A film by Dario Azzellini & Oliver Ressler, 94 min., 2010

“We have to decide for ourselves what we want. We are the ones who know about our needs and what is happening in our community”, Omayra Peréz explains confidently. She wants to convince her community, located on the hillside of the poor districts of Caracas, to found a Consejo Comunal (community council). In more than 30.000 Consejos Comunales the Venezuelan inhabitants decide on their concerns collectively via assemblies. Omayra is supported by the activists of the nearby shantytown “Emiliano Hernández”, which has had a Consejo Comunal for three years already. The inhabitants there managed to get a doctor from the governmental program “Barrio Adentro”, who treats everyone free of charge. They also got money to renovate their houses and replaced over a dozen of sheet iron huts by new houses. All of these activities and a lot more have been organized via the Consejo Comunal. By local self-organization from below several working groups have been established on self-decided topics and decisions are made in assemblies.

Several Consejos Comunales can form a Comuna and finally a communal town. The film “Comuna Under Construction” follows these developments throughout the hillside of the shantytowns of Caracas and the vast and wet plains of Barinas in the countryside. The councils are built from below and alongside the existing institutions and are supposed to overcome the existing state through self-government. In an assembly for the construction of the communal town “Antonio José de Sucre” Ramon Virigay from the independent peasant’s organization Frente Nacional Campesino Ezequiel Zamora (FNCEZ) reminds the delegates of the participating Consejos Comunales: “Even if we definitely need the government agencies at the moment, we have to be independent tomorrow due to our development. We cannot depend solely on the state forever.” For this reason the councils are to establish own structures of production and distribution in order to achieve autonomy.

The assemblies are a central element of the film “Comuna Under Construction”. The film starts off in the well organized Consejo Comunal Emiliano Hernández located in one of the shantytowns of Caracas. It then shows the intentions of forming Comunas and a communal town in rural Barinas and ends in Petare, a gigantic shantytown of the agglomeration of Caracas where there are 29 Consejos Comunales intending to build the Comuna of Maca.
Is it even possible to bring together state and autonomy? Every one of the Consejos Comunales spokes-persons has positive as well as negative experiences with the institutions in store to talk about. In an assembly in Petare the grass-roots activist Yusmeli Patiño blames a high government representative: “We are losing our credibility because of the incompetence of the state institutions”. But there are also members of the institutions who make a big effort to accompany the basis in making its own decisions. The relation between the basis and the institutions is marked by cooperation as well as conflict. But the Consejos Comunales also have internal difficulties; participation has to be learned.
Progresses as well as setbacks mark the difficult process of people actually taking the power of deciding on their own lives and environment by themselves.

Original Spanish version with German and English subtitles available.

Concept, film editing, production: Dario Azzellini & Oliver Ressler
Camera: Volkmar Geiblinger, Oliver Ressler
Sound, sound editing, supervisory editor: Rudi Gottsberger
Production assistant: Adriana Rivas
Image editing: Markus Koessl, David Grohe

Grants: Bundesministerium für Unterricht, Kunst und Kultur; Kulturabteilung der Stadt Wien; Stiftung Umverteilen; Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung; Solifond der Hans Böckler Stiftung; Fraktion die Linke im EU-Parlament; Bundestagsfraktion die Linke; Netzwerk e.V.

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Austria License

“Comuna Under Construction” (Part 1: Emiliano Hernández)

“Comuna Under Construction” (Part 2: Barinas)

“Comuna Under Construction” (Part 3: Petare)

A film by Oliver Ressler, 118 min., 2009

“What is democracy?” is not one question, but is actually two questions. On the one hand, the question relates to conditions of the current, parliamentary representative democracies that are scrutinized critically in this project. On the other hand, the question traces different approaches to what a more democratic system might look like and which organizational forms it could take.

The project asked “What is democracy?” to numerous activists and political analysts in 15 cities around the world, in Amsterdam, Berkeley, Berlin, Bern, Budapest, Copenhagen, Moscow, New York, Rostock, San Francisco, Sydney, Taipei, Tel Aviv, Thessaloniki and Warsaw.
The interviews have been recorded on video since January 2007. Even though all interviewees were asked the same question, the result was a multiplicity of different perspectives and viewpoints from people living in states that are usually labeled “democracies”.

This pool of interviews builds the basis for a film in eight parts, which (re)presents a kind of global analysis about the deep political crises of the Western democratic model. In one video, Adam Ostolski (Warsaw) explains that originally “the modern idea of democracy was connected to the notion of progress” and parliamentary states “had some tendency to become more and more democratic by including new types of political actors, such as workers and women. […] But since the 1980s, since the neoliberal trend in politics and economy we have a regression of democracy.” Lize Mogel (New York) notes that situation changed in such a way, that when you think about representative democracy today “you are not necessarily talking about individuals being represented, but more capital being represented.” Nikos Panagos (Thessaloniki) even argues that “representation and democracy are incompatible terms. Therefore, under no circumstances could the present system be called a democracy. It is just a sophisticated form of oligarchy.” While some subjects in the videos elaborate their ideas of direct democracy or decision-making processes of indigenous communities, David McNeill (Sydney) raises the issue of whether it makes sense “to continue contesting for the right to own and define the term democracy” or whether “it has been so corrupted and polluted by the conservatives that claimed ownership of it, that it is better to be surrendered.”

