Three Interviews

How to Work Together: Seeking models of solidarity and alliance , 2021

The way in which Marianne Savallmpi and I have introduced ourselves over the past two years of working as co-Artistic Directors has been to say that we are "a team responsible for the overall programming, managing M{ if }'s multilingual library, its ongoing archive, curating workshops and events, making coffee, maintaining the space and its day-today functioning, liaising with invited artists and performers, offering technical and documentation support, as well as managing finances and accounts". Through multi-layered, recurrent work, we have aimed to create a space and ethos to 1 " As a powerful everyday concept, "the economy" has affective purchase; people pay attention when we start playing around with itthinking about it differently, for instance, or working to build a 'parallel economy'. Adopting a category that has become common sense, we are attempting to make it "useful" for projects of non-capitalist development. If we abandon the concept, and resort to an ontology that doesn't involve an "economy," we are at risk of being ignored. But by placing "economy" alongside "parallel" and "community," we draw on resonant contemporary values of social inclusion and interdependence, transforming the "economy concept" into a platform for ethical approaches to surviving and thriving."-Gibson-Graham, J.K., 'The End of Capitalism (As We knew It)'. University of Minnesota, 2006, p. xxi facilitate the conditions for making significant interventions through cinema, performance, music, spoken word, discourse, visual arts, and activism based practice, discourse, and pedagogy. From this immersed vantage point within the workings of the Museum of Impossible Forms (affectionately called M{ if } by its friends, members, and supporters), I have regularly spoken and written about M{ if }'s aim as an iterative model that manifests a new kind of museum thinking, of museum making as a critical artistic practice ; its socio-political and ethical positions as a space dedicated not just the margins as a geographical entity, but also the marginalisation of time, space, and bodies 2 ; a space seeking to affect a paradigm shift to the site of culture away from a centralised and elitist position 3 ; of the real and perceived relationship of M{ if } to its surrounding communities, and the process of embedding M{ if } within Kontula-as it "engages the performativity of its own culture and as a contemporary institution remaking its own centre" 4. This performativity feeds into the mythology of M{ if }, and every event in the space begins with a now traditional evocation of "Welcome to the center of Helsinki". Whose Economy and for Whom? This publication aims to deal with a problem that is seemingly complex in its particularities, yet simple at its outset. The question, How to work together? begets further queries asking, who is this question posed to and who is supposed to work together? If even those who are 'together', are not by default on an 'equal footing' (a fact that we are implicitly aware of through the several socio-political and economic structures that implicate privilege and power relations, daily), then how is the distribution of collective labour defined and made equitable? Who is visible and who remains behind-the-scenes? Or to quote a question by FAR Night School during one of the 'In Practice' sessions 5 : Who does the dishes, and who gives the interviews, once the revolution is underway? "[W]e grapple with multiplying questions of use, participation, and visibility. Never before in history has there been such an opportunity to produce, and access, so many different types of publics". 6 Again, the question of 'we' is a topical one: at which stage do we define 'We the People?' An almost Kafkaesque transmogrification connects the prehistoric past to a sci-fi future. 'Who really are 'the people'? And what operation of discursive power circumscribes 'the people' at any given moment, and for what purpose?' 7 What has changed? "What distinguishes political from civil society is that This text is written as a contribution for the Impossible Reader, volume 02, 'How to Work together', to be published by the Museum of Impossible Forms, 2021

Zsuzsa Ferge, Iván Szelényi, Miklós Hadas – three prominent and acclaimed social scientist in the field not only of the Hungarian but also of international sociology and social sciences. Szelényi, an Emeritus Professor of sociology and political science at Yale University, and a former dean of Social Sciences at New York University Abu Dhabi; Ferge, a Professor Emeritus at Eötvös Loránd University of Sciences, Budapest; and Hadas, a professor at Corvinus University in Budapest and a visiting professor at Central European University – not only have made outstanding contributions to their discipline, but also greatly influenced many of their student’s work. Judit Durst is one of them. She has currently been working on a comparative monograph on Szelényi’s and Ferge’s work in the context of the birth of Hungarian critical sociology - the interview below is part of this project.

