... fleeing

The Future of THE PUBLIC SCHOOL BERLIN

2010-09-13T07:50:04Z

We are excited to announce the opening of THE PUBLIC SCHOOL BERLIN. On 18 September at 19:00 we will hold an event at Program called The Future of THE PUBLIC SCHOOL BERLIN.

Earlier this summer THE PUBLIC SCHOOL organized a 13-day seminar in Berlin, There is nothing less passive than the act of fleeing� The seminar, meeting each day at a different location in Berlin, took the form of an open reading group, where the texts discussed each day resonated with the site selected. Please visit the project web site for more information on our activities and discussion topics: http://thepublicschool.org/thereisnothinglesspassive/thantheactoffleeing.html

*****

THE PUBLIC SCHOOL is a school with no curriculum. At the moment, it operates as follows: first, classes are proposed by the public (I want to learn this or I want to teach this); then, people have the opportunity to sign up for the classes (I also want to learn that); finally, when enough people have expressed interest, the school finds a facilitator and offers the class to those who signed up.

THE PUBLIC SCHOOL is not accredited, it does not give out degrees, and it has no affiliation with the public school system. It is a framework that supports autodidactic activities, operating under the assumption that everything is in everything.

THE PUBLIC SCHOOL was started in 2007 in Los Angeles by Telic Arts Exchange.

*****

There will be several things that take place at The Future of THE PUBLIC SCHOOL BERLIN:

1. A committee member of the THE PUBLIC SCHOOL LOS ANGELES will briefly discuss its history and how it operates.

2. We will have a discussion about how the school could work here and what shape(s) it could take.

3. We will create class proposals.

4. We will talk some more!

Please join us to find out more about the school and find ways that you can participate, including joining the committee (D.A.N.) to help run the school here.

If you have questions please get in touch. Also, please sign up for an account here and afterwards try proposing some classes. To see the activities happening at the other schools, please visit here.

Look forward to seeing you all this weekend!

WHAT: The Future of THE PUBLIC SCHOOL BERLIN

WHERE: PROGRAM, Invalidenstrasse 115

WHEN: 18 SEPTEMBER 19:00 HR

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Friday, 16 July, "Who Cares?"

2010-07-15T15:25:03Z

"Who Cares?"

Hi everyone,

We just sent out invites to the final day of the reading group/dinner event. Many of you said that you wished to come, but unfortunately we have very little space to accommodate everyone. We invited those who had participated in the seminar on multiple days. That being said, if you came to three or four days of the reading group and did not get an invite, please get in touch asap and we'll put you on the list.

For those who didn't get the invitation, please still come to Appartment at 21:30h when the doors will be open to all for a Triple Canopy event: Sound by Jacob Kirkegaard (http://fonik.dk/), installation by curatorial collective 10-2-10 (http://www.tentwoten.info/), performance by Per-Oskar Leu (http://peroskarleu.com/splash.html) with Triple Canopy editorial and program manager Peter J. Russo, music by Hush Hush (http://www.myspace.com/therealhushmoney) and Easton West (http://www.highculturelowclass.com/).

Also, just a reminder that on Sunday we'll be doing:

THE PUBLIC SCHOOL hosted by THE OFFICE

----------------------------------------------------

If it happens, it happens. If it doesn't, it doesn't

Sunday, July 18, 6 pm.

Salon Populaire, B�lowstr. 90, 10783 Berlin
Limited admission. Please RSVP to rsvp@theoffice.li

The Public School will complete its seminar, "There is nothing less passive than the act of fleeing" with an evening conversation to be held in collaboration with THE OFFICE at Salon Populaire.

There will be no prepared remarks, no program, no introduction or concluding statement. But there will be questions: questions generated from the seminar discussions, questions about the project as a whole, questions that you bring, or questions you have when you arrive (from "Can we really escape?" to "Who cares?" and beyond). The evening's conversation will simply be our collective attempt to answer, contest, explain, and expand these questions.

We invite you to send questions in advance to this email address thereisnothinglesspassive@gmail.com or bring some with you.

Please join us for what we hope will be a cathartic conclusion to this project by The Public School.

Also, there will be some food and plenty of drinks!