The film discusses the contested notion of “democracy”, which is misused for the maintenance of order by those in power, while at the same time “democracy” still represents an ideal hundreds of million people in the South desperately want to achieve. Today it seems almost impossible to be against “democracy”, even though it is getting emptier and emptier. A potential strategy could try to fill what is called “democracy” with new meaning. In this sense, the film presents a multi-layered discourse on democracy, which expresses a broad field of opinions that go beyond the borders of nation-states and continents.

The film has eight parts with the following titles: “Rethinking representation”, “Politics of exclusions”, “Secrecy instead of democratic transparency”, “New democracies?”, “Is representative democracy a democracy?”, “Direct democracy”, “Reclaiming Indigenous politics” and “Should we consign the Western democracy model to the ash heap of history?”

Concept, interviews, camera and sound recording: Oliver Ressler
Interviewees: Kuan-Hsing Chen, Noortje Marres, Lin Chalozin Dovrat, Thanasis Triaridis, Tone Olaf Nielsen, Jo van der Spek, Cheikh Papa Sakho, Wolf Dieter Narr, Tiny a.k.a. Lisa Gray-Garcia, Joanna Erbel, Yvonne Riano, Trevor Paglen, Tadeusz Kowalik, Adam Ostolski, Boris Kagarlitsky, Michal Kozlowski, Lize Mogel, Rick Ayers, Nikos Panagos, Macha Kurzina, Gabor Csillag, Zachary Running Wolf, Jenny Munroe, David McNeill
Video editing and production: Oliver Ressler
Image editing and subtitles: David Grohe
Animation: Zanny Begg
Composition and sound editing: Rudi Gottsberger
Footage: Sierpien 80 (© Telewizja Polska S.A.)
Special thanks to Louisa Avgita, Kai Bauer, Zanny Begg, Karen Bennett, Christine Boehler, Paul Chatterton, Amy Cheng, Eyal Danon, Hilla Dayan, Miklos Erhardt, Takis Fotopoulos, Frédérique Gautier, Peter Grabher, Hou Hanru, Laila Huber, Manray Hsu, Jens Kastner, Caroline Lensing-Hebben, Geert Lovink, Margarethe Makovec, Davor Miskovic, Nikos Panagos, Ted Purves, Gerald Raunig, Natalia Romik, Walter Seidl, Katharina Schlieben, Gregory Sholette, Kuba Szreder, Nora Theiss, Dmitry Vilensky, Tom Waibel
Translation for English subtitles: Harold Otto
Translation for German subtitles: Otmar Lichtenwörther
Translation for French subtitles: Lucile Gourraud-Beyron

Grants: ERSTE Foundation, Kulturamt der Steiermärkischen Landesregierung, Kulturamt Stadt Graz, Otto-Mauer-Fonds, Biennale de Lyon, 2009

“What Is Democracy?”, Part 1 (Rethinking representation)

“What Is Democracy?”, Part 2 (Politics of exclusion)

“What Is Democracy?”, Part 3 (Secrecy instead of democratic transparency)

“What Is Democracy?”, Part 4 (New democracies?)

“What Is Democracy?”, Part 5 (Is representative democracy a democracy?)

“What Is Democracy?”, Part 6 (Direct democracy)

“What Is Democracy?”, Part 7 (Reclaiming Indigenous politics)

“What Is Democracy?”, Part 8 (Should we consign the Western democracy model to the ash heap of history?)

An 8-channel video installation by Oliver Ressler

“What is democracy?” is not one question, but is actually two questions. On the one hand, the question relates to conditions of the current, parliamentary representative democracies that are scrutinized critically in this project. On the other hand, the question traces different approaches to what a more democratic system might look like and which organizational forms it could take.

The project asked “What is democracy?” to numerous activists and political analysts in 18 cities around the world, in Amsterdam, Berkeley, Berlin, Bern, Budapest, Copenhagen, London, Melbourne, Moscow, New York, Paris, Rostock, San Francisco, Sydney, Taipei, Tel Aviv, Thessaloniki and Warsaw.
The interviews have been recorded on video since January 2007. Even though all interviewees were asked the same question, the result was a multiplicity of different perspectives and viewpoints from people living in states that are usually labeled “democracies”.

This pool of interviews builds the basis for eight videos, which are presented in an 8-channel video installation. This installation (re)presents a kind of global analysis about the deep political crises of the Western democratic model. In one video, Adam Ostolski (Warsaw) explains that originally “the modern idea of democracy was connected to the notion of progress” and parliamentary states “had some tendency to become more and more democratic by including new types of political actors, such as workers and women. […] But since the 1980s, since the neoliberal trend in politics and economy we have a regression of democracy.” Lize Mogel (New York) notes that situation changed in such a way, that when you think about representative democracy today “you are not necessarily talking about individuals being represented, but more capital being represented.” Nikos Panagos (Thessaloniki) even argues that “representation and democracy are incompatible terms. Therefore, under no circumstances could the present system be called a democracy. It is just a sophisticated form of oligarchy.” Lisa Gray-Garcia (San Francisco) seems to agree, when she labels representative democracy a “fake-democracy”. While some subjects in the videos elaborate their ideas of direct democracy or decision-making processes of indigenous communities, David McNeill (Sydney) raises the issue of whether it makes sense “to continue contesting for the right to own and define the term democracy” or whether “it has been so corrupted and polluted by the conservatives that claimed ownership of it, that it is better to be surrendered.”