2016

UNIDEE - UNIVERSITY OF IDEAS 2016 There is no surer way of evading the world than by Art, and no surer way of uniting with it than by Art. Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe, The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe In 2015, UNIDEE - UNIVERSITY OF IDEAS, inheriting a long experience of residency for international artists (2000-2012), launched within the unique and special context of Cittadellarte – a research centre and an exhibition area – the experimentation of an educational prototype or ‘model’ that combined theory with practice, which bases the processes of learning on doing and discovery, favouring the exercising of imagination through a meeting with the differences and plurality of languages, and that responds to the desire and need to delve more deeply into things, phenomena and stories through relationships, dialogue and the exchanging of views of the participants. Through residential dynamics, UNIDEE sees education as a life experience and social process characterised by the particular cognitive and emotional intensity of the exchange by members of the spontaneous community that is formed each week within the module. This is an educational model based on a research and project laboratory under the guidance of a mentor who is an expert in the theme of that specific module and the active participation of a guest with the objective of examining the topics in their complexity and many facets, trying to maintain a balance of the thought forms (theories) and free or unforeseeable situations (creative processes). The participants create a common space, conversational and relational, in which attention is placed on the procedure and final collective shape that closes the educational experience without turning to easy and pre-established formulae but through the organisation of complicated situations that vary each time, without worrying about precise goals that need to be completed but reaching their conclusions slowly following the time required for reflection, deeper consideration and imagination. The laboratory modality with which we work together with mentors requires the participants to be involved in questioning their own field, using dialogue and collaboration to evolve their ability to interact in this game as though exercising in a gym of complexities, the unpredictability of performing moves; this allows the development of a doing attitude, giving value to mistakes, comparing contrasting points of view, opening up to view and do things differently than usual, shifting from one position to another without losing attraction for personal territory or language; favouring the ability to localize problems, enter into details, ask questions, confound significance and uses, and create new openings in meanings. The didactic approach is a demo-practical one of responsible use of power, in the manner of circulating and distributing knowledge within the group, which is expressed, for example, in the dual-dialogue between mentor and guest and between the mentor and participants where the horizontal and circular sharing of knowledge is aimed at the creation of a common ground and language. A brief time, a pause of one week or longer (for those deciding to return) is what the participants allow themselves away from their usual routine so as to expand on a topic or add final touches to a project, and therefore return to study or work in their own contexts. The intent of the modules is to form ‘artivators’, people who intend to use art as a methodology, practice and language, becoming agents for the activation of responsible actions and processes in urban transformation and social emancipation in the territories in which they live and carry out their professional activities. The originality of the UNIDEE programme lies in its collaborating with Universities and Academies of the Fine Arts so as to identify reciprocal shortcomings and intervene in the more immediate critical necessities to elaborate together and find another path compared to that indicated by the traditional educational system; and, furthermore, thanks to the flexibility of the modules, to invent new residential formats, similar to what happened with the re-defining of long residencies and in the development of two projects co-financed by the European Union “Ottomans and Europeans” and “Understanding Territoriality: Identity, Place & Possession – TIPP”, where every week the artists in residence met couples of intellectuals and operators in the sector at an international level and exchanged ideas and opinions with them, having collective discussions full of new stimuli and in-depth content for the final Open Studios. Encouraged by the unexpected high number of participants (111 presences from 16 different countries) and their enthusiastic feedbacks and proposals for future developments of this new educational model experimented in 2015, the intention for 2016 is to continue to analyse and thus fine-tune this educational method through the close examination of three other macro- topics, which are research, gift and alteration, considered central to both theoretical reflection and the practice of artists operating in the public sphere. With an interdisciplinary approach articulating these three concepts according to the Trinamic principle of Michelangelo Pistoletto, that bases the cognitive process on the combination of detachment of an analytical approach with the implication of who is profoundly involved in the situations, the three semantic areas are considered in their interrelationships as sites for generating forms of resistance, new possibilities in meaning and social transformation. The word ‘research’ contains the act of ‘searching anew’ that refers back to semantic proximity, as well as for assonance, in the action of ‘encircling’ something, a study object, a disciplinary field, a territory and leads us back to that which is an aspect of the study method, in other words to the condition of losing one’s self while researching, with the impression of moving in a labyrinth (in which the work, from labor, shares the same etymological root labh) to regain the thread, relocate direction. Besides the willingness to lose one’s self, the research also includes the strain of intellectual and poetical in-depth analysis, attitudes of care and dedication, the ability to enter into the crevices, into the circles of things and discover hidden details due to curiosity and amazement. Today this is nearly a privilege, as it is so difficult, to take a break from study, without taking anything away from work, to think according to the slow time of research that favours activities of reflection, impossible under the pressures of a project. The latter, was already used by conceptual artists in the late 1960s (in particular by the Art and Project Gallery in Amsterdam) to denote a proposal for an artwork, from the 1990s it became a broad term used to include various types of social art (collective practices, groups of self-organised activists, participatory art and socially involved and curatorial experiments), in which duration and process are more privileged compared to the aesthetic solution. In the present phase of cognitive capitalism dominated by networks and projects our working life is described by a succession of ‘projects’, based on efficient connections the value of which lies in the fact that they allow us to generate or enter into a following project, often very different in context and content (L. Boltanski and E. Chiapello, The New Spirit of Capitalism, 2005). Having liberated the restricted space of the canvas and metabolised the processes and dispositifs through which life enters art and vice-versa, the challenge for artists today is to not abandon their own field of research but to occupy themselves with it, taking care to examine any potential in depth and to cultivate new possibilities. To not tie one’s self totally to the exclusive rules and transformative power of the art system, but rather stop without losing interest in one’s own research and language, and without being satisfied with crossings connected to the themed projects of a certain Biennale or exhibition or space. What are the survival strategies to resist the neo-liberalist spiral emphasized by multiple projects? How do we regain the slow and unproductive time for research today? [...]