----------------------------------------------------

THE PUBLIC SCHOOL - There is nothing less passive than the act of fleeing....
THE OFFICE

----------------------------------------------------

THE PUBLIC SCHOOL - There is nothing less passive than the act of fleeing.
The Public School is organizing a 13-day seminar, meeting each day at a different location in Berlin. This seminar takes the form of an open reading group, where the texts discussed each day resonate with the site selected.
Deadlock: perpetual war, failing economies, the crumbling of education, capitalist realism, our environment in ruin, hostility everywhere.
Resistance? Confrontation? Insurrection?
Exodus: silence, autonomy, occupation, withdrawl, invisibility, friendship. www.thepublicschool.org/the...

THE PUBLIC SCHOOL is a school with no curriculum. At the moment, it operates as follows: first, classes are proposed by the public (I want to learn this or I want to teach this); then, people have the opportunity to sign up for the classes (I also want to learn that); finally, when enough people have expressed interest, the school finds a teacher and offers the class to those who signed up.
THE PUBLIC SCHOOL is not accredited, it does not give out degrees, and it has no affiliation with the public school system. It is a framework that supports autodidactic activities, operating under the assumption that everything is in everything.

THE OFFICE
THE OFFICE seeks to create, facilitate and produce projects of contemporary culture. Based in Berlin, THE OFFICE does not dispose of a permanent location - neither in the city itself nor does it limit its activities to a particular place.
THE OFFICE wants flexibility and reacts to the city's changes and development, and each project's specific necessities. The goal is to re-discover the city, to channel and transmit information, and provide space for discursive thinking in constantly changing settings.

THE OFFICE explores collaboration and experimentation for artists, curators, writers and other cultural producers. It is a network for receiving and developing projects, inventing and testing formats, while surrendering to the risk of failure. THE OFFICE insists on independency while gathering forces to work together on temporary ventures into the arts.

----------------------------------------------------

thepublicschool.org/
office@theoffice.li
www.theoffice.li

----------------------------------------------------

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Re: Thursday, 15 July, Invisible Man and Ready-Made Artist and Human Strike

2010-07-15T05:20:02Z

Just came to my mind a place connected to today's readings.

In front of Grill Royal, the posh restaurant of the Berlin jet set
and fashionable art scene, you can admire an artwork of Claire
Fontaine: the neon light 'Capitalism kills love' where the word
'love' is supposed to blink (but the owner keeps always on,
interestingly ).

"Each gesture and each constructive activity in which we invest
ourselves has a counterpart within the monetary economy or the
libidinal economy. The human strike decrees the bankruptcy of
these two principles and installs other affective and material fluxes.
Human strike proposes no brilliant solution to the problems
produced by those who govern us if it is not Bartleby’s maxim:
I would prefer not to". (Claire Fontaine, 2005)

I guess it's perfect there -- outcome of any anarcoid paradigm ;)

Website: http://www.grillroyal.com
Google maps: http://bit.ly/dwTxnZ

In German: http://www.welt.de/wams_print/article2375491/Avantgarde-der-Rendite.html

-- Matteo Pasquinelli
http://matteopasquinelli.org

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Re: Thursday, 15 July, Invisible Man and Ready-Made Artist and Human Strike

2010-07-15T03:45:04Z

Just noticed that a couple of paragraphs in Ready-Made Artist and Human Strike are cut off in the reader. They are pasted below!

The reasons why Benjamin spent so much time analyzing the processes of suspension and cessation in Brechtian theater are inextricably linked to his vision of history and the function that art can assume within it. A large part of his thought appears to be a site for the construction of a knowledge both verbal and visual, which would function as a bridge between the image and life, the fixed image and the moving image. At the center of his research appears always a change in rhythm, whether due to shock, or to other types of interruption.

When, in epic theater, Brecht insists on the processes that produce a strange gaze on both the part of the public and the actors, suspension appears as the technical device employed to release that affect. In 1931 Benjamin described the procedure thus:

a family scene. Suddenly a stranger enters. The women was just about to roll up a pillow and smother her daughter; the father in the middle of opening the window to call the police. At that very moment a stranger appears in the doorway. A �tableau� was what one called such a scene in 1900. This means that the stranger finds himself confronted with the situation: bed sheets all rumpled, the window open, furniture turned upside down. Now a type of regard exists before which the most habitual scenes of bourgeois life do not appear to be so different. Strictly speaking, the more the ravages of our social order increase (the more we are affected ourselves, as well as our ability to even notice this), the more the distance of the stranger will be marked.

