Giorgio Agamben. The end of the poem. Studies in Poetics

all documentation of the lecture in 3 parts

- WHAT, IF ANYTHING, IS AN ATOM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bD6MhkEFPZo&list=PL94B3B86F8335A4EF&feature=plpp_play_all

Nikolay Chernyshevsky. What is to be done?

Published at the catalogue of Chto Delat? solo exhibition at Kunsthalle Baden-Baden

(see here: http://www.kunsthalle-baden-baden.de/kaufen/publikationen/)

[…] one must assume the inheritance of Marxism, assume its most “living” part, which is to say, paradoxically, that which continues to put back on the drawing board the question of life, spirit, or the spectral, of life-death beyond the opposition between life and death. This inheritance must be reaffirmed by transforming it as radically as will be necessary. Such a reaffirmation would be both faithful to something that resonates in Marx’s appeal – let us say once again in the spirit of his injunction – and in conformity with the concept of inheritance in general. Inheritance is never a given, it is always a task. It remains before us just as unquestionably as we are the heirs of Marxism, even before wanting or refusing to be, and, like all inheritors, we are in mourning. In mourning in particular for what is called Marxism.¹

– Jacques Derrida

“What is Communist art”? This straight, but strange, question is asked in the midst of a recent Chto Delat? performance at Smart Project Space in Amsterdam, instigating a collective discussion on artistic methods, forms and aims. The question is straight forward in the sense of its relation being object and method, communist art – although this might lead to a number of complications, as is evident in the ensuing discussion itself – but perhaps also slightly strange due to its specific injunction of time, placing the method and object in the present tense – what is communist art – and deliberately not the past, indicating communist art as something actual rather than historical. The question thus has an untimely timeliness, only accentuated by the title of the event in the context of which it is posed: WHERE has communism gone?, which certainly implies a past tense, if not a passing, then the least a transposition, and clearly echoes the work of mourning proposed by Jacques Derrida in his meditation of the withering of Marxism in his book Specters of Marx – The State of the Debt, the work of Mourning, & the New International from 1994.

Slavoj Žižek. WELCOME TO THE DESERT OF POST-IDEOLOGY
panel discussion:
- IS THERE A REASON IN HISTORY? STATE AND REVOLUTION TODAY. (participants Keti Chuchrov, Artyom Magun, Alexey Penzin & Dmitry Vilensky)

in 6 parts - go to
https://vimeo.com/48208575
https://vimeo.com/48210679

to watch further...

Zizek_The_Ongoing_Soft_Revolution.pdf

THE TRUE BLASPHEMY

Pussy Riot members accused of blasphemy and hatred of religion? The answer is easy: the true blasphemy is the state accusation itself, formulating as a crime of religious hatred something which was clearly a political act of protest against the ruling clique. Recall Brecht’s old quip from his Beggars’ Opera: “What is the robbing of a bank compared to the founding of a new bank?” In 2008, Wall Street gave us the new version: what is the stealing of a couple of thousand of dollars, for which one goes to prison, compared to financial speculations that deprive tens of millions of their homes and savings, and are then rewarded by state help of sublime grandeur? Now, we got another version from Russia, from the power of the state: What is a modest Pussy Riot obscene provocation in a church compared to the accusation against Pussy Riot, this gigantic obscene provocation of the state apparatus which mocks any notion of decent law and order?

global left.pdf

Vladimir Lenin // What is to be done?

I. Совместное существование: два типа репрезентации

Недавно российская группа художников и теоретиков «Что делать?», название которой восходит к программной книге В.И. Ленина, приняла участие в выставке «Коллективное творчество» в Кассельском Фридрициануме[1]. Показанная ими работа, также названная «Что делать?», представляла собой две расположенные рядом экранные проекции. На одном из экранов показывалась секвенция слайдов, запечатлевшая членов группы, на другом – субтитры перевода их оживленной дискуссии. Речь в дискуссии шла о формах совместной работы, об идеологии коллективности и сотрудничества, причем ирония здесь встречалась с преданностью идее, а индивидуальные позиции – с беспристрастными суждениями. Это был разговор друзей и в то же время соратников. И пока дискуссия звучит на русском, а на английском сменяют друг-друга фразы на темном экране, на другом экране мы видим этих молодых людей, холодной ночью в некой городской среде, со стаканами и сигаретами в руках, сидящих или стоящих, взгромоздившихся на обшарпанную бетонную площадку. Сцена при этом освещена ровно настолько, насколько того требует видеосъемка.

Введение в гендерные исследования. Часть II. Хрестоматия. СПб. – ХЦГИ. Сс.649 – 670. 2001

Provided by General Intellect

Provided by General Intellect