[Reader-list] "Discussions about Politics and Design", Ze Dos Bois (Lisbon) September, 20-21, 2007.

[Jean-Baptiste Naudy]

Discussions about Politics and Design

Ze Dos Bois, Lisbon, September, 20-21, 2007.

Conferences on the occasion of the finissage of Société Réaliste's
Transitioners exhibition.


Participants: Eric Alliez (Paris), Vicken Cheterian (Geneva), Cosmin
Costinas (Vienna), Jose Neves (Lisbon) and Olivier Schefer (Paris).

Ze Dos Bois is currently presenting the exhibition Transitioners, a project
by the Paris-based artistic cooperative, Societe Realiste. Transitioners is
a trend design agency specialized in political transitions. Transposing the
principles of prospective design, generally used by "fashion trend
agencies", to the field of politics, Societe Realiste questions the
revolution (transition?) as a central category for the contemporary western
society. Transitioners surveys the mutations of the revolution as a form.
How a "democratic transition" can be produced? What is the role of design in
the permanent conversion of politics into mythology? How the effect of an
event on people can be transformed into a controlled affect?

On the occasion of the exhibition's finissage, Ze Dos Bois and Societe
Realiste presents a conferences and debates program, entitled "Discussões a
propósito de política e design".


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THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 2007, 7pm.
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i/ INTRODUCTION.
By Societe Realiste

Société Réaliste will introduce the participants of these discussions and
reformulate some key points of the Transitioners project, from its genesis
to its main aesthetical and political perspectives. Some topics to be
discuss during the two-days conference will be synthetized, from the
problematics of an artistic science to an experimental approach of design,
from the necessity of understanding the main integration strategies of Late
Capitalism politics to some linkage between different chapters of the recent
history of political revolutions.


ii/ GREY WEATHER AT LA GRANDE JATTE : SEURAT VERSUS DUCHAMP.
By Eric Alliez

(In French) « The most important scientific mind of the 19th century, more
than Cezanne, was Seurat, that died at the age of 32." This specific
affinity felt by Duchamp for Seurat will be the center of this presentation.
Another important question will be the Seurat's contradictory heritage,
especially in the confrontation between Matisse and Duchamp. In Modern art,
there is this point that is not related to pictural Modernism but on the
contrary, through forces and forms, to an archeology of the contemporary, of
which Matisse and Duchamp are precisely the two fundamental paradigms.

Eric Alliez is a philosopher, professor at Middlesex University, London,
since 2004. Scientific director and editor of the complete works of Gabriel
Tarde (Empêcheurs de penser en rond/Le Seuil, Paris) and Gilles Deleuze,
Immanence et vie (with Danielle Cohen-Levinas, Françoise Proust, Lucien
Vinciguerra, PUF, Paris, 2006), creator and co-editor of the review
Multitudes. His most recent books are La Pensée-Matisse (with Jean-Claude
Bonne, Le Passage, Paris, 2005) and L'Œil-Cerveau (with Jean-Clet Martin,
Vrin, Paris, 2007).


iii/ THE COMMUNIST INVENTION OF THE REVOLUTIONARY MILITANT.
By Jose Neves

The representation of the communist militant is the result of a one
century-long creative work. In Portugal, this process has been accentuated
in the end of the 30s and has been strengthen by the recognition of PCP, at
the beginning of the 40s. This communication strategy has been the occasion
of melting various sensibilities that formed the communist idea of the
revolution. While analyzing the discurses of communist intellectuals - and
more particularly historians' ones - we will see how two main understanding,
the vanguard one and the common one, have created a productive tension, now
possible to encounter in the writings of authors like Toni Negri and John
Holloway.

José Neves is an historian. Currently finishing a thesis about Communism and
Nationalism in 20th Century Portugal at ISCTE, he has recently coordinated
the collective book Da Gaveta para Fora - Ensaios sobre Marxistas
(Afrontamento, 2006).


iv/ MYTHOLOGY AND INSTRUMENTALIZATIONS OF THE ROMANIAN REVOLUTION.
By Cosmin Costinas

The autumn of 1989 was the spectacular moment needed by the already
unleashed liberal machine to proclaim a grand finale before entering the age
of unshattered expansion and disbelief in any possibility of social change.
The almost ritualistic and choreographed nature of that autumn was nowhere
more striking than in the case of the Romanian revolution. The radical
proclamation of the end of a political construction employed both a highly
symbolic scenario of "the revolution" haunting the modern European imagery
(with the occupation of the public space, where the public space is
understood as streets and central squares, the storming of a palace
climaxing in a regicide), as well as a scenario of a media-generated
reality. The act of the king leaving his palace was doubled by an equally
significant moment, that of a contested and confused Ceausescu at the
balcony of his palace, failing to grasp the codes of the "live history",
exposing himself as the product of a pre-media regime of reality and
allowing a media story to take over. But the dozens of hours of tape that
constitute the Romanian revolution have also aquired an uncanny status of a
founding mythology, random gestures and spontaneous phrases becoming
projected as the ultimate references for the Romanian second republic.

