Planet Bricolabs

Caminhos - atualização da/s História/s da/e MetaReciclagem

2010-03-11T22:17:47+00:00

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Abrindo uma conversa aqui...
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Curadores da Terra

2010-03-10T19:17:21+00:00

Conheci o trabalho dos Curadores da Terra ano passado, na programação paralela à COP-15 da Matilha Cultural, em sampa. Me impressionaram os tijolos feitos de materiais diversos. Há algumas semanas, recebi um informativo de uma rede de organizações de Ubatuba comentando que os Curadores da Terra estavam em tratativas com a prefeitura para implementar seu projeto de Lixo Zero. Troquei alguns emails com eles, e fui ontem conhecer Sérgio Prado e Márcia Macul, em sua bela casa na estrada pra praia da Almada. Conversamos por algumas horas, sobre vários projetos deles, mas também MetaReciclagem, lixo eletrônico, apropriação de tecnologias e projetos educacionais. Acho possível que se articule alguma ação metarecicleira na possível usina de tratamento de lixo. No mínimo, valeu a conversa.

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Floating Structure: A Platform for Artistic Measurements and Research

2010-03-10T12:26:02+00:00

This text is the preliminary outcome of a research project going back to 2003/2004 and developed jointly by Franz Xaver and Armin Medosch. It has a theoretical and artistic dimension as well as an activist one. At the point of its inception stood questions relating to the crisis of art in informational capitalism. The project sets out to bring some clarifications by word and deed about the relationships between art and technology, art and science and the role of the artist at the beginning of the 21st Century.

Background

A first step was the conception of the Waves exhibition and its realisation in Riga 2006 and Dortmund 2008. Parallel to that a long term research project was started into paradigm changes in media art and the relationship between art, technology and social change. Practical and experimental work was done by fitting out the MS Franz Feigl as a research vessel and by working with wireless technologies and energy systems.

The first prototype, MS Franz Feigl

This culminated into the two months research residency Liquid Territories at Laboral, Gijon. This text is a shortened version of a research report written after the end of the residency in German. The project gained new urgency through the adaptation of the vessel Eleonore as a research platform. The Eleonore is currently lying in the winter harbour at the river Danube in Linz and through its ongoing adaptation the project has come a good deal closer to realisation.

The autonomous artistic measurement ship Eleonore in the harbour in Linz. Some more images and documentation (in German) by Franz Xaver Eleonore@stroem.ungat

Concept

Floating structure is conceived as a swimming platform for conducting artistic, theoretic and curatorial work, blurring the boundaries between those areas and opening up new areas for artistic explorations. The project proceeds along a close link between practical and theoretical work thereby developing new experimental methodologies.

In a first step a set of parameters, restraints and requirements was developed, defining the basic range of possibilities for the project. These are:

The floating structure should be an autonomous system, that is, in particular it should be independent of energy which it does not produce itself. It should use renewable energy sources such as solar, wind and wave energy and it must not use more energy than it can produce itself.

The floating structure should allow people to live on it. It should serve as a basic habitat which allows people to live and work there, if only for limited periods.

The floating structure should be capable of producing food and water. While aiming at full autarky, it is also okay if it does that only to a certain degree in an initial test phase.

The floating structure should be able to communicate with its environment. It should be able to produce and process data about its immedeate environment and communicate with the outside world. (This was originally conceived as a sort of status report, a daily transmission of data about its 'being' in the world; this has been extended considerably, see section on measurements below.)

The floating structure should meet all the requirements of safety on water and it should peacefully coexist with its environment causing no damage or pollution in the short and long term.

The floating structure should serve as a base for artists who both collaborate in the building of the floating structure and its usage as a medium of artistic research.

The floating structure should be built at minimum cost using pre-existing parts and recycling technologies where possible.

Prototype 1, MS Franz Feigl, radar reflector and solar panel, 2007

Research buoy

As it became clear that the floating structure is a long term project which implies mobilising considerable resources, a complimentary project was conceived. In a first phase a research buoy could be built. This buoy should fulfil a minimal set of requirements. It should also be energy autonomous, conduct some measurements and communicate with the enviornment. The buoy could be equipped with WLAN (5.2 - 5.6 GHz), a sonar, GPS, webcam, a power saving linux board and a set of sensors for water salinity, wind and air humidity; it also needs a radar reflector and should provide optical warning signs for swimmers and water vehicles. The research buoy should be built first as a proof of concept. As it turns out, a research buoy is currently being built at Stadtwerkstatt, Linz, in parallel to the adaptation of the Eleonore which both can be expected to be operational by summer 2010.

Research topics

Proof of concept: the project needs to be realised at whichever level to provide proof of concept; it needs to be shown that it makes sense that artists engage with the uncertainty of water and waves to enrich the vocabulary of arts. Theoretic speculation and book knowledge is not enough.

