How Much Fascism?
Free School for Art Theory and Practice with WHW and Alerta
Time: May 16, 2014,
Venue: Mayakovsky 102, the open office of tranzit. hu, 1068 Budapest, Király utca 102.
Program:
11:00-12:30: Public lecture, open to all at Mayakovsky 102, the open office of tranzit. hu, 1068 Budapest, Király utca 102.
14:00-18.00: Closed workshop with the participants
To participate in the seminar, please send a motivation letter in English as well as a short description of a case study in relation to the theme of the seminar. Participants are to present their case studies in 5 minutes at the seminar. Please send application until May 12, 2014 at office@tranzitinfo.hu.
Free school seminar with members of What, How and for Whom / WHW, Nataša Ilić and Sabina Sabolović, in collaboration with Nikola Vukobratović, representative of Alerta, Centre for Monitoring of Right-Wing Extremism and Anti-Democratic Tendencies, Zagreb. .
The title of the seminar is taken from the collection of texts by Slovenian philosopher and political activist Rastko Močnik, written in 1995, in the midst of the disintegration of Yugoslavia. At that time Močnik related the political conflicts and the rise of fascist tendencies in geographies “from the Adriatic to Siberia” to the establishment and consolidation of a ‘peripheral capitalism’. At the same time as several new state entities were created throughout the Eastern bloc on the basis of nationalist ideologies and market liberalization, Močnik outlined the “anti-anti-Fascism” that propelled these political constructions and their cultural policies with racist undertones.
What used to be ascribed to backward peripheries of Europe, today flourish unencumbered throughout Europe and what is left of its social democracies and welfare states. Although Močnik's title is a question, it contains a statement - we no longer need to ask ourselves whether “new local populism, new ‘fascism,’ and new right-wing extremism” drive the contemporary condition, but, rather, how much they do so. The question is not “Fascism – yes or no?”, but how much of it still allows for the performance of democratic exercise.
The seminar proposes to discuss dangers of political apathy that breeds forms of 'soft fascism' embedded in everyday life in different manifestations of administration of life and governing, looking into the role and potentials of cultural production and artistic interventions against a backdrop of “case studies”, also by the participants, whose “local” particularity is tested against broader social changes.
Image:
Milica Tomić
One day, instead of one night, a burst of machine-gun fire will flash, if light cannot come otherwise (Oskar Davičo – fragment of a poem) action/intervention in the public space, Belgrade, 2009. Courtesy the artist
Alerta, Centre for Monitoring of Right-Wing Extremism and Anti-Democratic Tendencies, is NGO based in Zagreb. Its activities include monitoring and research of historical and present political movement and governments which use right-wing extremist policies, as well as education of activists and general public, especially youth based on this research. Alerta organizes workshops, lectures, panels and publishes educational material about these issues. They are especially interested in exchange of experience between activists, and researching the differences and similarities between contemporary right-wing extremism in Eastern and Western Europe (so called Old and New EU members). Alerta recently published two educational brochures of the topic of World War Two anti-fascist resistance in Croatia and contemporary European right-wing extremism and populism, and organized a public discussion about the latter issue with participants from Slovenia, Serbia and Croatia.
What, How & for Whom / WHW is a curatorial collective formed in 1999 and based in Zagreb, and Berlin Its members are curators Ivet Ćurlin, Ana Dević, Nataša Ilić and Sabina Sabolović, and designer and publicist Dejan Kršić. WHW organizes a range of production, exhibition and publishing projects. Since 2003 WHW have been running the program of Gallery Nova, a non-profit, city-owned gallery in the center of Zagreb. WHW has been developing models based on collective way of working, creative use of public space, and collaboration between partners of different backgrounds. Primarily shaped by the format of the exhibition, WHW projects have been conceived as platforms for progressive modes of cultural production and reflections of social reality. WHW is currently working on a long-term collaboration project, Beginning As Well As We Can (How Do We Talk About Fascism?) and their interested for the topic also developed through a series of exhibitions Details (Kunsthal Bergen, 2011) and IHow Much Fascism? (BAK, Utrecht and Extra City, Antwerp; 2102 and Gallery Nova, Zagreb, 2013). They are curating Meeting Points 7, festival focused on contextualized presentation of art from the Arab World, realized in 2013/14 as an exhibition in time in Zagreb (Gallery Nova), Antwerp (MuHKA), Cairo (Contemporary Image Collective/CIC), Hong Kong (Para Site), Beirut (Beirut Art Center), Vienna (21er Haus, in collaboration with Wiener Festwochen) and Moscow (Institute for African Studies, in collaboration with the V–A–C Foundation). In October 2014 WHW is curating the exhibition Really Useful Knowledge, to open at Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid.
The seminar How Much Fascism? of the tranzit.hu Free School for Art Theory and Practice is realized in the framework of Art Under a Dangerous Star, a three-part event and exhibition series at tranzit.hu between April and June, 2014. Art Under a Dangerous Star is part of the international collaborative project Beginning As Well As We Can (How Do We Talk About Fascism?), with What, How and for Whom / WHW and Alerta - Centre for Monitoring of Right-Wing Extremism and Anti-Democratic Tendencies in Zagreb. The project is a research on the turn towards far right-wing ideologies throughout Europe and contemporary forms and impacts of fascism, as well as possible forms of resistance and interventions to these very tendencies.
The project Beginning As Well As We Can (How Do We Talk About Fascism?) is supported by the European Cultural Foundation.
The project Beginning As Well As We Can (How Do We Talk About Fascism?) is supported by the European Union Culture Programme 2007-2013.
