State of Concept
Athens

 

The symposium and book are part of the constellation of activities titled The Kids Want Communism (TKWC), marking 99 years to the 1917 Bolshevik revolution.

We invite contributors to the symposium to provide new propositions for a concept that was supposed to be a solution, but in reality proved to be a problem: communism.

As the highest expression of social and political change (“the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property,” wrote Marx and Engels in the Manifesto), communism also represents the circumstances in which the exploration of just and equal societies fail (for example real-existing socialism in certain periods). Still, in our current reality of anti-communisms fighting each other all over the world (fundamentalists, neo-cons, neo-liberals, nationalists) the question of communism as a solution and how to solve communism becomes ever more pressing.

More than any other word, “communism” expresses the opposite of a reality that champions and celebrates exploitation and inequality. But wherever capitalism goes, it brings communism with it, as a possibility for its radical negation. Yet communism is not contented with merely describing the power relations and resulting class division of “us versus them”, but offers an additional axis – one where we become the future. This axis has one guiding principle, that being-together precedes being, any being; biological, political, psychological, familial, social and so on.

Under the doctrine of the End of History, we have experienced the future as simply “more of now”. As history is reawakening, sometimes in the most horrific ways, in the Middle East and Eastern Europe, in the US and Britain, in Russia and Turkey, in Greece and Germany – the future will again suggest radically different realities, and with them communism will re-emerge.

The Kids Want Communism is an ongoing clandestine and public series of events marking ninety-nine years to the Bolshevik Revolution. A joint project of numerous individuals and organizations hosting exhibitions, screenings, discussions, seminars and publications throughout 2016, The Kids Want Communism takes place in a variety of locations. Among them tranzit, Prague, The Visual Culture Research Center, Kyiv, Free/Slow University Warsaw, State of Concept, Athens, Skuc gallery, Ljubljana, and MoBY-Museums of Bat Yam.

 

Programme

11:00 Gathering and coffee
11:20 Introductions
11:30 Joshua Simon — Communism: a solution to a problem that was supposed to be a solution
11:50 Angela Dimitrakaki — Communism and the Enigma of Social Reproduction
12:20 Coffee break
12:50 Jonas Staal — Assemblism
13:10 James Bridle — The New Dark Age
13:40 Discussion

14:00 Lunch break

15:20 Ingo Niermann — How could Marx forget about Sex and Love?
15:40 iLiana Fokianaki — Neo-identitarianism as communism
16:00 Vincent van Gerven Oei — Recycling communist Heritage
16:20 Coffee break
16:40 Irena Haiduk — Aesthetoconomics
17:00 Kostis Stafylakis — An antihumanist under the table part 2: The kids want communism and they will get it.
17:20 Round table discussion with participants
17:40 Discussion with audience and Conclusions

 

 

With the assistance of Goethe Institut Athens

 

With the continuous support of

 

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