next_now
Strategies to resample the future #4
“As the future is not prescribed, and the succession of now and tomorrow is not monolithic or determined, our task consists in distinguishing the layers of futurability that lie in the texture of the present reality and in the present consciousness. (…)
The present depression (both psychological and economic) obscures the consciousness that no determinist projection of the future is true. We feel trapped in the tangle of techno-linguistic automatisms: finance, global competition, military escalation. But the body of the general intellect (the social and erotic bodies of a million cognitarians) is richer than the connective Brain. And the present reality is richer than the format imposed on it, as the multifold possibilities inscribed in the present have not been wholly cancelled, even if they may seem presently inert.”
Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi – Futurability – The Age of Impotence and the Horizon of Possibility (2017)
For this new episode of our journey through the intersections between possibilities and potency we will be supported by these explorers: [Read more →]

Our new series of talks, discussions and presentations brought to you by Datacide and next:now is going into its fourth round on January 14th, 2019 with a talk about Revolution and Counterrevolution in Germany 1919 and beyond, by Christoph Fringeli.

As always at Vétomat, Wühlischstr. 42, 10245 Berlin

Doors open 7pm, talk will start 8.30

On January 15th, 1919, communist revolutionaries Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht were murdered in Berlin. They were only the two most prominent victims of the counter-revolutionary white terror that followed the attempts at a socialist revolution in Germany after World War I.
Only two weeks earlier they had been involved in the foundation of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). It was at a crucial moment of the revolutionary development that had forced the Kaiser to abdicate and saw workers and soldiers returning from the battlefield to set up workers’ councils.

The biggest of the workers parties, the Social Democrats (SPD), created a coalition with centrist bourgeois parties as well as with the military and the proto-fascist Freikorps fighters, who they used to squash the uprising rather than supporting the radical changes demanded by their base.

CF will look at the historic dynamic unfolding from the failed revolution, the developments of the communist movement in Germany and the contradictory ways these events are remembered and commemorated.

The new series of talks, discussions and presentations brought to you by Datacide and next:now is going into its third round on January 4th, 2019.

As always at Vétomat, Wühlischstr. 42, 10245 Berlin

Doors open 7pm

8pm
Round table discussion: Subculture and Economy in the age of Gentrification, Spotify and Amazon. With Jan Herold (Yaya23), Dan Hekate (Hekate Soundsystem, Coven H Records), Christoph Fringeli (Datacide, Praxis Records).

9.30
Dan Moss: New Videos
Dasa Raimanova: Two Shorts

+ public discussion

Round Table
It was particularly with Punk, but also with Techno and its many mutations that small labels, independent shops and zines have historically played a decisive role in creating networks to bypass and counter the mainstream corporate world. These possibilities of autonomy have been undermined since the ruling class unleashed their mad dog, Jeff Bezos, onto the innocent populous. Cannibalism and same-day delivery overshadow our everyday existence, as does the dim green glow of hours upon hours of suggested playlists. Is there a back door out of this madness?

Join us for a discussion with long-time underground dwellers Jan Herold (Yaya23), Dan Hekate (Hekate Soundsystem, Coven H Records), and Christoph Fringeli (Datacide, Praxis Records).

Dan Moss
A director and screenwriter, his first foray into film was a 50-minute documentary for BBC2 in 1992, when he was 13. He has since written, directed and produced one feature film and seven short films, along with a variety of music videos and online content. He has shot in locations across the world, including India, Italy and Uganda. He will show a number of shorts.

Dasa Raimanova
Dasa Raimanova, originally from Slovakia, is a freelance filmmaker, currently on a six months work placement at Deutsche Welle (DW) in Berlin.
Her documentary work explores socio-political topics, generally focussing on the stories of strong women. Dasa released her feature debut POLYLAND in 2017. She will be showing two short films.

Illustration by Joke Lanz for Datacide 18 (coming soon)

The second in a new series of talk and discussion events hosted by Datacide and next:now at Vétomat Berlin.

Datacide presents
Talk, performance, discussion
With Joke Lanz and Christoph Fringeli

17-12-2018

At Vétomat, Wühlischstr. 42, 10245 Berlin

Doors open 7pm

8pm
Christoph Fringeli: The Situationist International as World Cultural Heritage? A critique of the historicisation of a revolutionary group.

9pm
Joke Lanz: Spoken Word Performance

+ public discussion.

JOKE LANZ (*1965 Basel)

Joke Lanz has worked as a garbageman, factory worker, sales assistant, caretaker, housekeeper, carpet dealer, chicken farmer, record shop owner, night watch, sauna assistant, roadie, secretary, cleaner, nude model, part-time single father, chocolate producer, bike messenger…
Just to name a few! [Read more →]

„Once upon a time, pop‘s metabolism buzzed with dynamic energy, creating the surging-in-to-the-future feel of periods like the psychedelic sixties, the post-punk seventies, the hip-hop eighties and the rave nineties. The 2000s felt different. (…) Instead of being the threshold to the future, the first ten years of the twenty-first century turned out to be the ‚Re‘ Decade (…): revivals, reissues, remakes, re-enactments. Endless retrospection. (…)“

– Simon Reynolds – Retromania (2011)ⁱ

Atari emulators, electro-swing, Polaroid replicas, or Hieronimus Bosch’s triptychs in Virtual Reality: everything nostalgia related sells better than ever, and we’re not just talking about pop and mainstream. Every obscure fraction of a subculture had also its 15 minutes of …revival in the past 18 years.

An obsessive (therefore unhealthy) attention to the past is influencing all aspects of cultural production in these days. This is certainly a “Sign o’ the times”ⁱⁱ.

Times of “Liquid fear””ⁱⁱⁱ, that tangible feeling of anxiety that has only vague contours but is present everywhere. Dangers can strike anytime, everywhere: no matter what’s your job, tomorrow you can be fired, like those guys at Leeman Bros carrying their stuff out in cardboard boxes; you can be shot while you sip your cappuccino, in the name of god or the N.R.A.: or you can be killed by some multi resistant bacteria, and you have the same chance to get infected on a safari looking for the big 5 or in your local hospital having a proctology check up. To quote Bauman’s favorite metaphor:

“We’re walking on a mine field, we are aware that all is full of explosives, but we don’t know where there will be an explosion and when. There are no solid structures to rely on, nothing in which we can invest our hope and expectations.”^iv

Or, using the words of Comité Invisible:

“From whatever angle you approach it, the present offers no way out. This is not the least of its virtues. From those who seek hope above all, it tears away every firm ground. Those who claim to have solutions are contradicted almost immediately. Everyone agrees that things can only get worse. “The future has no future” is the wisdom of an age that, for all its appearance of perfect normalcy, has reached the level of consciousness of the first punks.”^v

In this context the past can be seen as a cozy and warm nest, a perfect world that we can control as it is shaped by our selective memory, a safe place. And so, as thinks are like that, instead of struggling to build up an uncertain future (to go for an Utopia), a very common choice is to aspire to return to a golden past, to go for a “Retrotopia”^vi. The spreading of this approach is another “Sign o’ the times”, but one with very scary implications. [Read more →]