. presently we have been trying to figure out a way they possibly can by preventing the use of music the whole capitalist ethos of these multinational II. Music/Data CDs - These contain both the of doing this that won't kill our web server... Or in any way that they do not want. Some even media corporations. Loca receives money from music and a hidden computer readable area that the downloading user's computer... any ideas impose severe licenses on works that you pur- selling CDs and Records. Following the example will hold the samples and music tracks we used please let us know... chase (for instance some e-book licenses make of Free/Libre and Open Source GNU/LINUX dis- to make up the songs. Thus you can do all the We believe that musicians are mad to sign away reading the book aloud technically illegal!). tributors, this money is reinvested in new talent above but also remix, reedit and completely their rights over their music for a tiny percentage LOCA believes that without the ability to use and to encourage more experimentation. There change the songs around any way you like... of what is in reality the highly profitable and infi- works in radically new ways we lose our rights to are two types of releases: These are releases that we are working on now nite exploitation of music products. free public debate and expression and control I. Music CDs - These are the CDs you buy in the (In fact MEME is releasing the Open Source EP in Originally copyright was intended to give artists over our lives. If we are unable to criticise, reuse, shops. With LOCA releases you are free to copy 2004) which will be dual format. In future we and writers an income from their works and to sample and deconstruct we will lose a vital part and resell and sample and resample etc. hope to also supply these as ISO copies of promote 'progress' for a period of 20-50 years, of our freedoms. However they do not contain the (which include all samples and source files) but now it has been hijacked by multinational The different artists create the music in a variety 20 source files, which we used to make which can be downloaded using FTP to burn off media corporations who actively lobby to make of different ways. The most democratic and open mirrors the general trend that introduces a real tours, is placed at its centre and deeply influ- and the EU Court of Justice in Luxemburg. The deployment (dispositif) of personal coercion into ences what we might call its material constitu- point is not to refuse to see the potential for the the labour market whilst rendering the presence tion. From this derive fundamental and inevitable constituent process opened in Europe that the of so-called illegal immigrants a structural fact of issues: the closure of detention centres and the consolidation of European citizenship entails for contemporary European society. Between 'illegal regularisation of _sans papiers_, two crucial ele- social movements. The latter's achievement of a immigrants' and citizens, in what the official ments for the united day of action for the rights European dimension is rather a goal that is agency of European Monitoring Centre on Racism of migrants decided at St. Denis on the 31st of urgently posed: we need to find political tools and Xenophobia in Vienna defined in its 2001 January this year. Another crucial issue linked to that allow for a productive interference of the report 'the ethnic-racial division of labour in this is the separation of residence permits from practices of citizenship recently expressed by the Europe' [1] there is a whole series of intermedi- work contracts and of European citizenship from movements in the current institutional processes. aries that correspond to the various existing the citizenship of countries enjoying membership Within the theoretical debate there is a strong typologies of residence permits. in the Union. The tendency toward decomposing tendency to reflect on citizenship beyond its On May 01 2004, ten new European countries citizenship is far from concerning migrants only: juridical codification and institutional profile and will join Europe, but their workers will not: for a the reintroduction of a principle of tutelage (that to account for the practices and demands period of two to seven years the entry into is, historically and conceptually, a principle through which social movements question that Europe and the acquisition of European citizen- opposed to that of citizenship) has persistently institutional profile. ship will not grant them the right to freedom of characterised neoliberal policies. It inspired the movement within the EU territory, as the latter demise of citizenship in matters of penal law and It is on this gap that we need to focus. The issue will be regulated and restrained by national and control and through the attempt to turn welfare is one of constitutional politics: our first aim can- community policies. [2] into workfare; it gradually reduced the provision not be a European constitution with its _demos_ of services to citizens whilst subordinating it, for conceived according to the classical categories of A further differentiation is thus introduced, this those who cannot acquire these services in the European constitutionalism; we need to prevent time also formally, within European citizenship: 'market', to paternalist logic. More generally, the the closure of this constituent process and keep its effects on the labour market can be clearly principle of flexibility has been affirmed as the opening it up when it seems to come to a halt, seen in the competition between African and new key to labour relations and to the very right so that within it, through struggle and political Polish workers for 'deskilled' and seasonal jobs in to work that was one of the main fields for the action, all the elements of material constitution agriculture in the south of Spain. As citizens of a expansion of citizenship in the last century. This that have been accumulating throughout time country bidding to access the EU, the Polish are was done through concrete practices that have can be continuously called into question. already in a relatively privileged position. laid the groundwork for a reintroduction of devices of subordination and personal command [1] Which European Citizenship? in fields that in the past had been at least juridi- [2] The condition of migrants constitutes a privileged cally protected by collective rights and guaran- trend towards selectively decomposing the fig- Europe through a process actively carried out not ures of citizenship that, the moment when only by the member countries, but also by European citizenship starts assuming clear con- European institutions such as the Commission

04 is the common framework for a wide spaces between Europe and non-Europe are sharing to enable and empower people with the B range of local and remote, mobile and being dispersed, extracted and contracted by practical use of new media technologies by pro- stationary activities taking place in sum- numerous movements of very different actors on viding connectivity, introducing open source soft- Border04 mer 2004. It is a modular, temporary, and tacti- an unknown and ever-changing field. ware and offering unfettered access to communi- cal association of various new media-and net- 3. Crossing the borders from the real to a virtual cation tools. A transnational migration-guide will work-initiatives from east and west europe, from europe: Leaving traditional political and geo- support and empower people in their interest to Project pitch outside as well as within the new europe. An graphical notions of Europe behind the informa- find better living- or working conditions, no ques- international and interdisciplinary coalition of fine tion and communication technologies as well as tion if it is temporarily or permanently. There will art and performance artists, human rights-, the flows of migration do shape a virtual europe, be a special focus on the potential of digital noborder- and new media-activists, filmmakers, that is defined by it's openness rather than it's media to facilitate dialogue and communication Some weeks after the EU-enlargement in mid video- and fotografers, researchers, scientists borders. There is an unrepresentable multitude of across national borders, and on the power of and investigators will set a series of events in europes to be discovered and explored. filmmaking, photography and storytelling in the 2004 B04--BORDER 04 will shift the focus to motion that surround, circumvent and perforate Working on these three fields B04 will consist of negotiation of emerging, hyphenated identities. the borders of Europe. B04 is a two month, virtu- four modules that will be developed by independ- the folds and fringes, the margins and new bor- al travel along both sides of the new borders of ent organizing teams, that are networking among Performances: To present the images and narra- an enlarged European Union, starting in the each others: tives of an emerging european culture that is cur- ders of the official europe. baltic states and moving around Poland, rently created around the issues of information Slovakia, Hungary, and Slovenia to Research: In order to investigate the subjectivi- society and transnational mobility, B04 will pres- Croatia, touching also Belarus, Ukraine, Romania ties and the constitutive power of people net- ent exhibitions, screenings and performances in and Serbia. working across borders, research units will work public spaces and in close collaboration with B04 will connect and shortcircuit debates around on frequently asked questions: How does a re- local and international artists and art institutions. migration with debates about the expansion of designed european border regime change the the borders of the EU, around mobility, mobile daily life of the people in the areas of the new Documentation: In order to document the experi- technologies and freedom of movement, about border regions? Which stories, experiences and ences, acquaintances, results and achievements the future dimensions of networking and the what desires do people have, that live on this of the project publically, in real-time or near on impact this will have for those already within and that side of the new border of the official, real-time internet connectivity is one of the key Europe and those previously outside it. but in the midst of a virtual Europe? What does issues. B04 will be accompanied by a specially 1. Tracing the routes of migration: The many living conditions of people that are on the move equipped van that provides a high-bandwith inter- faces of migration are producing dramatic look like? On the move into illegality or into pre- net connection via satellite. Using all available changes, that are not only affecting local and carious labour or into detention centers? How do media from print to radio to video in different remote economies. People in transit, commuters workers of the worldmarket factories struggle and output-formats the real-time documentation of a between east and west, seasonal and domestic organise -- in- and outside of the new external project at such an extend aims to facilitate dia- workers form new concepts of Europe, that are european border? logue and interactive communication between based on mobility, no matter if unsolicited or Europe's diverse peoples, new and old. unvoluntarily. Workshops: B04 will involve remote activists and Mapping the spaces in between: Theoretically it's local community organisers in workshops and The ultimate goal is to build a new vision of only a small drift from what lies beyond the limi- training programs in both an adhoc and a sus- Europe that moves on against exclusion, resent- tations of national imagination to the imagina- tainable fashion adressing the needs of local ment, localism, narrow-mindednesss, racism and tions of those outside of it. But in practice, the activists and civil society. It will focus on skill- xenophobia.