Water and Information: Water is not only the basis of life, it was also created at or shortly after the moment of the Big Bang. Nowadays, in the information society, "information" is considered the most important "raw material". In the current economy, characterised as informational capitalism, information has taken on a very dangerous dimension. Information technologies are at the heart of the surveillance society and financial markets. Information technologies are developing a powerful grip on markets, natural resources and human subjectivities. Is there a possibility of relating the concept of information - based on information theory (Shannon and Weaver 1948) - with water? Water is said to be capable of storing information, but only for nanoseconds. This property is based on the structure of the water molecule which serves as an electrical dipole. Could this capacity be expanded or further explored? This property of water is also linked with myths about water in different cultures where, for example, water is seen as a two-sided mirror, through which another reality can be reached (there are of course many other myths about water; those myths can be more systematically collected as one axis of research).

The floating structure serves as an artificial coastline, a borderline between land and water, nature and culture. By creating the floating structure an aquatic civilisation is postulated. Water covers 9/10s of earth's surface.Not the outer universe, the oceans are the final frontier. We need to engage with this 'borderline' where water and information meet. Thus, the borderline is not conceived as a strict separation but rather as a crossing, a meeting point, a zone of transitions - a line whose full meaning we have not yet understood. In information theory information is created by difference, out of redundancy. Art is also redundant, insofar as it does not create any use value. Can artistic engagement with water break the hegemony of informational capitalism? Can we gain new insights by studying the borderline as a zone of various transitions? Is the floating structure as an object a sort of a semi-conductor?

The floating structure will be equipped with underwater loudspeakers to transmit sounds responding to the rise and fall of stock markets.

Art, Money, Information: the artwork has no financial value before it enters the market. Certain strands of contemporary art in the 1960s can be understood as a move to avoid market capitalisation. Some artists came close to complete de-realisation. Was this an early warning about the onslought of information? Is it possible to create redundancy, to 'undo' information?

A map of Asia or just some stones at the beach in Asturias, North West Spain?

Some further ideas:
Would it be possible to build the floating structure without digital technologies? Could we find systems of information and energy storage without using computers? Which other possibilities exist, hydraulic, cybernetic, analog? Would it be feasible to make wave energy machines, kinetic art, artificial icebergs (Wesley machines)

Would it be feasible to revert the paradigm of interactive art and completely exclude the public from the floating structure? Could the floating structure claim souvereignty as a state?

Measurements and Experiments

Taking measurements as an artistic process as well as energy, water and food production are key areas to be researched. One wide area are the little researched anomalies of water and their potentials for quasi-natural aesthetic effects. Some possible activities are:

the viscosity of water and the influence of light
the surface tension of water
propagation of electromagnetic fields under water
reception of spherical waves (also called natural radio) under water
electric conductivity of water and very high voltage, artificial water bridges, some examples:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QufKjiWKdJk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhBn1ozht-E

measurment of the intensity of light and its effect on clorophyl and the formation of algae in tanks
prospects of water filtering and making potable water
usage of very high frequencies to separate hydrogen and oxygen using the methods of Stanley Meyer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xam5-_ZU0h4
production of plasm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVV6_u3p65g

experiments on water density under the influence of sound and light
aesthetic, speculative applications, reflections and water as mirror and medium

works using energy: wind, waves, solar
biological projects working with animals and plants
sociological projects researching the crew and habitat
the floating structure can be built at various sites in the world and a network of floating structures could come into being

The floating structure will peacefully coexist with its environment

Theoretical Background: Theses on Media Art

Artists should aim at autonomy

Artistic autonomy is not to be mistaken as "the autonomy of art". The autonomy of art was a social category which emerged together with the rise of capitalism and bourgeois democracy. The autonomy of art describes the position of art within a capitalist social system whereby the artist is granted some exceptional status. We reject this concept and postulate instead artistic autonomy. The latter is more closely related to autarky and describes an ethical attitude towards instruments and the work process. Artists should only use means of production which they understand and control as deeply and completely as possible. Therefore it is self-evident that only free and open source software can be used. Artists should avoid using digital tools which by their very structure define the frame of artistic production. The tools and materials of artistic production in the digital age should be as immedeately accessible as stone or wood.

The work of the artist

The main achievement of an artist is not her or his work understood as a final product which then enters the market; it is also not some dubious and vague reference to a 'process', but instead the real meaning and content of the work of the artist is the living labour of the artist. Artists therefore by necessity should avoid the capitalist division of labour. No invisible 'helpers', 'technicians', 'programmers' or else should be used for the creation of work. If one artist does not possess all the necessary skills to produce a specific artwork, the artist can engage in collaboration with other artists to realise those goals. The terms of those collaborations should be egalitarian and self-defined, no artist should become another artist's "foreman"; relationships between more experienced and skilled artists and 'students' are possible but should be free from coercive aspects of 'mastery'; everybody involved should be named as a co-author of the work at all instances when the work is shown or mentioned.

