A Tool for Decomposing the „World as We Know it“? Resilience beyond Critique and Affirmation

In writing my book about the car (that will be titled "Autodestruktion - das moderne Selbst in der ökologischen Katastrophe" and will be released next September in'shallah), I have written some preparatory papers in English to work out the theoretical implications of my philosophy of the car as one of the main prostheses to attach our selves to modern lifestyles. They are also the best sources in English as of now to get to know more about my main project these last years (maybe next to this video of a talk of mine).

The first one has already been released a couple of months ago:

• Politicizing New Materialism against the Toxic Entanglements of the Now - Towards a New Materialist Philosophy of the Car 

 A third one will be released beginning of next year with the title

• The Car as a Machine producing Nature 
  

Now the middle one has been released with the title:

 

A Tool for Decomposing the „World as We Know it“?

Resilience beyond Critique and Affirmation

 

It is a condensation of my year-long critical occupation with the term "resilience" that I have started with my book "Backlash - Essays zur Resilienz der Moderne" and will still play an important role in "Autodestruktion". 

 

The abstract of the now released paper is:

The critique of „Resilience“ as a predominately neoliberal concept that individualizes responsibility and depoliticizes the causes of crises of late-modern statehood is certainly en vogue in the more critical branches of the Humanities. However, in spite of a significant proliferation of these critiques the concept continues to spread almost unhalted. To understand this, I want to investigate the shortcomings – and even complacency – of modern critique with what it criticizes. By reading Isabelle Stengers, Tom Boland and Denise Ferreira da Silva, I want to propose a different approach towards resilience that is not only critical, but also affirms it as a critical tool to dismantle our toxic entanglements with the neoliberal state of the “world as we know it”, as Ferreira da Silva puts it. By learning from some fringe discourses within economic theory, I want to propose a methodology of examining the resilience of political problems with the aim of slowly decomposing them. By proposing an angle of a critical examination of the “resilience of Modernity” in order to overcome this world, I want to illustrate how resilience can be translated affirmatively as a critical tool to the Humanities.

 

Read it here. 

Ist eine autofreie Stadt möglich oder nur eine Spinnerei? - Panel at KAOS Berlin, 3.11.2023 19h

I have been invited to give an introductory input to and participate at a panel about the Utopia of a Car-Free City of Berlin. Given the current government of CDU and SPD that mainly fed on the resentment of car-drivers in the last election, I think this is a particularly challenging and engaging topic and I will be very happy to try to broaden our scope to create more inclusive and fun utopias that can enable people to de-tach from the very toxic realism of the Status Quo. I will be discussing with activists and politicians and am both excited and curious about the encounters!

Join us on Friday, the 3rd of November at KAOS. Find the Event-Link here and the description in German below.

Initiativen wie „Volksentscheid Berlin autofrei", „Aktionsbündnis A100 stoppen!" oder die „Bürger*innen-Initiative Wuhlheide" setzen sich für eine Verkehrswende und für die Abwendung von der autozentrierten Stadt ein.

Die Debatte um den Bau der TVO (Tangentialverbindung Ost) hat die
Bedeutsamkeit dieser Diskussionen für Treptow-Köpenick sichtbar gemacht.
Im Wahlkampf zur Abgeordnetenhauswahl 2023 und auch im politischen Alltagsgeschäft standen und stehen dagegen vermehrt die Perspektiven von autofahrenden Menschen im Fokus.

Die Diskussion um verkehrs- und klimapolitische Themen löst Emotionen aus. Wir möchten verschiedene Positionen zu diesen Themen an einen Tisch bringen und diskutieren.

Dazu laden „KLIMA IM KAOS" des KAOS e.V. und das „Zentrum für Demokratie Treptow-Köpenick" am 3. November 2023 zu einer Diskussionsveranstaltung in das KAOS in Berlin-Oberschöneweide ein.

Beginn: 19:00 Uhr, Einlass: 18:30 Uhr

Der Eintritt ist frei.
Barrierefreiheit: Der Veranstaltungsraum ist nur über eine Treppe zu erreichen. Ein Aufzug ist leider nicht vorhanden.