The 8-channel video installation discusses the contested notion of “democracy”, which is misused for the maintenance of order by those in power, while at the same time “democracy” still represents an ideal hundreds of million people in the South desperately want to achieve. Today it seems almost impossible to be against “democracy”, even though it is getting emptier and emptier. A potential strategy could try to fill what is called “democracy” with new meaning. In this sense, the installation presents a multi-layered discourse on democracy, which expresses a broad field of opinions that go beyond the borders of nation-states and continents.

The eight videos have the following titles: “Rethinking representation” (16 min.), “Politics of exclusions” (23 min.), “Secrecy instead of democratic transparency” (13 min.), “New democracies?” (23 min.), “Is representative democracy a democracy?” (22 min.), “Direct democracy” (22 min.), “Reclaiming Indigenous politics” (18 min.) and “Should we consign the Western democracy model to the ash heap of history?” (13 min.)

The 8-channel video installation was/will be realized within the following exhibitions:

“nochnichtmehr – Handeln im unmarkierten Raum“, Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung, Berlin (D), 09.09. – 10.10.09
“The Spectacle of the Everyday”, Biennale de Lyon, Lyon (F), 16.09.09 – 03.01.10
“What Is Democracy?”, Siz Gallery, Rijeka (HR), 29.09. – 18.10.09 (solo-exhibition)
“What Is Democracy?”, Alexandria Contemporary Arts Forum – ACAF, Alexandria (ET), 12.03. – 01.04.10 (solo-exhibition)

Concept, interviews, camera and sound recording: Oliver Ressler
Interviewees: Kuan-Hsing Chen, Noortje Marres, Lin Chalozin Dovrat, Thanasis Triaridis, Tone Olaf Nielsen, Jo van der Spek, Cheikh Papa Sakho, Wolf Dieter Narr, Tiny a.k.a. Lisa Gray-Garcia, Joanna Erbel, Yvonne Riano, Sami Bukhari, Trevor Paglen, Tadeusz Kowalik, Adam Ostolski, Boris Kagarlitsky, Michal Kozlowski, Ilaria Vanni, Lize Mogel, Rick Ayers, Janos Kiss, Nikos Panagos, Macha Kurzina, Clare Saunders, Ewa Majewska, Gabor Csillag, Zachary Running Wolf, Jenny Munroe, Jorge Joquera, Miranda Bergman, Patrick Watkins, Abram Mahmoadi, Anja Peter, Tracey Wheatley, Ilya Eric Lee, Berenice Hernández, David McNeill
2nd camera (video 8): Volkmar Geiblinger
Video editing and production: Oliver Ressler
Image editing and subtitles: David Grohe
Animation: Zanny Begg
Composition and sound editing: Rudi Gottsberger
Footage: Sierpien 80 (© Telewizja Polska S.A.)
Special thanks to Louisa Avgita, Kai Bauer, Zanny Begg, Karen Bennett, Christine Boehler, Paul Chatterton, Amy Cheng, Eyal Danon, Hilla Dayan, Miklos Erhardt, Takis Fotopoulos, Frédérique Gautier, Peter Grabher, Hou Hanru, Manray Hsu, Jens Kastner, Caroline Lensing-Hebben, Geert Lovink, Margarethe Makovec, Davor Miskovic, Nikos Panagos, Ted Purves, Gerald Raunig, Natalia Romik, Walter Seidl, Katharina Schlieben, Gregory Sholette, Kuba Szreder, Dmitry Vilensky and Tom Waibel.
Translation for English subtitles: Harold Otto
Translation for German subtitles: Otmar Lichtenwörther
Translation for French subtitles: Lucile Gourraud-Beyron
Grants: ERSTE Foundation, Kulturamt der Steiermärkischen Landesregierung, Kulturamt Stadt Graz, Otto-Mauer-Fonds, Biennale de Lyon 2009

The exhibition project “For A Completely Different Climate” deals with an emerging social movement that questions and selectively fights the response (or non-response) of states and corporations to climate change. This leftist movement has the potential to mobilize especially in Britain, where in August 2008 a Climate Camp was organized to close the Kingsnorth coal-fired power station east of London. Although the Kingsnorth station will be shut down, the energy corporation E.ON plans to build, at the same location, a new coal-fired power station that will assure profits for the next few decades. This project completely conflicts with the necessary goal of reducing CO2 emissions. Preventing a new coal-fired powerplant in Kingsnorth is of great symbolic value, since a successful resistance could mean the end of other planned projects for coal-fired powerplants elsewhere in Britain.

The centre of the exhibition “For A Completely Different Climate” is a 3-channel slide installation, based on 96 photos taken in the Climate Camp and at the demonstrations and blockades of Kingsnorth. These photos are combined with short texts and audio recordings of the demonstrations and workshops. In a presentation lasting 16 minutes, three connected projections will be shown on an 18-metre-long wall of the gallery. The exhibition also includes three light boxes combining photos with police search protocols and information sheets that identify state repression.