is the project known as ML. This is an experimen- MaMa cal locations, our collaboration aims to explore the local contexts where the media was gathered. tal collective that tries to apply open-source http://www.mi2.hr cross-cultural (Sami-Finnish-Russian at Inari-Ivalo methods to music writing itself. For instance ML MaMa is an independent media institute from -Lapland & Russian-Latvian at Karosta -Latvia) Marcel is currently working on a Sourceforge system that Zagreb. and mono-culture (deeply local) experiencies. In- http://www.mmmarcel.org will allow the music to be selectively worked on, other-words, through the stories, personal narra- a portal site for art-science-industry forked and remixed by a number of different col- Mapping Mythologies tives, mythologies and songs that people use to laborators. This will mean that a track is never http://locative.x-i.net/mm describe or show a sense of shared, common Metapet actually *finished* but will continue to be This project is a collaboration between Signe and collective memory to others, in relation to http://www.metapet.net changed and developed and only interim versions Pucena (LV) and Andrew Paterson (UK/FI), that the environment in which they are situated. The Metapet is an online game commissioned by of the music will be released — although you can began in Karosta -Latvia, July 2003. 'Drawing' project touches upon ethnographic fieldwork craft Creative Time, New York in association with always download the nightly builds of the music. from the local ethno-acoustic landscape, the proj- and situated narratives, exploring the potentials HAMACA, Barcelona: Biotech innovation meets ect aims to map and link locative media - record- of emerging mobile and collaborative media prac- corporate creativity and gives birth to a new class Location1 ed with mobile media-capture devices: image, tices. As part of the process it aims to elaborate of virtual pet: the Metapet. Your challenge: dis- http://www.locationone.org sound, gps-trace, movie - from a person-centred tangible representations and appropriate means cover the right balance between a position of narrative and experience. In two physi- of feedback interfaces to present the project in firm hand and a gentle coax with- 21 e saw that many of these jobs in the liberal fragmentation which separates and debili- of our companion within the new factory struc- margins: the invisible, unregulated, tates us, turning us into victims of fear, of ture, recomposed according to the demands of Precarious W unmoored jobs were in no way interrupt- exploitation or of the individualism of 'each one the global market. ed or altered by a strike of this type, and that the for herself.' But, above all, we want to make pos- becoming precarious of the labour market had sible the collective construction of other lives The drift permits us to take the quotidian as a women extended to such an extent that the majority of through a shared creative struggle. Our insis- dimension of the political and as a source of working people were not even effected by the tence upon singularity we owe to our desire to resistances, privileging experience as an episte- new reforms against which the strike was direct- not produce, once again, false homogeneities, mological category. Experience, in this sense, is workers adrift ed. Therefore we tried to think of new forms of without permitting that this insistence prevents not a pre-analytic category but a central notion in living this day of struggle by approaching and us from saying anything at all. We thought, in understanding the warp of daily events, and, confronting these new realities. We decided to relation to this, of the specific situation of some what is more, the ways in which we give meaning transform the classic shut-down picket into a sur- companions who are migrants working in domes- to our localized and incarnated quotidian. It is Precarias vey-picket. Frankly, we didn't feel up to upbraid- tic service and in the consequences of a link not exactly an observation technique; it does not ing a precarious worker contracted by the hour in which demands other forms of commitment than aspire to 'reproduce ' or approach daily experi- a supermarket or to closing down the little con- those to which some of us are accustomed. ence as it habitually occurs (an ideal of classical Precarias a la deriva is a collective project of venience store run by an immigrant because, in anthropology which has proved difficult to real- the end, despite the many reasons to shut down Basically it was a question of producing a cartog- ize) but rather to produce simultaneous move- investigation and action that converged in June and protest, who had called this strike? Who raphy of the precarious work of women based on ments of approaching and distancing, visualizing were they thinking of? Was there even a minimal the exchange of experiences, shared reflections and de-familiarizing, transit and narration. We 2002, the day of the general strike called by interest on the part of the unions for the situation and the recording of all that was seen and told in are interested in the point of view of those that of precarious workers, immigrants, housewives? an effort to materialize to the greatest extent pos- guide us -how they define and experience precari- Did the shut-down stop the productive process of sible -through photographs, slides, video, audio ousness, how they organize themselves on a the major unions in Spain. In the days before domestic workers, translators, designers, pro- recordings and written stories- these encounters daily basis and what are their vital strategies in grammers, all those autonomous workers for in order to communicate the results and the the short and the long term, what they hope for- the strike we came together to brainstorm an whom stopping this day would do nothing but hypothesis which might be derived from them; a without dismissing, in this process, the dialog duplicate their work the next day? It seemed question of taking communication seriously not and complicity which is produced in our intervention which would reflect our times, more interesting to us, considering the gap only as a tool for diffusion but also as a new encounter. In all these wanderings we attempt to between the experience of work and the practice place, a new competence and primary material extract common names from this dispersion of aware that the labour strike, as the culminat- of struggle, to open a space of exchange for the political. Our point of departure: the singularities -each one unknown, even alien, to between some of the women who were working occupied women's house La Eskalera Karakola, the others- which comprise the new reality of pre- or consuming during that day and with those who point of arrival: unknown. It is the transit that carized work. We dream of substituting, albeit ing expression of a process of struggle, was were moving in the streets. This small, discreet interests us now. just a little, the weakness of dispersion for the sketch of an investigation was the starting point strength of alliances, the potential of networks. unsatisfactory for us. There were three reasons for what became the project of the 'drifts'. The Drifts But the difficulty of both objectives comes out In the Situationist version of the drift, the investi- during the drifts. The realities of precarious work for our discontent: (1) for not taking up -and From the Laboratorio gators wander without any particular destination are very, very different: the resources we can That first picket-survey of June 20th, which was through the city, permitting that conversations, count on, the emotional and material support, this is no novelty- the experience and the limited though very inspiring, gave way to a new interactions and urban micro-events guide them. the wages, the rights, the social value of what we project of interpellation based on displacement, This permits them to establish a psycho-cartogra- do, the diversity of availabilities and sensibilities. unjust division of domestic work and care, that is to say, the possibility of preparing and car- phy based on the coincidences and correspon- rying out a series of itineraries which would cross dences of physical and subjective flows: exposing We might venture a definition of the word precari- through the diverse metropolitan circuits of themselves to the gravitation and repulsion of ousness, broad enough to acknowledge the almost entirely done by women in the 'non-pro- female precariousness. Thus, against the habitu- certain spaces, to the conversations that come amplitude and multidimensionality of the phe- al division of life and work, a division long ques- up along the way, and, in general, to the way in nomenon, but concrete enough to avoid that the ductive' sphere, (2) for the marginalization to tioned by feminism, we opted for a research which the urban and social environments influ- term lose all explicative force: thus we will call practice that would attend to the spatial/tempo- ence exchanges and attitudes. This means wan- precariousness the juncture of conditions, both which both the forms of action and the propos- ral continuum of existence and the experience of dering attentive to the billboard that assaults material and symbolic, which determine an the double (or better, multiple) presence as a you, the bench which attracts, the building which uncertainty with respect to the continued access als of the strike condemn those in types of subjective transposition or, as the Situationists suffocates, the people who come and go. In our to the resources necessary for the full develop- would say, as a technique of uninterrupted pas- particular version, we opt to exchange the arbi- ment of a person's life. This definition permits us sage through diverse physical and psychic envi- trary wandering of the flaneur, so particular to to overcome the divisions between public/private work -ever more common- which are generally ronments. the bourgeois male subject with nothing pressing and production/reproduction, and recognize and to do, for a situated drift which would move visualize the interconnections between the social lumped together as 'precarious' and (3) for not We decided that this drifting should be done in through the daily spaces of each one of us, while and the economic which make it impossible to the first person, that is, with each one telling the maintaining the tactic's multi-sensorial and open think about precariousness from a strictly work- taking into consideration precarious, flexible, others about herself, and walking together character. Thus the drift is converted into a mov- and-wage perspective. towards a prudent but sustained approximation ing interview, crossed through by the collective invisible or undervalued work, specifically that of the differences between us. We talk, there- perception of the environment. Mobility fore, of seeking common places and, simultane- So how do we do a drift? We depart from a few Mobility is the quality which best describes the of women and/or migrants (sexual, domestic, ously, of singularities to strengthen. This approxi- paradigmatic feminized sectors of precarious present malleability of the work force around the mation has grown through the subsequent work. To begin, we chose five: domestic, tele- three axes: time, space and task. Mobility in the debates which have made us modify the initial marketing, manipulators of codes (translators, disposition of rhythms and schedules, mobility assistance, etc.). utterance »we are precarious workers« for others language teachers), food service (bar, restau- between jobs and, beyond that, in geography, in less prone to affirming identity as an original ele- rant), health care and identified other equally vital decisions, in lifestyle, and mobility in 'unit ment and more attentive to the processes of important ones for a future phase of the project: acts' and in the ways of developing them, always (de)identification. prostitution, scholarships/research, advertising, subject to mutations, to processes of evaluation communications, social work and education. The and adjustment, a constant auditing. Mobility Our situations are so diverse, so partial, that it is women working in these sectors whom we asked opposed to the old static forms, to bureaucratiza- very difficult to find common denominators from to guide us chose a series of relevant places: tion and routine and, without a doubt, to the which to elaborate alliances and irreducible dif- their houses, workplaces, supermarkets, the park, organizational capacity of persons who in any ferences with which to mutually enrich ourselves. the cyber café, the yoga class. and we threaded moment may find their functions modified and It is complicated for us to express ourselves, to these spaces together as points on an itinerary recombined, persons who don't know the limits define ourselves from the common place of pre- loaded with significance, the networks of chance of what they have to do, and in general, of what cariousness; a precariousness capable of bypass- and simultaneity which compose our daily lives. they themselves are. ing a clear collective identity through which to Thus, following an English teacher we were able simplify and defend itself, but one which to connect -through the fortuitous tour one of her In the past people struggled against the reifica- demands discussion. We need to communicate students gave us in NCR (a multinational which tion of daily life, primarily incarnated in work but the lacks and the excesses of our working and installs and maintains automatic bank tellers) also in the family and mass consumption, and living situations in order to escape from the neo- where she teaches- the reality of the flexible work this determined a change in business policies,

out ever losing sight of the bottom line. But tion of documentary films involved in political MyBrandenburg Brandenburg already a steppe country? Together here's a word of advice: treat your Metapet with issues, more particularly about Middle-East and http://www.mybrandenburg.net with others we want to create a travel guide, that care. Heedless actions may come back to haunt Israeli-Palestinian conflict. During the last summer in a lot of places in represents Brandenburg the way we see it. We you when you least expect it! Brandenburg people became angry because of are politically active people who live or used to Mute magazine the the bad image of Brandenburg discussions live in Brandenburg. We stand for equal rights Miklataklitim http://www.openmute.org were focusing on: First of all, scientist warned, and emancipation, against racism and Fascism http://miklataklitim.com OpenMute is an open source web resource proj- that parts of the county seems to be in a state of and we are part of the brandenburg-network, that Kunst- und Musikprojekt und Plattenlabel aus ect aiming to support cultural practice in the desolation and devastation of big parts of the came up with the campaigns »Aktion Noteingang« Jerusalem information age. Through the provision of server land (because of the brain drain or the reduction and »Research and Action«. We do not want to space, tools, practical guidance and critical con- of rain). Shortly after again other scientists point- create a travel guide in a small group of voluntary Momento textualisation, we seek to develop open and col- ed out the danger in a desolation of editors. This page is open for everyone, who has http://www.momento-production.com laborative ways of working, and contribute to the Brandenburg. We also realised the phenomenon something to tell about this county. It is not our Created in 1994 by Eyal Sivan, Armelle Laborie kind of public knowledge architectures that will of desolation of different places, but mainly we intention just to show only one – namely our – and Rony Brauman, MOMENTO! is serve practitioners' needs over the long term. are aware of a cultural desolation. We took this view on this county, but as well a communication 22 specialised in production and distribu- discussion as a motivation to ask ourselves: Is about the daily life and our surrounding. We are particularly in the management of human the states of being uprooted, the lack of a stable work which mixes paperwork with customer serv- the one hand, the salary appears ever more the resources. Today security and continuity have identity, an unbalanced practice of flight, nostal- ice. The desire to be appealing (to oneself and variable vulnerable to adjustment by economic become, in name at least, increasingly precious, gia and submission. We have caught a train in to others), a desire powerfully domesticated in policy, that is, it is the task of the salary to although the price that must be paid for them is Atocha and once seated, we listen attentively to women, is here recuperated for the diffuse con- absorb macroeconomic shocks, the rise or fall of often too high and one ends up accepting mobili- these reflections, previously written by one of us, trol of labour and for the production of a subjec- the moment; on the other, it is ever more individ- ty and unrestricted availability in an attempt to as we move rapidly towards the industrial sub- tivity based on unconditional surrender. The femi- ualized: the standard wage (that which is calcu- compose a destiny which at least is not totally urbs. nist re-vindication of corporeal self-determination lated in the contract and which is based on the prescribed. The only stable element is being in (»Our bodies, ourselves«), inspired in a vision of qualification of the worker: an irreversible ele- perpetual transit, the »habit of the unaccus- A rootless person is pitied or repudiated, blamed the colonized body and of colonization as a ment) is only a small part of real wage income, tomed« which characterizes work paid by the for lack of identity, roots and traditions. But to superimposition of layers over an original and vir- whereas an increasing part is based upon the hour, by the job, or until something better is construct an identity from local cultural elements gin nature demands an updated reflection. degree of implication, zeal and interest demon- found. Which, as our guides through the mysteri- is absurd in the changing world in which we live, strated during the process of work, that is, after ous world of telemarketing commented, never of dislocations, temporary habitats, migrations The increasing abstraction of commercial and cul- the contractual moment. Thus the salary really happens, such that one returns again and and mixture. tural products, converted into images or becomes less and less a result of a contractual again to bounce off different campaigns which lifestyles, submitted to the devices of the optical relation (and a relation of force) and more a the virtual enterprises in the sector contract with Border Territories unconscious and the optical test of which purely individual remuneration for services ren- the big communication multinationals under ever The second axis is the border, both in its most Benjamin speaks, has given priority to a body in dered. more competitive conditions. immediate sense -the closing of geographical which products and attributes become insepara- borders and the precarization which this entails- ble. Fashion advertisements, such as those pro- Conflict In our drift through the social nursing sector, as well as a more general sense of the construc- duced by Mango, show a body in which the gar- For us this investigation is, above all, a way of Carmen explained to us in detail how the lack of tion of borders which determine inside access ments are imperceptible or no more perceptible thinking together towards collective action, an acceptable work opportunities in Spain and the and hierarchies within much more diffuse fields, than other physical characteristics: extreme thin- effort to locate the scattered sites of conflict and demand for this kind of work in other countries is such as the house in which one works and the ness, reclining and invalid posture (sometimes know how to name them, to inaugurate other pre- motivating a flow of young nurses who, besides personal relationships which one establishes with barely managing to stay afoot), shadowed eyes viously nonexistent ones along with those we working in their own field, aspire to learn lan- the employers and their families. Perhaps the (suggesting evanescence, illness and abuse), already experience: in the process of job-seeking, guages and live in other places. The passage most vivid image of all this was offered to us by fleshy lips (hyper-sexualization in a hypertrophic in the job-interview (that grand machine of daily through past and present work places -a health Viki, an Ecuadorian friend who works in domestic body), the empty background which helps to humiliation!), in networks, in shopping centres, centre in which she worked as a substitute, an service, when she told us about the barriers emphasize the body's elements. on the telephone, in the park, in social centres. attention centre for drug addicts marked by orga- which are erected in the work of in-house domes- nizational chaos and lack of resources, return to tics, especially in the case of foreigners. As In this way, the opportunity to make oneself a The primary objective of the Laboratorio de the health centre, a training course for social A.Macklin has indicated, this work is marked by a body cohabits with the corporeal proposals in Trabajadoras was to create a space of permanent workers of the IMEFE for which one must sign up series of ambiguities which situate those who do which (self)discipline, be it athletic or alimentary, communication which would not be restricted by from one day to the next - gives the sense of the it both inside and outside: inside the nation and becomes a common denominator. Ultimately it work-place nor limited to the strictly work-related - sustained unpredictability within a life which outside the State, inside the economy and out- is about beating the body, knowing how to over- as if this could be separated from other aspects besides employment -interest, security and salary side labour relations, inside the home and out- come it in the face of stress, exhaustion, age, ill- of life- and that would not be restricted to the sin- - values other types of questions: the relation side the family. The space of home and family, ness, depression or laziness. In this battle the gularity of this or that company, this or that spe- with others as something which is never pre- which in principle is a smooth surface, bit by bit first to lose are the domestic workers. cific conflict, some particular demand, but that determined and as something which is esteemed reveals its strata: its forbidden places, its behav- could be reinvented as a practice, contaminating in its singularity, or this idea of »the social« as a iours, its habits (in terms of food, cleaning, Nothing in domestic work, including care work and provoking chain reactions. A laboratory public good which extends beyond work as leisure, order, shopping, vacations, etc.) which and nursing, contributes to self-care, nothing but which would permit us to be on top of events and socialization, learning, exchange, consciousness are converted into rules, instituted in practice. the capacity of the worker to endure and pre- improvise coordinated movements of support and raising, and vital context but which, as Carmen The uniform, Viki explained, is the first border, serve her most necessary tool which is her own of rebellion. insisted when comparing her vision with that of that which establishes upon the body and in the body and her integrity faced with the enormous her mother, also a social worker, one must learn eyes of others which is the place occupied by sadness of all that which she doesn't. (»Migration Perhaps the conflict of the telephone operators to limit, to use to one's advantage. Carmen for- each. - a woman in the park told us - is being far from struck us closest to home, especially for the mulates the dilemma in this realm of action in one's land«). Free time is, definitively, time to absolute non-existence of representative struc- her comparison of two interpretive frameworks: Really it's very unpleasant, besides being an work more. Viki's insistence on her need to feel tures, the extreme mobility (the constant shuffling one as »working for the people« an attitude imposition. They don't ask you if you want to herself treated »like a person«, like a »human of workers) and the isolation to which they are Carmen attributes to her mother, and the other wear it or not, or how you feel, or if it looks good being« has to do with this fabrication of submis- subjected, as well as some their hybrid practices »working for the system« a tactic she claims for on you or not. Nothing. They impose it upon you sion, the reduction of her being to a mere body of struggle in which they play with anonymity, net- herself. The distinction is important, demonstrat- at some point just to make the differentiation, or for the reproduction of others, pure work force worked action, clandestine organizational ing as it does how life is absorbed by work and to feel better, to feel that they are above this per- unconnected to any specific quality. processes, the use of symbolic tools to break work by life. 'Working for the people' one loses son who has her own feelings, her own ideas, through isolation and fear. Their experience of ones own limits with respect to work and melds who perhaps has come to do a lot of different Income communication »with whoever is beside you« in one's energies and one's emotions in an exercise things, to maintain her family. they don't think Income is habitually taken as the key criteria in order, bit by bit, to construct a common sensibili- of continuous and committed sociability which about any of this, they just think in this moment defining precarious work, income and the condi- ty, their necessity to recognize themselves, attempts to overlook the mediation, in this case that people that visit them or the family itself will tion of permanent temporariness to which we because the common names are not obvious, or of the State, which exists in a health centre, see that this person is inferior, is inferior to them, have already alluded and which we have tried to their ability to short-circuit the company's logic where the privatizing tendency has skyrocketed in nothing else. make more complex on the basis of things which producing other logics give us a few interesting recent times and where the incentive system have arisen during the drifts. The importance of hints for future interventions. rewards a perverse model of medicalization and Food -the access to certain foods or the times the salary with respect to the other values such neglect. 'Working for the system', on the other and places for eating- constitute another strongly as prestige, resources, connectivity, opportunities By exploring the intimate and paradoxical nature hand, regulates this exercise of fusion by entering gendered border territory. The rules of hospitality for strategic projection or personal interests vary of feminized work we discovered a few points of into a relation which emphasizes institutional which reign in the household apparently guaran- depending on the possibilities each person has, attack: turn mobility to our advantage, appropri- mediation (though generally not from a critical tee equal access to the foods in the refrigerator. as an individual but more importantly as a func- ate the communicative channels in order to talk perspective), supervising the link and embittering Nevertheless, the existing hierarchies determine tion of one's more-or-less fixed social position. about other things (and not just anything), modi- it by quitting from it the open, experimental and ever narrower and more arbitrary limits (»Who For some, like the domestic workers, the job is fy semiotic production in strategic moments, unlimited character of relation with others. We drank the baby's juice?«). The assistant or the just this: money, that which is immediately nec- make care and the invisible networks of mutual are also talking about the difference between a babysitter, like the housewife, experiences a essary to change things, to transform »this hell of support into a lever for subverting dependence, strictly medical focus, adjusted to the »viability« severe dietary regime which »obliges« her to eat instability in which we lived.« practice »the job well done« as something illicit of health minimums, and a more social focus at fits and starts, on foot in a free moment, as if and contrary to productivity, insist upon the prac- which is necessarily interwoven with the habits she were on a diet or picking at leftovers. Income is inseparable from residency papers and tice of inhabiting, of being, a growing right. and histories of each and every one of the per- the condition of being a migrant woman. Both sons whom we see during our trip to the corporealities form the closed circuit of domestic work in which Alcobendas health centre. This places us in the terrain of productive bodies. many women find themselves trapped, unable to The fusion in the body of life and work is a com- develop their professions or interests. In this cir- Mobility as an existential, subjective condition monplace for many women whose work puts cuit the servile dimension also becomes mani- constantly puts us up against an ambivalence them in contact with the public: in commerce, fest, a dimension which is most clearly and mate- which makes its most important effects known in hospitality and the new kind of administrative rially expressed in the very form of the salary: on

