NOT ANNOUNCED

#0.2009

A FIRST STEP TOWARDS SELF-PRODUCTIONOne of the best places to question the beliefs of our work is just outside of it. We think that to start a production process means to consider the context in which one wants to operate, its rules, functions and distribution possibilities. Also to take account the meanings and the purposes desired to reach, and the possibility that these are beyond our forces.

The number zero of NotAnnounced starts from the discussion of these preliminaries, considered like a short reconnaissance on the world in which we want to introduce us, and on the way that we want to deal with it. Before the beginning of an artwork production we need to have clear in mind that every social relation is essentially a political act. At this point the question ‘what is politics?’ is necessary. A political act is an opportunity of negotiation of our position inside those power relations that form the society that we know, it is the ability to position ourselves as subjects in action. If we consider an artwork as a political subject, and not just as a consumption object, it is necessary then to reflect upon its potential power over the negotiations that make the society, and its lucrative relationship within the market.

We need to question now, how the value of an artwork is produced? The art system works with the same logic of the other market fields, creating values for art production by means of different circulation strategies. One of the system powerful mechanism is the media exposure, used to raise interest on the communicated object, creating demand for it, and therefore incrising its price into a logic of ‘marketing campaign’. In this sense artworks’ value cannot be quantified on the base of the price that is assigned when the work is placed inside the art system, but it is established in relation to every actor and network that composes the system as a whole. If art production is directed according to the market’s logic, it yields its political power in exchange of a price. This price is the compensation that the market pays to the work instead of its power, that is to say in change of its capacity to put itself as an actor inside the political discussion on social relations. Thus the market replaces the artwork in its function as political subject. But which is the role of an artwork since the market has paid for its power? If the production is conceived according to market logics, the value will not go far beyond the price of a fetish. This fetish is not a subject in the political discussion, because no power of negotiation belongs to it. The power belongs to the system that already has negotiated its fake status, its powerless position inside society.

Finally, why use a publishing ‘platform,’ even if it can be read as a product, to research (act) on cultural fields? To sell or to buy a publishing product doesn’t mean to assure or to acquire value for an artwork, because it cannot be either sold or bought if considered as a matter of public domain. The privatization of an artwork power is therefore an illegitimate act, and it is thanks to the same illegitimate power appropriation that the market is constituted as a political subject.

Thus production needs to be about dissemination and maintenance of models for social engagement in self-organized structures. The strategy presented here is one among many other alternatives of escape from the marketing model of value’s production. A first step toward self-production.

(Paolo Caffoni e Beto Shwafaty)

TIME REDUCTIONACCESSIBLE PROCESSEMPOWER YOUR PRODUCTION.

TIME REDUCTIONACCESSIBLE PROCESSEMPOWER YOUR PRODUCTION.

FIRST

When facing the current situation in the world, where the privileged part of the population lives its life with style at the expense of the majority of the world population, one cannot just stand still and observe passively. The situation demands from us to react: it calls for a class struggle that must be in itself political. By political I mean that an individual or a collective takes their position in relation to the hegemonic structure by any means at their disposal. This could happen either as a form of journal, protest, activism, artistic project or any other new form of struggle. What is important is to realize that we have to invent new strategies in order to react at all levels of power through which capital controls our lives. We are called upon to start a new class struggle which will not seek differences (racial, gender, religious, etc.) within itself, but one that will rather be able to localise the hegemonic structure of oppression by the capitalist class responsible for increasing class discrimination and social poverty. At the same time we need to start the process of de-linking from capital and the colonial matrix of power which has been developing from the Renaissance on (Walter

Mignolo.) The consequences of this development can be traced exactly in the neoliberal capitalist reality in which the hegemonic class is forcing those who are socially and economically located on the oppressed side to think epistemically like the ones in the privileged position. We need to be aware that we are being subjugated by capital and all other mechanisms of control not only at the material but also at the epistemological level, and that we are forced into epistemological thinking imposed by the system of power. Any form of resistance against capital, social inequalities or any other form of oppression within such an epistemological imperial horizon of thinking, constituted by capital, is not a resistance at all! It is a resistance appropriated by the same system of power. In order to be able to continue to de-link ourselves from capital and the colonial matrix of power, new forms of resistance must be developed. One such form is by all means Reartikulacija – a border thinking project that is able to produce significant changes in the wider socio-political space.

(Sebastjan Leban, editor of the journal Reartikulacija)

REARTIKULACIJAArtistic-Political-Theoretical-Discursive Platform In two parallel moves

If push toward a research doesn’t means just find the ‘performative’ way to do it, we need to reflect upon every steps we have already done before go on. This reflexive time is the only way to made a cultural discourse that tries to oppose its critical logic in the construction of knowledge, to the spectacular time of the profit that takes form from the capital. Two interventions from the editors of Reartikulacija (Sebastjan Leban and Marina Grzinic,) starts the discussion on the topic proposed in the number zero of NOT ANNOUNCED, pushing it towards a second step. The conciousness is itself a political act. (GRID)

A SECOND STEP TOWARDS...