The prism of the stranger in Benjamin�s thought allows us to grasp logical and political links that tend to remain hidden. One becomes strange by means of a halting, for, when the movement picks up again, it is as if the parataxic evidence of the sequence of things appears unbound, as if in that interruption an interstitial space gaped open, sapping both the instituted order and our belonging to it.

In a commentary on Brecht�s poems in 1939, Benjamin writes �whoever fights for the exploited class becomes an immigrant in his own country.� Becoming stranger, a process that operates via a successive halting of thought images as well as an abandonment of the self, is manifested by an interruption and its following counter-movement.

This process of salvatory defamiliarization, which allows us to gain lucidity, seems to have a close relation to art or, more precisely, to art as source and device of these newfound affects, rather than as a site of their realization. This may be explained by the status of art as a space for the de-functionalization of subjectivities: singularities emerge there emancipated from any utility. As a purely aesthetic space, the world of art harbors a potential critique of the general organization of society, and of the organization of work in particular.

The process of becoming stranger as a revolutionary act appears in Benjamin�s work much earlier, in a 1920 text, which has nothing to do with art, entitled �Critique of Violence.� Here one can read that �today organized labor is, apart from the state, probably the only subject entitled to exercise violence.� But can one term strikes �violence�? Can a simple suspension of activity, �a nonaction, which a strike really is,� be categorized as a violent gesture? In all, no, Benjamin responds, since it is equivalent to a simple �severing of relations.� He adds, �in the view of the State conception, or the law, the right to strike conceded to labor is certainly a right not to exercise violence but, rather, to escape from a violence indirectly exercises by the employer, strikes conforming to this may undoubtedly occur from time to time and involve only a �withdrawal� or �estrangement� from the employer.�

What happens in this singular moment of turning away that allows us to lose our familiarity with the misery of ordinary exploitation, suddenly rendering us capable of decreeing that for one day the boss is not the boss? It is an interruption of the normal routine, a mobilization following upon a de-mobilization. This occurs thanks to a halt that transforms us into astonished spectators, nevertheless ready to intervene. Foucault wrote that the implicit demand of any revolution is �we must change ourselves.�

The revolutionary process thus becomes both the means of this change and the goal, because this transformation must generate for itself a context of possible persistence. It is in this sense that Benjamin says a genuinely radical strike would be a means without end, a space in which the entirety of hierarchical organization tied to political bureaucracy would fall apart when faced with the power of events. Parataxis would be ruined by the irruption of discontinuity.

But does a means exist today for the practice of such a strike, neither union-based or corporatist, but larger and more ambitious? The question is complex, but perhaps because of our impoverished singularity we are the first citizens of history for whom the metaphysical affirmation of the human being as a being without professional or social destiny has a very concrete sense. Agamben writes; �there is definitely something humans should be, but this something is not an essence, nor is it even a thing: it is the simple fact of their own existence as possibility or power.�

Some Italian feminists in the 1970s already envisioned a strike that would be an interruption of all the relations that identify us and subjugate us more than could any professional activity. They knew how to engage in a politics that wasn�t considered as politics. During struggles over the penalization of rape, the legalization of abortion, and the application of a quota policy, they simply asked the law to remain silent about their bodies. In 1976 the Bolognian collective for a

domestic salary wrote, �If we strike, we won�t leave unfinished products or untransformed raw materials; by interrupting our work we won�t paralyze production, but rather the reproduction of the working class. And this would be a real strike even for those who normally go on strike without us.�

This type of strike that interrupts the total mobilization to which we are all submitted and that allows us to transform ourselves, might be called a human strike, for it is the most general of general strikes and its goal is the transformation of the informal social relations on which domination is founded. The radical character of this type of revolt lies in its ignorance of any kind of reformist result with which it might have to satisfy itself. By its light, the rationality of the behaviors we adopt in our everyday life would appear to be entirely dictated by the acceptance of the economic relationships that regulate them. Each gesture and each constructive activity in which we invest ourselves has a counterpart within the monetary economy or the libidinal economy. The human strike decrees the bankruptcy of these two principles and installs other affective and material fluxes.

Human strike proposes no brilliant solution to the problems produced by those who govern us if it is not Bartleby�s maxim: I would prefer not to.

Paris, November 2005

Translated by Olivier Feltham and Continuous Project

On Jul 15, 2010, at 12:38 AM, Sean Dockray wrote:

Hello!

