Kolleg zur Wiederentdeckung des Klassenbewusstseins (2017)

How can the demands of factory workers, the self-employed, the refugees, the unemployed, the demands of those working in the household, etc., be formulated in such a way that their particular interests become a collective fight? In a series of talks in Frankfurt am Main, Mannheim and Berlin, ongoing project is looking for a contemporary ›class consciousness‹ together with trade unions, strikers, prostitutes, journalists, professors, blind organizations, economic experts etc. The series of talks is an artistic research.

The results of this research will be shown in a final performance in September 2017.

dates and information for the talkshow:

18.05.2017, 18:00 h, Künstlerhaus Mousonturm Frankfurt am Main

#1 My female* body, our feminist war!

Care-Labour, which is still seen as something feminine*, is especially affected by precarious practices. Either they are deprived from their social and political rights - for example in the case of prostitution - or they are dismissed from the economic sector - housework, education and family care. In either case the female* workers rarely are present in the traditional workers and class mouvements and they are often excluded from leftist authors from the so called workers class, defining them as “Lumpenproletariat” or “housewifes”.

Bojana Kunst (SVN) is a philosopher, dramaturg und a perfomance theoretician. She is a professor at the Institut für angewandte Theaterwissenschaft of the Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen and is the head of the international Master ›Choreography and Performance‹ there.

Juanita Henning (Doña Carmen e.V. - Verein für soziale und politische Rechte von Prostituierten) (D) is an association fighting since their foundation in 1998 for social and political concerns of prostitutes, especially for migrant prostitutes. The association has a helpdesk for women and their relatives, fights for legal contracts and conditions for prostitutes and for the recognition of prostitution as a profession.

#2 Bildet Banden! Mobilisation and tactics in the labour dispute.

In times of individuated employment relations, the traditional methods of the workers struggle - strike, organization in trade unions, wage negotiations - seem old fashioned. How can there be found new ways of organizing and fighting that aren’t only for employees but also for more unstable employment relations? How can the division between day laborer and permanent workers, waged work and unpaid reproductive labour be questioned?

Christian Krähling (Vertreter Amazon-Streik-Bündnis) (D) is an association of workers with different working conditions at the mail-order company amazon. The association was founded 2013 during a strike in Leipzig.

Elfriede Harth (Netzwerk Care Revolution) (D/COL) is an association with more than 80 groups and persons in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, that are active in different fields of social reproduction - housework, health, care, assistance, education, living and sexual work. They work against supply gaps in the public social system and aim at new models for care-relations.

20.05.2017, 18:00 h, Vierte Welt Berlin

#3 Class and Intersectionalism

In a globalized world, different factors of exploitation - economic, social and political - are not any more able to be divided. Is the notion of class still an appropriate tool if we look at the multiple fights going on?

Nikita Dhawan (IN) is a professor at the university of Innsbruck, in the field of political theory since 2014 with a focus on female and gender studies.

Maria do Mar Castro Varela (ES/D) is a professor for pedagogy and social work at the Alice Salomon Hochschule Berlin.

#4 Organize! Practice vs. theory in the fight against oppression

In the fight against oppression two fields seem problematic: 1.) How can you link theory and practice? 2.) Who is being represented and who is not?

In this talk both aspect are being discussed in order to face a common struggle.

International Women’s Space (int/D) is a feminist group of migrant and refugee women and women without this experience engaging against racism, sexism and other forms of oppression. The group was formed during the occupation of the Gerhard-Hauptmann-Schule in Berlin in december 2012.

Freundinnen und Freunde der klassenlosen Gesellschaft (D) is a soical revolutionary circle that publishes the magazine KOSMOPROLET (kosmoprolet.org).

#5 What is to be done? organize solidarity

To what extent is it possible that activistic and artistic strategies are able to intervene and question in an emancipatory way the hegemonic order?

Often it is assumed that art and concrete political actions are irreconcilable. The aim of this talk is to examine which tactics and strategies are in need to change social conditions - for example the occupation, the strike or other aesthetic-political interventions in society. To what extent is the political will fed by the utopian space of art and what is the role of art and activism in shaping awareness of one’s own situation in society?

David Riff (RUS/D) is a writer, translator, artist and curator. Riff is part of the work group Chto delat/What is to be done? and took part in other artist collaborations, like the Learning Film Group or the Karl Marx School of the English Language. Riff currently teaches art history at the Rodchenko Moscow School of Photography and Multimedia.

Freie Arbeiterinnen- und Arbeiter-Union (D) is a federation of trade unions which campaigns for the improvement of working and living conditions with the means of labor dispute and education.

02.06.2017, 18:00 h, Künstlerhaus Mousonturm Frankfurt am Main

#6 Produce knowledge! No learning without interest

This talk is devoted to the production conditions of knowledge. The institutions which serve the purpose of knowledge transfer, through the nature of the mediation, produce the faith of a universal and ahistorical knowledge and conceal the fact that power structures are based on them. In this discussion, the structural functions at schools and universities are to be reflected and then looked for according to the requirements of the transformation of the same.

unter_bau (D) is a trade union initiative at the university of Frankfurt and aims a broad transformation of the institution university.