SECOND

With regard to the relationship between globalization, capitalism and aesthetics, we should establish a critique of the formation of a so-called ‘universal culture and art’ that takes place at three co-dependent and decisive levels (the economical, political and institutional) and that establishes culture as a hegemonic and ideological apparatus. Today’s frenetic global economy demands the production of more and more new commodities at increasingly larger profit rates, and ascribes the essential role (position and function) to innovations and experimentation in the field of art.

On the other side while demanding for de-linking of art from capital, we have to call for linking of contemporary theory and practices of intervention to the social and political. For it is precisely within this horizon (theory and political intervention) that a different type of ‘de-linking’ is nowadays being promoted. This de-linking claims that it is sufficient to think about the critique of the world, to contemplate it within one’s mind and support it within oneself by reading and writing what is termed ‘real’ theory, while what happens to the World ‘out there’ is not important. Such a de-linking is very much desired and promoted in the name of active passivity, because activity is seen as an exercise in thought.

I would like to as well think on the difference in between coloniality and colonialism. Coloniality, which is different from the historical colonialism, is the hidden logic of contemporary capital, and makes possible here and now the imperial transformation and colonial management of the World in the name of fake but for capital constitutive parameters: progress, civilization, development, and democracy. This process of coloniality is grounded in the Western rhetoric of modernization and salvation, through which global capitalism attempts to disgustingly snobbish and when is not possible with pure violence and death of millions to reorganize what it calls ‘human’ capital. In the capitalist apocalyptic scenario, technology gets out of control; it seeks only progress and development, and in this fake progress the only scientists, or artists, who can be involved, are those from the First capitalist World. You will be hard pressed to find any trace of a position that originates anywhere outside of the Western (First World) neoliberal capitalism.

Reartikulacija stubbornly insists on rearticulating these three points, implying a force as a result of a constant and insisting approach that asks for a continued analysis of contemporary knowledge/political subjectivity/liberation processes.

(Marina Grzinic, editor of the journal Reartikulacija)

The laser printer was invented by Xerox in 1969. At the time, with the exception of art prints, printing meant only one thing: high volume production of books, magazines, reports etc... large scale production with less time consume (the basis for profit logic.)

Today you can buy a laser printer by less than $100,00. But unless we change objectives, hierarchies of production and content creation; acessibility to these systems of production will never means empowerment, equality or even freedom.

XEROX 9700

MAKING DO We read somewhere that publishing is like gardening, everyone should engage with it in one way or another. For us, publishing is a need. A need to write, to create, a need to share and exchange, a need to have a conversation. The starting point was our addiction to the written word and as a consequence we wanted to throw ideas out there and see what happens. Our main aim was to create a space/place in order to collaborate with others, to challenge our practices individually as well as a group. Collaboration is an important aspect of the publication as it opens up possibilities...

MONO.KULTUR Because it was not being done by anyone else – mono.kultur is something that we wanted to see in the shops but no one was doing it. We are all working in various areas of print media, as writers, photographers and designers, and we needed an outlet where we could really do what we want to do and the way we want to do it. So much of publishing is governed by financial pressure and publication schedules, by advertising clients, sales, newsstand politics, that at the end, sometimes not much of a magazine is left anymore. So we needed to create a format that still comes from the heart and that we can pour all our ideas and creativity into, without being told that it’s not possible because... It’s a place that keeps us sane.

FUCKING GOOD ART Because we felt some nessecity that ‘other’ people write about art than only the people that usually write in the media. We were curious what makers, artists, would write, and we felt there should be also more reflection about some smaller exhibitions, events and initiatives that we thought were interesting and that are not written about by the newspapers or the big magazines. And I think we also felt the writing could happen in a different kind of language. So we tried. Later on we started to focus more and more on all the things that happen around the work and the exhibition itself, on the whole context and cultural politics behind the art world. Always between the very specific, individual, anecdotal, and the effort to gain, share and join in the construction of some general understanding. Fucking Good Art has proved to be an effective tool to report on art research. We create the magazine with the help of others: each edition of Fucking Good Art is compiled by a different team, an organically growing (and shrinking) network of artists and curators who have different, urgent reasons for writing about art, for sharing knowledge and observations, and for voicing institutional criticisms. At present our ideas are much more suitable for distribution via a publication like that than for instance in a white cube.

Editors and Design GRID (Paolo Caffoni & Roberto Shwafaty) Contact gridcollective@gmail.com Printed trough photocopy Thanks to Ariana Carcano, the magazines and editors of: Fucking Good Art, Making Do, Mono.Kultur and Reartikulacija Distribution almost bimonthly in an irregular basis.You can contact us via e-mail to ask for a digital file, or get Not Announced wherever you find it! We incentivate the freely reproduction of this publication.

NOT ANNOUNCED PRODUCTION COSTS (1st print) units value

print (photocopy) 600 30,00paper 250 12,00design 6h --,--writing/correction 7h --,--n. contributors 06 --,--distribution online freeTotal -- 42,00

WHY DID YOU START TO PUBLISH AN INDEPENDENT PRODUCTION?

We contacted some of the independent magazines and journals that motivates us to start our own production. Trying to figure how things started, we ask them to talk a little about their process and starting points...