interested in attractions, we think are worse see- Nettime New Global Vision glance on reality, a free speech & indypendent ing and the stories we relate with them. At the http://www.nettime.org http://www.ngvision.org information product. Our common feeling is that same time we try to give a reflection on the is not just a mailing list but an effort New Global Vision is an internet video archive we are under the pressure of a pervasive and developments in the towns we live in, since the to formulate an international, networked dis- project. The goal is to build up a network of dedi- powerful information system, that points exclu- so called downfall of the Berlin wall. For this trav- course that neither promotes a dominant eupho- cated ftp servers and a peer-to-peer file sharing sively to consensus manipulation and political el guide we want to follow this tracks and look for ria (to sell products) nor continues the cynical system able to overcome the bandwidth prob- support. We think information is something differ- the facts of desolation, but as well we want to pessimism, spread by journalists and intellectuals lems related to the size of video files. It is based ent: to fight mainstream dis-information we need find a possible creative potential in these region in the 'old' media who generalize about 'new' on a crew that work together in network and from to implement the effectiveness of the tools we're and offer a forum to that. Invited for participation media with no clear understanding of their com- the network start to structure the project, to able to immediately develop or quicky build up. is everyone, who has delight to tell others the munication aspects. we have produced, and will share knowledges, experiences and resources, to NGV is based on free software and technologies point of view in regarding to their towns or com- continue to produce books, readers, and web develop communication. Videos are download- that allow you to download or upload videos. The munity or regions. All those, who have exciting sites in various languages so an 'immanent' net able on tape or cd in vhs quality (compressed existence on web of all the titles of the archive is stories to tell – it does not matter, if they are critique will circulate both on- and offline. with mpeg1 or divx codec) and represent an guaranteed by dedicated ftp servers. based on a historical or actual political back- expression of issues raised by the global move- round or personal experiences background. ment against corporate capitalism, a critical 23 Preface a symptomatic process whose significance points one can make any number of copies; to ask for beyond the realm of art. One might generalize by the »authentic« copy makes no sense. But the When Marx undertook his critique of the capital- The Work of saying: the technique of reproduction detaches instant the criterion of authenticity ceases to be istic mode of production, this mode was in its the reproduced object from the domain of tradi- applicable to artistic production, the total func- infancy. Marx directed his efforts in such a way tion. By making many reproductions it substitutes tion of art is reversed. Instead of being based on as to give them prognostic value. He went back a plurality of copies for a unique existence. And ritual, it begins to be based on another practice Art in the Age to the basic conditions underlying capitalistic in permitting the reproduction to meet the reader — politics. production and through his presentation showed or listener in his own particular situation, it reacti- what could be expected of capitalism in the vates the object reproduced. These two process- V of Digital future. The result was that one could expect it not es lead to a tremendous shattering of tradition Works of art are received and valued on different only to exploit the proletariat with increasing which is the obverse of the contemporary crisis planes. Two polar types stand out; with one, the intensity, but ultimately to create conditions and renewal of mankind. Both processes are inti- accent is on the cult value; with the other, on the which would make it possible to abolish capital- Reproduction mately connected with the contemporary mass distribution of the work. With the different meth- ism itself. The transformation of the superstruc- movements. Their most powerful agent is the ods of technical reproduction of a work of art, its ture, which takes place far more slowly than that Internet. Its social significance, particularly in its fitness for distribution increased to such an of the substructure, has taken more than one most positive form, is inconceivable without its extent that the quantitative shift between its two and a half centuries to manifest in all areas of Robert Luxemberg destructive, cathartic aspect, that is, the liquida- poles turned into a qualitative transformation of culture the change in the conditions of produc- tion of the traditional value of »intellectual prop- its nature. This is comparable to the situation of tion. Only today can it be indicated what form erty«. This phenomenon is most palpable in the the work of art in prehistoric times when, by the »Our fine arts were developed, their types and this has taken. Certain prognostic requirements great file sharing networks. It extends to ever new absolute emphasis on its cult value, it was, first should be met by these statements. However, positions. In 1999 Shawn Fanning exclaimed and foremost, an instrument of magic. Only later uses were established, in times very different theses about the art of the new proletariat after enthusiastically: »Shakespeare, Rembrandt, did it come to be recognized as a work of art. In its assumption of power or about the art of a Beethoven will be on Napster... all legends, all the same way today, by the absolute emphasis classless society would have less bearing on from the present, by men whose power of mythologies and all myths, all founders of reli- on its distribution the work of art becomes a cre- these demands than theses about the develop- gion, and the very religions... await their exposed ation with entirely new functions, among which mental tendencies of art under present condi- action upon things was insignificant in compar- resurrection, and the heroes crowd each other at the one we are conscious of, the artistic function, tions of production. Their dialectic is no less the gate.« Presumably without intending it, he later may be recognized as incidental. This much noticeable in the superstructure than in the econ- issued an invitation to a far-reaching liquidation. is certain: today file sharing and the Internet are ison with ours. But the amazing growth of our omy. It would therefore be wrong to underesti- the most serviceable exemplifications of this new mate the value of such theses as a weapon. They III function. techniques, the adaptability and precision they brush aside a number of outmoded concepts, During long periods of history, the mode of such as creativity and genius, shareholder value human sense perception changes with humani- VI have attained, the ideas and habits they are and copyright — concepts whose uncontrolled ty's entire mode of existence. The manner in The twentieth-century dispute as to the economic (and at present almost uncontrollable) applica- which human sense perception is organized, the value of Television versus the Internet today tion would lead to a processing of data in the creating, make it a certainty that profound medium in which it is accomplished, is deter- seems devious and confused. This does not Fascist sense. The concepts which are introduced mined not only by nature but by historical circum- diminish its importance, however; if anything, it into the theory of art in what follows differ from changes are impending in the ancient craft of stances as well. And if changes in the medium of underlines it. The dispute was in fact the symp- the more familiar terms in that they are com- contemporary perception can be comprehended tom of a historical transformation the universal pletely useless for the purposes of Fascism. They as decay of the aura, it is possible to show its impact of which was not realized by either of the the Beautiful. In all the arts there is a physical are, on the other hand, useful for the formulation social causes. Namely, the desire of contempo- rivals. When the age of digital reproduction sepa- of revolutionary demands in the politics of art. rary masses to bring things »closer« spatially and rated business from its basis in copyright, the component which can no longer be considered I humanly, which is just as ardent as their bent semblance of its authority disappeared forever. toward overcoming the uniqueness of every reali- The resulting change in the function of the In principle a work of art has always been repro- or treated as it used to be, which cannot ty by accepting its reproduction. Every day the Internet transcended the perspective of the cen- ducible. Man-made artifacts could always be imi- urge grows stronger to get hold of an object at tury; for a long time it will even escape that of tated by men. Replicas were made by pupils in remain unaffected by our modern knowledge very close range by way of its likeness, its repro- the twenty-first century, which experienced the practice of their craft, by masters for diffusing duction. To pry an object from its shell, to destroy development of file sharing. Earlier much futile their works, and, finally, by third parties in the its aura, is the mark of a perception whose thought had been devoted to the question of and power. For the last twenty years neither pursuit of gain. Digital reproduction of a work of »sense of the universal equality of things« has whether the Internet is an economy. The primary art, however, represents something new. increased to such a degree that it extracts it even question — whether the very invention of the matter nor space nor time has been what it Historically, it advanced intermittently and in from a unique object by means of reproduction. Internet had not transformed the entire economy leaps at long intervals, but with accelerated Thus is manifested in the field of perception what — was not raised. Soon the Internet theoreticians was from time immemorial. We must expect intensity. These convergent endeavors made pre- in the theoretical sphere is noticeable in the asked the same ill-considered question with dictable a situation which Steve Jobs pointed up increasing importance of statistics. The adjust- regard to file sharing. But the difficulties which in this sentence: »Just as water, gas, and electric- great innovations to transform the entire tech- ment of reality to the masses and of the masses the Internet caused traditional economies were ity are brought into our houses from far off to sat- to reality is a process of unlimited scope, as mere child's play as compared to those raised by isfy our needs in response to a minimal effort, so nique of the arts, thereby affecting artistic much for thinking as for perception. file sharing. we shall be supplied with cultural commodities, which will appear and disappear at a simple IV VII invention itself and perhaps even bringing movement of the hand, hardly more than a sign.« The uniqueness of a work of art is inseparable For centuries a small number of writers were con- Around 2000, technical reproduction has from its being imbedded in the fabric of tradition. fronted by many thousands of readers. This about an amazing change in our very notion of reached a standard that not only permits it to This tradition itself is thoroughly alive and changed toward the end of the nineteenth centu- reproduce all transmitted works of art and thus extremely changeable. It is significant that the ry. With the increasing extension of the press, to cause the most profound change in their art.« (Steve Jobs, Keynote, MacWorld San existence of the work of art with reference to its which kept placing new political, religious, scien- impact upon the public; it also has captured a aura is never entirely separated from its ritual tific, professional, and local organs before the place of its own among the artistic processes. Francisco 2004) function. In other words, the unique value of the readers, an increasing number of readers For the study of this standard nothing is more »authentic« work of art has its basis in ritual, the became writers - at first, occasional ones. It revealing than the nature of the repercussions location of its original use value. This ritualistic began with the daily press opening to its readers that these two different manifestations — the basis, however remote, is still recognizable as space for »letters to the editor.« In the twentieth reproduction of works of art and the art of repro- secularized ritual even in the most profane forms century, there was hardly a gainfully employed duction — have had on art in its traditional form. of the cult of »intellectual property«. An analysis European who could not, in principle, find an II of art in the age of digital reproduction must do opportunity to publish somewhere or other com- justice to these relationships, for they lead us to ments on his work, grievances, documentary Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of an all-important insight: For the first time in world reports, or that sort of thing. Thus, the distinction art is lacking in one element: its presence in time history, digital reproduction emancipates the between author and public was about to lose its and space, its unique existence at the place work of art from its parasitical dependence on rit- basic character. The difference became merely where it happens to be. One might subsume the ual. To an ever greater degree the work of art functional; it began to vary from case to case. At eliminated element in the term »aura« and go on reproduced becomes the work of art designed for any moment the reader was ready to turn into a to say: that which withers in the age of digital reproducibility. From a digital text, for example, writer. As expert, which he had to become willy- reproduction is the aura of the work of art. This is