Cosmin Costinas is a writer and freelance curator, external editor of the
reviews Idea Arts + Society e Version, and consultant for visual arts at the
Romanian state television. His most recent projects include Textground
(Prague, 2004) and Laicitate dupa Complicitate (Bucharest, 2005). He is
currently working on a book about Romanian contemporary art of the 21st
century (with Mihnea Mircan) and he is part of the editorial team of the
Documenta 12 Magazines project in Kassel.


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FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 2007, 7pm.
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v/ FROM SERBIA TO KYGYZSTAN, COLOR REVOLUTIONS AND REBELION IN A NEW
CENTURY.
By Vicken Cheterian

"Color Revolutions" raised a strong hope. They turned out to be a deception.
All of them had their specific history, their own biographies. The youth
went to protest for different reasons, to reach distinct objectives. What
did the youth in Serbia want in 2000? In 2003 Georgia? In 2004 Ukraine and
in 2005 Kyrgyzstan? What did "they" promit them? After some years, are these
countries more democratic? Were they the beginning or the end of non-violent
pro-democratic westernized revolutions? Are the jihadists the
revolutionnaries of the 21st century? Is the revolution a solution for the
problems of our societies, in the East, in the West?

Vicken Cheterian is a journalist, specialized in international politics.
Born in Lebanon, he has covered conflicts in the Middle East, then in
Caucasus and Central Asia. Currently living in Geneva, he is working for
Cimera, a non-for-profit organization, and he is a frequent collaborator of
Le Monde Diplomatique, Paris.


vi/ ART AND REVOLUTION: ZIGZAGS INTO COLOURS.
By Olivier Schefer

We'll try to see how and why color seems to be the very expression of the
artistic revolution of the modernism. This lecture will endeavour also to
reflect on the self-construction of the modernism, which creates its own
mythology through colors. Following aspects will be studied : the quest of
autonomy, the spiritual dimension of colors, the exhibition as artwork.

Olivier Schefer is professor of aesthetic, philosophy and fine art at the
University of Paris I Sorbonne. He works on the romantic period and its
modern influences. Latest pulications : Anish Kapoor catalog's (Svayambh,
éditions Fage, Paris, 2007), Les corps du retour (Zombies), in Fresh Theorie
(éd. Léo Scheer, Paris, 2006), Résonances du romantisme (éd. La Lettre
volée, Bruxelles, 2005).


vii/ SUMMING UP: ATTEMPT OF A FRAGMENTARY HAGIOGRAPHY.
By Societe Realiste

To conclude the two-days public discussion, Societe Realiste will try to
summarize some of the main points debated between the participants, by
linking modernist stakes of the colour (Alliez, Schefer), examples of
political transitions (Cheterian, Costinas, Neves) and the core problematics
of the Transitioners project. Then, Societe Realiste will open the
conversation on a critical hagiography of some stakes of the Revolution
Mythology by using several examples such as the ones of Saint Thomas More or
Olinde Rodrigues.

Societe Realiste is a Paris-based artistic cooperative created by Ferenc
Grof and Jean-Baptiste Naudy, that manages the development of several
research and economical structures such as a laboratory for the study of
urban signs (IGM), an immigration agency (EU Green Card Lottery), a trend
design bureau specialized in political transitions (Transitioners), an
administration dedicated to the politics of the space (Ministere de
l'Architecture), a legislative consulting firm, expert in competitive and
sustainable lawmaking (Cabinet Societe Realiste Conseil), a counter-biennial
(Manifesta 6.1), a company designing marketing models for the contemporary
art field (PONZI'S), or a collective finance fund for individual projects
(OTC).

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More info: www.zedosbois.org / zdb at zedosbois.org
With the support of Instituto Franco-Português; Chama Vermelha; Instituto
das Artes.
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