“For A Completely Different Climate” is my third project focusing on climate-change concerns. The “100 Years of Greenhouse Effect” was done in 1996 (Salzburger Kunstverein) and followed in 2000 by “Sustainable Propaganda” that used a series of exhibitions to comment on the hegemonic discourse of “sustainable development” (exhibitions included Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin). Ever since Al Gore’s documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” (2006), that is based on his slide shows, the debate about global warming has been part of the mainstream. Gore believes that trading emissions rights and using clean and efficient technologies can prevent global warming. However, “For A Completely Different Climate” uses the medium of a slide show to focus, above all, on resistance to the existing system and provides space for people who in contradiction to Gore believe that market-compatible approaches such as emissions trading is not about the protection of the climate, but instead only about ensuring continued capitalist growth. As noted in the installation’s audio recordings, CO2 emissions continue to rise years after the signing of the Kyoto Protocol. Climate change could therefore only be confronted through a radical transformation of society that would effectively challenge the existing distribution of wealth and power-relationships that are guaranteed by the military.

• “For A Completely Different Climate”, December 15, 2008 till January 30, 2009, Galleria Artra, Milan, Italy, curated by Marco Scotini

• Concept, photos, audio-recording, editing and production: Oliver Ressler
• Editing assistant: David Grohe
• Lightbox photos on the Great Rebel Raft Regatta: Amy Scaife, Mike Russell
• Special thanks to: Climate Camp, Tadzio Mueller, Marco Scotini, Marcella Stefanoni
• Supported by Galleria Artra

A section on the counter-globalisation movement for the Taipei Biennial 2008 curated by Oliver Ressler

The trope “A World Where Many Worlds Fit” goes back to the Subcomandante Marcos, when talking about the Zapatistas’ struggles in the Lacandonian Rainforest in Mexico. Since their uprising in 1994 the Zapatistas have been fighting for a less-hierarchical, autonomous world with more options to offer in democratic decision-making processes. They fight against an existing world, which calls itself “democratic”, but should rather be seen as a form of sophisticated oligarchy that functions especially in favour of the interests of the political and economic elites. In other parts of the world the stick that punishes people who envision another world is usually not so visible. But, this can change suddenly when those in power assemble in the framework of the summits of the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Trade Organization (WTO), World Economic Forum (WEF), or the G8. Though the decisions made by politicians and business leaders at such meetings affect the lives of all people in the world, the negotiations take place hidden from the public gaze, behind fences and under massive security with the protection of thousands of riot-police. These gatherings have become a symbol for the undemocratic and illegitimate formation of global capitalism.

At each of these summits individual and collective singularities from all over the world come together in order to express their opposition to the way global decisions are taken and realised. These mobilisations of attendance at summit meetings are the movements’ most visible public appearances. According to most narratives, the action taken against the WTO in Seattle in 1999 launched the birthplace of the new movement. The events at Seattle articulated a form of resistance and protest of the centres of capitalism that proved strong enough to shut down the WTO summit there. Since 1999 this global movement has shown up at each meeting of World Bank, IMF, WTO and WEF – unless the scared politicians decide to meet in the mountains, in deserts, or in dictatorships in order to avoid publicly shown dissent at their summits, which were originally introduced for publicity purposes. Even though this movement is the first that is truly globalised, it is usually described as a counter-globalisation movement. It can actually be called the “movement of the movements”.

At the demonstrations, counter-summits and mass blockades many individuals and collectives come together: media activists, clown army, pink block, naked block, black block, anarchists, socialists, Trotskyists, members of ATTAC, human rights activists, feminists, migrants, indigenous people, artists, etc. Many activists switch between these identities. All these singularities have their own images, banners, different public appearance and slogans, that do not only represent something, but contribute to the creation of effective blockades and to the creation of a space. This space is both one of representation, as well as a space for action that in the best cases also spreads to other areas such as the local neighbourhoods of the activists. This new social subject, sometimes referred to as the “multitude”, builds horizontally organised networks and has a radial transformation of society in mind.

“A World Where Many Worlds Fit” attempts to present a global movement as an example of collective intelligence through a variety of artistic practices, and wants to function as “a space for thinking”. The 12 artists involved in the project demonstrate a strong commitment to social movements and do not position themselves as “neutral” in relation to them. Many of the included works focus on the cities that have now become known for past demonstrations, counter-summits and/or blockades and are used as shorthand descriptions for these events: Seattle, Prague, Salzburg, Genoa, Buenos Aires, Gleneagles, St. Petersburg or Heiligendamm. The exhibition can be seen as a kind of course, which addresses important steps of the movement of the movements.

Whether or not this globalisation of resistance will be successful in the future will depend on whether upcoming summits can be mobilised to show our dissent to the world and our desire to create other worlds. As Tadzio Mueller eloquently outlines*, it will be essential for the global movement to develop a critical and convincing anti-capitalist strategy to fight climate change, as this is a central issue of world-wide importance that the G8 exploit to legitimise their meetings in the public, and that “asks the question of property and class struggle” and “talks about collective social transformation”. If we manage to bring such an agenda into public debate, the movement of the movements will probably also play an important role in the political landscape in the ten years after the upcoming G8 summit in Maddalena in Italy.