Societamutamentopolitica, 2014

The rapid growth of the 'studies' profoundly influenced the social sciences in recent decades. Against the background of this reality, to ask today the question of Weber's value neutrality appears an anachronism.

Using the work of Bertell Ollman on the theory of dialectical materialist research, and that of Richard Levinss & Richard Lewontin and John Bellamy Foster on its application in the natural sciences, I argue that science itself is an area of class struggle. Rather than being a neutral and objective ground, it is riddled with hidden ideological assumptions and implications. The advantages of a dialectial approach to science are compared to the two contradicting approaches of 'crude materialism' and 'natural idealism'.

Institutionelle Grundlagen für die Funktionierung der Ökonomik unter den Bedingungen der Transformation: Sammelwerk der wissenschaftlichen Artikel.Vol. 2 -Verlag SWG imex GmbH, Nürnberg, Deutschland, 2014. -275 S.

Q «Whenever humanity seems condemned to heaviness, I think I should fly like Perseus into a different space. I don't mean escaping into dreams or into the irrational. I mean that I have to change my approach, look at the world from a different perspective, with a different logic and with fresh methods of cognition and verification. The images of lightness that I seek should not fade away like dreams dissolved by the realities of present and future. […] Today every branch of science seems intent on demonstrating that the world is supported by the most minute entities: such as the messages of Dna, the impulses of neurons, and quarks, and neutrinos wandering through space since the beginning of time. […] The second industrial revolution, unlike the first, does not present us with such crushing images as rolling mills and molten steel, but with bits in a flow of information travelling along circuits in the form of electronic impulses. The iron machines still exist, but they obey the orders of weightless bits.» Italo Calvino * Vincenzo Moretti is in charge of the section Society, culture and innovation at the Giuseppe Di Vittorio Foundation; he is visiting professor on Sociology of organisation at the University of Salerno.

2015

transformations throughout history. What kind of forces affect the body? How do historical representations function in their original contexts? And most importantly, how could one activate historical turns and their relevance for the current conditions within topical visual art? In the formalization of the distance inherent in each representation, Pisano specifically notices possibilities to arrive at a temporary, permanently repeating obstruction and liberation of the semiotic triangle of object-representation-subject. From the perspective of art, that could be a temporary claim of space for actualization of the conditions of life. Jeremiah Day's work LA Homicide departs from the website of the same name of the Los Angeles Times. On that site, the newspaper gives an historical account of facts and a statistical survey of the daily victims of street violence in the "global slums" of Los Angeles. Day deploys these historical data as a starting point, as a map and as an epic urban poem. He visits the crime scenes, photographs them, and provides them with handwritten comments. In combination with cinematographic observation, these texts produce a certain connection between brutal, historical reality and the topical Hollywood paradigm, that, resigned in a certain fatal consciousness, no longer believes in the narrative of the problem-solving capacity of human beings. Against this anthropological condition, artists can only place their own body, Day claims: a performative act entirely in line with Hannah Arendt's thought where action is understood as an autonomous activity in public space. Nicoline van Harskamp's project, Yours in Solidarity, demands attention for anarchism as a historical movement. To that end, Van Harskamp analyses and archives correspondences of a late twentieth-century Amsterdam protagonist. Yours in Solidarity consists of an archiving, textual presentation of original quotations articulating various aspects of the once personally experiences and spent moments of micro-politics. In addition, interviews are conducted with actors playing the authors of the letters. From our time dominated by a post-Fordist concept of performance and a neo-liberal context of prioritizing the economic realm, the actors speculate how they would re-think and re-activate an awareness of Hakim Bey's Temporary Autonomous Zone. The convergence of these three different approaches to autonomy (a sanctuary with idiosyncratic laws, an engaged intervention, a disciplining school) enabled the Amsterdam Pavilion to link and match its questions and issues with the knowledgeeconomic and institutional conditions and constituents of art education. It is precisely these three perspectives in their inextricable connection that articulate the institutional preconditions of the academy as a temporary autonomous zone. That is, the academy as an institutional zone no longer comprehending autonomy as an inherent conditio sine qua, but understanding it emphatically as a forced societally constructed possibility leaving space for rejecting the instrumentalizing diktat of efficiency. For example by presenting itself as an experimental, free space for critical research, artistic thinking, and non-conformist production of novel knowledge and alternative perspectives.

Etnološka istraživanja

The text depicts the role of Vladimir Tkalčić in the Ethnographic Museum in Zagreb from 1919 to 1934, a period characterised by the so-called diarchy between him and Salamon Berger. Various museological and expert concepts that they represented and implemented were a reflection of new ideas and inherited concepts in turbulent times after World War I and the establishment of a new state, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. Tentatively, we can speak of a “scientific” approach and a “commercial” approach that juxtaposed, intertwined, and complemented each other. The data from the museum documentation show that S. Berger understood the activities of the Museum as a continuation of his previous trade and craft practices, while V. Tkalčić sought to introduce museological and scientific principles in the museum work.