 

"Die Verbindungen, die befreien" - a new book project (?) with Michael Hirsch

 

It seems like I got myself into a new book project. After visiting Longo Mai together with Stoffwechsel and together and alone reading a lot of French literature about the ZAD, Michael Hirsch and me started to write a text that was supposed to be 10 pages but now has swollen to a size that can only be held by the form of the book. It is exciting to think together about this with Michael, because we have found a way to make our differences in thought and action communicate in a really productive way. He is more the leftist state-philosopher, while I am more on the anarchist movement side. But we both know that our thinking gets fuzzy, or imprecise, where the respective other's strengths lie. So we have engaged in a dialogue, using what is commonly thought to be inconsolable trenches as tools to think productive with - we are at the moment riding the contradictions between State and Anarchy, Reform and Revolution, Top-Down and Bottom-Up and love the sparks that emerge from the friction. 

The text is titled: "Die Verbindungen, die befreien - 'ZAD Partout' als politisches Programm" and we have now put some little excerpts online as part as the obligations to the process we have engaged with at Stoffwechsel - Ecologies of Collaboration. 

Find the text online and I hope you will be able to read about this project again in due time!

"Welten ohne Autos" - Interview with Sabrina Rosina at skug

Following our performative public space intervention in June titled "Die Letzte Waschung", an interview has now gone online at Skug in which Sabrina Rosina and me explain why we like washing and burning cars (among many other things). 

Find the interview here.

 

 

Alexis Shotwell in Vienna - LANDEN x Against Purity, 10th of October 2023

I am very honored to have the opportunity to invite Alexis Shotwell to a full-day workshop at our emerging research cluster LANDEN in Vienna, taking place on the 10th of October at im_flieger. Her book "Against Purity" has had a deep impact on my own thinking, learning and acting and since she is a fellow anarchist, I am so excited to learn more about her recent work on LeGuin's utopianism, practices of prefiguration and the concept of freedom as a collective entity. There are sill some slots available to participate in this amazing opportunity to think and become together with Alexis <3

Find all info here

Im_flieger’s youngest artistic research cluster is engaged with the topic of landing in its many and yet to define meanings. We are interested in both theoretical as well as physical approaches to engage in new and old forms of reclaiming territory in non-capitalist, non-colonial and non-patriarchal ways of inhabiting the planet. Nonetheless, we are aware of the dangers of various kinds of “purity politics” in any attempts to land on, or re-connect with the Earth, Gaia. For this and many other reasons we have invited the philosopher and activist Alexis Shotwell for a full-day workshop as part of the several-year artistic research project LANDEN focusing both on her latest book “Against Purity – Living Ethically in compromised times” and her current project about Ursula Le Guin’s ambiguous utopianism, the importance of process and whether/how prefiguration is a political strategy, …. and an artistic one.

Guest-Appearance @ "Exzess - Eine Techno-Oper", rbb-Radio

In early summer, Jorinde Schulz and me were invited to meet Noam Brusilovsky and Tobias Purfürst in front of - what has once been to us - the TEMPLE, meaning that club next to Metro in Berlin. We talked about our book on it (Die Clubmaschine (Berghain)) and our changing relationship to club-culture in the years that followed. It was a very nice interview and now they cut up our statements into a radiophonic opera they did for the Berlin public radio station RBB.

You can listen to it here!

Talk on "Neue Vorsicht" & musical dance-theater play "Rasender Stillstand" @ Festspiele Bregenzerwald

 I am honored to have co-inspired a musical theater play at the Festspiele Bregenzerwald this year with my book "Neue Vorsicht - Philosophie des Abstands im Zeitalter der Katastrophen". The piece is titled "Rasender Stillstand" [Raging Deadlock] and is a topic very dear to me in my research about the Resilience of Modernity and the deadlock of our ecocidal life-forms. Therefore I am very happy to give a little input from my book on the (under-reflected) relation between activism and developing taste, between withdrawal and immersion, between breathing in and breathing out. I will speak at the infamous "Felbers schiefes Haus" and the whole day program will be accompanied by food, walks, music and dance. I am very excited about next week!

Find the program here.

And my book, of course, here.