[artinfo] ab-strike program in milan during expo

[Geert Lovink]

AB-STRIKE is a platform set up by S.a.L.E. Docks 
and MACAO, a practice of subversive imagination, 
a laboratory of commons, a hotbed of actions, 
artworks, talents and debates that will come into 
being from the 1st to the 8th of May 2015, in 
Milan and Venice.

A science-fiction platform for an abstract strike

May 1st-8th, 2015 Milan/Venice

The work of the artist has no defined boundaries, 
nonetheless it has become paradigmatic within a 
productive model increasingly oriented to 
linguistic, relational and performative skills in 
which creativity is an essential managerial asset 
and terms like innovation and culture attract 
each other like magnets. The artist and the 
cultural worker have questioned their own role in 
the light of Postfordism, Neoliberalism, 
cognitive capitalism and so on. Artists often 
work for free, someone says that they are always 
at work even if they read a book, visit an 
exhibition, chat with friends at the bar and use 
social networks. For them, as for many others, 
the word strike sounds like a conundrum. How do 
you block the industry of culture? How do you 
damage the "event economy"? How do you overthrow 
finance and the algorithms that produced the 
crisis, impoverishing the workers and enriching 
the lobbies of speculators? The control over big 
data allows a massive profiling of social 
behaviours: collective intelligence is the newest 
and more important  commodity for the capital. 
With algorithms, wealth is produced through a 
constant biopolitical monitoring. Is it possible 
to fight the financial abstraction with an 
abstract strike? AB-STRIKE is a platform set up 
by S.a.L.E. Docks and MACAO, a practice of 
subversive imagination, a laboratory of commons, 
a hotbed of actions, artworks, talents and 
debates that will come into being from the 1st to 
the 8th of  May 2015, in Milan and Venice. In 
tune with the international mobilisations against 
"EXPO Milano 2015", the platform tackles two 
different urban dimensions both characterised by 
the same primacy of the so called event economy. 
It is not by chance that this year the Venice 
Biennale choses an early opening and will run 
parallel to the Expo in Milan. Let's re-imagine 
the concept of festival and artistic events. If 
creativity is the fuel of capital, let's invent 
new forms of artists organisations that challenge 
the power through new languages and new forms of 
self-governance.

TALKS

PANEL 1 (@Macao) // 4th May 2015, 2.30 - 7.30 pm
The political value of new technologies and 
cultural innovation. Is the future political?
Adam Arvidsson, Franco Berardi BIFO, Andrea 
Fumagalli, Stefano Lucarelli, Marco Sachy 
(D-Cent), Tiziana Terranova, Akseli Virtanen and 
Robin Hood Minor Asset Management Cooperative, 
and MACAO
Can technological innovation and decentralized 
models of Governance build commonfare, fighting 
new forms of military biopolitical control by the 
capital?

PANEL 2 (@S.a.L.E. Docks) // 7th May 2015, 5.30 - 8.30 pm
Let's Strike! Towards an inter-continental 
platform for art and cultural workers
Global Ultra Luxury Faction/Gulf Labor, Noah 
Fisher/Artists as Debtor,  Florian Schneider 
(Head of Trondheim Academy of Fine Arts), Roberto 
Ciccarelli (Researcher/Journalist), S.a.L.E. 
Docks, Macao and many othersŠ
This round table brings together different 
perspectives on the issue of artists and cultural 
workers organisation, from the U.S. to Northern 
and Mediterranean Europe. We will start from 
issues such as: the effect of debt over the life 
of the artist. The necessity of inventing new 
models of production and forms of life against 
the neoliberal frame. The role of multinational 
art brands in the new global division of labour. 
The need for new methods of struggle and 
networking to go beyond the capturing devices of 
art institutions and creative industries.

PANEL 3  (@S.a.L.E. Docks) // 8th May 2015, 18.30 - 20.30
The Strike in the Age of Financial Abstraction
Antonio Negri (Philosopher), Matteo Pasquinelli 
(Independent Researcher), Marco Assennato 
(Independent Researcher), Florian Schneider (Head 
of Trondheim Academy of Fine Arts).
Abstraction is an ambiguous word, it doesn't only 
describe a peculiar attitude towards the artistic 
sign, but also the capitalistic propensity to see 
work as the general equivalent. Today the storage 
of metadata and the use of complex algorithms by 
the capital, forces the multitudes to ask new 
questions about the efficacy of their political, 
linguistic and artistic practices.


WORKSHOPS

Workshop 1 (@Macao) // May 1st-5th
The famous Robin Hood Asset Management Cooperative opens office in Milan!
Robin Hood is the black sheep of activist hedge 
funds which bends powers of finance to the 
production and protection of the common. It uses 
capacities of finance to reopen the economic 
space. It reengineers financial technologies to 
see what more can finance do. The Robin Hood 
service strategy is the same as it was 600 years 
ago in Sherwood: attack the routes of wealth 
appropriated from the people, distribute the 
booty, big party. But the methods are a little 
different. Robin Hood does now big data, uses 
algorithms and blockchains, follows transactions 
at the U.S. stock exchanges, makes databanks of 
market actors, deconstructs them from individuals 
into dividuals, and shares their most important 
means of production to everyone. The Robin Hood 
team comes to Macao to work on the launch of the 
Hood Notes. The Hood Notes are a first generation 
non-cryptocurrency cryptoasset (Collaterilized 
Equity Note) backed up by the Robin Hood's 
dynamic portfolio of stocks which imitates the 
emerging conventions of the financial oligarchy 
at the market. Nothing like has been done before. 
Welcome to the wild side of finance. The Milan 
office is open.
You are welcome to join, follow or take part in 
the work. Robin Hood Milan office workers, among 
others: Akseli Virtanen, Brett Scott, Tiziana 
Terranova, Benjamin Lozano, Pekko Koskinen, Dan 
Hassan, Emanuele Braga, Teppo Vesikukka, Harri 
Homi, Ana Fradique, Tere Vadén, Luca Guzzetti.

