with Akseli Virtanen and KAFKAMACHINE Team
workshop about:
Exhaustion of the possible. Three metamorphoses of the spirit. From biopower to arbitrary power. To function “in another way” (Benjamin). Economy as oikonomia. Topoi koinoi. An-arche. The secret bond between anarchy and government. Production of ethics. Production of memory. Giorgio Agamben and Paolo Virno’s on coming politics. Good and evil share the same root. Distance to environment. Mode of potentiality. Endless regression. Openness to the world. Experience of potentiality. Exhaustion of the realizable vs. exhaustion of the possible. Pathos of distance. Disaster, fragilization and desubjectivation. Impossibility-to-not-love. Copoiesis. Kafkamachine. Cooperation to come. Robin Hood Investment Fund of the Precariat. Minor Asset Management.
KAFKAMACHINE arouse in the midst of the marvels of financial economy and crises of Europe, when the precariousness of immaterial labour defines our every day, financial capitalism exercises its arbitrary power and forces us to continuously exploit ourselves and our friends while cynicism, opportunism, depression and detachment from others have become the only means of our survival. After the economic collapse, there seems to be nothing that holds Europe together anymore. Except our fear and apatheia. Just like in the Greek myth about the beginning of Europe, the Bull is raping Europa maiden again. Just look at Greece, Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Spain, Romania, Finland... And there is nothing we can do, nothing works. There is no solidarity, no shared place or time for a creation of community, of conscious collective subjectivity. There is no way out. The old political practices have totally lost their operationality.
KAFKAMACHINE is made out of loosers, sad figures, dark souls, cynical opportunists and depressed princesses. ”We are not tough or heroic, we are soft and feeble. We don’t march or demonstrate. We have difficulties in getting up from the bed. More, we are dependent on each other to see this. We are molle people, the future of cooperation.” There may be some self-sarcasm in this introduction, but only to express that there is no heroism in the exhaustion and disillusionment we are experiencing at the moment when seeking a way forward together is necessary but without any one being able to guide the way. The cognomen of the project is n-1, the one that disappeared. There is no other ground but the broken one.
We have difficulties in believing what is happening to us, because nothing seems to happen. We are tired of being ourselves because the self-evidencies of our lives don't work anymore. We know they don't, even if we still try to pretend that they do. We need reinvention of ourselves, but have no strength or appeal for it. That is why we all sound like déjà vu. The realm of possible at our disposal is exhausted. And when there is no access to possible, there is just the actual: there is no change. How do you build a way back to the possible? How do you invent a way out when there is no way out? KAFKAMACHINE is an organizational experiment on cooperations to come.
This is our story, the story of our lives, naked in front of the arbitrariness of the world, alone and lost, when the one has disappeared.
Akseli Virtanen is a member of Mollecular organization and the coordinator of Future Art Base in Helsinki (Aalto University School of Art). He is currently working on “Parasite –Investment Fund of the Precariat” and “Kafka machine” film project based on Félix Guattari’s project plan. He also teaches new political economy and philosophy of cooperation at the Aalto University School of Economics. His recents books include the Molecular Organization of Félix Guattari (2011), Economy and Social Theory Vol 1-3 (2011-2012), Introduction to Bracha Ettinger's Copoiesis (2009), The Place of Mutation. Vagus, Nomos, Multitudo (2007), A Critique of Biopolitical Economy. The End of Modern Economy and Birth of Arbitrary Power (2006), Dictionary of New Work. A Map to Precarious Life (2006). He edits "Polemos" and "Memory books of cooperation" book series.
workshop about:
Exhaustion of the possible. Three metamorphoses of the spirit. From biopower to arbitrary power. To function “in another way” (Benjamin). Economy as oikonomia. Topoi koinoi. An-arche. The secret bond between anarchy and government. Production of ethics. Production of memory. Giorgio Agamben and Paolo Virno’s on coming politics. Good and evil share the same root. Distance to environment. Mode of potentiality. Endless regression. Openness to the world. Experience of potentiality. Exhaustion of the realizable vs. exhaustion of the possible. Pathos of distance. Disaster, fragilization and desubjectivation. Impossibility-to-not-love. Copoiesis. Kafkamachine. Cooperation to come. Robin Hood Investment Fund of the Precariat. Minor Asset Management.
KAFKAMACHINE arouse in the midst of the marvels of financial economy and crises of Europe, when the precariousness of immaterial labour defines our every day, financial capitalism exercises its arbitrary power and forces us to continuously exploit ourselves and our friends while cynicism, opportunism, depression and detachment from others have become the only means of our survival. After the economic collapse, there seems to be nothing that holds Europe together anymore. Except our fear and apatheia. Just like in the Greek myth about the beginning of Europe, the Bull is raping Europa maiden again. Just look at Greece, Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Spain, Romania, Finland... And there is nothing we can do, nothing works. There is no solidarity, no shared place or time for a creation of community, of conscious collective subjectivity. There is no way out. The old political practices have totally lost their operationality.
KAFKAMACHINE is made out of loosers, sad figures, dark souls, cynical opportunists and depressed princesses. ”We are not tough or heroic, we are soft and feeble. We don’t march or demonstrate. We have difficulties in getting up from the bed. More, we are dependent on each other to see this. We are molle people, the future of cooperation.” There may be some self-sarcasm in this introduction, but only to express that there is no heroism in the exhaustion and disillusionment we are experiencing at the moment when seeking a way forward together is necessary but without any one being able to guide the way. The cognomen of the project is n-1, the one that disappeared. There is no other ground but the broken one.
We have difficulties in believing what is happening to us, because nothing seems to happen. We are tired of being ourselves because the self-evidencies of our lives don't work anymore. We know they don't, even if we still try to pretend that they do. We need reinvention of ourselves, but have no strength or appeal for it. That is why we all sound like déjà vu. The realm of possible at our disposal is exhausted. And when there is no access to possible, there is just the actual: there is no change. How do you build a way back to the possible? How do you invent a way out when there is no way out? KAFKAMACHINE is an organizational experiment on cooperations to come.
This is our story, the story of our lives, naked in front of the arbitrariness of the world, alone and lost, when the one has disappeared.
Akseli Virtanen is a member of Mollecular organization and the coordinator of Future Art Base in Helsinki (Aalto University School of Art). He is currently working on “Parasite –Investment Fund of the Precariat” and “Kafka machine” film project based on Félix Guattari’s project plan. He also teaches new political economy and philosophy of cooperation at the Aalto University School of Economics. His recents books include the Molecular Organization of Félix Guattari (2011), Economy and Social Theory Vol 1-3 (2011-2012), Introduction to Bracha Ettinger's Copoiesis (2009), The Place of Mutation. Vagus, Nomos, Multitudo (2007), A Critique of Biopolitical Economy. The End of Modern Economy and Birth of Arbitrary Power (2006), Dictionary of New Work. A Map to Precarious Life (2006). He edits "Polemos" and "Memory books of cooperation" book series.
