Bifo - Franco Berardi E-Book

Franco Berardi

• Herausgeber: Hatje Cantz Verlag
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Serie: E-Books
• Sprache: Deutsch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Seitenzahl: 55

Beschreibung

 In diesem Notizbuch reflektiert der Medientheoretiker und Medienaktivist Bifo – Franco Berardi die Vorhaben der dOCUMENTA (13) auf Basis seiner persönlichen Überzeugung, dass sich die derzeitige Krise der Wirtschaft und Weltgesellschaft als tödliche Falle für die menschliche Entwicklung erweisen muss, sofern nicht Kultur und Lebensstil auf den vorherrschenden Trend der »Erschöpfung« (physischer Ressourcen, mentaler Energien und sozialer Organismen) reagieren werden. Der Kunst kommt dabei eine entscheidende Rolle zu. Künstler erkennen und artikulieren häufig den erschöpften Zustand der Welt in seiner ganzen Tragik: mit Genügsamkeit statt Akkumulation und Freundschaft statt Rivalität kann der Implosion des Finanzkapitalismus für die Schaffung eines neuen Europas 2.0 mit »Tausch- und Solidaritätsinstitutionen anstelle von Konkurrenz- und Gierinstitutionen« entgegengewirkt werden. Projekte und Entwürfe etwa von Doug Ashford, Man Ray, William Kentridge, AND AND AND oder Gustav Metzger werden genannt und begleiten den Text ebenso wie ein faksimilierter Brief des zur dOCUMENTA (13) eingeladenen Künstlers Kai Althoff an die Künstlerische Leiterin Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev mit der Bitte um Befreiung »von der erschöpfenden Aufgabe seiner Mitwirkung«.    Bifo – Franco Berardi (*1949) lehrt Medienästhetik an der European School of Social Imagination in San Marino.    

Leseprobe

100 Notes – 100 Thoughts / 100 Notizen – 100 Gedanken

Nº094: Bifo – Franco Berardi

transverse / transversal

dOCUMENTA (13), 9/6/2012 – 16/9/2012

Artistic Director / Künstlerische Leiterin: Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev

Member of Core Agent Group, Head of Department / Mitglied der Agenten-Kerngruppe, Leiterin der Abteilung: Chus Martínez

Head of Publications / Leiterin der Publikationsabteilung: Bettina Funcke

Managing Editor / Redaktion und Lektorat: Katrin Sauerländer

Editorial Assistant / Redaktionsassistentin: Cordelia Marten

English Copyediting / Englisches Lektorat: Melissa Larner

Proofreading / Korrektorat: Stefanie Drobnik, Sam Frank

Translation / Übersetzung: Ralf Schauff

Image Editing / Bildredaktion: Jonas Raam

Graphic Design / Grafische Gestaltung: Leftloft

Junior Graphic Designer: Daniela Weirich

Production / Verlagsherstellung: Monika Reinhardt

E-Book Implementation / E-Book-Produktion: LVD GmbH, Berlin

© 2012 documenta und Museum Fridericianum Veranstaltungs-GmbH, Kassel;Hatje Cantz Verlag, Ostfildern; Bifo – Franco Berardi

Illustrations / Abbildungen: p. / S. 1: View of / Ansicht des Monte Verità, ca. 1906(detail / Detail), Fondo Harald Szeemann. Archivio Fondazione Monte Verità inArchivio di Stato del Cantone Ticino; pp. / S. 5, 31: © Doug Ashford; pp. / S. 11, 38: private collection / Privatsammlung, Berlin; © 2012 Man Ray Trust, Paris/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn; pp. / S. 14, 41: courtesy William Kentridge; Marian Goodman Gallery, New York/Paris; Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg/Cape Town; Galleria Lia Rumma, Naples/Milan / Neapel/Mailand; top / oben: design and drawing / Design und Zeichnung: Sabine Theunissen and / und Jonas Lundquist; bottom / unten: photo / Foto: Caroline Naphegyi; pp. / S. 15, 42: courtesy Gustav Metzger, photo / Foto: Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev; pp. / S. 19, 47: courtesy Julieta Aranda and / und Anton Vidokle; pp. / S. 20–24: courtesy Kai Althoff, by request of Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev; pp. / S. 26–28: courtesy AND AND AND

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Bifo – Franco Berarditransverse / transversal

Bifo – Franco Berarditransverse

In this text I will try to understand some of the intentions of dOCUMENTA (13) according to my particular point of view, which is based on the belief that the current agony of capitalism will be a deadly trap for human evolution unless we adapt our culture and lifestyle to exhaustion, the dominant trend of our time. I will also try to understand how some of the works presented and assembled by dOCUMENTA (13) express propositions for emancipation and autonomy through withdrawal, exodus, and a proliferation of morphogenetic processes of recombination.

I am writing and acting in Europe, where the modern utopia of infinite growth has come to an end, and a process of irreversible decline is unfolding. The dissolution of the last great political project of modern times, the European Union, is approaching, and this process can be seen as a failure and a catastrophe, but also as the condition for the imagination of a new Europe—based on social solidarity and no longer on competition. From my (European) point of view, the collapse and rebirth of the European project may be seen as the beginning of a new process of autonomy based on frugality rather than accumulation, on friendship rather than rivalry.

Trauma

We have been told for so many years that “everything will be okay” that now it’s hard to believe that everything is more or less collapsing: pensions, social security, public sanitation, schools. Prosperity, democracy, civilized manners, may therefore disappear too.

What exactly is happening, down here, on Planet Earth?

Climate pundits have stated the matter clearly: time is up for the environment; floods and catastrophes are increasingly frequent and violent. But the Durban Conference, the umpteenth climate summit, has gone neglected. Nobody has money to spare for the rescue of mankind from the apocalypse of the planet, since everybody is haunted by the financial conundrum. Should we care about the collapsing physical planet and the growing number of starving people and unemployed or should we care about the abstraction of the abstraction of the abstraction?

Doug Ashford, Forma Corporis, 2010, ink-jet print, 45.7 × 61 cm. “There is a huge reservoir of feeling produced by abstraction, daily as the dark impartiality of economic systems that tear culture apart and rarely as the brighter possibilities of a distanced view: both positions of looking (and thinking and making) are incandescent because they are separated from the space of reality.”1

Finance is the most abstract level of economic symbolization. It is the point of arrival of a long process of progressive abstraction that started with capitalist industrialization. Marx speaks of abstract labor in the sense of a growing distancing of human activity from its concrete usefulness. In the sphere of capitalism, the application of human skills is only a means to obtain a more abstract goal: the accumulation of monetary value. Nevertheless, in the old period of industrialization as analyzed by Marx, the production of useful goods was still a necessary step in the process of valorization itself. In order to produce abstract value, the industrial capitalist was obliged to produce useful things. This is no longer true today, in the sphere of semiocapital. Accumulation in the world of financial capitalism no longer passes through the production of goods, but goes straight to its monetary goal: extracting value from the pure circulation of money, from the virtualization of life and intelligence.

Financialization and the virtualization of human communication are obviously intertwined: thanks to the digitization of exchanges, finance has turned into a social virus that spreads everywhere, transforming things into symbols. The symbolic spiral of financialization is sucking down and swallowing up the world of physical things, of concrete skills and knowledge. The concrete richness of the Europeans is vanishing into a black hole of pure financial destruction. Nothing is created from this destruction, while the financial class is expropriating the outcome of the general labor force and of the general intellect.

Years ago, Jean Baudrillard said that the ever-growing debt has disappeared from the scene of the world, and is orbiting above the earthly atmosphere.