Noborder network Open Society Institute critical contextualisation, we seek to develop gressive, potentially critical, popular and global http://www.noborder.org http://www.soros.org open and collaborative ways of working, and languages to speak about the experiences, the The no border network is a tool for all groups and The Open Society Institute (OSI) is a private oper- contribute to the kind of public knowledge dreams and the desires of our era. It also works grass root organizations who work on the ques- ating and grantmaking foundation based in New architectures that will serve practitioners' well as an antidote against certain forms of left tions of migrants and asylum seekers in order to York City that serves as the hub of the Soros needs over the long term. thinking, theorizing and politics that combine elit- struggle alongside with them for freedom of foundations network, a group of autonomous ism, self-isolation and boredom in a well-proofed movement, for the freedom for all to stay in the foundations and organizations in more than 50 Out of this world ! way. Films like Matrix, books from Kim Stanley place which they have chosen, against repression countries. For 4 years now, we mix 1 part science fiction Robinson and Octavia Butler, Star Trek of course, and and the many controls which multiply the (blockbusters, series, experimental films and old- but also a lot of feminist science fiction, utopian borders everywhere in all countries. This network Openmute timers as well as books and literary utopias), 1 projects, non-western fantastic literature, alterna- is different from lobbying groups and NGOs http://www.openmute.org part critical theories about society, several parts tive economies and society were discussed at the because it is based on groups of grass root OpenMute is an open source web resource of fun, and shake it in a conference that some- last ootw-conferences. Since 2000, there have activists and intends to stay so. project aiming to support cultural practice in times looks fuzzy, but always goes straight to the been three conferences called >Out of this world! the information age. Through the provision of head. Science fiction, at least in some of its Science Fiction, Politics, Utopia<, all held in 24 server space, tools, practical guidance and developement streams, is one of the most pro- Bremen at Paradox and Cinema. The first confer- nilly in an extremely specialized work process, two aspects of the same process. Fascism Copy Adorno, go to Jail? Benjamin who claims to advance science and even if only in some minor respect, the reader attempts to organize the newly created proletari- gained access to authorship. Literary license was an masses without affecting the property struc- now founded on polytechnic rather than special- ture which the masses strive to eliminate. The Hamburg Foundation for the Advancement culture by sending people to jail for taking ized training and thus became common property. Fascism sees its salvation in giving these masses All this can easily be applied to the Internet, not their right, but instead a chance to express of Science and Culture, presided by Jan Philipp Adorno and Benjamin serious is seriously where transitions that in literature took centuries themselves. The masses have a right to change have come about in a decade. In digital practice, property relations; Fascism seeks to give them an Reemtsma, has just advanced science and cul- wrong on a whole number of points. In the end, particularly in Asia, this change-over has partially expression while preserving property. All efforts to become established reality. In North America and render »rights management« effective culminate ture to a whole new level: Sebastian Luetgert, he may even be wrong in thinking that he will Western Europe the capitalistic exploitation of in one thing: war. War and war only can set a the Internet denies consideration to modern goal for mass movements on the largest scale the founder of textz.com, is facing a warrant of ever get his property back. There is a universal man's legitimate claim to being reproduced. while respecting the traditional property system. Under these circumstances the culture industry is This is the political formula for the situation. The trying hard to spur the interest of the masses technological formula may be stated as follows: arrest and may go to jail if he refuses to pay right to reappropriation that will never cease to through illusion-promoting spectacles and dubi- Only war makes it possible to mobilize all of ous speculations. today's technical resources while maintaining the more than 2,300 euros in damages for the apply, and there is copyright legislation that property system. Epilogue alleged copying of two essays by Theodor W. will. Sooner or later, it will dawn upon The growing proletarianization of postmodern man and the increasing formation of masses are Adorno that the foundation claims as their Reemtsma that his »intellectual property« is a

»intellectual property«. Jan Philipp Reemtsma genie, and his foundation just another failing

was kindly asked to settle, but refused. An bottling company. Free Adorno - Support

»intellectual proprietor« of Adorno and Textz.com - http://textz.com/adorno

n the age of real existing socialism in name that it got - state-capitalism. information. This is the reason why the free soft- Yugoslavia, social production was sup- ware developer community includes the entire I posed to be governed by the principles This putative critique of really existing socialism range from hackers to users - because it is first A Continuum of public ownership & workers' self-management, from the dated machinery of political economy and foremost a continuum of knowledge, and whilst in fact, all along the circulation of capital should not serve here as a point of departure for this is the reason why copyleft is its fundamental continued to rely on the solid principles of indus- yet another account as to what were the inherent feature - it is a safeguard for knowledge to be of Knowledge trial capitalism. The capital could generate sur- reasons that the entire thing fell apart. As a fail- free to circulate. plus value only if those who workers who were ure to set straight the workings of capitalism, it selling the productive commodity - their labour should rather serve us as a tool to better illumi- Free software certainly cannot be measured with force - on the labour market, were also the ones nate how the free cooperation paradigm of pro- the socialist projects from the last century. It is Tomislav Medak who were buying back the commodity products of duction created in the free software community is also not the first and only thing of its kind. their labour. As it turns out the radical re-founda- remodelling these workings in its own right. The However, it addresses the basic politico-econom- - A contribution to the Political Economy of tion of social production in the Yugoslavian point made is not that this endeavour necessarily ic parallax at the heat of those projects, i.e. how socialist project remained half-way radical - stands as a successor to the socialist one, but to reinvent the organizational principles of media- Copyleft although the production relations and manage- rather that it offers a different intervention in the tion between productivity and circulation that do ment of means of production were imagined in a same nodes of the capitalist system - those of not take place via the alienation implied by com- thoroughly different fashion, the issue of circula- production and circulation. And maybe a better modification and the general equivalent of tion was not addressed adequately. This might be one. money, but would conceive them as a form of the reason why, when the socialist economy con- labour that is, along with being a product, also a verted to free market, consumption was the first Using the privileges of a small scale community knowledge generated in labour and a form of cir- element in the economic make-up of society to with a global reach, an epochal coincidence of culation that is, along with giving a product up adapt to the new environment - it wasn't all that production and consumption in the digital medi- for consumption, also conveying that knowledge. new after all. But what constituted the failure on um and a legally sanctioned relation of exchange And in being a politico-economical strategy of behalf of the socialist project was that it based on the copyright, free software succeeded autonomy - albeit maybe but a temporary one; rehearsed the divorce between the productivity in a relative erasure of the functional differentia- one that might eventually dissolve under the and consumption in the subjectivity (differentia- tion between producer and consumer. Instead of sway of market or development of technology - it tion between worker and consumer otherwise abstracting labour into the general equivalent, it has the merit of not following the methodology of also known as alienation of producer from his opted to convert it into the knowledge it needed socialist projects. It does not liberate the multi- products) and the mediation between them via to communicate in order to coordinate the collec- plicity of production and circulation by making a the process of abstraction and mediation by tive effort of creating a commons. As the market work out of the re-foundation of the social. It means of the general equivalent in the same mechanism of scarcity is not applicable for some- rather liberates the multiplicity of the latter by re- manner that the capitalist project did. In this thing that is digital, non-competitive and non- founding the former. regard it remained a tributary to the capital rela- exclusive, the way to feed back the demand into tion and was thus essentially deserving of the development are not price signals but knowledge,