The division of manual and mental labour

The focus on the work of the artist instead of the work of art is designed also to overcome the division between manual and mental labour which is crucial for the maintainance of the capitalist class society and its power structure including its academic and artistic production units and their ideological output. The separation of manual and mental labur is not only foundational for the political economy and the class structure, it has also a significant impact on the definition of what constitutes "knowledge". Currently, academia and the arts are almost completely dominated by the mystifications of bourgeois ideology. By combining manual and mental labour artists have the chance to show possible ways out of the dead end street of informational capitalism and its superstructural reifications.

Artistic Research versus Science

Artistic research is fundamentally different from Science, even if artists use techniques and instruments very similar to those used by Scientists. If artists have just as much as an inch of self-respect and take themselves seriously, they need to distance themselves from the conduct of normal Science. Science with a capital S is deeply compromised by its past as well as by its present subservience to capitalism. Western Science came into being through acts of genocide against other peoples and against women in the so called witch hunts (Federici). It created the Scientist as a specific version of subjectivity: male, white and Cartesian. The specific psychology of the male Scientific subjectivity wants to create life without women (Artificial Life) and intelligence without flesh (Artificial Intelligence), but it only creates death - weapons of mass destruction, genetically modified superweeds and other deadly technologies. Currently, Science's conduct is almost completely dictated by the needs of capitalism and the competitive military nation state. The objectivist tendencies of Science with its eternal and universal Laws of Nature are totalitarian and to be rejected as they carry over the problematic legacy of oppressive religious believes into the present and future.

Artists and Nature

When artists engage with nature they understand that they themselves are nature. Unlike Scientists, artists do not construct nature as a lifeless object, a territory to be conquered. Therefore artistic measurements have a quality very different from Scientific measurements. Artists are investigating the world as it is in a reflective process which includes themselves as well as the other 'objects' of investigation. Artists, as all humans, are both part of nature and distinct from it through the achievements of human culture, such as language, numbers, mathematics and algorithms.

Artistic Measurements

Artistic measurments are processes of reflexive self-creation rather than supposedly neutral fact finding missions about an objective reality "out there". Artists create a framework of references and interpretations distinct from the terror of objectivism, i.e. Science. They can only do so because of the collective nature of human culture which both sets the from for and yet also enables the creative act of the radical social imaginary (Marx read through Castoriadis). Within the narrow limits of the current techno-economic paradigm, artists have the duty to develop new perspectives for self-creation and self-realisation both individually and collectively.

Martin Howse conducting artistic measuerment, seconded by Erich Berger, Gijon 2008. Some of the ideas in this text about artistic measurements are also inspired by conversations had with Marting during the Laboral residency.

Na pele

2010-03-09T18:11:28+00:00

Assim que terminar o verão, vou ali no tatuador marcar a MetaReciclagem na pele, como fez meu eterno irmão dpadua:

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Avisos por e-mail

2010-03-01T22:44:01+00:00

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Instalamos semana passada o módulo notifications, e hoje estou terminando de traduzi-lo e disponibillizá-lo para usuárixs mais antigxs do site. Ele traz algumas funcionalidades que eu julgo essenciais para o objetivo de estender o site como espaço de interação e formação de subgrupos dentro do universo da InfraLogica da MetaReciclagem: cada usuárix pode escolher receber avisos sobre novo conteúdo.
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Infra Lógica

Blizzard of Books

2010-02-28T12:22:03+00:00

Tirando a poeira

2010-02-27T18:41:44+00:00

Já tem um tempo que eu não blogo por aqui (com exceção dos meus posts no desvio e no blog da metareciclagem, agregados aqui automaticamente). Deu saudade do meu broguezim.

Começo do ano em ritmos malucos. Coisas aceleradas, paradas, lentas, tudo ao mesmo tempo. Trabalhando em um monte de frentes - lixo eletrônico, desvio, metareciclagem e outras correrias. Pesquisando e agitando projetos e ações com drupal, laboratórios de mídia, água, produção editorial, debates. Também elaborando perguntas sobre a situação da água e o que fazer, construção ecológica - devemos começar nosso quarto agora em março -, construção de barcos, redes sem fio. Tô planejando também montar um metamóvel em cima de uma Parati de 17 anos, mas ainda estou negociando isso.

Ontem passei lá na Praia Dura, onde rola o Ubatuba Brazil Camp. Conheci Hermeto Pascoal (que na noite anterior escreveu uma música na parede da pousada). Hoje à noite vamos ao espaço Artaud nas Nuvens pra ver a apresentação final do camp.

