#thekidswantcommunism

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Being Together Precedes Being — Philadelphia book launch at Slought

Tuesday, November 5, 2019, 6 - 8 pm

Image: Noa Yafe, Red Star, 2016-17. Photo by Gal Deren.

Slought is pleased to announce The Kids Want Communism, a public conversation exploring the legacies and meaning of communism today. The event will feature writers and scholars including Marissa Brostoff, Kristen Ghodsee, Malcolm Harris, and Joshua Simon, and marks the publication of the book  Being Together Precedes Being: A Textbook for The Kids Want Communism  (Archive Books), copies of which will be available courtesy of Ulises, and is presented in partnership with Philly Socialists. Specters are haunting the globe—the specters of anticommunism. From the European Union and its erosion to the disastrous "war on terror" and the destruction of the welfare state; from Wahhabism to neoliberalism; from debt economy to privatization; from game theory and disruptive innovation to cybernetics, and the surveillance of entertainment devices - all these anticommunisms are fighting one another, and collectively haunting us. What began with the implosion of real existing socialism almost thirty years ago comes full circle with the current collapse of the neoliberal arrangements that were then constituted. The discussion will consider communist legacies and knowledge inside and outside of real-existing socialism, to address some urgent questions facing us today: automation and reproductive labor, human capital and algorithmic management, environmental capitalist reform and planning for zero growth. From the Cold War to Global Warming, from the Soviet Block to Blockchain technology, from the Space Race to Space X, the word communism stands again as the radical opposition for exploitation and inequality. Being Together Precedes Being offers itself as a text book for The Kids Want Communism project, which was initiated towards the 99th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution of October 1917 as a series of exhibitions, symposiums and conferences, screening programs, publications and a summer camp around the world. In this textbook, communism does not merely describe an "us versus them" relation, but also offers that we are becoming the future. This trajectory of communism runs parallel to us at every single moment and its guiding principle is that being together precedes being. This event is free and open to the public. 

For more information, please visit here.

FB event available here. 

[gewohnheitstier]

☭

[skowhegan]

Ivonne Dippmann (’11) “for we bend and break time” wallwork / photo collage 300 x 700cm Hamburg 2018 with objects by Jan Thomsen (Thoja) & a limited edition of hats by FriedrichDippmann (#thekidswantcommunism) as part of the project LIEBESLIED Chemnitz - Tel Aviv 11.10.2018 - 11.11.2018 as part of the group show “prozess” at


xpon-art Repsoldst.45 20097 Hamburg

www.xpon-art.de www.ivonnedippmann.eu

[berxwedan161]

THE KIDS WANT COMMUNISM!

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Amazing propaganda images from the 1960s show how the Soviet Union thought the world would look in 2017

“Amazing images from the height of communism showing how a futuristic and all-conquering Soviet Union might have looked in 2017 have emerged in Moscow. The fantastical prediction of an idealized communist paradise - with the West defeated - was made almost half a century ago and envisaged Russia as it marked the centenary of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. In this brave new world, there are under-ice cities in the USSR's polar regions where the season was 'eternal spring' with their own tropical sea and beach. Heat is obtained from 'the bowels of the earth' by 'underground boat 'moles' made from extremely heat-resistant steel' tapping into sources of perpetual energy. And Soviet apparatchiks tamper with nature to reverse two of Siberia's mighty rivers - the Yenisei and Ob (the fifth and seventh longest in the world) - to flow into the Caspian Sea, instead of the Arctic Ocean, to feed states of the union. The slide show was intended as a propaganda filled comic strip for Soviet children in 1960 allowing a glimpse the exciting future of their country, which - in fact- was to collapse in ruins in 1991 after nations such Ukraine voted for independence.” 

Read more here. 

Some images from the story below:

The front cover of the propaganda comic strip depicts a futuristic world of cities in the sky, high speed trains and space shuttles venturing into outer space. The western capitalists have been defeated but attempt a feeble fight back in the story.

The cartoon story predicted that the Soviet Union would be at the forefront of technology with heat obtained from 'the bowels of the earth.' The roots of the Union came in 1917 when the Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, overthrew the Russian Provisional Government.

The picture in the backdrop shows a towering skyscraper, aircraft dotted across the sky and a high speed train traveling on a glistening white bridge. The portrait painted in the cartoon was far removed from reality and just four years after the piece was released the country encountered a period of economic stagnation from which it would never recover.

Children of 2017 look out to a projection of an immaculate city with blanket white buildings and roads.  'The Era of Stagnation' is deemed to have started in 1964 under the rule of Leonid Brezhnev and lasted until 1985 when Konstantin Chernenko was in office. Experts say the state over budgeted on its military which lead to a prolonged period of economic decline.  