*In: “What Would It Mean to Win?”, A film by Zanny Begg and Oliver Ressler, 40 min., 2008

Artist’s works in the exhibition:

CHRISTOPHER DELAURENTI (USA) / Four Protest Symphonies

An audio track by Seattle-based composer, improvisor, and phonographer Christopher DeLaurenti permeates the exhibition. “Four Protest Symphonies” is a series of front-line recordings made at various actions, including the World Trade Organization protest in Seattle in 1999. Spattered by pepper spray, enshrouded in tear gas and pelted with rubber bullets, Delaurenti was engulfed in a maelstrom of drums, slogans, chants, screaming and violence. These are cemented with combative field recordings of the various protests, art actions, police transmissions, National Oceanic And Atmospheric (NOAA) weather alerts, radio broadcast anomalies (splashes and sprays of tape hiss, enigmatic numbers glossolalia, crude phase encoding), and wild card audio snatched from the airwaves to compose a vivid sound-scape of dissent.

NOEL DOUGLAS (GB) / Whose World? Our World, 2008

The artist, designer and activist Noel Douglas presents an installation based on graphic material that he has produced over the last seven years as part of his involvement with different social movements. The banners, posters, t-shirts, books and magazines included in the installation have been used and disseminated during many recent anti-capitalist and anti-war protests. In “A World Where Many Worlds Fit”, Douglas arranges these objects in a nine-metre long vitrine. Displayed on a panel in the vitrine are numerous spreads from books and magazines promoting and popularising the ideas of the movement. Alongside these are laid out the popular “Regime Change Begins at Home” playing cards, which satirise the playing cards handed out to troops by the US military in Iraq. On the floor of the vitrine thousands of “Capitalism Means War” dollar bills are spread out, these were handed out during the major demonstrations against the impending War in Iraq held on February 15th, 2003. On the glass window, a vinyl tape with the text “Ceci N’est Pas Le Capitalisme” (This is not Capitalism) frames the work. This tape was used at demonstrations across Europe and the US as a temporary street “line” to hang posters from. Shown here hung on the walls, these posters called for demonstrations against the G8 and instead for participation in the European Social Forum. There are also those that simply visualise the problems of capitalism using a more direct agit-prop approach with many proclaiming one of the central slogans of the movement, “Another World Is Possible”.

ETCÉTERA (ARG) / To eat, to create, 2008

The Argentinean artist/activist collective Etcétera presents documentation of their Buenos Aires based street actions in an installation that includes information about the original local context and situation. Since late 1997 Etcétera has implemented a poetic, absurd and surreal artistic practice into street actions that take a crack at important issues such as social injustice and human rights agendas. Their work became even more pertinent in the midst of the enormous economic crisis that peaked in 2001 and that sent Argentina spiralling down to levels of emergency and starvation. Etcétera’s actions, like many enacted in the public space, are ephemeral and circumstantial. They re-imagine the activity of the street as a performance in a specific space and a specific time. As a result of the dissemination their amazingly humorous and bitter sparks of activism into cultural institutions, artistic circuits and the web through videos, cartoons, pamphlets and manifestos, Etcétera have inspired numerous kindred spirits and related projects.

PETRA GERSCHNER (GER) / History is a work in process, 2007/2008

Petra Gerschner produced a photo-documentation of the activities made against the G8 summit held in Heiligendamm. She celebrates the work of activists, who aim to become the subjects of their own history, by literally illuminating them in the form of a light-box with a precise selection of four photos. “Join the Winning side – Smash Capitalism”, reads a light-installation on a truck in one of the images. This slogan represents the approach of the global movement to not only comment on social conditions, but to also actively change them. The work attempts to transpose the energy and enthusiasm of the activists and hints at the possibility that with collective experience and action, resistance is feasible and can be successful. At the same time Gerschner raises questions about the visual representation of the movement of the movements in the collective global consciousness. In a second work, a digital print from the series “What does memory mean to you?” (2001/2006), Petra Gerschner lays bare the demonstrative power of state forces by confronting political advertising and slogans with pin-ups, which all came together in the public space during the protests against the World Economic Forum in Salzburg.

JOHN JORDAN (GB) / The Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army: Operation “HA HA HA”

One of the works in the exhibition that ventures beyond a documentation of the activities of the “movement of the movements” is by the British artist/activist John Jordan whose practice merges art and social engagement, and favours transformative actions over representation. He is one of a number of artists who consider themselves part of the “movement of the movements” and intervenes wherever and whenever possible. Jordan’s installation consists of documentation from the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army’s operation “HA HA HA”, which took place during the G8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland in July 2005. The central element of the installation is a large canvas map that shows the area around the G8 summit, which was used by activists for organising protests. Two video monitors are placed on opposite corners of the map, with pink ribbon connecting them to locations on the map where the activist’s events occurred. One short film shows a performance of police and clowns competing in a strange game together, and the second documents clowns magically breaking through a line of riot policemen and occupying a road.

ZANNY BEGG (AU) & OLIVER RESSLER (A) / Timeline, 2008 /This is what democracy looks like!, 2002

A timeline of the global movement, spanning from the momentous actions against the World Trade Organization Conference in Seattle in 1999, up until today, is layed out by Zanny Begg in a 12 metre long wall drawing. It is a kind of framework for “A World Where Many Worlds Fit”, that not only sets up a relationship between the various works, but also tells its own stories. Embedded in Zanny Begg’s huge timeline is Oliver Ressler’s video “This is what democracy looks like!“. The video presents the events of July 1, 2001, which took place surrounding a demonstration against the World Economic Forum in Salzburg in Austria, where 919 demonstrators were encircled by the police and detained for more than seven hours. In the video the demonstrators take the role of active spokespersons and describe what was happening from their own individual perspectives.

