the living room(s)

Saturday’s session will be hosted at the Goleb Project in Bos en Lommer. It’ll start at 7.30pm. You can find info on how to get there @ projectgoleb.wordpress.com/contact-address

the press on Post/Autonomia

Recently, Post/autonomia conference organizer Joost de Bloois has been interviewed by the Dutch newspaper Trouw. The interview focuses on recent protests caused by budget cuts in the state’s expenses for culture. Is taking the streets, and marching against the neo-liberal restructuring of the state, still a viable strategy of struggle? Sadly, we all know the answer: yet, where can artists and cultural workers situate (or re-situate) themselves in a context where their production has been deemed socially worthless? For all who can read Dutch, here is the link

Matteo Pasquinelli has also written an article on Il Manifesto. The question he raises there is one that will hopefully kick-start many a discussion among us next week: what is the meaning of (or, why) Post/autonomia today, in Academia? What are the risks of its integration within the academic institution: is it a first step to do away with its subversive potential? Here the article in English, translated by Pasquinelli himself.

getting to the conference venue

View Larger Map

The Smart Project Space (see map above) is located close to the old town. From there, it can easily be reached by Public Transport:

Tram 1 stops on the Overtoom, get out at —> Jan Pieter Heijestraat

Tram 7 & Tram 17 both stop on Kinkerstraat, get out at—> Ten Katestraat

For more info on the venue, go to http://www.smartprojectspace.net

Post/autonomia conference program

Post/Autonomia Conference, Amsterdam, 19-21 May 2011>

 @SMART PROJECT SPACE, Arie Biemondstraat 111, 1054 PD Amsterdam

Thursday, May 19

9.30 Coffee

10.00 Word of welcome and introduction to the project

10.30 Session 1: Affect

Moderator: Joost de Bloois, University of Amsterdam

Jack Bratich, Rutgers University <Affect from enervation to love, or, Is there a subjectivity bubble?>

Jason Read, University of Southern Maine <The affective composition of labor: From class composition to the production of subjectivity>

Rob Horning, ‘Marginal Utility’, ‘The New Inquiry’, New York <Social Media as Social Factory: The personal brand as the neoliberal self>

Emilie Bernier, University of Ottawa <The ambivalence in contemporary forms of labour>

12.30: lunch

14.00 Session 2: <Bio>politics

Moderator: Frans-Willem Korsten, EUR/University Leiden

Mathijs van de Sande, University of Nijmegen <Fighting with tools: Prefigurative politics, revolution and power in the 21st century>

Ignacio Valero, California College of the Arts San Francisco <EcoDomics: Capitalist realism, biopower delirium, and the aesthetic(s) of the common(s)>

Ioulia Giovani, Goldsmiths College London <Humanitarian NGO’s in Athens: Places of exploitation>

Tarcisio Torres Silva, Goldsmiths College London <Social networks, mobility and activism: new strategies in the struggle against the State>

16.00: tea

16.30 Keynote: Matteo Pasquinelli Moderators: Vincenzo Binetti, University of Michigan & Federico Luisetti, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

18.00 Drinks & Dinner

 

Friday, May 20

9.00 coffee

9.30 Session 3: Memory & Media

Moderator: Monica Jansen, University of Utrecht

Oisin Gilmore, University College London <Theories of money and struggle: From Operaismo to Open Marxism>

Maria Karagianni & Viki Semou, Independent Artists <Digital and analogue recordings as repository of memory and vehicles of interjection>

Andrea Hajek, Institute of Germanic & Romance Studies University of London <Appropriating memories of resistance: the Crash collective and the legacy of Autonomia in Bologna>

Emanuel Rota, University of Illinois <The Worker, the Southerner and the Lazy: Tronti’s strategy of refusal and the invention of laziness>

11.30 Coffee

12.00 Keynote: Stevphen Shukaitis

Moderator: Frans-Willem Korsten

13.00 lunch

14.00 Session 4: Mobilisation

Moderator: Silvia Contarini, Université Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense

Femke & Ruud Kaulingfreks, University of Humanistics Utrecht <Badiou & Wikileaks: Is it a pirate ship we see emerging at the communist horizon?>

Elise Danielle Thorburn, University of Western Ontario <From Autonomism to Assembly: The new movement structures in contemporary organising>

Luca Marsi, Université Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense <Governance and fetishism of freedom: Two pillars of the neoliberal ideology>

Cihan Özpinar, University of Galatasaray Istanbul <What is reversed colonial war? Re-examining the 2005 French banlieue revolts>

16.00: tea

16.30 Session 5: Technologies of Labor

Moderator: Gianluca Turricchia, University of Amsterdam

Michael Palm, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill <Disaffected Labor: Self-Service Technology and the Digital Everyday>

Michael Dieter & John Haltiwanger, University of Amsterdam <Untying the Machinic Knot: General Intellect, Open Hardware, Ecologies of Practice>

Guido Ruivenkamp & Joost Jongerden, Wageningen University <Seeds from commodities to commons>

Sebastian Cobarrubias & John Pickles, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill <The EU’s Migration Management Complex: Towards an Autonomous Reading of European Border Externalization>

Saturday May 21

9.00 Coffee

9.30 Session 6: Precarity & the Cultural Fabric:

Moderator: Monica Jansen, University of Utrecht/ Antwerp

Karen Pinkus, Cornell University <Post/autonomist fiction and the language of precariousness>

Sabrina Ovan, Scripps College Claremont <Call centeredness. Bodies at work, entities in narrative>

Theresa Geller, Grinnell College <‘Capitalism, A Fairytale’: The work of love in I Am Love (Io sono l’amore)>

Payal Arora, Erasmus Unjiversity Rotterdam, <Digital labor and the new corporate work space: A real-virtual spatial investigation>