The image shows how 'bridges stretched over bottomless gorges' connect the vast Soviet Union together. It suggests that even mountains, which were blown away by 'precisely-aimed nuclear explosions,' cannot stop the rise of communism nor stunt the growth of the country.

'The sea that was just recently drying up now accepts new deep rivers,' reads the script. The Soviet Union, which was then presided over by President Nikita Khrushchev, shows it can play god in 2017 managing to beat nature by reversing two of Siberia's mighty rivers - the Yenisei and Ob (the fifth and seventh longest in the world) - to flow into the Caspian Sea instead of the Arctic Ocean.

This map shows the tumultuous route the waters would have taken to reach the Caspian Sea which would have served the Soviet states of Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan. This underlined in no uncertain context the strength the Union would have upon its centenary year.

Propagandists also claimed that the socialists state would build a dam across the Bering Strait linking Russia and an Alaska 'liberated' from capitalism. The dam can also accommdate 'nuclear powered trains' on double decker railway lines. 'See nuclear powered trains rushing across it. The dam blocked a cold current from the Arctic Ocean, so improving the climate of the Far East' the caption reads.

Elsewhere, defeated Western 'imperialists' have been banished to a remote island in the southern Pacific and are trying desperately to claw back land by building bombs with the manpower they have left.

Not content with conquering the world the communists were able to reach the depths of space to expand the Soviet Union's burgeoning territory.  The state consisted of now 15 separate countries including European nations such as Estonia, Moldova and Latvia. The union also encompassed Central Asian powerhouses Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan.

'Photonic rockets - interstellar ships - swept across space at near the speed of light, heading for the nearest, yet so distant planetary system of Alpha Centauri,' the script reads as a scientist gives a class to attentive students.

After an introduction to the impending achievements of the Union the story focuses on a boy called Igor who was awoken by another technological advancement of the regime. The boy's alarm clock sends out a hand to pinch its owner's nose to wake them.

See the rest of the story here. 

[tkwc]

Wir feiern 100 Jahre russische Revolution: Lesung und Musik

Hosted by Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien and Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung

Veranstaltung: Dienstag, 07. November 2017, ab 19 Uhr

Im Rahmen der Ausstellung "The Kids Want Communism", die noch bis zum 12.11. zu sehen sein wird: Jacob Blumenfeld wird aus "Kommunismus für Kinder" von Bini Adamczak vorlesen und Diego Castro sorgt für Musik, denn am 07.11.2017 jährt sich die Russische Revolution zu ihrem 100sten Geburtstag. Gewiss ein Anlass! „Kommunismus für Kinder“ enthält zahlreiche Illustrationen, die Adamczaks Geschichte tragen und ihr helfen ihre Ideen zu vermitteln. Im Rahmen der Ausstellung „The Kids Want Communism“ zeigt Adamzcak einige der Illustrationen aus ihrem Buch. Diesen stellt sie jeweils Kommentare von Webseiten des konservativen und Alt-Right-Milieus gegenüber, wie etwa The National Review und Breitbart. Darin ereifern sich Autorinnen und Leserinnen gleichermaßen über die „Propaganda“, die Adamzcak und MIT Press fabriziert hätten. Stellenweise gipfeln die Kommentare gar in Aufforderung, das Buch solle „verbrannt“ werden.

Jacob Blumenfeld ist Übersetzer, Auto und Philosoph, der in Berlin lebt.

Diego Castro ist neben seiner Tätigkeit als bildender Künstler auch als Musiker bekannt, unter anderem als Frontmann der bekannten Kreuzberger Garagenrocker "Black Heino". Im Rahmen der Ausstellung komponierte er für sein "Monument für den Kunstarbeiter" Songs über das Berufsleben in der Kunstszene aus marxistischer Sicht, die er in einem ersten Set vortragen wird. In einem zweiten kurzen Set gibt er noch ein paar weitere Hits zum Thema zum besten, unter anderem umgedichtete Coverversionen von den Sex Pistols, die er speziell für den Abend eingeübt hat. Castro singt über Prekariat, Selbstausbeutung und die Transformationen der Arbeitswelt mit Witz und Humor und lässt dabei doch den gebührlichen Ernst walten.

See the FB event here.

And more information here. 

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The Kids Want Communism in Berlin - Vernissage

Photographs from 8th Sept 17 Vernissage at Kunstraum Kreuzberg / Bethanien

Images below taken by © Nihad Nino Pusija

See more here and here

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The third and final installment of The Kids Want Communism opens on 22 June, 2017!