Workshop 2 (@S.a.L.E. Docks) // 6th May 2015, 2.30 - 6.30 pm
Points of Interruptions. A Strike Preparation Camp
Daniel Blanga-Gubbay (Aleppo)
A strike starts with the body: it starts from the 
position that a body takes in respect to the one 
it had to take. [Š]Then, an interruption is not 
simply the refusal to go along with the normal 
flow of things: the same gesture refigure the 
inclinations of the surface. It creates a 
deviation in the normative flows of things, 
opening up a gap between the permitted and the 
possible. Aleppo opens for a day a "Strike 
Preparation Camp", a set of questions, readings 
and videos on the power of interruptions and the 
role of art as strike. The day is articulated as 
three Points of Interruption.

	* Introduction: is the strike an action 
or the interruption of an action? On flux and 
violence (introduction, video session and a 
reading group)
	* "Art Strike / Art as a Strike". 
Discussion with Florian Schneider on "10 working 
points for artists in new divisions of labor".
	* The Continuous Interruption: thinking 
interruption beyond the idea of exception.

ACTIONS

- Robin Hood Minor Asset Management Cooperative, 
minor asset management and MACAO. The parasite: 
stealing money to financial markets  in order to 
create the common
The Milano Operation takes on a critical issue: 
the systematic exploitation of volunteer work, 
with 8000 workers serving for Expo, their only 
payment being free meals.

- Global Ultra Luxury Faction/Gulf Labor
"We have yet to hear the Guggenheim's public 
statement about this disturbing event"

- ZEBRA (a laboratory on abstract strike in Macao)
Let's imagine a future in which all we can create 
is already probably expected. The machines can 
calculate our behavior, our desire, our time. 
This future is now. How can we suspend this time, 
what is the point now for a strike? It means 
interrupting this cycle, forging an unexpected 
plot, changing the point of view. ZEBRA is a 
collective experiment that during Expo 2015 will 
explore the art of disappearing,  of not being 
seen, of not being neither the rule nor the 
abnormal. We want to be out of the catalogue, 
besiege the imagination, reaffirm the force of 
desire and reclaim the future.
Co-created by Sara Leghissa and Francesca de 
Isabella (Strasse), Emanuele Braga and Maddalena 
Fragnito (Landscape Choreography), Camilla Pin, 
Luca Chiaudano, Cristina Rizzo, Monica Gentile, 
Leonardo Delogu and Valerio Sirna, Benno 
Steinegger, Nhandan Chirco and Branko Popovic, 
Isabella Mongelli, Livia Porzio, Paolo Gerbaudo, 
Roberta Bonetto, Silvia Calderoni and Ilenia 
Caleo, GianMaria Di Pasquale, Flora Vannini, 
Sarah Barberis.

- Urban Image of a Citizen
Small urban actions appear in the crowds passing 
through the city. As sudden events, they generate 
breaks that qualify the time and the place where 
they happen, opportunities to destabilize flows 
relating them with a part that ceases to be 
invisible. The city as a permanent laboratory 
where cohabitation of artists, students and 
residents creates new paths, open spaces of 
suspension and new possibilities to the 
unexpected.The actions will be repeated in five 
different points of the city, adjacent to bridges 
and passageways.
Performers: Marianna Andrigo, Roberta Da Soller, 
Carlotta Bisello, Michela Solinas, Gea Polimeni. 
Part of OPEN# 7 Project in collaboration with 
Marianna Andrigo and the support of 
LiveArtsCultures.

- Curandi Katz
The work of Curandi Katz actualizes dynamics of 
interaction that move from private and intimate 
scale of personal desire towards a warm openness 
of mutuality,  accountability and transparency 
between individuals, in formal and informal 
community, and in relation to intentional or 
unintentional institutions. It focuses on taking 
care with strategies that weave artistic forms 
with radical actions related to the realm of 
activism.

DISPLAY

@Sale Docks and @Macao
Global Ultra Luxury Faction/Gulf Labor, ZEBRA (a 
laboratory on abstract strike in Macao), 
Open#7/Spatial Device Group, Open#7/Awakening 
(photographers movement), Open#7/Scioper@! X 
Inciso

- Spatial Device
The assembly is read as an introductory tool in 
search of new strike methodologies. S.a.L.E. 
Docks spaces are interpreted as suitable for the 
creation of a permanent assembly. The space is 
reconfigured in reference to the Minoan theater, 
ancient place of meeting and cultural exchange. 
Assemblies, panel discussions, performances and 
artworks will enrich and complete the space.
OPEN#7 / Spatial Device group: Francesca Modolo & 
Alessandro Zorzetto (Rural Boxx), Roberto 
Dell'Eva, Piter Perbellini, Michela Solinas, 
Denise Bianco, Altea Bacchetti.

All the materials used during the construction 
are offered by ReBiennale project.

////////////////////////////////// by Festival FOLLE/Macao and S.a.L.E Docks

http://ab-strike.tumblr.com/who //////////////////////////////////