What Would It Mean To Win?, 2008

This film, a collaboration by Zanny Begg & Oliver Ressler, was made on the blockades of the G8 summit in Heiligendamm, Germany in June 2007 and focuses on the current state of the movement of the movements. Combining documentary footage, interviews, and animation sequences, the work is structured around three questions pertinent to the movement: “Who are we?” “What is our power?” and “What would it mean to win?” The protests in Heiligendamm seemed to re-assert the confidence, inventiveness and creativity of the movement of the movements. In particular the five finger tactic – where protesters spread out across the fields of Rostock in order to slip around police lines – proved successful in establishing blockades on all roads leading into Heiligendamm. Staff working for the G8 summit were forced to enter and leave the meeting by helicopter or boat thus providing a symbolic victory to the movement.

RTMARK (USA) / The Archimedes Project, 2001

The objects and photographs of the “anti-corporate corporation” RTMark chronicle the corporation’s commitment to direct intervention. For the protests during the G8 summit in Genoa, RTMark produced pink, blue, black and purple mirrors that were distributed to a thousand activists. The mirrors focused and reflected sunlight at police helicopters and other aggressive assault vehicles, as well as into the eyes of attacking police. The work is titled “The Archimedes Project”, after the ancient Greek mathematician who reputedly used several large mirrors to focus the glare of the sun at invading Roman ships, burning them to a crisp and thus saving the city of Syracuse in what is now Sicily, Italy. The Italian press hilariously characterised these mirrors as weapons and included them amongst the police’s other official weapon classifications, which included cell phones and Swiss army knives.

ALLAN SEKULA (USA) / Waiting for Teargas, 1999

Allan Sekula’s slide installation “Waiting for Teargas” was produced from the photographs he had taken during the protests against the World Trade Organization Ministerial Conference that took place in Seattle in 1999. Sekula’s concept was, in his words, “to move with the flow of protest, from dawn to 3 a.m. If need be, taking in the lulls, the waiting and the margins of events. The rule of thumb for this sort of anti-photojournalism: no flash, no telephoto zoom lens, no gas mask, no auto-focus, no press pass and no pressure, to grab at all costs, the one defining image of dramatic violence… The alliance on the streets was indeed stranger… varied and inspired… There were moments of civic solemnity, of urban anxiety, and of carnival. Something very simple is missed by descriptions of this as a movement founded in cyberspace: the human body asserts itself in the city streets, against the abstraction of global capital. There was a strong feminist dimension to this testimony, and there was also a dimension grounded in the experience of work…”

GREGORY SHOLETTE (USA) / WTO Action Collectible, 1999

Gregory Sholette’s “WTO Action Collectible” comprises a “commemorative” action figure and an accompanying poster that refer to the police tactics that labelled unarmed protesters as violence-prone during the now legendary Seattle World Trade Organization Ministerial Conference in 1999. Sholette’s plastic figure – which comes equipped with interchangeable “action arms” that are useful for deflecting tear gas grenades and an authentic “radical” mascot carrying a Molotov Cocktail – also makes reference to the long, if little known history of militant political resistance in the United States: from the great rail strikes of the late 19th century to the National Student Strike and mass demonstrations of May 1970 that followed the shooting deaths of anti-Vietnam war protesters by National Guardsmen at both Kent and Jackson State Universities.

NURIA VILA & MARCELO EXPÓSITO (ESP) / Tactical Frivolity + Rhythms of Resistance, 2007

This video focuses on various forms of protest that occur across the European continent. It brings into play femininity, and blurs gender-expectations. As a work about a particular moment of joy and expectation at the global movement’s early days, “Tactical Frivolity + Rhythms of Resistance” questions the social order through unanticipated role reversals and confuses the response of the media and the police to label such forms of protest as violent. As the artists write, “Tactical frivolity sought to undo classical anarchists vs. police, one-to-one confrontational tactics, by multiplying front-lines and making an extremely ironic use of femininity and kitschy representations of the body in direct action. Music and dance provided this radical redefinition of street protest not only with a powerful tool to practically dissolve or détour police violence, but also with the strongest possible image (and soundtrack) to realise how street demonstrations can become the unleashing of the body’s desires in the moment of protest itself”. The work demonstrates that resistance can result in a lot of creativity and fun, which is important to draw in larger crowds who are not necessarily active and who normally see activism as a sour and professional exercise of a singular political inclination.

DMITRY VILENSKY (RUS) / Protest Match – Kirov Stadium, 2006

In his video “Protest Match – Kirov Stadium” Dmitry Vilensky focuses on the heavy security tactics enforced upon the Russian Social Forum that ran parallel to the G8 Summit in Saint Petersburg in 2006. These tactics included the detainment of former delegates long before their arrival in the city; coercion of print-shop owners to not print pamphlets, blackmailing and arrests. The video reviews the situation at the Russian Social Forum in the Kirov Stadium, the space that was offered by the authorities. A series of interviews with Russian political activists discuss this particular event, where it was impossible to demonstrate and where even participation in the forum became a perilous pursuit.