Tomorrow we were originally going to be meeting at Teufelsberg and I regret to say
that that is not going to be happening there (several people need to return early).

Instead, we'll be meeting at 17h underneath the Oscar Niemeyer housing project in
Hansaviertel, which is significantly closer for most people. The address is:

Altonaer Stra�e 4-14 10557 Berlin, Germany

and you can see it on the google maps here:

http://maps.google.de/maps?client=safari&rls=en-us&q=Altonaer+Stra�e+4+10557+Berlin,+Germany&oe=UTF-8&redir_esc=&um=1&ie=UTF-8&hq=&hnear=Altonaer+Stra�e+4,+D-10557+Berlin&gl=de&ei=Zys-TIzzI4vqOIqVrKkP&sa=X&oi=geocode_result&ct=image&resnum=1&ved=0CBQQ8gEwAA

We'll be discussing two texts:

Invisible Man (prologue)
http://aaaaarg.org/text/14689/invisible-man
or, http://anonym.to/?http://ifile.it/i75xeqz

Ready-Made Artist and Human Strike: A Few Clarifications
http://aaaaarg.org/?q=text/4659/ready-made-artist-and-human-strike-few-clarifications
or, http://anonym.to/?http://www.clairefontaine.ws/pdf/armfr.pdf

See you then
Sean

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Thursday, 15 July, Invisible Man and Ready-Made Artist and Human Strike

2010-07-14T16:40:04Z

Hello!

Tomorrow we were originally going to be meeting at Teufelsberg and I regret to say

that that is not going to be happening there (several people need to return early).

Instead, we'll be meeting at 17h underneath the Oscar Niemeyer housing project in

Hansaviertel, which is significantly closer for most people. The address is:

Altonaer Stra�e 4-14 10557 Berlin, Germany

and you can see it on the google maps here:

http://maps.google.de/maps?client=safari&rls=en-us&q=Altonaer+Stra�e+4+10557+Berlin,+Germany&oe=UTF-8&redir_esc=&um=1&ie=UTF-8&hq=&hnear=Altonaer+Stra�e+4,+D-10557+Berlin&gl=de&ei=Zys-TIzzI4vqOIqVrKkP&sa=X&oi=geocode_result&ct=image&resnum=1&ved=0CBQQ8gEwAA

We'll be discussing two texts:

Invisible Man (prologue)

http://aaaaarg.org/text/14689/invisible-man

or, http://anonym.to/?http://ifile.it/i75xeqz

Ready-Made Artist and Human Strike: A Few Clarifications

http://aaaaarg.org/?q=text/4659/ready-made-artist-and-human-strike-few-clarifications

or, http://anonym.to/?http://www.clairefontaine.ws/pdf/armfr.pdf

See you then

Sean

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14 July: Massacre of the Body, Affectivist Manifesto, City in Female Gender

2010-07-13T17:20:03Z

We will be meeting at the Schlachtensee S-Bahn stop tomorrow at 17h. If you are running late, we will be walking directly north towards the lake.

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=111162172991000092690.0004882558b261f0fd61d&ll=52.494696,13.29895&spn=0.134822,0.318604&t=h&z=12&iwloc=00048b3100c2074ce4803

Will we be reading:

TO HAVE DONE WITH THE MASSACRE OF THE BODY

FELIX GUATTARI

http://aaaaarg.org/?q=node/14609

or http://ifile.it/syditfo

THE AFFECTIVIST MANIFESTO: ARTISTIC CRITIQUE FOR THE 21ST CENTURY

BRIAN HOLMES

http://brianholmes.wordpress.com/2008/11/16/the-affectivist-manifesto/

THE CITY IN THE FEMALE GENDER

LIA MAGALE

http://aaaaarg.org/?q=text/3988/semiotext-autonomia-issue

or http://www.mediafire.com/?zqzdjwygzyn

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some material

2010-07-13T15:20:02Z

hey all,

apologies for usurping the disscussion with technical details earlier,

here are some sources for those interested in immaterial labor and law of value polemics and some related matters (out of top of my head, i can send more if someone is interested when i get home and can asses my bookmarks)

http://auto_sol.tao.ca/node/3074�

http://libcom.org/library/throwing-away-ladder-universities-crisis-george-caffentzis-zerowork

http://www.public.iastate.edu/~tonys/10%20The%20General%20Intellect.pdf

http://www.ephemeraweb.org/journal/7-1/7-1henninger.pdf

http://www.reallyopenunion.org/reallyopenunion_files/cognitivecapitalism.pdf

best,

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11 July ROUSSEAU-INSEL IN THE TIERGARTEN 17H