ence is documented in an already published vol- Public Netbase independent local cultural groups working in the about.html ume, the proceedings of the last two conferences http://www.t0.or.at fields of new media, art, film, music, youth cul- Real2Reel is a small independent video pro- will be published in a new volume this year. In Institute for New Culture Technologies/t0 was ture and social projects. duction collective making films about environ- November 2004, ootw4 will take place, this time founded by Konrad Becker and Francisco de mental and social justice issues, all with a in Berlin. There will be also a call for projects to Sousa Webber in the Vienna Museumsquarter in Radio Alice grassroots direct action bias realize videos, exhibitions, web tools etc. for the 1995 as a non-profit internet provider and a plat- http://www.br- conference. At NEURO, there will be the possibili- form for the participatory use o information and online.de/jugend/zuendfunk/onair/radioalice Reboot FM ty for a meeting on Sunday, 12 h. communication technology. Public Netbase Radio Alice is a weekly format of Zuendfunk. http://www.reboot.fm organizes exhibitions, events, symposia and work- reboot.fm is a Berlin based open radio broad- Peoples global action shops .... Radio Helsinki casting on 104,1 for 100 days http://www.nadir.org/nadir/initiativ/agp/en http://helsinki.mur.at RIXC Independent Radio from Austria Rekombinant Precarias http://www.rixc.lv http://www.rekombinant.org http://www.sindominio.net Recently founded Centre for new media culture in Real2Reel Autorganizzazione della rete del Riga - the RIXC is the joint effort of a number of http://media1.commedia.org.uk:8080/real2reel/ lavoro cognitivo 25 In response, we wish to defend the idea talism. As such, the relationship codified in intel- 8. An analogy can be drawn with everyday lan- of a creative field of concepts and ideas lectual property law between creativity and profit guage, that is, the system of signs, symbols, ges- Libre I that are free from ownership. can be seen as a core element of this wider tures and meanings used in communicative structural transformation of the productive understanding. Spoken language is shared. A 1. Profit has a new object of affection. Indeed, processes. meaningful utterance is only made possible by Society.org profiteers now shamelessly proclaim to be the drawing on the words that freely circulate within true friend of creativity and the creative. 5. For many of us, the thought of intellectual a linguistic community of speakers and listeners. Everywhere, they declare, »We support and pro- property law still evokes romantic apparitions of Language, then, is necessarily non-owned and Manifesto tect concepts and ideas. Creativity is our busi- a solitary artist or writer seeking to safeguard his free. But imagine a devastating situation where ness and it is safe in our hands. We are the true or her creative work. It is therefore unsurprising this were no longer the case. George Orwell’s friends of creativity!« that we tend to view intellectual property law as 1984 dystopia — and the violence done to free- — something that defends the rights and interests thinking through ‘newspeak’ — helps to illustrate David M. Berry & Giles Moss 2. Not content with declarations of friendship, of the creative. Perhaps, in some removed and this. In a similar way, the control and ownership the profiteers are eager to put into practice their distant time, there was a modest respect in this of concepts and ideas is a threat to creative fondness for creativity as well. »Actions speak specious notion. But this romantic vision of the imagination and thought, and so also a grave A constellation of interests is now seeking to louder than words« in capitalist culture. To dis- creative is certainly ill at ease with capitalist danger to what we affectionately call our freedom play their affection, profiteers use legal mecha- ‘reality’. Creators have become employees and and self-expression. increase its ownership and control of creativity. nisms, namely intellectual property law, to watch each concept and idea they produce is appropri- over concepts and ideas and to protect them ated and owned by the employer. Profiteers are 9. Previously, the creative multitude could decide They tell us that they require new laws and from those who seek to misuse them. While we using intellectual property law to amass the cre- either to conform or rebel. In conforming they are dead to the world at night, they are busily ative output of their employees and others. What became creatively inert, unable to create new stockpiling intellectual property at an astonishing is more, they continually lobby to extend the con- synergies and ideas, mere consumers of the rights that will allow them to control concepts rate. More and more, the creative sphere is being trol of intellectual property law for greater and standardised commodities that increasingly satu- brought under their exclusive control. greater lengths of time. rate cultural life. In rebelling, they continued to and ideas and protect them from exploitation. use concepts and ideas in spite of intellectual 3. The fact that the profiteers are now so protec- 6. The creative multitude is becoming legally property law. But then they are labelled »pirates«, They say that this will enrich our lives, create tive of creativity, and jealously seek to control excluded from using and reinterpreting the con- »property thieves« and even »terrorists«, answer- concepts and ideas, ought to rouse suspicion. cepts and ideas that they produce. In addition, able as criminals to the courts of global state new products and safeguard the possibility of While they may claim to be the true friends of this legal exclusion is now being supported by power. In other words, profiteers declare a per- creativity, we know that friendship is not the technological means. Profiteers use technology to manent state of exception, a political emergency, same as dependency. It is very different to say, enforce copyright and patent law through the which is then used to justify the coercive use of future prosperity. But this is a disaster for cre- »I’m your true friend because I need you«, than technical code that configures information, com- state power and repression against a newly crimi- to say, »I need you because I’m your true friend«. munications, networks and machines. The use of nalised culture of creativity. As we will soon dis- ativity, whose health depends on an ongoing, But how are we to settle this issue? How do we digital rights management software, for example, cuss, a growing number of the creative are also distinguish the true friend from the false one? In locks creative works, preventing any copying, moving beyond rebellion, through an active resist- free and open conversation between ideas from any relationship between friends we should ask, modification and reuse. In the current era of ance to the present and the creation of an alter- »Are both partners mutually benefiting?« technological capitalism, public pathways for the native creative field for flows of concepts and the past and the present. free flow of concepts and ideas and the move- ideas. 4. The profiteers’ insatiable thirst for profit clearly ment of the creative are being steadily eroded — benefits from their new friendship with the cre- the freedom to use and re-interpret creative work 10. There will be immediate objections to all we ative. Through their use of intellectual property is being restricted through legally based but tech- have said. The profiteers will turn proselytizers law – in the form of copyright, patents and trade- nologically enforced enclosures. and say, »If there is no private ownership of cre- marks – concepts and ideas can be transformed ativity there will be no incentive to produce!« The into commodities that are controlled and owned. 7. This development is an absolute disaster for idea that the ownership of knowledge and ideas An artificial scarcity can then be established. creativity, whose health depends on an ongoing promotes creativity is a shameful one, however But, unlike physical objects, concepts and ideas conversation and confrontation between con- plausible it may seem from the myopic perspec- can be shared, copied and reused without dimin- cepts and ideas from the past and present. It is tive of the profiteers. To say that creativity can ishment. No matter how many people use and shameful that the creative multitude is being thrive whilst lacking the freedom to reuse con- interpret a particular concept, the creators’ use excluded from using concepts and ideas. cepts and ideas is clearly upside-down. After gig- of that concept is not surrendered or reduced. Creativity is never solely the product of a single gling a little at this absurdity, we should now turn But, much money is to be made when creative creator or individuated genius. It always owes this thinking the right way up. flows of knowledge and ideas become scarce debts to the inspiration and previous work of oth- products to be traded in the market place. Thus ers, whether these are thinkers, artists, scientists, 11. According to this »incentive« claim, there can- increasingly, intellectual property law is providing teachers, paramours or friends. Creativity, as a not have been any creativity (i.e., art, music, liter- profiteers with vast accumulations of wealth. fusion point of these singularities, cannot subsist ature, design and technology) before the profi- Indeed, immaterial labour (based on information, in a social nothingness. Concepts and ideas teer’s owned and controlled our concepts and knowledge and communication) has now depend upon their social life, and it could not be ideas. This seems like pure fantasy. Historians replaced industrial manufacture as the main pro- otherwise. frequently profess to us that creativity was alive ducer of wealth in the age of technological capi- and well in pre-capitalist times, before the advent of intellectual property laws. But, even so, we might concede that history is now enough of a fiction to raise some doubt about the previous incarnations of creativity and the creative. Perhaps more bizarrely, it also implies that there cannot be any creativity currently operating out- side of the intellectual property regime, thus con- tradicting our current experiences as historical actors and witnesses. We can now be sure of something that we have always already known — creativity is not reducible to the exploitation of intellectual property.

12. A new global movement of networked groups that operate across a variety of creative media — e.g., music, art, design and software — is now emerging. These groups produce a gathering of concepts, ideas and art that exist outside the current intellectual property regime. Hence, the

Rosa-Luxemburg-Initiative Bremen Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung concrete projects of the Youth-education-network: Sarajevo Center for Contemporary Art http://www.luxemburg-initiative.de http://www.rosalux.de - one working group tries to collect and develop http://pro.ba The Rosa-Luxemburg-Initiative, founded in 1999, The Youth-education-network is an open network ideas and methods of how to include a criticism is an association in Bremen (Germany) which of institutions, groups as well as single persons of kapitalism into educational concepts. Secretariate provides ‘political education’ by organizing work- that conduct and organise political education. - one working group is trying to develop an up-to http://www.secretariate.org shops, conferences and events. With our activity The common ground of the people that meet date term of education and is also trying to con- we want to communicate political and historical here is the practical work with young people and tinue this debate during NEURO. Shoa.de education/knowledge/information, initiate critical the search for a framework that allows a reflexion - the third working group tries to find modes of http://www.shoa.de thought-processes and the reflection of societal of the political educational work each one con- decision making and organising that make our The working party Shoa.de is a citizens' initiative affairs as well as offering an discussion-forum to ducts. The network has been founded in October network »work«. focussing on a debate on the terrors of the an interested public and the left current. The 2002. The common goals are to organise and Holocaust and its aftermaths in the present. The Rosa-Luxemburg-Initiative cooperates with the prepare debates on the topic of education, to SO36.NET internet platform wants to mediate factual and Rosa-Luxemburg-Foundation in Berlin and with focus on the solidarily common use of Youth-edu- http://www.SO36.net generally understandable information and func- many other projects and organisa- cation-network ressources and to find common SO36.NET is a non-profit alternmative provider tion as a forum for civil engagement. 26 tions. positions and interests. Right now there are three from Berlin. creative works of the Free/Libre and Open Source ative work is valued and recognised for its contri- stood back on its feet by copyleft (‘all rights both deepening and widening through a variety of communities, for instance, can all be examined, bution to creativity as a whole. Attribution and reversed’). It now stands the right way up for cre- forms of media. They offer a glimpse of a creative challenged and modified. Here, knowledge and share-alike are constitutive principles of the ativity and can once again look it in the eyes. field in formation that supports flows of concepts ideas are shared, contested and reinterpreted Free/Libre and Open Source movements, and and ideas that are shared freely among friends. among the creative as a community of friends. chromosomes of the new mode of creative life 15. We believe that the creative multitude should They are acting in a way that is ‘counter to our Their concepts and ideas, like the symbols and that their social practice intimates. embrace and defend the ideas and practices of time and, let us hope, for the benefit of a possi- signs of language, are public and non-owned. these groups and the untimely model of creative ble time to come’ — Creativity is creating resist- Against the machinations of profit, these groups 14. These movements adopt an ingenious viral life that they intimate. Indeed, we, who are ance to the present. are in the process of constituting a real alterna- device, implemented through public licences, already quite a crowd, must defend these ideas tive — of constructing a model of creative life that known as copyleft. This ensures that concepts and practices. For it is only the creative multitude (cc) 2003 The LibreSociety.org Manifesto is made available under the Attribution Share-alike Creative Commons License reflects the force and desire of the creative multi- and ideas are non-owned, while guaranteeing that will determine whether this possible transfor- 1.0. www.creativecommons.org tude. that future synergies based on these concepts mation of our times is realised. and ideas are equally open for others to use. 13. Through the principles of attribution and Whereas copyright acts through law to prevent 16. Just as the violence of the Profiteers’ intellec- share-alike, existing works and ideas are given the modification and re-use of concepts and tual property regime is seeking to intensify, a real recognition in these communities. This means ideas, copyleft ensures that they remain openly countervailing force is now beginning to confront that although a work may be copied, modified available and not capable of being commodified. it. Indeed, the vision and practice of these rhi- and synthesised into new works, previous cre- In this way, copyright (‘all rights reserved’), is zomatic groups is defiantly growing in strength,

here are a number of Application Service sense to member organizations which already Interaction: Lots of user interaction & interaction Providers (ASPs) providing external had close associations. Some coalitions are between related Drupal sites. Extensive use of T eActivist applications that can be inte- using this type of permission based content shar- RSS feed publishing & aggregating. Top 10 Open grated with the look and feel of an organization's ing to maintain an issue related site which is fed existing web site, but we will not be evaluating by a number of member organizations. Strengths: Informal, newsy, often personal. There ASPs in this article. Instead, we want to discuss Example: http://www.rabble.ca/ are a lot of folks who are bloggers or participate Source Tools eActivist applications that can be run from the Alternatives: slashForums, Blogs, Back-End and in blog culture. same server as the organization's existing web- Active (below) can all provide content non-inter- site. Furthermore, we will be looking at Free active content publishing. Weaknesses: Like other news focused sites, if it for eActivism Software applications that can be downloaded, isn't updated regularly, it becomes stale very modified, and distributed by the users of the quickly. software. Broadly speaking, the eActivist applica- 2. PostNuke (Slash tions described below can be categorized as Forums/Portals) Activist Tips: For activist organizations, the blog Dan Bashaw & Mike Gifford either informational, aiding in efficiently spread- http://www.postnuke.com/ format can be a great way to humanize messages ing your message, or actionable, allowing your on an ongoing topic or a developing campaign. users to act on their information and understand- Because *blog=personal* to the reader, cam- People have been trying to use the web to cre- ing of issues. Although the distinction can be Interaction: Plenty of opportunities for users to paign blogs have a 'note from a friend' feel to useful in deciding which tool to use, many appli- submit stories, links, & comments for publishing them -- much more personal than the same infor- ate change from its conception. Along with cations have now evolved to include elements of on the site. Dialogue is usually shaped through a mation presented in a web news or magazine response to an article posted by the editorial both. framework. When using blogs, consider having a the rest of the Internet community, activist team. single 'voice' or a small group of voices do all The first five applications examined are primarily posts, to reinforce the personal flavour of the focus has moved away from producing static informational: four are tools for building web Strengths: Lots of add on modules, often blog. sites, and have considerable overlap in core fea- installed with a web hosts default control panel. tures, though each has different strengths, weak- As well consider displaying the blog's 'RSS feed' content to building on- line communities. nesses, and appropriate uses. The fifth focuses Weaknesses: Many slash sites are hard to modify (Headline, annotation and link of each blog on eNewsletters. to look like anything but a slash site. Content entry) into the sidebar of your organizational web becomes stale very quickly and daily posts are site and your email campaigns, to extend this We have provided just a brief sketch of the func- almost required. personal voice further. tionality of each application. Describing the type of interaction they allow and with whom. Activist Tips: Selecting the right modules for your Example: http://www.blogforamerica.com/ (likely Outlining their key strengths and weaknesses as site is the key to using any of the 'slash' content not using drupal) we see them. Providing some activists tips for management systems. Pick the features (i.e. their use and providing an example. polls, surveys, galleries, calendars, forums, etc.) Alternatives: Also consider Geeklog that your site needs, and keep it simple by not (http://www.geeklog.net/index.php), and the var- We feature one example, but have also listed offering those that don't forward your goals. It is ious blogs listed under the 'Blogs' heading in the alternatives which are worth considering. also important to watch the activity in different left hand sidebar at Open Source CMS modules to see which ones are being used. (http://www.opensourcecms.com/). 1. ActionApps (On-line In terms of keeping your site fresh, the authoring Magazine/Content Sharing) environment is key to creating a site that is easily 4. Active (News Posting) maintained. Look for authoring tools that will http://www.active.org.au/doc/ http://www.apc.org/actionapps/ allow your authors to style their own text easily and quickly. A system that is too obscure or com- Interaction: Terrific news contributions. Interaction: Minimal interaction between visitors plex will not be used. & content authors Strengths: It is a great way to gather news from Example: http://www.canadiandemocraticmove- an event or a community. One of the best tools Strength: Publishing Control & Extensive Cross ment.ca/ for posting/displaying multi-media. Site/Server Publishing Permissions. A good pub- lishing tool. Alternatives: The listings in the left hand sidebar Weaknesses: Like other news sites, they can grow at Open Source CMS (http://www.open- stale quickly. As well, due to the open publishing Weaknesses: Often too big & cumbersome for sourcecms.com/) link to demos of many portal nature of Active, editorial control over the organizations that don't need this type of control. systems, including postNuke (http://www.post- Newswire is weak. It is almost impossible to nuke.com/) , and Plone (http://www.plone.org/). totally control the content of the site. Activist Tips: Some organizations may want to share content between other related organiza- Activist Tips: Indymedia sites running Active first tions. Set up within the Association of 3. Drupal (Blogs) came into prominence during the Seattle anti- Progressive Computing, this model made a lot of http://drupal.org/ globalization protests in 1999, where the ability to post news rapidly from the streets to the web