• The 6th Taipei Biennial is curated by Manray Hsu and Vasif Kortun.
• Organizing institution is the Taipei Museum of Fine Arts.
• Dates: 13 September 2008 – 4 January 2009

A billboard by Oliver Ressler on gated communities in Warsaw

Gated communities seem to emerge primarily in countries with big differences in income among people and where governments show no real effort in redistributing wealth. Post-socialist Poland and especially Warsaw seem to be very fertile grounds for social disintegration and segregation, which leads to the development of gated communities at an unbelievable pace. For people who choose to live in gated communities, the reduction of uncertainty and disturbing factors seem to be of extraordinary importance.

The billboard (size: 504 x 238 cm) shows a typical façade of a gated community from the perspective of someone standing in the street. It shows the fences, the cabin of the security guards, and the posh architecture.

The irritating feature of the building is that most windows are broken. The broken windows can be seen as a rupture of the imagined stability and safety of a gated community. The images of broken windows and the graffiti have been photographed in poor and abandoned areas in Warsaw. The graffiti on the building reads: “Donkeys from right to left tell lies to people.”

Through this montage, the photo brings together the living areas of the haves and the have-nots. Associations with an uprising or a militant struggle may be evoked.

On the top of the billboard, the Polish text in uppercase (NIE KUPUJ LEPSZEGO SWIATA, WALCZ O LEPSZY SWIAT) declares: Don’t purchase a better world, fight for a better world.

The billboards were created as part of the Passengers Festival in Warsaw, September 2008, curated by Kuba Szreder and Zuzanna Fogtt.

A film by Zanny Begg & Oliver Ressler, 40 min., 2008

“What Would It Mean To Win?” was filmed on the blockades at the G8 summit in Heiligendamm, Germany in June 2007. In their first collaborative film Zanny Begg and Oliver Ressler focus on the current state of the counter-globalisation movement in a project which grows out of both artists’ preoccupation with globalisation and its discontents. The film, which combines documentary footage, interviews, and animation sequences, is structured around three questions pertinent to the movement: Who are we? What is our power? What would it mean to win?

Almost ten years after “Seattle” this film explores the impact this movement has had on contemporary politics. Seattle has been described as the birthplace for the “movement of movements” and marked a time when resistance to capitalist globalisation emerged in industrialised nations. In many senses it has been regarded as the time when a new social subject – the multitude – entered the political landscape. Recently the counter-globalisation movement has gone through a certain malaise accentuated by the shifts in global politics in the post 911 context.

The protests in Heiligendamm seemed to re-assert the confidence, inventiveness and creativity of the counter-globalisation movement. In particular the five finger tactic – where protesters spread out across the fields of Rostock slipping around police lines – proved successful in establishing blockades in all roads into Heiligendamm. Staff working for the G8 summit were forced to enter and leave the meeting by helicopter or boat thus providing a symbolic victory to the movement.

“What Would It Mean To Win?”, as the title implies, addresses this central question for the movement. During the Seattle demonstrations “we are winning” was a popular graffiti slogan that captured the sense of euphoria that came with the birth of a new movement. Since that time however this slogan has been regarded in a much more speculative manner. This film aims to move beyond the question of whether we are “winning” or not by addressing what would it actually mean to win.

When addressing the question “what would it mean to win?” John Holloway quotes Subcomandante Marcos who once described “winning” as the ability to live an “infinite film program” where participants could re-invent themselves each day, each hour, each minute. The animated sequences take this as their starting point to explore how ideas of social agency, struggle and winning are incorporated into our imagination of politics.

The film was recorded in English and German and exists also in a French subtitled version. “What Would It Mean To Win?” will be presented in screenings in a variety of contexts and will also be part of the upcoming installation “Jumps and Surprises” by Begg and Ressler, which will present a broader perspective of different approaches to the counter-globalisation movement.

• Concept, Interviews, Film Editing, Production: Zanny Begg & Oliver Ressler
• Interviewees: Emma Dowling, John Holloway, Adam Idrissou, Tadzio Mueller, Michal Osterweil, Sarah T.
• Camera: Oliver Ressler
• Animation: Zanny Begg
• Sound: Kate Carr
• Image Editing: Markus Koessl
• Sound Editing: Rudi Gottsberger, Oliver Ressler
• Special thanks to Turbulence, Holy Damn It, Conrad Barrett
• Grants: Bundesministerium für Unterricht, Kunst und Kultur; College of Fine Art Research Grants Scheme, Sydney

The French version of the film is online at http://www.art-act.fr/?p=44

Although the real stakes behind the attacks on Iraq and Afghanistan had to do primarily with geo-strategic interests and control of the oil deposits, the preferred official line to legitimize the wars in the eyes of the public spoke of their being waged to bring “democracy” to those countries. This political discourse was maintained as long as victory still seemed feasible to the armed forces of the United States and its allies. In the meantime, however, the emphasis has shifted more towards achieving “stability” in Iraq and “peace” in Afghanistan.

At the start of the military campaign, the US jet fighters did not drop only bombs: they also showered down leaflets containing messages intended for the population. These called upon the enemy soldiers to desert, warned civilians to keep at a distance from military targets, defined the pattern of behavior in case of contact with the invaders, or else relayed a general political message explaining the alleged reasons and goals of the military attack.