☭ ☭ ☭

Opening reception is 8:00 - 11:00 pm.

☭ ☭ ☭ 

See here for more information.

[tkwc]

El Lissitzky's “Abstract Cabinet”

“El Lissitzky’s “Cabinet of Abstraction” (Kabinett der Abstrakten) was commissioned in 1927 by Alexander Dorner for the Hannover Provincial Museum. In 1926, Soviet artist El Lissitzky was Head of the Department of Furniture and Interior Design at the wood and metal workshop at VKhUTEMAS and received an assignment by the Narkompros, the People’s Commissariat of Enlightenment, to travel to Germany and the Netherlands in order to study modern architecture and act as an ambassador for Russian art. The artist began experimenting with exhibition design in the early 1920s through a practice which aimed at integrating his researches in abstract art with three-dimensional environments.

The cabinet comes as a close collaboration between the artist and art historian and curator Alexandre Dorner.  Dorner believed in the need for new exhibition formats for abstract art which would include the possibility for the spectator to interact with the art works and the exhibition spaces.

The pavilion is a room of about 20 square metres built inside the galleries of the Museum, a modular and adaptable area conceived to host works by constructivist and abstract painters, among whom Piet Mondrian, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Pablo Picasso and Fernand Léger as well as Mies van der Rohe and El Lissitzky himself. The Cabinet,  an art piece by itself, does not work only as background for the paintings and sculpures on show, but provides the spectator with changing viewing conditions by means of the reflective properties of some of its materials as well as by the way colors are placed on the areas around the paintings. The walls are covered with vertical background stripes of steel painted grey on the front side, white on the left edge and black on the right side in a way that following the position of the viewer, the walls appear white, grey or black. To further involve the observer during his visit to the cabinet, El Lissitzky integrated movable partitions and rotatable glass-cases which could be continuously displaced in order to create new spatial combination inside the structure.

The pavilion was destroyed in 1936 during the Third Reich and reconstructed in 1969 following the original plans in the Sprengel Museum in Hannover.” (source)

Also see:

“El Lissitzky and Alexander Dorner Kabinett der Abstrakten Original and Facsimile,” Museum of American Art Berlin

See here for “a catalog published as a constitutive printed matter both for the exhibition Kabinett der Abstrakten—Original and Facsimile at Halle fuer Kunst Lueneburg from 24 January to 8 March, 2009 and of Displayer 03.” 

and see:

demonstrationsraum - An augmented-reality app on El Lissitzky’s Abstract Cabinet

A virtual exhibition on EL Lissitzky's 'Abstract Cabinet'

Lower Saxony State Chancellery, Berlin, Nov 30—Dec 13 2015

Sprengel Museum Hannover, Jun 5—Oct 16 2016

Braunschweig University of Art, Oct 26—Nov 11 2016

«Арт Ель» art space, Novosibirsk, May 19—Jun 11 2017

“El Lissitzky intended his Abstract Cabinet (1926/27) to function as a “Demonstrationsraum” (demonstration room): an exhibition space for abstract art that makes visitors aware of their own visual experience, and thus of the conditions of exhibiting itself, through an array of devices fostering both interaction and disorientation. The work of the Russian avantgarde artist has had a fragmented and changeful history. Initially installed in the Provinzialmuseum Hannover in 1927 as a commission by Alexander Dorner, and destroyed only ten years later by the National Socialists, it was reconstructed in 1968 for the Landesmuseum Hannover. This second version was transferred to the Sprengel Museum in 1979, where it has since been permanently exhibited. Each of the Cabinet’s different states has been documented in photographs, so that photography has had a significant impact on the evolution of the space—both in retrospect to historical versions as well as for the current and future reconstructions. The history of this ground-breaking art space is reflected upon in an exceptional exhibition format. With the help of historical and recent photographs, an augmented reality app allows for a virtual visit to the Cabinet, proposing a time travel across the different versions of the installation. The app “demonstrationsraum“ draws on El Lissitzky’s terminology and concept: It transfers his artistic and social vision of uniting art and technology and activating spectators as citizens into a virtual exhibition. In the app, the diverging layers of time represented by digitized photographs taken since 1928 until today overlap precisely with the actual view of the visitors while moving through the space. Upon a closer look, both the differences between the three versions and their similarities become apparent, with the latter lying in the task of shattering the bourgeois monopoly on art, of facilitating participation—a goal that is actualized again by the “demonstrationsraum“ app.”