Source Records Subtropen Tavolo di migranti tial of new media opportunities, we had much http://www.source-records.com http://www.jungle-world.com/seit- http://www.migranti.net more than a film on our hands. What we envision David Moufang, a.k.a. Move D, co-founded en/2003/27/1230.php is an ongoing community of »inter-activists« able Source Records, released several solo projects Subtropen was formerly a supplement of the Textz.com to respond online, offline, and even in real-time like the electronic-listening classic Kunststoff, a weekly newspaper jungle Work and is now exist- http://www.textz.com to the issues raised by the film. MAKE MORE 12« on Warp Records and Solitaire on the Fax ing on as a loose collective of authors. we are the & in copy & paste, and plain ascii is MEDIA: We plan to use the media attention we label. He's also worked in several collaboration still the format of our choice. expect the film will generate to create support for projects, such as Reagenz (with Jonah Sharp, Tacheles Reden i-corp and to develop an online community. a.k.a. Spacetime Continuum), View to View (with http://www.tacheles-reden.de The Corporation Marshalling the significant forces of both the Robert Gordon), Koolfang/Move D & Namlock An Association against rightist extremism, racism http://www.thecorporation.tv mainstream media in all its forms, and the alter- (with Pete Namlock) and Deep Space Network and antisemitism which is holding speeches and A Feature documentary by Mark Achbar, Jennifer native media network, as well as providing a (with Jonas Grossmann). He is the grandmaster workshops on a regular basis. Abbott and Joel Bakan. As THE CORPORATION media venue ourselves through the website and of smooth and groovy techno. grew in scope, we realized that based on the an interactive DVD, we hope to generate both sig- TamTam timely and urgent nature of the film’s subject nificant dialogue and effective http://tamtam.mi2.hr matter, as well as on the communication poten- action around the issues raised 27 was critical to getting the story out. Active is ideal (ePetitions), and peer-to-pole your headline and other key text directly into the Weaknesses: They are most useful if there are for an action-oriented situation, where informa- (eLeaflets/ePosters) communications. eCard image. multiple campaigns or opportunities for people to tion is posted in real-time and contextualized on- start becoming more educated & aware. The flex- the- fly by volunteer editors. Example: http://www.savebiogems.org/post- ibility of Back-End makes it more time consuming 6. phpBB (Forums) card.asp (not using webcards) to customize. However -- it is not as good an ongoing publish- http://www.phpBB.com/ ing system choice for an activist organization with Alternatives: Website Gizmos http://www.bite- Activist Tips: Keep the text of the ePetition or a controlled editorial workflow. Because Active Interaction: It's all interaction. Discussions take sizeinc.net/index.php/gizmos.html, Send Card eAction short & easy to read. Make sure to have allows any member of the public to post directly place in forums and users contribute all of the http://www.sendcard.org/ or see links to other information about the campaign on to an unmoderated Newswire, it can leave an content. http://www.hotscripts.com/PHP/Scripts_and_Pro your site that people can read up on if they are organization open to potential legal and 'staying grams/Postcards/index.htm l interested. Make sure that you ask for permission on message' problems if the Newswire is not Strengths: It's a commonly understood format so from your supporters to contact them. People like closely monitored. If tighter editorial and user seeing other people's comments, so if possible it is easy for new people to start participating. 8. TWiki (Wiki/Group control are important to your organization The ability to have restricted forums is also useful display the and the number of signatories. ActiveApps, postNuke and Drupal (all noted for some organizations. Documentation) above) are alternatives. http://www.twiki.org/ Example: http://www.fairvotecanada.org/peti- Weaknesses: It may need to be moderated, or at tion.php/ Example: http://www.indymedia.org/ (The least monitored so that you are familiar with what umbrella site for over 80 Indymedia sites) and Interaction: Total, but focused on creating more Alternatives: simpetition ~PostNuke module is being posted. Also, it may take some time to static documentation by the community http://portland.indymedia.org/ (A typical Active get people using/posting to the forum. http://sourceforge.net/projects/simpetition/ site showing the Newswire in the righthand side- bar). Strengths: It's a great web based collaboration Activist Tips: Bulletin boards or on-line forums platform. The ability to create common docu- 10. FPDF (eLeaflets/ePosters) predate the Internet and are one of the most Alternatives: Variations on the PHP-based Active ments & review changes makes this application (Dynamic PDF/Graphic understood forms of web dialogues, and training quite powerful for community groups. (http://www.active.org.au/doc/) include MiR time for most is minimal. It is a good environ- Generation) http://www.fpdf.org/ (http://docs.indymedia.org/view/Devel/MiR), a ment for brainstorming or allowing folks to vent Java implemetation, and IMCSlash Weaknesses: Wiki markup isn't consistent, it their concerns. Many forums allow for modera- takes a bit of training for folks to get used to, Interaction: Simple off the web interaction. (http://docs.indymedia.org/view/Devel/ImcSlash tion so that inappropriate posts can be adjusted, ), written in Perl. editorial rights can be abused. Allowing folks to download & print off posters, but this takes time as does building an active, petitions, stickers and brochures customized constructive climate for exchanging ideas. Activist Tips: Wiki webs are great tools for collab- online for their local campaigns. 5. phpList (eNewsletters) orative writing when your goal is to ultimately If a forum is little-used, consider replacing it with http://www.phplist.com/ have a static or slowly-evolving document for Strengths: Good control over printed output, not either a mailing list like Mailman internal use or public display: policy and proce- dependent on the user's browser capabilities or (http://www.list.org/), or a simpler bulletin board dures, grant proposals, reports can all be built Operating System. Interaction: It's entirely one way, but it gives the system like wwwBoard effectively in a Wiki, with each contributor work- user the opportunity to indicate what they want (http://www.scriptarchive.com/wwwboard.html) ing in their own time on the single live document. Weaknesses: Introduces an additional server-side to subscribe to. It also provides an opportunity which shows all posts in a 'tree view' on a single As Wikis support roll-back to previous versions of technology to accomplish PDF generation, which to gather other information about your site's visi- page. Both of these alternatives will encourage pages, editorial control can be maintained while could have server performance impacts. tors. more participation in low-traffic situations. allowing freedom to each contributor. Activist Tips: If you want to be able to take your Strengths: It is easy to set up and provides an Example: http://www.gwbush.com/forum/ (Not Wikis can also serve as a shared brainstorming message to the streets and extend your brand to easy way to encourage other participants to using phpBB) and notebook tool for activist groups -- though support local activists. Target specific communi- come back to your site. Users can provide their the fact that wiki information is not 'pushed' to ties on the fly with a customized pamphlet. interests & geographic location to allow users to Alternatives: Also consider the forums listed users desktops requires that users building a get more targeted eNewsletters. under the 'Forums' heading in the left hand side- project must intentionally visit and contribute to Example: bar at Open Source CMS (http://www.open- the Wiki. Twiki, which supports RSS feeds, can http://www.afgha.com/?af=article&sid=37844 Weaknesses: There are a lot of options and it sourcecms.com/). push notification of page changes to users, may take a bit of time to learn how to use it, par- encouraging participation. Alternatives: For some applications, CSS2 ticularly if you are only sending out eNewsletters 7. WebCards stylesheets (http://www.alistapart.com/arti- every couple of months. New users will need to be given a brief introduc- cles/goingtoprint/) can be used to print simple (eCards/email2friends) tion to using Wiki, to give them familiarity with dynamic content such as handbills. R&OS have Tips: Plan to write a eNewsletter once every http://webcards.sourceforge.net adding pages, editing content, and basic text produced a PDF class month or two, more if your campaign is very styling, to ensure that they are comfortable in the (http://www.ros.co.nz/pdf/) and there are a active. Make sure that you write the eNewsletter Interaction: Limited opportunity to send a mes- Wiki environment. number of other graphic/pdf modification tools to be short and easy to scan. Provide a title, which are being developed. short abstract an a link to an article on your web- sage to a friend. Essentially an advanced email2friend form. As an example of how far groups can go in using site with the full story. Text is generally preferred Wiki as a writing tool, look at the multi-lingual ---- by users and easier to be forwarded on in email Strengths: By using innovative images you can Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org). & included in other forums. Always ask your sub- Of course, in the rapidly evolving world of scribers to forward this message on to their encourage folks to spread the word more about your campaign. Like blogs, people that use web- Example: http://thor.acedragon.co.uk/biconwiki/ eActivism, any list of 10 anythings will have at friends. When referring to a URL, make sure to (not using twiki) least 11 members by the time it is completed! include the »http://«; cards will use them a lot and come back when they can. Emerging technologies that might be applied to Alternatives: Also consider the forums listed eActivism include: RSS feeds, Friendster, cell- Example: under the 'Wiki' heading in the left hand sidebar phone texting, cam-phones, and audio blogs. Any http://www.learningpartnership.org/phplist/?p=s Weaknesses: When was the last time you were really influenced by a postcard? at Open Source CMS (http://www.open- of these may inspire or connect to Open Source ubscribe&id=4 sourcecms.com/). applications. Older technologies such as chat Activist Tips: eCards are a 'semi-viral' marketing and Internet telephony may also spring back onto Alternatives: Mailman (http://www.list.org/), the stage as activist solutions. (http://www.sympa.org/) and other mail- technique -- they cannot escape and circulate 9. Back-End (eActions/ePetitions) independently of your organization, as an email ing list managers also allow one-way 'broadcast' http://www.back-end.org/ As well, the convergence of existing tools often lists. Also consider LetterIT can, so you maintain control over the organiza- tional image projected by your eCards. leads to new solutions. We've selected TikiWiki, a (http://otterware.net/index.php?id=scripte&sid=l tool that blends Wiki and Portal features, to etteritm) Interaction: It's a focused level of interaction, but * Humour will often work well with eCards, as asks permission to contact folks in the future. round out our list of ten eActivist applications with its eleventh member. ---- more users will be likely to pass along a humor- ous message than a less evocative one. Strengths: People are comfortable giving a minor The remaining five eActivist applications exam- level of support to an organizations cause 11. TikiWiki * In order to keep your activist message clear for through Petitions & eActions. ined below are broadly 'actionables' involving http://www.tikiwiki.org/ peer-to-peer (Forums, eCards, Wikis), peer-to-Pol for the recipient of the eCard, you can include within THE CORPORATION. Our goal is to create digm. As we embark on the development phase es. If history has taught us anything — it’s that we bers are actively engaged for persecuted human an online documentary experience, in order to for i-corp we are doing social market research, in create the future! Development for i-corp has rights activists in their home countries. provide an always current interactive route order to identify key issues around which to cen- been financed with the participation of Telefilm through the themes, issues and people inside tre multi-media campaigns and also to develop Canada, the Yvonne Tasker-Rothenberg and tie THE CORPORATION , as well as to integrate a set relationships with individuals and organizations Martin Rothenberg Fund, and Renewal Partners. http://www.tie-germany.org of components that would allow for a compelling who would benefit from partnering with us on We seek more financial support for development tie (Transnationals Information Exchange) is an and ongoing model for promoting the project’s issue-based co-promotional campaigns. During and for the production phase. international grassroots network of workers and ideas. To wit: Hundreds of hours of film did not this phase we will also develop a working proto- union activists. Rooted both in the global North make it into the 165 minute film. Yet, today, type of an online documentary forum, »doc-back« The Voice and South, tie aims to encourage, organize, and there is such tremendous potential to dissemi- as well as related innovative co-promotional mod- http://www.thevoiceforum.org facilitate international consciousness and cooper- nate this information, and also to create an ongo- els for encouraging dialogue, participation and The Voice Refugee Forum is a network of refugee ation among workers and their organizations in ing forum for analysis (ultimately linked to action) action. In addition we will develop an interface political and human rights activists that has been various parts of the world. tie supports an inter- that could be networked to countless organiza- prototype for an iDVD by researching what our actively engaged in publicly protesting the inhu- national exchange of information and experiences tions around the world, all with an audience most wants to see, and how to most mane situation of refugees since 1994 in among labour activists, women's and human 28 aim of challenging the corporate para- effectively link these themes to activist respons- Thueringen and Germany as a whole. The mem- rights groups. tie's activities are geared to enable Interaction: TikiWiki is a content management sider for your organization. There are a lot of Open Source tools out there system for writers. It supports wikiwiki web which you can employ for your campaigns. We pages, blogs, CMS news article publishing, dis- We have plotted these tools on the Surman-o- have tried to list some of the ones which we feel cussion forums, a directory of links, a calendar, graph, (an emerging standard in analyzing civil are the most useful in the fall of 2003. Like the RSS newsfeeds, user-designed databases for society communications) clustering them in the Internet as a whole, Open Source projects tend tracking contacts/events, and many other things Formal/Centralized and Informal/Distributed to evolve quickly and new initiatives are popping as lots of people added code to the product over quadrants: up all of the time. The challenge for anyone put- the last year. ting together an activist web site will be in blend- http://www.openconcept.ca/images/surman-o- ing these and other tools into a seamless user Strengths: A 'swiss army knife' tool with a mas- graph_web.gif interface. Customizing and adapting any soft- sive feature set! ware to meet your needs can be time consuming, In deciding which specific tool to apply to your but often the development communities behind Weaknesses: make sure to use the latest version eActivist problems, consider the following ques- these Open Source projects can help point you in of TikiWiki (1.1.1 or higher)for improved speed tions: the right direction. Most Open Source projects over earlier, slower builds. TikiWiki shares the rel- also have web developers who can be hired to atively rigid 'portal' look of phpNuke and other * Does the tool do what I need 'out-of-the-box', modify the code that they have developed. Any slashForum applications. or will it need to be customized? customized code can be brought back into the core of the project so that it can benefit the Activist Tips: Use the collaborative capabilities of * Is the user interface simple for the people who whole community. TikiWiki to work with a dispersed group of will be working with the application? authors on keeping the site's formal content * Many of these applications will run on both proprietary & fresh. Use the built-in blogs, chat forums and * Is there reasonable documentation and sup- non-priorietary Operating Systems, however, you will have to check with your web host to determine if you have the software image galleries to build community interaction. port? Does the support forum handle newbie which is required. The combination plays to TikiWiki's strengths as a questions well? multifunction tool for building a site that is both This article is licensed under a Creative Commons License and is copyrighted © 2003 by Mike Gifford & Dan Bashaw, informational and actionable. * Does the tool use technologies and languages Attribution- ShareAlike 1.0, http://creativecommons.org/licens- we are already familiar with? es/by-sa/1.0/ Example: http://www.greens-in.org/ * Is there an on-line demo my users can play Democracies Online Newswire - http://e-democracy.org/do Alternatives: Other general content management around with to see if the tool 'feels right' to frameworks, such as Geeklog (http://www.geek- them? log.net/index.php) and Typo3 (http://www.typo3.org) also take the fusion * Is the tool's programming team actively devel- approach -- but none include the Wiki capabilities oping and maintaining the tool? of TikiWiki. * Is the tool one of the more popular ones in it's Dan & Mike would like to thank David Newman category? his contribution to this section. A yes to a majority of these questions is a sign Sorting them out that you've may have the right application for There are a number of ways to compare eActivist your eActivist job. applications as an aid in deciding which to con-