Black Diaspora School is an educational initiative for black teenagers. In the BDS, young people meet to learn together for school and non-school education projects. Recently, a film about empowerment, racism and the lives of black people in the Wedding has been created in cooperation with the Ballhaus Naunynstraße. The BDS continues to develop according to the needs of the young people. Every last Friday of the month, Black Youths are also invited to the Black Youth Fridayz - for common listening, exchanging, learning and networking.

#7 Subvert Institutions! Guilt by association

This talk is discussing the need for and the difficulty of institutions. On one side institutions can guarantee rights and equality, on the other hand they are themselves oppressing. Here we want to search for a subversive strategy within institutions.

Gregory Sholette (US) is an artist. He writes (among others) for the magazine Eflux, Critical Inquiry, Texte zur Kunst, October, CAA Art Journal und Manifesta Journal. He is a professor of the Queens College Art Department of the City University of New York, member of the curatorium of HomeWorkSpace Program at Ashkal Alwan Beirut and co-founder of the Gulf Labor Coalition.

Illia Yakovenko (UKR) is an artist and activist. He studied at ICA Moscow, Chto Delat’s School for Engaged Art and Ashkal Alwan Beirut. He is a member in the co-operative for creative research ›Krasnaya Shpana‹ (Hamburg–Kiev–Moskow) und Tawaaniya co-operative (Beirut–Istanbul–Kiew–New York). He lives and works in Kiev.

03.06.2017, 21:00 h, zeitraumexit Mannheim

#8 Provoke! Tactics of the rebellion

Publicity and attention are important aspects of the emancipatory struggle. However, there are different means: from the academic discourse to subversive strategies, from blank provocation to transgression of borders, the struggle is split into different tactics. This raises the question which means are appropriate for which aim. This talk will discuss different attitudes towards feminism and the critique of working conditions.

Stefanie Sargnagel (AUT) is an author and artist. The themes of her literary work are refusal of work and radical feminism. In 2016 she took part at the Ingeborg-Bachmann-Preis and received the BKS Bank-Publikumspreis. She is a co-founder of Burschenschaft Hysteria. This year, she is writer-in-residence in Klagenfurt (Austria).

Anna Kow (D) are part of the editorial staff of the 2008 in Leipzig founded magazine ›outside the box‹, which has devoted itself to an extensive social criticism with a feminist focus.

#9 Who owns the world? The struggle for visibility

Women that make housework and people with disabilities are both disadvantaged or excluded from the labor market. As excluded from this market, because they don’t recieve wages, they lack in visibility. In this talk we want to discuss the hegemonic-aesthetic perception and the exclusion of marginalized groups in order to fight for their visibility. In left discourse you also find a problematic approach in this topic, in special in the fields of the workers mouvement and the term class. This is why we also want to question the term class counciousness in relation to the people with disabilities and other people, excluded from the labor market.

Siegfried Saerberg (D) is a sociologist. For the association Blind and Art he curated the exhibition “Art blind”. He is also the author of several books, for example “Sexistenz”, a book about sexuality and disabilities.

Katherine Braun (D) is a sociologist. She worked in Bolivia and Genf about forms of survival of female sans-papiers and is now about “welcoming culture” for a decolonial perspective. She works for the network global migration studies at the university of Göttingen. She is part of Kritnet and part of the editorial staff of the magazine „Movements“- Journal for critical research about border and migration regimes.

01.07.2017, 21:00 h, zeitraumexit Mannheim

#10 class – with or without wage labour?

While many marxist theoreticians adhere to Marx’s central thesis of the value-creating human work and the revolutionary potential of the exploited this talk discusses to what extent work is a transhistorical constant of mankind. Looking at the aim of social struggles, the emancipatory transformation of society, we will also discuss if and how the “working class” can still be perceived as the revolutionary subject.

Alex Demirović (D) is a German social scientist and representative of critical theory. He is Senior Fellow of the Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung. Focus of his work: theory of the state and democracy, critical theory of society, intellectuals, education and knowledge.

Roswitha Scholz (D) is a feminist journalist, author and co-founder of the magazine "EXIT!". Contrary to other marxist-feminist authors, Scholz\\\'s critical theory breaks with labour movement, Marxism and underlines instead the marxist value critique.

#11 Lumpenproletarians unite!

In the face of resentments which sex workers have to endure, their political self-organization is of particular importance. Especially in times when employment conditions are increasingly precarious - \\\'lumpenproletarized\\\' - prostitution is for Marx ›only a particular expression of the universal prostitution of the worker‹. The example of the prostitution shows how particular activities are morally stigmatized and therefore socially excluded. This creates the possibility of the political deprivation of rights and for thus intensifies exploitation of the workers. In this talk the neoliberal concept of work is criticized and the question is raised: Why work at all?

Paula Ezquerra (ARG / ES) Feminist prostitute, activist, representative and member of the feminist group of sex workers "prostitutas indignadas" and former councilor of the CUP party in Barcelona.

Xiomara Tortoza (VE/D) is a social worker in Hamburg, supporting migrants. In Venezuela she was leading a center for education. In Hamburg she continous her pedagogical and political work and engages in projects that support the political process in Venezuela. She is founder of the latin-american womens group “Abriendo Espacios” and the solidarity-Venezuela group “Salón Protagónico”.

Further links about the project:

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