Download the app here or from  Google Play 

“... In order to use the app beyond this particular context, just print this document on an A4 sheet, cut out the depicted form and fold it into a cuboid. Then, place it on a flat surface with the blank side looking down, open the app and start scanning the markers. “

Also see here for: 

“Politics of aura. El Lissitzky's Abstract Cabinet between musealization and participation”

“In Benjaminian termns, the Abstract Cabinet can be described as a space that, paradoxically, achieves the detachment of aura from the works of art exhibited in it by investing visitor interaction with aura. This tension that made Lissitzky’s installation such an interesting case for contemporary artistic and curatorial practices is further accentuated by the art historical canonization of the space. The primal space was deconstructed in the 1930s under the pressure of the cultural political campaigns of the nazi regime and re-erected as late as in 1968. The ‘Abstract Cabinet’ is on view in a secondary reconstruction of 1979 as part of the permanent collection of the Sprengel Museum. The museum’s logic transformed it into a gesamtkunstwerk, in opposition to a space dedicated to the spectator’s experience. An object, that  today is the subject of conservational considerations on the basis of interpreting the historical documents on the space. To what extent is the Abstract Cabinet’s claim of participation compatible with its musealization? Do non-morphological aspects of the space have to be taken into account when it comes to its preservation? And how can an original state be postulated, when even the complex form of the installation is only fragmentarily conveyed in photographs, construction sketches and drawings? How can its initial mission be experienced again by contemporary visitors? Which methods and media could be employed to re-activate the Abstract Cabinet?

This anthology presents a selection of essays addressing these questions from the perspective of art history and curatorial studies. 

(Please note that as of now, the texts (apart from Steven ten Thije's) are only available in German and Russian; an English translation is forthcoming.)”

[tkwc]

The Mars Generation

More about The Mars Generation can be found here.  

About:

“Since NASA’s first mission to Mars in 1964, humanity has seen the planet as the ideal target for the first interplanetary space mission. In The Mars Generation, director Michael Barnett delves into space exploration’s history and current state while looking beyond technology to what we will really need to get to the Red Planet: the power of youthful dreams.

Through amazing archival footage of the space program as well as interviews with a number of scientists and astronauts—including Neil deGrasse Tyson, Bill Nye, and Sunita Williams—Barnett provides an overview of the history and current state of space exploration. The film juxtaposes this with a revealing and intimate look at participants in NASA’s space camp for youth. These self-proclaimed “space nerds” aspire to be the scientists, engineers, and technicians on whose shoulders humanity will reach the Red Planet. Their infectious passion and optimism is the heart of the film, leaving little doubt that if given the support and opportunities they need, they will get us there.”  

- Sundance

Also see here.

Find it on Netflix here. 

@artandblueberries 

[tkwc]

Envisioning an Art Museum on the Moon

By Sarah Rose Sharp

Moon Deed (image courtesy Julio Orta)

“Can we make art that transcends petty terrestrial concerns? The Museum of Contemporary Art on the Moon (MOCAM) has drawn together a diverse group of contemporary artists (including myself) to create work for a speculative museum that might one day exist on the moon. MOCAM was conceived in 2016 by visual artist Julio Orta in response to what he views as “the inevitable creation of human communities on the moon in the near future.” The museum purchased a plot on the moon through a website that issues deeds for property. The territory spreads over 20 acres in area D6, Quadrant Charlie, Lot Number 1/0581-0600, located 001 squares south and 001 squares east of the extreme northwest corner of what the deed terms “the recognized Lunar Chart.”

“Although governments and private entities are working on tourism and colonization of the moon, they seem to have no concern whatsoever for the arts,” states the MOCAM mission statement. MOCAM is working to address that situation, and in conjunction with the Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art, has begun a process “dedicated [to] displaying the most interesting, cutting edge, relevant art from the world, moon habitants, or in the case of future encounters, any other form of intelligent life we may meet.”

The inaugural show, Mystic Hyperstitians in the Heart of Empire, is being staged as a thought experiment of MOCAM on its online digital proxy, but the same works are also physically part of a bigger show, The Museum of Real and Odd, which opened at the Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary (IndyMOCA) Art early February. Mystic Hyperstitians was curated by Joey Cannizzaro, who chose to organize the show around the following prompt: “If extolling the virtues of self-expression and individual genius actually empowers capitalist ideology, then how can artists make work that is anti-conformist without promoting the values of individualism and its attendant isolation?”

After being invited to collaborate with artist Cedric Tai on his piece for the show, I took the opportunity to interview MOCAM founder Julio Orta and inaugural curator Joey Cannizzaro over email, who unpacked the inspiration, implications, and future prospects of the museum.”

Read the full interview here.