n the following days we learned that a Knowledge multiplies the human capacity to pro- been an internationally body with disciplinary The Warrior, peace movement of gigantic proportions duce useful things and the spaces of freedom for powers on its members. But is such thing possi- I is not sufficent to stop the war, and that all human beings, by reducing the necessary ble in modern science?' (R. Jungk: Gli democracy does not possess instruments capa- labour-time to produce whatever society needs. apprendisti stregoni, Einaudi, Torino, 1958, pag. the Merchant ble of defusing military automatisms that terror- This means that to know is to have power. The 92). ism and security paranoia have set in motion. merchant and the warrior want to turn knowledge Even if the majority of public opinion opposes into an instrument of power. And to this end they In Weizsaecker's words we find the problem that and the Sage war, the dynamic that leads to war is not have to subdue the sage. But this does not occur we encountered again in its full expression half a stopped. Terror is the political investment on easily, because knowledge does not tolerate century later: which organisational form and what which the Bush administration placed all of its domination. Thus, the warrior and the merchant rules can those who produce knowledge give bets. There is no need to create consensus resort to traps and deceit, to submit the power of themselves, if we want to stop political, econom- Franco Bifo Berardi through discursive, propogandistic, and ideologi- thinking to the power of money and violence. ic and military power from using knowledge for cal instruments, it is sufficent to use psychic purposes that are extraneous to knowledge itself, automatisms founded on terror. Terror is born Common Interest of Humanity and above all, contrary to the common interest On 15 February 2003 when millions of people all before the terrorist attacks, terror is born out of In a 1958 book entitled 'The training witches', of humanity? In that occasion, the US govern- the cruel and continuous competitiveness that Robert Jungk tells of how in the Second World ment managed to convince a group of scientists over the world took to the streets to stop the war, the principle _mors tua vita mea_ has inculcated War the warrior captured the sage, through the to surrender to its blackmail. The effect of the into the mind of every individual. history of the Manhattan project that led to the sage's surrender to the warrior was Hiroshima. many felt that military global power was about to creation of the nuclear bomb. A group of scien- The history of the twentieth century is the history tists was faced with blackmail: Hitler might be At that moment the struggle for the liberation of lose all consensus and that this could signal the of the conflict and alliances of three figures. The preparing a nuclear bomb. We need to hurry, to the sage from the warrior began, and it culminat- sage is the heir of human labour, the bearer of anticipate him. ed in '68. 1968 represented first of all the sage's the intelligence accumulated by the infinite suc- According to Jungk, 'In the Summer of 1939 refusal to lend her/his knowledge to the warrior beginning of its crisis. But power is no longer cession of acts of labour and the infinite series of twelve men, the physicists who were working on and the decision to place the sage at the service acts of refusal of labour. The refusal of labour the Manhattan project, could have agreed to stop of society. Then the merchant came along to grounded on consensus, but terror, ignorance induces the evolutive motion of intelligence. the construction of atomic bombs. But they seduce the sage and subdue her/his knowledge Intelligence is the refusal of work, actualized into missed their opportunity and were unable to to the domination of techno-economic automa- and technological-economic financial and psychic a socially useful form. Because of intelligence it decisively make their thoughts and actions ade- tisms. The evaluation of the truth of knowledge is becomes possible to substitute human labour quate to the future consequences of scientific submitted to the criteria of competitiveness, eco- automotisms, that politics is no longer able to with machines. Because of the refusal of work, discoveries; neither did they have, in such critical nomic efficiency, and the pursuit of maximum science is pushed forward, developed, put into situation, enough faith in the traditions of their profit. practice. From the outset, modern science has profession. At the end of the war, von control and that mass action is no longer able to been aware of its function in this respect. Weizsaecker commented, 'the fact that we were a In the two decades inaugurated by Thatcher- family was not sufficient, maybe we should have Reagan, knowledge has been put to work in con- modify or stop. workers to engage in a process of self-organisa- works in auto industry, retail sector, chemical attended by representatives of all tie offices and guardians of the Coalition will tell the ingenuous tion, to develop their own strategies for better industry, and public sector * Support of various their most important project partners to discuss tresspasser. The reason for this prohibition is that working and living conditions, and to facilitate European workers' and union initiatives * Project current and future work and strategies. The next from the Tigris you have a perfect view and shot international solidarity. In Germany, the tie net- Working Without Pain in Brazil, Europe, and North conference will take place from November 27th on the palace. So the river has been taken away work is represented by »tie - Internationales America * Project New Strategies against to 30th, 2003 in Oberwesel, Germany. from the city. If not a crime against civic life, this Bildungswerk e.V.« which is a politically independ- Management by Stress * Project ExChains - is at least a serious infringement on the freedom ent non-profit organization. In keeping with the Solidarity along the supply chain: from production Tigris Woods Project, of movement. Therefore the proposed intervention overall objectives of tie, tie Germany has the fol- to retail, workers unite! in Asia and Europe * http://www.radioreedflute.net aims to recover the river as a fundamental ele- lowing work priorities and projects: * Production Project Workers Education and Exchange Project The City and the River: The Tigris winds like a ser- ment of public life, a stream of consciousness of the publication Ränkeschmiede; research on to support independent and democratic unions in pent through the city of Baghdad. In its fold one and a source of inspiration. The Tigris is much social movements; cooperation with the monthly West Africa tie Germany also supports the estab- finds the Palace of Saddam Hussein and Paul more than just a streaming river: it is a cradle of union paper express * Presentation of various lishment of new tie offices in Senegal and Turkey. Bremer. Under Saddam the Tigris and its banks civilisation, a stream of water for fishing, swim- education programs for workers, workers repre- Since 1993, tie Germany has been organizing the were a forbidden area, likewise now the Coalition ming, drinking, irrigation and dumping, hiding sentatives, and works council members * international tie conferences taking place every has decided that the river is not safe: »for your and shaving . And it may be a Support of national and international workers net- two or three years. These conferences are being own good, stay away from the river«, the vehicle for anybody's imagination. 29 ditions of absolute dependence on capital. realise that their potential is superior to the emerged to take advantage of the crisis of tradi- Science has been incorporated into the automa- power of the merchant. Since intellectual labour tional capitalist rules in order to appropriate for tisms of technology, deprived of the possibility of is at the centre of the productive scene, the mer- itself enormous shares of social capital, as all changing the finalities that guide its functional chant no longer possesses the juridical or materi- the post-Enron collapse cases demonstrated. operation. The intensive application of knowledge al instruments to impose the principle of private Neo-liberalism in the long run has not favoured to production is concretised in the creation of the property. Given that the most precious goods in free market but monopoly. digital techno-sphere, which emanates effects of social production have an immaterial and repro- extraordinary power. But this power is submitted ducible character, we have discovered that the At this stage, almost miraculously, while the cri- to the technical automatisms where power is private appropriation of goods makes no sense, sis precipitated and was taking away all credibili- articulated. Constrained within the categories of while the reasons sustaining the privatisation of ty and power of the groups linked to the Bush the profit economy, technology increases the pro- material goods in industrial society have weak- administration, those airplanes fell from the sky ductivity of labour while simultaneously multiply- ened. In the sphere of semiotic-capital and cogni- and gave birth to an era of unlimited violence, an ing misery, the subordination of human beings to tive labour, when a product is consumed, instead era when power, having lost all legitimacy, legiti- wage labour, solitude, unhappiness and psy- of disappearing it remains available, while its mates itself through war. But in war, perspectives chopathy. value increases the more its use is shared. This is are redefined. Nazi-liberal aggressive capitalism how the network economy works, and this contra- evoked the spectre of the war to defend its vacil- I remember when I was a child in the '50s like dicts the very principle of private property on lating power, but in the course of this war, which everyone else I was fascinated by the idea that which capitalism was founded until now. is unacceptable for the conscience and life style we would have lived the year 2000. Newspapers of the great majority of the western population, used to write that in the year 2000 all the prob- Since this perspective has started to spread, the anything could happen. lems of humanity would have been solved warrior has come back on the scene, with the old because technology would have assured peace, economy of petrol magnates and arms produc- Above all, what could happen is that cognitive freedom and abundance. Now that the year ers. The amount of sadness, fear and anxiety labour starts giving an organised and self-con- 2000 has come, however, instead of peace war accumulated in the folds of social labour during scious form to its internal break. The problem hangs over the world as never before, atomic the nineties has now been turned into fanaticism, Weizsaecker talks about is urgent today: is it pos- bombs proliferate in the hands of fanatics of all aggressiveness and obsession with identity. The sible to have a self-organisation of scientists that religions. Instead of freedom there is the unques- merchant has resorted to the warrior to submit is founded on the autonomy of science from tionable domination of economic priorities, the sage again. Bill Gates allied himself with power? This is no longer a concern for a small instead of abundance there is slavery, misery George Bush. The merchant who robbed collec- group of nuclear physicists, but for millions and and hunger in two thirds of the world. The fanatic tive intelligence allied himself with the idiot war- millions of workers in science and technology, in application of market rules has produced this rior and together they try to suffocate any inch of administration, in education and therapy. folly and we are racing towards catastrophe. wisdom, to subsume once and for all knowledge to profit and power. The pacific army of the cognitariat holds the key Movement of Researchers to a deconstruction of the chain of automatisms Any project of reform or change makes no sense Thanks to the opening of the stock market to the through which capitalism fortifies itself. unless we are prepared to radically redefine the masses carried out in the 90's, a mass participa- direction of this race, and neither the warrior or tion to the profit of capital was possible and this the merchant can decide the direction of the resulted in the dotcom economy. This also race. Only the sage can establish it. Only human opened the possibility for a vast process of self- knowledge, following its own rules, its priorities organisation of cognitive labourers. Cognitive and lines of possibility has the right to redefine labourers invested their competence, knowledge the rules of production and exchange. Only and creativity and found the means to create an women and men as subjects of knowledge can enterprise in the stock market. For several years decide in which direction the world is to move. the form of enterprise was the point of encounter This is the great novelty affirmed in Seattle: the for financial capital and cognitive labour at a merchants have no right to decide on the lives of high productivity rate. A new form of self-enter- million of people on the basis of their own eco- prise glorified at once the autonomy of labour nomic profit. Only a movement of researchers, a and the dependency on the market. high-tech labour movement of the cognitariat that is autonomously organised can stop the dictator- After a decade of uninterrupted growth and ship of financial corporations. The global move- social alliance between cognitive labour and ment that exploded in Seattle in 1999 pointed recombining capital, this alliance was broken. towards a direction: globalisation must be guided The fall of the stock market that began in April by ethically motivated knowledge and become a 2000 was the beginning of a political crisis of power in the hands of all women and men, not the relation of capital and cognitive labour. Many the power of a minority. different factors provoked this rupture. First of all, the collapse of the psychic and social energies of From Seattle onwards a movement emerged that cognitive labour: overexploitation, the accelera- aims at the social, epistemic and technological tion of life rhythms, the 24h long working day of re-composition of cognitive labour. This requires mobile phone workers, depression, the excessive that scientific research is autonomous from the use of stimulant drugs to sustain the pace of merchants' interests. This awareness has grown hyper-labour have lead the cognitive labourer into ever since: millions of people in the world have a depressive phase. The collapse came from started to reclaim the autonomy of their brain inside. At the same time, the monopolistic attack from profit. In information technology we have against the army of dotcom, the front of cognitive witnessed the diffusion of open source practices; labourers and the free market occurred. The in biotechnological and pharmacological sectors imposition of limits on experimentation, the there has been a struggle to claim free access to imposition of monopolistic standards, the the products of intellectual innovation; in the alliance between monopolies and political power cycle of information media activism has spread. have taken the breath away from the diffuse economy. Then the monopolistic counterrevolu- Privatisation of Knowledge tion began and the conditions for a shift from the Capital reacted, following the dictates of liberalist network economy to the war economy were creat- ideology, with the coercive privatisation of the ed. products of collective knowledge and the submis- sion of experimentation to economic competition. The new economy had witnessed the flourishing The privatisation of collective knowledge has of a process of self-organisation of cognitive encountered resistance and opposition every- labour in the form of the enterprise, but in the where, and cognitive labourers have started to same years a predatory lumpen-bourgeoisie