The “Fly Democracy” installation represents a re-enactment of this shower of message-bearing flyers, but symbolically transfers the drop’s target point to the territory of the United States. Specially drawn up for the “Fly Democracy” piece, ten flyers set forth current political arguments on behalf of direct or participatory forms of democracy, all of which stand in contradiction to the model of formal democracy that – embedded in a neo-liberal, capitalistic State – is imposed by the United States. The stance that “Fly Democracy” adopts contrasts with that model by interpreting the term “democracy” more in its original sense, as it was understood in Ancient Greece. At that time, it meant – at least for full age male citizens – more direct involvement in the decision-making processes than what exists in today’s representative democracies. “Pseudo-democracies” is how the theorist Paul Cockshott would label the latter, as measured against the word’s original meaning.

The installation consists of a five-minute video loop showing the flyers on their downward trip from a shining blue sky to the ground, where they are read by people who pick them up. The original English-language flyers are strewn on the floor in front of the video screen, together with the exhibition-destined flyers in German, French or Romanian. Visitors are welcome to pick any of the flyers up, read them and take them home.

• Concept, Camera, Film Editing, Design, Production: Oliver Ressler
• Image Editing and Sound: Rudi Gottsberger
• Production assistants: Meghan Hartman, Brandon Ives, Gaby Ruzek

The installation has been produced by ACC Galerie, Weimar (D); Fri-Art – Centre d’Art Contemporain, Fribourg (CH); Kunstverein Wolfsburg, Wolfsburg (D); 2. International Photo Festival Mannheim, Ludwigshafen, Heidelberg 2007 (D); and <rotor>, Graz (A) in 2007.

Download video excerpt

“Globalizing Protest” is an ongoing series of photographic montages consisting of images shot in inner cities during protests against the G8. Each photographic montage is based on 36 single images that document the wooden barricades protecting the shop windows erected during various G8 summit meetings, which activists use for graffiti, political texts, and slogans. Three photo works of this series have been produced: “Untitled (Geneva 03.06.03)” was shot during the G8 summit in Geneva 2003, “Untitled (Edinburgh, 7/2005)” at the G8 summit in Scotland in 2005, and “Untitled (Rostock 6/2007)” during the recent G8 summit in Heiligendamm in Germany in 2007.

“With photographs showing shopping windows protected with wooden desks, which turned out to become an endless plateaux for the demonstration’s texts, graffiti and images and sometimes combined with the signs and names of global companies still visible outside the wooden desks, we can see how the incoherency of space and contingency of time enables the disclosure of the common. What is interesting here is exactly the mixture of spatial incoherency and contingency of time of the common, which revealed a completely different mapping of the city streets, movements, languages of the city, parallel spatial meanings. What holds these images together is not the common goal, not even the common meaning, but the alternative production of language with by taking the space and opening up the time. The common appearance is made explicit, this is “the spectacle of appearance” as Hannah Arendt would say. The spectacle is spatially incoherent as a consequence (it is namely done as a protection nevertheless establishing plateaux for momentarily spatial appropriation) and contingent in the sense of making the common explicit not as a program, but as a response to the momentarily urgency of appearance.” (Bojana Kunst, The Collaboration and Space, Moscow Art Magazine No. 61/62, 2006)

“Ressler’s photograph is without action(s), but a site of a precise textuality, and a possible answer to questions about the difference between mainstream journalism, big capital, the power elite and mediactivism. […] An objective camera eye simply does not exist, which is why the camera angle in Ressler’s works blends with the perspective of the demonstrators. As viewers we are in direct relation to the events by seeing them through the demonstrators’ viewpoint. The place of the image of vision and its reversal are crucial. And as regards the image of vision, it is more important to include the third element between the body and that image, namely power. This is why it is necessary to look at Ressler’s works through the only possible perspectives that are non-essentialism and a strict anti-documentary positioning of reality.” (Marina Grzinic and Walter Seidl, Double Check. Re-Framing Space in Photography: The Other Space, Parallel Histories. 2005)

The size of each of the three photo works is 140 x 105 cm.

Intervention by Oliver Ressler at the main train station in Zurich, eBoard, 2006

During the exhibition at the Shedhalle a new piece made for the electronic billboard of the Zurich main train station will be shown. The piece displays the foreign debts of Africa in relation to the damages which were caused by colonialism and slavery on this continent. If it is possible to elicit the foreign debts of Africa, which were tripled between 1980 and 2000, out of the World Banks databanks (235 billion dollars for the ‘Sub-Saharan Africa’ 2004), then the calculations of the damages caused by colonialism and slavery represent a disparate and much more difficult undertaking. At the occasion of the UN World Conference against Racism in Durban in 2001 the African World Reparations and Repatriations Truth Commission brought forward a calculation based on comprehensive research and announced the sum of 777 trillion dollars. The claims of the African states were calculated using the reparation numbers of Germany for the victims of the Nazi-Regime as a point of reference. Out of fear of amend claims the Western countries deny any responsibility for colonialism and its aftermath and decline a guilt confession.

The billboard text reads:

• 235 Billion Dollars
• Africa’s External Debt
• (Debt level of sub-Saharan Africa in 2004 according to the World Bank)
• 777 Trillion Dollars
• Damages from Slavery and Colonialism
• (Source: African World Reparations and Repatriations Truth Commission)
• Cancel the Debt + Compensate for Slavery

The intervention is carried out in the framework of the exhibition “for example S, F, N, G, L, B, C – A Matter of Demarcation”, Shedhalle, Zurich, 04.11.2006 – 28.01.2007