Passei uma semana em sampa - tive reuniões com Hd e Drica, tivemos um papo do lixoeletrônico com Ike e a Soninha, outro com o Glauco Paiva e o pessoal do Centro Cultural da Espanha, e ainda uma conversa articulada pelo consulado da Holanda sobre novos desdobramentos da articulação dos mapeamentos culturais do Brasil. Também nos despedimos do Marcão e da Ari, que saíram para uma temporada em Londres. Também estou resolvendo umas burocracias, abrindo empresa e essas coisas chatas.

Ubatuba está molhada e com temperatura amena.

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Andando - interface e sistema

2010-02-27T16:20:17+00:00

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Como eu comentei antes, já estamos movendo os motores do desenvolvimento do site da MetaReciclagem. Ainda estamos na fase de criar uma base comum, planejando e arrumando alguns bugs do sistema. A Fernanda continua desenrolando uma proposta de interface, acho que na semana que vem a gente já pode apresentar pra rede e conversar a respeito.
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Infra Lógica

robvk

2010-02-23T11:24:03+00:00

Open call: funding for environmental health project using Pachube.com

Calling all environmental designers, artists and researchers: we’re delighted to announce that Pachube.com in collaboration with xClinic, the Environmental Health Clinic + Lab at NYU and ZER01: the Art and Technology Network, are soliciting proposals to create environmental health projects and lifestyle experiments that make use of Pachube.

One project will be selected for funding in the amount of $5000 and will be featured as part of the Out of the Garage, Into the World program at the 2010 01SJ Biennial.

We are looking for truly innovative projects that push the boundaries of both environmental analysis and action, projects that don’t just “make data public” but help the “public make data,” projects that consider very carefully the relationship between all sorts of system, human and non-human alike, technological and cultural. You will need to do a lot more than just plug a sensor into a tree and get it to tweet!

One project will be selected for funding in the amount of $5000 and will be featured as part of the Out of the Garage, Into the World program at the 2010 01SJ Biennial. Once selected, during project development, Environmental Health Clinic Director, Natalie Jeremijenko, and the founder of Pachube.com, Usman Haque, will be on
hand to provide advice, guidance and consultation on projects.

Infralógica - chute inicial

2010-02-19T23:08:48+00:00

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Nesse ano de 2010 que agora começa (afinal o carnaval acabou de passar) estamos com algumas ações bem interessantes por aqui.
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Infra Lógica

Fazedorxs

2010-02-19T00:01:05+00:00

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Aproveitei o carnaval para terminar de ler Makers, que eu já tinha mencionado no post do debate sobre Gambiologia. Eu fiquei sabendo do livro via twitter (mas não lembro através de quem), em novembro: alguém comentou que o próximo livro de Cory Doctorow sairia também em episódios semanais no Tor.com. A única coisa que eu tinha lido dele até então eram alguns posts no Boingboing e o Scroogled (em português aqui). O primeiro episódio, que já começa dedicado a "quem toma riscos, xs fazedorxs de coisas". Li no site até o terceiro e gostei. Fui lá na amazon e encomendei o livro antes mesmo de ser lançado. Ele chegou aqui em Ubatuba no começo de dezembro. Resolvi deixá-lo de lado para ler no meu recesso de fim de ano, mas o reveillon molhado não me deixou muito tempo pra isso. Acabei pegando pra ler mesmo só nas últimas semanas.
Apesar de situado em um contexto bem diferente - Estados Unidos, empreendedorismo capitalista, toda aquela coisa - eu me vi bastante (e à MetaReciclagem) em várias partes da história. Desde o começo, o lance de começar uma coisa despretensiosa, de amigxs compartilhando uma vontade simples - fazer coisas, construir estruturas sem pensar muito em resultados efetivos, descobrir. Depois, a busca de estrutura sem sucumbir à corporificação, à maneira mais aceita de viabilizar as coisas, refletida na tensão entre os fazedores e os executivos. Também o lance da rede, da replicação autônoma, dos esporos comunicantes mas auto-organizados surgindo, e a surpresa que eles causam. A crítica ao consumismo e à indústria da obsolescência. O ativismo pelo uso pleno das tecnologias, o desvio do uso, a apropriação total. E claro, todo o lance de propriedade intelectual vs. cultura livre.
Logo no começo, as esculturas de Perry e Lester me fizeram pensar nos monstros de 1,99 do Glauco Paiva. E, por mais que o final tenha ficado meio solto, o último capítulo tem até uma partida de calvinbol, que simboliza ali a única coisa permanente na história - a sensibilidade do fazer, que tem muito a ver com o que aqui a gente tem chamado de gambiologia. Também fiquei pensando na tradição brico/fazedora/hacker que é tão presente nas culturas norte-americanas, mas à qual eu nunca dei muita atenção. Mas ainda assim, descontadas todas as diferenças culturais e todos os nortamericanismos do lance, foi uma leitura agradável e que mexeu bastante comigo - muita nostalgia dos tempos do galpão da MetaReciclagem no Agente Cidadão, e uma sensação de que algumas coisas nunca vão mudar, e de que fazer pouco também é fazer muito.
Ler sobre o cotidiano de Perry e Lester, suas sincronicidades e conquistas, seu afastamento e reencontro, sua amizade e complementaridade, também me fez pensar bastante no Dalton. Saudades do tempo em que as coisas eram mais simples - ou era a gente que se preocupava menos?
À história então... (pulando o parágrafo para quem quer evitar spoilers)...

