[artinfo] Fwd: ART AND REVOLUTION, Artistic Activism During Long 20th Century

[Janos Sugar]

>ART AND REVOLUTION
>Artistic Activism During Long 20th Century
>
>Author: Gerald Raunig

>  The original title:

>Kunst und Revolution. Künstlerischer Aktivismus 
>im langen 20. Jahrhundert, Wien: Turia+Kant 2005

>Free download of the English translation of the 
>book in PDF: 
>www.republicart.net/publications/artandrevolution.pdf
>
>In this study, author Gerald Raunig presents 
>prolific material for the analysis of the 
>diverse relations of exchange between art and 
>activism based on a poststructuralist revolution 
>theory. Gustave Courbet's engagement in the 
>Paris Commune, German activism of the 1910s, 
>post-revolutionary Soviet art around Eisenstein 
>and Tretjakov, the Situationist Internationale 
>in Paris in May '68, the confrontation of 
>Viennese Actionism and the students movement in 
>the action "art and revolution", and finally the 
>genealogy of the PublixTheatreCaravan from an 
>anarchist theatre collective of the 90s to a 
>transversal interlinking of anti-globalisation 
>and the European noborder network: These 
>exemplary investigations open up an alternative 
>art history of the "long" 20th century.
>
>Gerald Raunig, philosopher, art theoretician, 
>lives in Vienna. He is codirector of eipcp 
>(European Institute for Progressive Cultural 
>Policies), Vienna, coordinator of the 
>transnational research project republicart, 
>lecturer on political aesthetics at the 
>Institute for Philosophy, University of 
>Klagenfurt/A and at the Department of Visual 
>Studies, University of Lüneburg/D, editor of the 
>Austrian journal for radical democratic cultural 
>politics, Kulturrisse; numerous lectures, essays 
>and publications in the fields of contemporary 
>philosophy, art theory, political aesthetics and 
>cultural politics.
>
>From the book "Art and Revolution":
>"It is time to ask ourselves whether there does 
>not exist, from a theoretical and practical 
>point of view, a position which avoids 
>absorption within the opaque and terrible 
>essence of the State. In other words, whether 
>there does not exist a viewpoint which, 
>renouncing the perspective of those who would 
>construct the constitution mechanistically, is 
>able to maintain the thread of genealogy, the 
>force of constituent praxis, in its extensivity 
>and intensity. This point of view exists. It is 
>the viewpoint of daily insurrection, of 
>continual resistance, of constituent power." 
>Antonio Negri
>
>"Following Antonio Negri, the post-structuralist 
>theory of revolution that is to be developed 
>here proposes the revolutionary machine as a 
>triad. The three components of the revolutionary 
>machine, as far as they can be clearly 
>distinguished in the analysis, are mutually 
>differentiated and actualized in relation to one 
>another. Their partial overlapping determines 
>the consistency of both the occurrence and the 
>concept of revolution. The revolutionary machine 
>continuously runs through its components, taking 
>place in the emergence of insurrection, 
>resistance and constituent power." Gerald 
>Raunig, Art and Revolution