One of the important issues in today’s world is the question on how to circumvent dominant assumption and practices of any fixed categories in a society. A possible strategy to that is that we should be creating constructive-productive spaces – spaces of collective resistance that are also meeting places for all peripheralized or/and marginalized subjectivities. In doing so, radically new and different forms of citizenship could be redefined and realized. But it is important, first of all and before any further actions are taken that we recognize what our pre-judgments and our fixed and determined viewpoints are and realize that there exist numerous standpoints and horizons. Which means that we should try and understand “a horizon that is not our own in relation to our own”. Of course, this does not mean we should agree on everything; on the contrary, “the less we agree, the more we create an area, a field of vitality in different branches of this phylum of molecular revolution, and the more we reinforce this area.” 1
The debates and reflections about the foundations of society could be collaborative, dialogical, antagonistic, or conflictual. Change occurs as the “tension” leads to a new concept of reality. It is at the intersection with something unfamiliar that binary opposites (us-other, inside-outside) are transformed into trialectical twist; and the newly constituted concepts remain open to infinite array of circumstances and subjects. Eventhough locating oneself there is difficult it is also necessary. That is the starting point where the (cultural) norms of any society are being bypassed.
One of the prepositions on how to reject the role of being mere “objects” in the homogenized realms of the world and to undertake to become “subjects” is to learn through living experience on the basis of dialogue and dialogic inquiry. It should be taken into consideration though, that any kind of education reflects a narrative that “includes its ideal vision of educators, learners, teaching and learning process”. The progressive radical education should therefore be able to de-educate itself to the point where people learn social and political responsibility “only by experiencing that responsibility” (Freire). These moments are a part of a larger process – that of knowing and of cognizing, which also implies recognizing. Knowledge that arises from these processes is not a fixed thing but an aspect of emancipation.
The importance of art in the wider social context is its ability to create situations where people can allow themselves to be something else than they are in their ordinary social roles. This creates “alternative narratives” that permit otherness on a variety of expressive levels.
There is a motivation in art to create a form of human social configuration that lies beyond existing social forms. But solidarities, identification between minorities, marginalized and other groups are pseudo-dialectical unless this alignment is mediated through identification with a particular group, as Bhabha emphasized.
Recent examples in Ljubljana (Slovenia) tell us that art could be a dialogic praxis too and where artists do not only work or create for the people but with the people. For example; an informal self-organized production network of groups and individuals TEMP tries to maintain an organic and open structure of the network, which allows them to seek new ways of participation and organization beyond the framework of institutions. This is, they say, when the synergy of a multitude occurs: a multitude assembles at a certain point to achieve a common goal, and then equally quickly disintegrates.
TEMP’ first experiences with constituting such communities were in the beginning stage of their activities, when they appropriated parking lots and parks in Ljubljana with a mobile pavilion. They would set up the prefabricated structure in a given situation, a private parking lot or an untended park, and with an educational-cultural program informed the passers-by of the position and significance of the space itself. They called this technique “activating space”: opening a stagnating environment to the field of discourse with direct action. These kinds of constructive methods encouraged interaction in the public domain, and concrete examples proved that the alternatives in that space were possible.
In February TEMP set a temporary interactive base in the SKUC gallery; the gallery space was transformed into a working space, where workshops and talks were held. They investigated the potentials of the temporary structures and the creation of self-organized space. But in order to achieve any kind of constructive results they needed to develop the ideas together with the people who lived and /or worked there; they wrote letters and signed petitions to the city government, organized talks and other events – in order to improve and re-vitalize living and working conditions in the old part of Ljubljana and enable the temporary use of the empty spaces for cultural and other purposes as well as to organize joint actions in a climate of intolerance and passivity.
All the reflections and reactions of the people involved in the Skuc project later on unexpectedly resulted in praxis – in a temporary occupation of the empty bicycle factory ROG. This was and still is the space where TEMP and other groups and individuals started new radical program open to all engaged in the non-profit sector, for the realization of independent production of cultural and social content which also included the needs of the local community surrounding it. Coincidently, the first public event was a press conference by Antonio Negri. As Nova, a temporary user of the space put it, the multitude and the co-existence of different voices that happened in the factory constituted a better community and society as such. And it was through their actions that degraded city structure was being re-generated by creating new public spaces through workshops, talks, cleaning actions, new tactical media productions, recycling, alternative power solutions, involvement with asylum seekers, with the “erased” (residents erased from Slovenia’s civil registries), and other undesirable elements that the state systematically oppresses. The space simultaneously brought together a variety of people; university professors, homeless, artists, asylum seekers etc. It engaged everybody in a discourse, which did not simply reflect a situation since it was a situation.
ROG is an important moment in a current pro-profit oriented, nationalistic, conservative economic/political/social milieu in Slovenia, which shows how a small self-generated community succeeded in creating an experimental space on the basis of respect, horizontal distribution of knowledge, sharing of ideas, “gift economics” and democratic extensibility. Eventhough ROG factory is still lacking an official permission, it is in a dialogue with the city council. Seen from another perspective, ROG could be a sample for regeneration of other critical city vacancies, putting into practice ideas on how the city, their council and deprivileged communities can benefit from it. Eventhough this proposal might sound to some like a utopian reverie, which eludes control by politics, economy and their predominant mechanisms, it represents a new kind of social power, new ways of organization of collaboration and of exchange and hence create a self-defined productive domain of people working in areas which are left uncovered by the government and corporations. ROG is also a space, which enables people to take a stand and act according with their possibilities; and where each subjectivity is at the same time worker-activist with numerous hybrid competences proving that “there exists an alternative” to the dominant relations and the hierarchical order so very much present in the world today.
Footnotes:
1 Charles J. Stivale, Discussion with Felix Guattari, at https://webpages.ursinus.edu/rrichter/
Bojana Piskur (1970), curator, lives and works in Ljubljana, Slovenia.