... o livro abre numa época quase-agora, em uma coletiva de imprensa anunciando a fusão de Kodak e Duracell. O novo CEO, Landon Kettlewell, anuncia que toda a operação da nova empresa será substituída por times pequenos e inovadores. Após a coletiva, ele convida Suzanne Church, uma das jornalistas presentes, a acompanhar o trabalho de uma das equipes, que ocupa um Wal-Mart desativado na Florida. Essa equipe é formada por Lester e Perry, dois fuçadores / fazedores / hackers que reusam brinquedos, eletrônicos e aparelhos para montar novos produtos: fazem esculturas para colecionadores, montam um carro operado por bonecos do Elmo (Sesame Street) e por aí vai. Em pouco tempo, junta-se a eles Tjan, um administrador que vai ser responsável por transformar a criatividade deles em produtos vendáveis. Eles patinam um pouco, até que criam um sistema pra organizar as coisas em casa baseado em RFID, que vende milhões. Eles brincam também com impressoras 3D. Em algum tempo, Tjan vai para a concorrência. Todo um mercado - chamado "New Work" - é criado. No meio-tempo, mais algumas coisas aconteceram - eles ajudaram a desenvolver uma favela para os sem-teto do outro lado da estrada que tinham sido desalojados, o que vira um laboratório vivo. Eles envolvem o pessoal da favela em algumas coisas. Até que a bolha estoura e todo mundo cai.
Passam-se alguns anos. Lester e Perry montaram um "ride", que não sei bem como traduzir - como as atrações dos parques da Disney - onde estão expostos pedaços de seus antigos projetos. Os visitantes podem votar nas peças que gostam ou não, e o parque se rearruma sozinho. Kettlewell e Tjan estão aposentados, Suzanne viveu esse tempo na Rússia. Em determinado momento eles se reunem. Tjan decide replicar o ride em Boston. Outros rides começam a surgir, de forma emergente, em outras partes do país. Perry e Lester construíram um protocolo pelo qual os diferentes rides podem modificar a composição uns dos outros. Em meio a tudo isso, aparece Sammy, um executivo da Disney que, enciumado pelo sucesso dos hackers, passa a tentar sabotá-los, de forma cada vez mais grave. Ele processa os rides com base em direito autoral, o que dá base para a polícia destruir alguns deles. Kettlewell e Tjan bolam uma estratégia para se contrapor ao tamanho da Disney - criando um mercado que especula contra ações na justiça. Até um toque tupiniquim aparece - da noite para o dia surgem 50 rides no Brasil, sem ter contato com ninguém. Enquanto isso, Sammy faz coisas terríveis até que tem uma ideia que salva sua carreira - transformar impressoras 3D em produtos domésticos, imprimindo peças da Disney. Em pouco tempo Lester invade o firmware das impressoras para imprimir o que quiser. A Disney fica a um passo de um ataque ainda mais forte, quando aparece uma solução que acaba com toda a tensão entre a empresa e as pessoas - e também faz todo mundo ficar amigo de novo, etc.
Mais quinze anos se passam, os amigos se reencontram e - como mencionei lá em cima - o livro termina com uma partida de Calvinbol!
O fim do livro deixa algumas pontas soltas: não me convenceu de estar resolvida a situação com Death Waits, e acho que Doctorow passou a gostar de Sammy e foi amansando ele. Mas enfim, valeu por vários outros motivos. Recomendo a leitura.

Fazedorxs

2010-02-19T00:01:05+00:00

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Review of "Beyond Marx" - Über Marx hinaus

2010-02-10T14:14:28+00:00

This article presents a review, summary and notes on Über Marx hinaus Arbeitsgeschichte und Arbeitsbegriff in der Konfrontation mit den globalen Arbeitsverhältnissen des 21. Jahrhunderts. Edited by Marcel van der Linden and Karl Heinz Roth, this book combines many heterodox thinkers of the left, who had a close engagement with Marx, but are convinced now that we need to go beyond Marx for a number of reasons. This carefully edited volume makes a very interesting contribution to the history and present of labour and deserves to receive enough attention so that it gets translated as a whole or some of the pieces in it.

