The seminar will take place between 2 - 4 February and urgently addresses the questions 'What is Communism?' Is there a need to revisit this ideology? Is the communist model relevant to contemporary cultural practices?
Where has Communism gone? This question refers, firstly, to the Russian revolutionary writer Andrey Platonov. It was the hero of this novel “Chevengur”, who suddenly awoke from a dream in the middle of the night asking where has socialism gone and searched for it as if it were an object, a thing which supposedly belonged to him. Socialism or communism is thus a matter of desire, and this kind of desire, as Fredric Jameson says, hasn’t yet found its Freud or Lacan. By posing the question about communism, we aim to explore the nature of this political desire, which, in spite of the fall of what is referred to as “real socialism” or “communist regimes”, is still persistent, at least in the field of contemporary theory and arts.
We are used to the reality principle of one-dimensional liberal propaganda, according to which, nothing is better than the present state of things, by translation this means the neoliberal economy accompanied by the rhetoric of human rights and legal democracy. They say that communism was a utopian project, which ended badly, with violence and totalitarianism, and that the only thing we can do now is to forget any hope of a better future for the whole society and to focus on our individual lives, to enjoy this eternal present – to use our possibilities and skills to succeed by walking up the money pyramid trampling on the heads of others.
Today however, after decades of excessive ideological overproduction regarding Communisms monstrosity, a general anti-communist phobia ends with a new disappointment. The liberal utopia, based on the notion of free individuals freely operating in a free market, was demolished by the intervention of the real of the global economic, political and ecological crisis. In this perspective, all the debates about communism not only as an experience of the past, but also as an alternative for the future, have become relevant and actual again. The only problem is that it would appear not to be taken seriously. Neoliberal institutions easily give their money to any kind of creative and sophisticated critics of the present, taking for granted that all these debates are based on market exchange, and that the ideas discussed there have their nominal value. The ghost of communism is still wandering around, and to transform it to a commodity-form seems as a good way to finally get rid of it. Conferences and artistic events dedicated to the idea of communism are going on one after another, speakers are paid or not paid, advertisement production machine functions well, and the wheel continues to turn as before.
But beyond this exhausting machinery of actualization and commodification, we potentially still have this totally new desire of communism – the desire which cannot be shared, since it keeps in itself a “common” of communism, a claim for togetherness, so ambiguous and problematic in human animals. This claim cannot be privatized, calculated and capitalized, since it exists not inside individuals, but in between them, in between us, and can be experienced in our attempts to construct this space in between, to expose ourselves inside this “common” and to teach ourselves to produce it out of what we have as social beings.
We invite you to join us, to think, discuss and live through these issues at our seminar and to imagine what you could bring to the representation of our debate and live together for two days through form and finally the staging of a Learning Play.
All interested please apply with your motivation to Dmitry Vilensky – dmvilen@gmail.com Or to SMART Project Space, Una Henry, una@smartprojectspace.net
The participation is free but demands full involvement for 2 days and includes an overnight sleep-in at SMART Project Space.
You are welcome to bring your own sleeping bags - those who do not have one will be provided with blankets.