Our desire to share has been harnessed by the overwhelming power of technology, and the ever-since twisted interconnection between knowledge and human interest has been brought to a post-human level. In modern times we are busy decoding the intentions and ethics within our system of beliefs, and it seems as if there are endless attempts to challenge our critical perception by the mental overload.
“Senator, we run ads” was Mark Zuckerberg’s response at the congressional hearing about the Cambridge Analytica scandal, to the question of how he wants to sustain a busi-ness model in which users don’t pay for its service. What Facebook means to sell as a uto-pian society is a high-speed freeway, surrounded by companies that want to track your preferences, show you ads and monetize your behavior. How are we to evade the dystopian machinery tracking our every step?
To stop feeding the network may leave one hungry. Although as long as this sobriety lasts, we might ask which realities are still there, what is lost and what is gained? What tools can be crafted to overcome the binaries of the (digital/physical/psychological/political/racial) that set things apart?
An undead god, whose eye was meant to expose any human secret and kill ideas before they were born, to ensure those in power can pursue their hegemonial aims, has finally taken shape, building on the dystopian heritage of our self-colonizing society.
The second issue of this street newspaper attempts to glimpse what social cohesion can be; seen through contemporary art practices coming together in different texts and interventions by our contributors. Dialectical cohesion presents itself in the archives of arts in the 21st century as an accumulation of reactionary movements. The impressionists against academism, surrealists against social standards, post-modernism against modernism, content-based interpretation against formalist interpolation.
“May the bridges I burn light the way” looks at both ends of the revolutionary act: the will to reach utopias and the urge to provoke dystopia. Artists always situate themselves in history by breaking with what they believed this profession to be before becoming artists.
As a title, it implies a certain pessimism; anticipating the worst outcomes of a given situation. However, it also reveals the unfortunate desire to (always) be right.
“May the bridges I burn light the way” was the title of the summer camp we organized with EXILE gallery for the collateral events of the European Biennial in Palermo, the Manifesta 12. Many of this issue’s contributors intervened in Palermo following the curatorial idea of working together with the community at the Ballarò market and the community kitchen Cre.Zi Plus. Utopia here is not a promise but a joint venture. The group of people was deliberately brought together by invitation, but the summer camp was left to the unpredictable nature of the market vendors’ routines.
Artworks and kiosks co-existed as two different autonomous systems in daily conversations. This issue intends not to document those days, but to unfold the energies gathered through infinite flexibilities and their softness, towards a new redemptive way of collaborating in the arts. As if there weren’t any difference from other occupations, vocations and professions. An overcoming of the artificial borders of an dystopian art zoo.
„Arts of the Working Class“ ist eine Straßenzeitung für Armut, Reichtum und Kunst. Sie erscheint alle zwei Monate und enthält Beiträge von Künstlern und Denkern aus verschiedenen Feldern und in verschiedenen Sprachen. Sie richtet sich an die Arbeiterklasse, also an alle, und es geht um alles, das allen gehört. Jeder, der sie verkauft, verdient mit. Jeder Künstler, dessen Arbeit beworben wird, gestaltet mit.
„Arts of the Working Class“ wird vom Künstler Paul Sochacki und der Kuratorin Maria Ines Plaza Lazo entwickelt und erscheint bei Reflektor M. Die Straßenzeitung erscheint am 26. April 2018 im Rahmen von Paul Sochackis Ausstellung „Self-reflection“. Sie wird unter anderem in der Galerie Exile und auf der Straße vertrieben. Verkäufer erhalten Kontingente zum halben Preis.
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"Arts of the Working Class" is a street journal for poverty, wealth and art. It is published every two months and contains contributions by artists and thinkers from different fields and in different languages. Its terms are based upon the working class, meaning everyone, and it reports everything that belongs to everyone. Everyone who sells this street journal earns money directly. Every artist whose work is advertised, designs with us its substance.
Developed by artist Paul Sochacki and curator Maria Ines Plaza Lazo, "Arts of the Working Class" is published by Reflektor M. The street journal will be published from April 26, 2018 on. It will be available at the gallery Exile, as part of Paul Sochacki's solo show "Self- reflection ", as well as other places. Sellers receive quotas at half price.
