Post-Soviet Imaginary and Global Coloniality: a Gendered Perspective

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Interview with Madina Tlostanova, www.kronotop.org

When you are the border, when the border cuts through you, when you do not cross borders in order to find yourself on either side, you do not discuss borders from some zero point positionality, but instead you dwell in the border, you do not really have much choice but to be a border thinker. Here Gloria Anzaldua’s dictum is really unmatched: “To survive the Borderlands/ You must live sin fronteras/ Be a crossroads”. Anzaldua calls this painful position “una herida abierta” – an open wound – between the lighter and darker sides of modernity/coloniality. For a Chilean-American playwright and human rights activist Ariel Dorfman it is being a bridge between the North and the South. For British-Caribbean writer Caryl Phillips it is the belonging to the airport as an ideal transit border state of someone whose home is in the Atlantic. For Argentinean diasporic philosopher Maria Lugones it is a journey along other peoples’ worlds with a loving perception which allows the border subject to flexibly and easily switch and juggle different models in her essentially non-aggressive ethical and communicative stance.

As for me, indeed my origins make me a border person more easily than others and being the border and thinking from the border has been my leitmotif both in scholarly works and in fiction. My recent novel “Zalumma Agra” is precisely about border dwellers and thinkers from different countries and époques. For trans-diasporic people like me it is hard to define my own body-politics of knowledge, my local history does not correlate with my native language. I speak the imperial tongue and am ignorant of colonial languages that were supposed to be my native ones, my ethnic composition is discordant with my cultural, ethical and social, as well as religious persuasions. I am a postmodern/postcolonial trickster with decolonial stance, with no land to territorialize in and with an explosive mixture of contradictory values hard to unambiguously taxonomize in any essentialist way.

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“Ómnibus” neoliberal: Procomunes contra Industrias Culturales

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Entrevista con Jorge Luis Marzo

En el redactado del “Anteproyecto de Ley de Simplificación, de Agilidad y Reestructuración Administrativa y de Promoción de la Actividad Económica” propuesto por Convergència i Unió al parlamento, conocido como las “Leyes Ómnibus”, se declaran una serie de cosas: la remodelación del Consell Nacional de les Arts, que pasaría a depender directamente de los puntuales criterios de la Conselleria; la anulación de la autonomía de los centros culturales adscritos a la Generalitat; la desposesión de ciertos derechos de algunas entidades de gestión cultural y de actividades. La aplicación de todo esto creará un enorme daño a la independencia de las programaciones, a la salvaguarda de las manipulaciones políticas y administrativas y a la salubridad del tejido cultural. Pero lo más preocupante, si es que ya no lo es lo anteriormente dicho es este párrafo: “Se entiende por empresas culturales las personas físicas o jurídicas dedicadas a la producción, la distribución o la comercialización de productos culturales incorporados a cualquier tipo de soporte, y también las dedicadas a la producción, la distribución o la comercialización de espectáculos en vivo. Se incluyen dentro de este concepto las personas físicas que ejercen una actividad económica de creación artística o cultural”.

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Ne vrtimo se v krogu, vrtimo se nazaj

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Intervju z Marino Gržinić, _ Roman Kuhar

Konec je pravljice o samostojni Sloveniji kot oazi demokracije in blaginje. Imamo turbo oropano realnost, v kateri so izginile skorajda vse socialne in ekonomske pravice, manjšini (tistim, ki jih je sistem naredil za manjšine) pa je večina odvzela pravice kar na referendumih. Zadnja sramota je Družinski zakonik. Enostavno rečeno: obstaja zgodovina te velike zgodbe o fašizaciji neoliberalne slovenske države, če si sposodim ta zgodovinski pojem za opis procesov diskriminacije, rasizma, razlaščanja…

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Urban revolution is coming

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Interview with David Harvey by Max Rivlin-Nadler

Beginning with the question, How do we organize a whole city? Harvey looks at how the current credit crisis had its root in urban development, and how this development has made any political organizing in American cities virtually impossible in the past 20 years. Harvey is at the forefront of the movement for “the right to the city,” the idea that citizens should have a say in how their cities are developed and organized. Drawing inspiration from the Paris Commune of 1871, where the entire city of Paris overthrew the aristocracy to seize power, Harvey outlines where cities have organized, or could or should organize, themselves in more sane, inclusive ways.

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Judith Butler y Beatriz Preciado en entrevista con la revista Têtu

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Beatriz Preciado: En la época cuando yo estaba en un departamento de arquitectura, estudiaba con Derrida y publiqué mi primer libro, que fue sobre los consoladores, el Manifiesto contra-sexual, en Balland, en una colección editada por Guillaume Dustan. Estaba obsesionada con el problema del cuerpo y de su materialidad, y me sorprendí al descubrir el análisis performativo de la identidad realizado por Butler. Su análisis ha cambiado radicalmente mi manera de pensar los géneros y la sexualidad. Lo que yo quería desde el principio, era tomar este análisis y llevarlo al campo de la corporeidad. Comencé a tomar testosterona y quería hacer un libro sobre la genealogía política de las hormonas, a partir de la obra de Judith y de la de Foucault. Esto fue para mostrar cómo nos hemos desplazado hacia un nuevo régimen de control y de producción del género y de la sexualidad.

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Research Training Module: Interview

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Generally speaking, an interview is a method of questioning. Apart from journalism where the interview is an important tool for investigation as well as presentation of information, various forms of interview techniques are applied in science where interviews are traditionally used to collect data and to address particular research questions. Furthermore, interviews are steadily gaining popularity as a method of artistic expression and research.

The workshop gives an overview of the different uses of interview techniques and designs, depending on the particular contexts. The focus will be on the possible uses of the interview format within the art research context. Besides the theoretical overview, there will be practical/technical training along with presentations of examples. The participants are asked to bring along their own interviews or prepare relevant material that can be discussed and further developed within the workshop.

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Withdraw! Why? Where to?

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REARTIKULACIJA #7, 2009, DE-LINKING FROM CAPITAL AND THE COLONIAL MATRIX OF POWER, The Law of Capital: Histories of Oppression

In summer 2008, the Missile Defense Agreement was signed between the U.S./Polish and U.S/Czech governments to ensure, as it was termed, “our common security.”

On September 17th, 2009, U.S. President Barack Obama suspended the plans for placing missile interceptors in Poland and the radar base in Czech Republic. A new approach was announced that will provide capabilities sooner, built on proven systems and offer greater defenses against the threat of missile attack than the 2007 European missile defense program. The new system will deploy smaller SM-3 missiles, and will be, probably, placed somewhere in Southern Europe or Turkey.

The documentary, Hit-to-Kill, emphasizes political and strategic elements of the deployment of U.S. antimissile shield in Europe, entailing a dialogue between concepts such as security, global dominance, democracy, propaganda and resistance.

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