[iDC] open source radicalism...
low
loreso at oginoknauss.org
Fri May 25 10:51:39 EDT 2007
Hi all,
I'm Lorenzo, Italian, recently resettled in Germany, town planner and
media artist. It's the first time I intervene; I often wanted, but I
must say that as a non native english speaker, somehow it's hard to
react in time to the lively exchange of this list! but I find it
really enriching to follow anyway... well, I just received from
another list the following text of the opening speech at the SUMMIT
in Berlin, and I found interesting the positions expressed here by
Florian Schneider, especially with regards to the final demands for
the summit. So, I propose it to you, hoping that is not too off topic...
Opening speech by Florian Schneider
Ladies and Gentlemen,
dear SUMMIT delegates and SUMMIT contributers,
it is my utmost and sincerest pleasure to welcome you to the first
SUMMIT non aligned initiatives in education culture.
I am supposed to deliver a speech since a summit is usually opened by
a speech. But of course such a speech would be un-speechable. Who am
I that I could possibly take the chance to claim the right to open
such a thing as a summit? For whom could I speak -- hardly for what
is supposed to be myself? Whom should I represent? Why should you
believe such a performance is relevant at all?
I am mentioning these questions not in order to impress you (or our
guests from britain) with some autodidactically appropriated
understatement. I am mentionig them since it refers to the condition
that characterizes the aporia of the project SUMMIT and its process
as such.
i learned today, impossibility might be the wrong word: what i mean
is an inverted potentiality, or if you like: a negative potentiality
in the sense that we feel an urgency to do exactly what seems to be
unthinkable, unfeasable, unforseeable and way beyond our power or
actual capacities.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
let me reflect on this basic condition of the event for a few minutes
at its very beginning and lets start by describing some phenomena: We
are meeting in an extremely interesting place at a very distinct moment.
The main venue of SUMMIT is a theatre. Truly one of the most exciting
theatres in Germany and we are very grateful for the hospitality we
encountered over the past few months -- we really know that this is
everything but a matter of course and we appreciate it very much.
But why did we choose a theatre, and not a conference center, an art
academy or any other more or less appropriate space for a gathering
like this?
The reason may be obvious: a certain playfulness, a kind of mockery
or mimikry. Something like a parody in the truest and driest sense of
the word, a parody understood as a melody that is slightly misaligned
and by that uncovering the mechanisms in which authority operates due
to a small delay and a certain distortion. Let me please make thi
absolutely clear: It is not about humorous effects or satirical
exaggerations, but about gaining access to the courtly theater by the
relatively simple means of copy-paste.
But there is also another reason. That reason implies the opportunity
to stage something, to make an experiment, to create a certain
artificial mis-en-scene that would not be possible by nature. We
understand the SUMMIT as a dramatic laboratory that calls into
question all that exists.
SUMMIT is taking place less than two weeks before the heads of
governments of the eight most powerful nations of this world are
going to meet in a rundown luxury ressort a two hours car-ride north
of here. We have chosen this moment explicitely not in order to
protest, not in order to lament, and not in order to propose
alternatives.
We are meeting here and now, since we feel the urge and desire to
open up new fields.
At the moment SUMMIT consists of 82 working groups, workshops,
presentations, caucuses, dj-sets, and parties. We are sure that there
will be further, ad-hoc sessions that are going to be scheduled on
the fly.
The wide range of delegates is characterising the specific concept of
SUMMIT: From professors of universities and art academies to
delegates from migrant self-organizations, from software developers
to artists, curators and museum directors, from the initiators of
free and self-organized academies to precarious labor activists and
union organizers.
It would have been unthinkable in advance, impossible to envision,
let alone planning it, and in fact it is nothing we can rely on:
there is no common ground or common agenda and i promise you: there
won't be anything like that.
Non-alignment is a non-identitarian and non-representative category.
It is neither nor. It does not call for unity, it does not claim a
territory, it rather tries to overcome blockages, escape dichotomies
and liberate itself from a self-inflicted immaturity and dependence.
We are perfectly aware that on this basis we can only produce
misunderstandings and i really do hope that these misunderstandings
become as creative, enlightening, unexpected as possible.
So, what can be the goal of SUMMIT? What can we achieve in these four
or five days?
I do not believe that we should try to start a new project. Most of
us are already busy enough and can hardly manage to cope with our
manifolded commitments, mostly unpaid and extremely urgent.
i also believe, that we do not just have to renovate and realign an
existing body of knowledge, update its organizational structure and
methodologies. No, we really need entirely new terminologies, we
urgently need really new concepts and new categories...
I am very confident that these four days offer us the extraordinary
opportunity to formulate the challenges and demands, compile the
sources and release a program that might outline the main
characteristics, lay out the infrastructure and make available the
pre-requisites of a multitude of networked educational, pedagogical
projects.
Please allow me to mention quickly three points that seem important
to me and might work as an example how we could proceed last but not
least in terms of an "impossible" declaration or action plan:
1. open source radicalism
We are not satisfied by the wikipedia. The button with the logo of
the creative commons license is defientely not enough. If free
software is not free beer, free knowledge is more than information
about some ingredients and on this basis we want to take over and run
the entire brewerie and create two, three, four, many open, free,
nomad, monad, pirate, peer-to-peer universities
2. new configurations of the self
in order to struggle against the ongoing privatization and
proprietarization of knowledge production we need to invent and
create new models of multiple ownership. This seems to me the only
chance to deal with increasingly fluid forms knowledge and would
enable us leave the common notion of individual mastery behind. A
generecally open notion of mutual owenership that might enable us to
reappropriate the means of immaterial production
3. increasing complexities
we all know, that we live in a world that undergoes dramatic changes
and is commonly perceived as increasingly complex. Instead of
reducing these complexities, simplfying them, the enormous challenge
we are currently facing is to fold and unfold, or better: multiply
complexity.
Tomorrow night we have scheduled the first session with a public
editing of the declaration and we are going to use that opportunity
to start from scratch, with a blank sheet of paper and
Ladies and Gentlemen, dear SUMMIT delegates,
we are all more or less familiar with the fundamental problem of
emancipatory pedagogy: in the moment when I try to teach somebody how
to liberate him or herself, i re-align to an infinite line of
regression and power reappears even stronger than before. The more I
try to explain, mediate, communicate or teach, the more I reaffirm
the distance, inequality and dependency of those who lack knowledge
on those who seem to possess it.
Lets cut this gordic knot, lets take advantage of a this enormously
privileged situation where we have the opportunity to meet and
discuss, argue with each others and question ourselves in such a
great company for about four days and nights.
Lets come forth and lets unalign!
Thank you very much!
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