Reference: Über Marx hinaus Arbeitsgeschichte und Arbeitsbegriff in der Konfrontation mit den globalen Arbeitsverhältnissen des 21. Jahrhunderts, Marcel van der Linden und Karl Heinz Roth, (ed.) with Max Henninger, Berlin und Hamburg: Assoziation A, 2009 1

"We urgently need a critical theory which makes it possible to analyse the development of a capitalist world system and to construct, based on this understanding, new perspectives for a comprehensive social re-ordering" (Marcel van der Linden und Karl Heinz Roth, Introduction p. 13)

The introduction by the editors starts with a short and concise analysis of recent world events, the so called financial crisis and the decline of U.S. hegemony. This concludes with a number of points which illustrate that even so the last 20 years can be understood as a phase of economic expansion, this expansion was very uneven. The poorest fifth of the world's nations achieved negative economic growth of -0,5%. In 80% of all countries the rise of life-expectancy has slowed down, while also the decline of child death has decelerated. Only in the richest countries spending on education has risen, while in almost every country the proportion of spending as part of GDP has fallen; and even in the richest countries, measured by the OECD, the wealth gap between the poorest and richest segments of societies has grown. pp. 8-9

The introduction proceeds with a short re-assessment of Marx' work. Both authors/editors belong to a thread in Marxism which has drawn on Marx' classics during their youth in the 1960s and 1970s, yet were also close to the student movement and currents in Marxism now known as autonomous Marxism coming out of the operaio movement. The authors point out that the new materials published in the new complete German edition - Marx Engels Gesamtausgabe MEGA 2 - show that Engels' interventions as editors of the second and third volume of Capital did not only occasionally smooth over Marx' gaps and inconsistencies but had a more profound impact on the meaning of the work than had previously been thought. They also point out that Marx, towards the end of his life, had resisted the publication of II and III not only because the work was unfinished but because he had started to nurture severe doubts about the analytic framework he had developed. Marx had originally planned a six part work with the themes capital, land ownership, wage labour, the state, foreign trade and the world market of which he had within his life time only finished the first volume of the first part. It is therefore impossible, the authors conclude to analyse the complex processes and cycles of the world economy driven by competition between nation states on a genuine Marxist basis p. 12.

Roth and van der Linden identify five main weaknesses, inconsistencies and/or contradictions in Marx' work. First, they focus on the issue that Marx analysed capital but did little on living labour, which was reserved for a further book which he never came to write. The focus on developing theoretic instruments through which to understand the working of capital necessarily leads to many gaps, notably how capitalism actually works in the real work, how for instance the working class reproduces itself and what constitute its 'needs'. This, in our terms, would be the integrative process. van d. Linden and Roth are asking, what is the working class? The first part of the book provides a variety of angles, from a historic perspective, to aspects such as migration and the difficulty of applying a concept of class on subaltern groups in an emerging economy such as India.

This leads to a second point, a tendency to objectivism which is partly explained out of the context of Marx' own life: while the basic plan for a critique of the national economy was developed in the revolutionary 1840s, the emerging working class movement suffered heavy political defeat in the late 1840s and Marx thereafter became a precarious intellectual who had withdrawn into private life to make his theory more 'scientific'. This resulted in an objectivist tendency with Marx hoping to discover the "natural laws of the development of the capitalist economy" which would either lead to avantgardism or passivity (this line of critique is developed by quoting Karl Korsch (p.17)2 and Castoriadis' Crossroads in the Labyrinth (p. 16 and p. 204)3, both quoted on pages 18-19).

The third weakness is a tendency to privilege only one segment of the world working class, the male industrial proletariat which Marx and Engels treat as the only really revolutionary class while having, for instance, scant regard for the urban lumpenproletariat. This is closely linked with a fourth problem which is identified as methodological nationalism (p. 20). Marx explicitely based his theoretic model in Capital I on one nation state. While Marx made this theoretic reduction explicit, it has led to a widespread methodological nationalism among Marxists who, according to Roth and van der Linden, naturalise the nation state and exclude subnational, supranational and transnational aspects of the world system, while also identifying society with the state and a specific territorry (p. 21). This leads to the fifth accusation of Eurocentrism, which finds three main expressions, one, by ignoring events outside the axis Europe-North-America, second, by developing a prejudice about a European led development model, and third, by using empirical assumptions which treat certain things as facts, when they actually occured only under specific historic conditions (p.23).

The central thesis of the editors of Beyond Marx is that those 5 issues have to be overcome if radical theory should be able to provide orientation in the way it is expressed in the initial quote. The following essays of this finely edited book focus mainly on the aspect of labour and a more inclusive approach to the question of who or what is the working class. Thereby they help to sort out the mess with regard to class issues. The demographic decline of a specific type of working class in rich Northern countries, the rise in numbers and significance of new types of "flexi-workers" both in developed and emerging economies, the swelling numbers of the new industrial proletariat in emerging economies, all those tendencies coalesce into a problematic which has so far seen little solution both theoretically and empirically.