From the Gilgamesh Epic to Mehmet Uzun, from of AlMuajaha in Baghdad told him that the Tigris And of course we can distribute it via internet, Tilos Radio is a community, non-profit radio sta- Rotterdam to Baghdad. From me to you. And and its banks are, again, forbidden area. CD-Rom and cassette. It would provide an invita- tion in Budapest, Hungary. back. Like a kellek. The Tigris, or Dicle (Turkish), Reclaiming the River Tigris means regaining the tion to bloggers, artists, activists, fishers, farm- or Djila (Arab) is also subject to geopolitical pleasure, but also processing the pain. Concept: ers, rafters and passers-by to plunge, project and Transhackmeeting strategic interventions like the Turkish Great Ideally the project consists of a permanent audio navigate the Tigris. To realize the full potential of http://www.transhackmeeting.org Anatolian Project. Megadams built in the Tigris stream from the river itself, which we call »wet the concept there must be access and produc- The hackmeeting is a totally independent and would affect first of all the Kurds in Turkey, radio«, by setting up microphones at certain tion points (wet spots) in various shapes and autonomous gathering of hackers that happened drowning the ancient city of Hasankeyf and radi- points in and along the river, and a smooth trans- places, so that active participation and collabora- in italy in the last 6 years, always in a different cally shake up economic and political affairs in fer to the internet. This audiostream would then tive programming can develop on the ground autonomous zone, like squats or abandoned the whole of the Middle East. And yet, we don't be programmed as an open channel for all to (and in the water). Finally I envisage a dynamic buildings (http://www.hackmeeting.org) This year want to do ordinary water management, nor play insert data of any kind: audio, poetry, graphics, platform which lends itself for global exchange there is the ongoing effort to bring this meeting politics. We just want to go with the flow in any music, video, information, contestation, etc. and events. on a transnational ground, therefore the way we can. For radiomaker Jo van der Spek this Locally the audio may be (re)broadcast by exist- http://www.transhackmeeting.org will be happen- project started when Majed al Jarrar, ing radiostations, new radio initiatives, event-ori- Tilos ing in Pola (Monteparadiso squat, Croatia) the 30 wizkid blogger and technical director ented micro radio, real human gatherings, etc. http://www.tilos.hu last weekend of june. Undercurrents preparation of the workshop >networking desires and necessities of your loved ones. Have http://www.undercurrents.org migrant/refugee groups< will be held on people over for yomango dinners. Steal this mag- A year when the Tory government embarked on Saturday, 20 h. azine! Britain's largest and most destructive road build- 6. The market offers us a false alternative, a ing plan. A year which saw the introduction of a Xiph.org false liberty to choose between one way to spend ‘draconian’ Criminal Justice Bill (CJB) - aimed at http://www.xiph.org our money or another. Your hopes and dreams be making direct action protest a criminal act, Xiph.Org is about open source and the ideals for them of one brand or another, almost always squatting disused buildings a crime, choosing an which free software stands. Open source is not a benefit the same guy. yomango affirms the real alternativ lifestyle an imprisionable offence. This fad any more than the Internet is. It is a neces- alternative: Its either MONEY or yomango! was the arena for Small World Media, a non-prof- sary force driving innovation and the Internet for- 7. yomango turns the mall into a playground. it organisation, to step into and offer media sup- ward while protecting the interests of individuals, These supposed public spaces, where the market port to grassroots direct action campaign groups. artists, developers and consumers. Closed commercializes, regulates and controlls our basic We worked out of a cramped bedroom in North source software is not evil, nor is it necessarily wish to live shared experiences, these human London with just a basic edit suite and a couple inferior in quality to open source. What is certain, antfarms that cross leisure and culture. yomango of borrowed camcorders. We were a couple of however, is that closed source and closed proto- breaks out of the isles and defies dreary rou- frustrated TV producers and a handful of environ- cols do not serve the public interest; they exist by tines. mental activists who began work on what would definition to serve the bottom line of a corpora- 8. YOMANGO is with you in every daily gesture become the country's most recognised ‘alterna- tion. The foundations of the Internet today are you make. Its with you during your best tive news service distributed via video cassette’. built of a long, hardy history of open develop- moments. Those that don't cost money. yomango ment, free exchange of ideas and unprecedented systematizes daily acts. In Barcelona, the yoman- V2 levels of intellectual cooperation. These founda- go franchise held civil disobedience workshops http://www.v2.nl tions continue to weather the storm caused by adapted to the yomango lifestyle, as well as V2_ is an organization that concerns itself with the corporate world's rush to cash in. The point is workshops where imaginative and usefull tools research and development in the field of art and not that companies that try to make money on were produced. Also, encounters, discussions, media technology. V2_'s activities include organ- the new popularity of the net are in some way dinners, parties, all for the public to enjoy. izing (public) presentations, research in its own inherently immoral or greedy. Rather, the point is 9. yomango is a franchise you can form wherever media lab, publishing, developing an online that companies must not be allowed to use the you want. The yomango style is an open ended archive and a shop offering products that are infrastructure we all depend upon as a weapon process, generating tools, prototypes and dynam- related to V2_'s areas of interest. against their rivals to the detriment of all others. ics which flow and proliferate, waiting to be The Internet is a common resource and as with reapropriated and to circulate. A brand name V2V other cooperatively shared resources, the that's everyones. That is born from and for the http://www.v2v.cc »Tragedy of the Commons« looms large. commons. Remember: yomango, only in your For some time now the idea of utilising Competitive behavior dictates that eventually a closest multinational .10. YOMANGO. You want peer2peer structures to assemble a user-built dis- company will act on their own interests to the it? You got it. tribution platform has been circulating. Recently, detriment of all others unless a mechanism exists in the run-up to the G8 meeting in Evian, a con- to prevent it Commodity standards and software Z Communications crete proposal has been made to establish a sys- must be free because open source is that con- http://www.zmag.org tem for the sharing o video. Long-term we believe trolling mechanism. We're the only mechanism ZNet is an enormous site with thousands of files. that we can assemble a sustainable and scalable we've got. Z Magazine articles usually go online publicly in platform for audio-visual materials of a critical this subsection three months after publication, and independent nature. This is an appeal to Yo Mango and years of articles are now available. You can groups/individuals to get involved, dedicate http://www.yomango.net view articles by author or topic, search them, etc. some resources, support and expand the project 10 style tips for a more yomango life because There is also considerable information about Z generally. Works to be distributed over the sys- you can’t buy happiness. and links to related projects. And you can sub- tem will vary from somewhat edited footage suit- 1. yomango [Mango is a popular Spanish cloth- scribe to the print magazine, or to an online site able for use as a stock archive to finished docu- ing chain. yomango, in spanish slang means 'I where you can see the whole magazine simulta- mentaries/films. Each file will be accompanied steal'. 'manga' -spanish for sleave, hence 'man- neous with its print release, including all graph- by metadata in an xml. info file and produced as gar', to sleave, to steal] is a brand name whos ics, etc. ZNet prioritizes activism and movement a searchable RSS feed for people to integrate principal objective, as is the case with all impor- involvement. Many of its components focus on into their own sites and published on its own tant brands, is not the selling of things, but the things people are doing or can do. A good exam- website. mass promoting of a life-style. Specifically, the ple is the subsite devoted to the anti-corporate promoting of shoplifting as a form of disobedi- globalization movement. Vacarme ence and direct action against multinational coor- http://vacarme.eu.org porations. Zalea TV 2. Dare to desire: yomango is your style: risky, http://www.zalea.org/fond.php?titre=en Volxtheater Karawane innovative. It is the articulate proliferation of cre- A little abstract of »TéléviZone d'Action pour la http://no-racism.net/noborderlab ative gestures. yomango is not about theft, its Liberté d'Expression Audiovisuelle« (ZALEA TV): Since 2001 the about magic, about the liberation of desire and The first national non commercial, non profit, PublixTheatreCaravan/VolxtheaterKarawane has inteligence cristalized in the »things« offered for community tv channel in France, Zalea TV was been touring through Europe with the claim for sale. If yomango has a politics, it is the politics launched as a radical alternative to the estab- »noborder - nonation - stop deportation«. Every of happiness, of putting the body first. Be happy, lished media, whose journalistic mission is year the international Caravan moves on as a insultingly happy. yomango: feel pretty! increasingly controled and handicapped by the mobile noborder Laboratory to politically and cul- 3. Because you can't BUY happiness. Capitalism conflicting interests of financial and industrial turally different public places in Europe. The currently works through the exploitation of collec- groups, shareholders and announcers Zalea TV Declaration of »Another war is possible!« calls for tive intelligence and creativity. The market nurish- aims to promote the existence and multiplication the global freedom of movement, the right of free es itself on the ideas, the life forms and the mul- of non profit media namely by actively encourag- choice of housing for migrants and planetarian tiple ways in which people express themselves ing the exchange of programs and means in the citizienship to be discussed and claimed. through words, clothes, gestures, sexuality... Third Audiovisual Sector. Zalea TV invites citizens, Commerce appropriates your desires, your expec- non profit organizations, independent producers, Walled-city.org tations, your experiences and gives them back to directors, videasts, authors ignored or ill repre- http://walled-city.org you, alienated, distant, converted into »things« sented by these media, to use its -editorialized- Walled-city.org is a project still at the beginning. for you to buy. Buy your own happiness, from public access. Just as there can be no democra- It took off last year with two European confer- concentrates. The yomango style proposes reap- cy without a force of opposition, there can be no ences on networking and electronic tools, where propriating, legitimizing and extending the »expro- audiovisual democracy without an audiovisual projects came to know each other that produce priation« of what is, in effect, previously to its force of opposition. materials for public intervention, education, or conversion into »things«, was part of the com- art, seeking ways to exchange and cooperate. mons. yomango, its very much inside of you. Zuendfunk The general idea is to do this within a structure 4. Inventing new gestures that, once repeated, http://www.br-online.de/jugend/zuendfunk that is self-organized and not defined nor ruled open new worlds for us to inhabit. »Buying« is an Zuendfunk is the youth program of Bavarian by the centralized power of webmasters or proj- excercise in passivity. Boring and alianating, it is Broadcast 2. ect founders. This is a good idea, but contrary to a socially predetermined act. yomango is a cre- the reality of common network architectures and ative and exciting practice. »Stealing« is under- the software the’re based on. After experimenting stood to be a crime, but yomango does not with a special, altered CMS we’re now shifting to acknowledge legalities or illegalities. More so, it a Tiki-Wiki. We talked a lot with different groups speaks of a kind of legitimacy which comes from and network initiatives for a year, including work- below, the legitimacy of daily life, of wanting to shops at the EEF and the ESF, to know now that live freely, creatively. Buying is an action based all this is not just a problem of ours. So we are on obedience. yomango is a disobedient style. very interested in any form of exchange or yomango is the hand, which in an irreducible ToolPool. The project will have three workshops insubordinate dance, draws an unmediated arch this year: a workshop to fund a European network of desire from the stand to your pocket, without of migration/refugee groups (March 27 + 28, money or credit cards Bremen); a workshop within the >Networking, 5. yomango is not the propogation of private Arts and Collaboration< conference at Buffalo property through other means. It does not pro- (April 24 + 25); and a workshop on feminist net- pose accumulation. It consists in taking to the working (probably in September). At NEURO, we’ll extreme the free circulation of goods. Potlacht!: have a meeting on Saturday 12 h. A meeting in reapropriate and make circulate, satisfy the 31 NEURO_MAPPING