12.30 Lunch 

14.00 Session 7: Multitudes:

Moderator: Vincenzo Binetti, University of Michigan

Robert Wells, University of Michigan <Of masses and multitudes – Ortega y Gasset, Negri, Hardt, Spinoza>

Sonja Lavaert, Free University Brussels <The perspective of the multitude in Negri, Agamben and Virno>

Maria Isabel Casas-Cortes, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill <When precarity encounters migration and care: The becoming (feminine) migrant of labor?>

16.00: tea

Afternoon

16.30 Keynote: Vittorio Morfino

Moderator: Federico Luisetti

 

Evening

Living Room Project: The commons

Moderator: Joost de Bloois

Aetzel Griffioen, University of Rotterdam <The commons, commonplaces, communalism>

Jos Scheren, Amsterdam <Populism and the Common: About introducing some Spinozian concepts into the populism debate>

Merijn Oudenampsen, Amsterdam <On the autonomy of the political and the poverty of theory>

This conference is the first of a series within the project Precarity and Post-autonomia: the Global Heritage funded by NWO (Dutch Organisation for Scientific Research).

Organizing committee:

- Vincenzo Binetti, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (USA)

- Joost de Bloois, University of Amsterdam

- Silvia Contarini, Université Paris Ouest, Nanterre La Défense

- Monica Jansen, Utrecht University

- Federico Luisetti, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (USA)

- Frans-Willem Korsten, Leiden University/Erasmus University Rotterdam

- Gianluca Turricchia, University of Amsterdam

Contact: <postautonomia@gmail.com>

Call For Papers

Post/autonomia – CFP

Amsterdam, 19-22 May 2011

University of Amsterdam/SMART Project Space

Keynote speakers include:

Franco Berardi (‘Bifo’)

Vittorio Morfino

Stevphen Shukaitis

Matteo Pasquinelli (to be confirmed)

Immaterial labour; multitude; the communism of capital; commons; precarity; biopolitics: autonomist thought has undoubtedly provided contemporary critical theory with some of its major concepts and/or allowed for an important reconsidering of these. Most importantly, autonomist thought has been at the forefront of thinking the crucial shifts in contemporary capitalism and its effects in both the social and cultural sphere. Autonomism’s impact on current critical theory in both European and American academia can therefore hardly be underestimated. Moreover, today we witness a resurgence of autonomist models of activism and thought in social movements in for example Italy, Greece, the UK and California.

‘What can ‘post/autonomia’ mean today?’ therefore is one of the pivotal questions in contemporary critical theory and activism. Rather than packaging it as ‘Italian Theory’, we would like to explore the international dissemination of autonomous thought and activism today and their possible futures; in particular we would like to explore critical engagements and uses of autonomist ideas that shape what we might call post/autonomia. It is precisely the dynamics, tensions and ruptures between autonomia and its possible futures (or ‘posts’) that we would like to investigate. What are the effects of autonomia, as a thought and a movement, in a variety of domains: from critical theory to cinema, from activism to academic practice?

Crucial questions raised by the notion of post/autonomia are:

how did autonomist thought move from what was in fact a specific local context to the global activist and intellectual sphere? What are the possible connections between (post)autonomia and other contemporary conceptualizations of ‘communism’? What is the role of (post)autonomist thinking in current efforts to reassemble and reconstitute the militant left? What are possible connections/convergences between (post)autonomism and post-situationism, anarchism or the green movement? How can post/autonomia be situated in the aftermath or even afterlife of the ‘no global’ moment? How is post/autonomia taking shape in diverse cultural and artistic interventions? What is the significance of autonomist thought in non-western/global contexts (e.g. the debates concerning precarious labour in China)? How does the current the interest in autonomism and its relevance relate to political discourses concerning the ‘heritage’ of 68/77 and their alleged ‘liquidation’ (by Berlusconi/Sarkozy); to what extent does it encourage or block these debates? What elements of autonomism remain unaddressed today (e.g. the feminist heritage)? What particular nexus between theory/militant practice takes shape in post/autonomia (e.g. in media activism and precarity-movements)? What new perspectives/connections can be created: e.g. post/autonomia and queer, the metropolis, bioeconomy, etc. etc.

The conference will provide a platform for addressing these and other important questions. Papers may address the following topics (but are by no means bound to these):

Post/autonomia and

-          contemporary activism

-          conceptualizations of bio-politics

-          the neo-liberal state

-          precarity

-          media activism

-          academic activism and new student movements (L’Onda che viene etc)

-          post-situationism

-          queer autonomy

-          feminism

-          the work of individual theorists (e.g. Negri, Virno, Berardi, Guattari, Lazzarato, Marazzi etc)

-          semiocapitalism

-          artistic and cultural activism

-          political/cultural memories of autonomia

-          the metropolis and the social factory today

-          the new communism

-          transversality

-          new spinozisms

-          (the lessons of) Genoa 2001

-          strategies of resistance

-          populism

-          the law, the state of exception and legitimacy

We welcome both academic and practice-oriented contributions in English. Papers should not exceed 20 minutes. Please send abstracts (350 words) before March 15 to postautonomia@gmail.com. For further information, please contact postautonomia@gmail.com.

This conference is the first of a series within the project Precarity and Post-autonomia: the Global Heritage funded by NWO (Dutch Organisation for Scientific Research).

Organizing committee:

-          Vincenzo Binetti, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (USA)

-          Joost de Bloois, University of Amsterdam

-          Silvia Contarini, Université Paris Ouest, Nanterre La Défense

-          Monica Jansen, Utrecht University

-          Federico Luisetti, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (USA)

-          Frans-Willem Korsten, Leiden University/Erasmus University Rotterdam

-          Gianluca Turricchia, University of Amsterdam

Call For Papers

To be published very soon… check regularly!