Historical labour inquiries

The first section, on labour, starts with a short version of Linebaugh and Rediker's book on the Many Headed Hydra4 which I assume to be well known by an English reading public. The second article by Niklas Fryman, is a fascinating account of seafarers as workers on the European war ships of the late 18th century. One thing that stands out is how, firstly, hard it was for the various navies to fill warships with the necessary amount of workers, and the mostly coercive ways of achieving this; secondly, there have been, accroding to Fryman, different phases when working class resistance took on different forms: during phases when hopes for an overall political change are slim, seaferers deserted in great numbers; when things got really hopeless they switched to open mutiny.

This almost melts together in my memory with Peter Way's attempt to understand the British soldier of that same period as a 'worker'. Noteworthy, across those three texts, is the tendency for transnational revolutionary solitarity, and the much bigger attention that probably should be paid to forms of forced labour, as both seafarers and soldiers can only partially be understood as "free individuals" who had nothing else to sell but their labour time. Can workers who are forced to work and who do not engage in a free contractual relationship also be analyzed according to a Marxist framework of labour vs. capital? And, as specifically Peter Ways suggests, does the great role that forced labour played in primitive accumulation lead us to a new understanding of that process, which Marx maybe assessed to schematically within a before and after of capitalism's history? Furthermore, are there continuities with regard to coercive methods on the capital-labour relationship with legacies lasting till today?

Gambino and Sacchetto on migration, forced labour and the business cycle

This last question gains increased urgency in the fourth piece by Ferruccio Gambino and Devi Sacchetto, which is the first piece in this volume to create a bridge from those deep histories to present times. Die Formen des Mahlstroms. Von den Plantagen zu den Fließbändern which could be translated as The forms of the maelstrom: from the plantations to the assembly lines draws together those histories of labour in chains with histories of migration and industrial development, the combination of free trade with slavery and indentured labour as well as the hard fought for freedom of the wage labourer to leave her employer. This 40 page essay does not waste much time with lengthy declarations about methodologies and theories and is packed with interesting research which is impossible to retell without translation of the whole piece.

As an important aside, a short search for possible English versions of this text did yield no result. It shows how important translations is especially in this living field of theory which connects itself to real struggles, something that becomes even more visible with the next piece by Sergio Bologna (more below). My motivation for writing this review is partly to make people aware of this book to motivate them so that they either wholly or partially translate it into other languages than German.

Gambino and Sacchetto address the "re-disciplining of migration flows" in Asia, Europe and North-America as a double process of selection, between exclusion of people deemed dangerous and the combination of formal and informal recruitment channels for an industrial system based on just-in-time production which wants to access human resources as flexibly as natural ones (p. 116). The buerocratisation of 'processing' migration flows takes on various forms and so leads to segmentations between workers whose often paperless status gets exploited while fostering new practices that turn detention centres for 'illegal migrants' into informal recruitment camps for cheap and dangerous labour. The text, however, does not only focus on the ways power tries to regulate migrant labour, it also highlights the agency of workers and the influence this had and has on the business cycle.

The chief term here is that of 'fluctuation', the turnover of workers and the measures taken to address it, or taken more generally, the mobility of capital. While the movement of workers has forced capital to globalise its recruitment capabilities, migrant workers have also triggered the opposite movement, when they try to stay in places where employers want to get rid of them again. Bringing in David Harvey's retemporalisation of the crisis, the authors ask how does this complex and cruel dialectics play itself out concretely. As Marx discusses the turnover of fixed capital and its relation to circulating capital, they criticise him for taking a too contemplative view on a process which went ahead in a much stormier way thereby exposing the limits of a system relying on 'using up' or 'exhausting' labour power. The relationship between jumpy peaks and troughs of fixed capital investment rates - the business cycle - and the availability of human labour as an uncertain factor is a key theoretical problematic to which this text makes an important contribution. There is an ambiguity between the historic forms that the maelstrom took on, using coercive and free forms of labour together for their own workers, in England, for example, while showing outright violence and brutality to slaves and indigenous people on plantations p. 121.

The relationship between the business cycle and migration has already been observed as early as 1926, note Gambino and Sacchetto 5. Yet while there are observable similarities in the shape of the respective curves, the exact connection between them is not quite clear. This is an intriguing bit which I suggest should be factored into the Technopolitics research scheme and given further consideration. Over the following pages the authors show how this particular connection was conditioned by certain social superstructural aspects in the U.S. namely the intention of keeping migrating African Americans in menial jobs and out of industrial assembly line jobs. But WWI and the U.S. fear of radicalised socialist workers together depleted the reservoir of available white workers, so that employers started to scrape at "the bottom of the barrel" of European labour - means recruiting Southern and South-Eastern European workers. there is a relationship between the tendency of the working class to "vote with their feet" when confronted with the three d's - dirty, dangerous, difficult - of labour and the role that regulation of migration plays with regard of coercing workers into accepting such working conditions that negatively afflict health (p. 138).

