"Soiled love: May it last long" - Stoffwechsel Lab 2023

 

Part of my visit at Longo Mai this April/May I was able to spent with my long-time research cluster and good friends of "Stoffwechsel - Ecologies of Collaboration". I remember our time in the french Provence, discussing forms of commoning, reading loads of texts on ZADism and smelling the fragrances of rosemary and lavender everywhere with such great intensity and fondness. I am particularly overjoyed to present some of our results at our Open Lab this year on 12th of September at im_flieger. Michael Hirsch and me are also now working on a text on ZADism which is turning longer and longer - it is one of these texts that have developed a life of their own and we are curious where it will lead us. We will present some of that text and its process at the Lab in the form of a discursive walk.

Find all info here.

The Provençal word Longo Mai means “May it last long” in English. This year, the metabolism collective is exploring the questions of soil and earth, radical ecology and concrete utopias of alternative forms of life. In this context, we also visited the Longo Mai commune as part of a working week in the south of France in June 2023 and got to know their experiment, which has now been going on for decades, with a different cultivation of the soil and a different collective way of life beyond growth, intensive agriculture and capitalist wage labor.  

The lab focuses on speculative questions, practical exercises and experiences with the phenomena of earth, soil, land and home; “prefiguration” in the sense of models of future other ways of living in the now, and the productive tension between revolutionary-anarchist and radical-reformist models of action, politics and society.  

We invite you to the practice of walking through the Vienna Woods followed by a gathering with food in the Im_flieger Studio. Our guest and discussion partner is Alexander Behr, political scientist, journalist and long-time member of the Longo Mai collective.

 

Territory beyond state and property (Aug 21-26 @ Bravos Foundry, Gallicia)

I have been quite inactive on this blog for a while. This is because I was mainly operating in the clandestine and autonomous zones of France and Spain recently and this is nothing I would publish freely. However, I can tell you that I am learning a lot and there will be a few publications around certain experiences coming up, among which a publication about the slogan "ZAD partout" as a political program (with Michael Hirsch) and a presentation of our visit to Longo Mai with Stoffwechsel in September. More on this in due time. 

Currently I am on my way to various autonomous meetings, among which are Les Resistances in Larzac and the Rencontres de luttes paysanes in Bure. At the moment I feel extremely fortunate to be able to get to know these related "eco-anarchist" scenes in France and I feel the germano-phone sphere could really learn a lot from their practices and experiences. I will try to start more of this "translation-work" in the future - if you are curious, do not hesitate to contact me in person. I feel the Rhine is still such a huge frontier of political cultures and - perhaps unsurprisingly - I feel France is a little more advanced in understanding the eco-political struggles we are all facing (whether we want to or not).

So much about this short update from my side. I will also attend a workshop on related topics in The Bravos Foundry in Gallicia, Spain, where I will talk about the role of car as a vehicle of homogenization and how to work with it in rural communes. The whole week-long program is called "Territory beyond state and property" and will happen from 21-26th of August. Here is the abstract of my presentation:

Driving the Homogenocene
Not all earthlings are affected equally by the catastrophes of our times. While some lifeforms are entrenching their privileges, others face extinction, expulsion or violent adaption. The term “Homogenocene” seeks to understand these two dynamics in relation: the modern form of the Good Life paves and normalizes our expectations, desires and interactions in a monolithic way that absorbs the air to breath and ground to stand on for a plurality of the living. In this workshop, I propose to understand the car as a main driver and embodiment of this Homogenocene and want to discuss possibilities of undoing its auto-destructive homogenisation of landscapes, desires and economies. The car will be thought of as a metaphor for our being dead-locked in an ecologically catastrophical way of relating to the planet. With it, I want to engage a discussion about our own entanglements with automobile infrastructure in our utopian imaginations as well as practical necessities and horizontally seek strategies for active resistance and alternative worlding that promotes plurality as a radical practice. Roots have a hard time spouting through pavement after all.

You can find the full program here. I am sure it will be a blast. If you are close, please come by!