2010-07-11T16:15:04Z

We will be meeting tomorrow at 17h in Tiergarten in front of the Naturschutz Grünflächenamt‎. Please see this map for location:

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=111162172991000092690.0004882558b261f0fd61d&t=h&ll=52.514076,13.363307&spn=0.001975,0.004951&z=18&iwloc=lyrftr:h,13382826799724038918,52.514151,13.363677

From there we will walk south-west towards the body of water that you can see on the map.

We will be reading:

SLOUCHING TOWARDS BETHLEHEM

JOAN DIDION

http://aaaaarg.org/?q=text/14510/slouching-towards-bethlehem

or http://ifile.it/3lemdh2/14510-slouching_towards_bethlehem.pdf

ANALYTICON (FROM SEMINAR XVII)

JACQUES LACAN

http://aaaaarg.org/?q=text/10208/jacques-lacan-book-xvii-other-side-psychoanalysis

or http://ifile.it/8c7mli1

THE NEUTRAL (SESSION OF APRIL 29, 1978)

ROLAND BARTHES

http://aaaaarg.org/?q=text/13847/neutral-excerpts

or http://ifile.it/bnjufyl

Ring 017669321554 if you can't find us.

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Re: sunday

2010-07-10T16:35:03Z

yes! we are trying to avoid the excessive heat of the afternoon (and also find a good spot in the shade that we can occupy).

hope to see you there!

-c

On Jul 11, 2010, at 12:20 AM, Matteo Pasquinelli wrote:

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sunday

2010-07-10T16:25:03Z

dear friends,
i noticed you change the time of sunday at 11h, is that confirmed?

we try to join,
matteo

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Note on 2 important questions raised in the discussion so far

2010-07-09T16:20:03Z

Hi Everyone,

on Thursday there were two interesting questions brought up at the end of our discussion, which I want to keep hold of, because I think they can somehow be enlightening and because the discussion today already moved on to other important, but different perspectives.

The first question I mean was:
What is a form-of-life regarding (its) reality? (I mean "form-of-life" in a descriptive everyday-sense, and not in the strong agamben sense)
�
- What I think can be helpful here is to ask, whether we should see the question of "forms-of-life" as a critical perspective on reality itself. Because what is kind of interesting is to realize the fact, that "form-of-life" is a totally marginalized term in the public and academic discussion on crisis diagnosis and solution right now. And in my opinion the reason for this is precisely, because asking the question of "what form of life do we live in today?" or "what form of life do we share?" can be a very enlightening question, that is somehow avoided by the main discourses of crisis diagnosis right now. Therefore to raise this question has an enormous critical impact. So my answer to this in short is: "form-of-life" is a (critical) perspective on reality.

The second question I mean referred to the life-in-limbo text, namely to the following passage:

These two perspectives on the same crisis obviously call forth two different �logical� responses. While the reaction of zombie-liberalism makes sense according to its own (undead) logic, the logical response to the crisis of social reproduction is perhaps a strategy of commoning. This would be a defence, creation and expansion of resources held in common and accessible to all: expanding public transport, socialising health care, guaranteeing a basic income, and so on. This type of strategy would achieve two linked and essential goals. First, it would address our immediate fears of losing our livelihoods � because it would create spaces where social reproduction becomes possible outside the crisis-ridden circuits of capital. Second, it would counter the atomisation caused by three decades of neoliberal subjectivation in markets � just as engaging in market-based interactions tends to create market-subjects, engaging in commoning tends to create �commonistic� subjectivities.

- I think what is very important in this passage, and what we haven't discussed so much by now, is the question of the "how" of a different and better, maybe more social kind of state or let's better say: governing. In my view this passage is clearly a call for a different, not-neoliberal and better kind of governmentality and this is a question that should be discussed very urgently for the state will change, and the question is how and how to influence this process of change.

I just wanted to make a note on this and share it with you, so that maybe we can discuss this stuff during the next week.

Best
Dirk

��
--
Dirk Schuck
Kirchhofstr. 13
12051 Berlin
0049-(0)30/25589913

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