G&S present a particularly unforgiving view of the early phase of Fordism underpinned by spectacular turnover rates which stood as high as 370% at Ford's Highland Park before the doubling of the daily wage to 5$ (p. 134). The African Americans who had migrated to the North and West saw work at Ford as a chance despite the fact that many of them were first employed in the most unhealthy workshops such as the foundries. The retention rate of married African Americans at Ford who were not working in the foundries were one among the highest of all Fordist workers at the time, which was part of the motivation of Ford to take them on while other employers in Detroit continued discriminating against black workers (pp. 134 - 136)6

The continuation of those histories after WWII, the migration of African Americans to the centres of the industrial North, their increased inclusion in the Fordist labour market had a direct connection with the anti-segregation and civil rights movement in the U.S. within a global context of anti-colonial insurrections, according to G&S. The overall result of this was an international tendency towards less discrimination brought down many rassistic taboos in Europe as well (pp. 139-40). Northern Europe had to accept that many of those 'guestworkers' who had been invited to come for a few years and leave would have to be allowed to stay. The opposite tendency sets in, of exporting labour to low wage countries or so called export processing zones. The authors highlight the continuity from plantation to export processing zones, in the case of some countries such as the Fidschis. While a number of countries, especially larger ones, start a process of import substitution through building up domestic resources, others lack the necessary pre-conditions completely to do so (p. 141). The rise of free trade zones and export processing zones is making permanent the violation of many basic rights of the workers, there are nevertheless strong migration currents in poor countries towards these zones. China, in particluar, had already mobilised 100 million workers by 2005, with a further potential of 130 mio rural inhabitants to become migrant workers in export processing zones (pp. 148-49).

G&S conclusions emphasise more strongly the continuity of forms of forced labour in the assembly line work rather than the more Marxist orthodox view of factory work marking a more substantial change. Therefore they do not end without a swipe at those "prophets who predict the end of serialised labour or a postindustrial world" (p. 153). Without entering this very interesting discussion further I take note of a potential point of contestation with prevalent narratives about Fordism and Postfordism. If narratives about Golden Ages of Fordism are too sanguine, what about the sequel to that?

Sergio Bologna on the intellectual history of operaio

Which is, in a way, exactly what Sergio Bologna tackles with Der Operaismus, eine Innenansicht: von der Massenarbeit zur selbständigen Arbeit (pp. 155 - 181, Operaism, a view from within: from mass labour to self-employed labour). This is first of all, an intellectual history of Operaismo and autonomous Marxism and as such very useful, because in its relative brevity it is able to show connections between events and turning points in theory development that evaded me previously. What appears to me as most important is this drive by the first generation of operaistic researchers to understand factory labour, not in the terms that were already used by the Communist Party and the main Trade Unions, but what their own collective research yielded which directly engaged with the productive process on different layers:

"sequential organisation of the production cycle; hierarchical mechanisms, which this process spontaneously creates, disciplining and integrating techniques, the development of technologies and production processes, the reaction to the spontaneous behaviour of the labor force, and the intersubjective dynamics between workers, the communicative processes which workers have adopted among themselves, the passing on of knowledge from older to younger workers, the emergence of a culture of conflict, the fragmentations within the labor force, the use of breaks and cantine times, the differentiated account of the working of the payment system, the presence of trade unions and the forms of political propaganda, awareness of risk and means to protect one's physical safety, ... etc." (Sergio Bologna in Van der Linden and Roth 2009, p. 156)

It merits to quote this at length as it represents a possible research matrix to conduct conricerca ourselves in this day and age. In this view of theory or research as being in constant and direct connection with reality lies one of the lasting achievements of operaismo. The currently very fertile strand of conricerca appearantly owes something to the influence of Danilo Montaldi on Romano Alquati (p. 161) something further to be explored. The well known but hard to get by German edition of Opereio e Capitale, Tronti 1966 (dtsch.7), was a cornerstone of theory development. From there on, a theoretic shift phased in which should last a few years, which led to the reading of Grundrisse8 and the culmination of viewpoints based on that, lasting into the 1970s. While the first volume of Capital gives you the instruments to understand concrete labour, Grundrisse allows you to understand the principles of abstract labour, writes Bologna. With Vol I you 'get' Fordism, with Grundrisse you 'get' Postfordism (p. 166). Never before heard that so neatly juxtaposed. The next interaction between strike wave and theory creation brought together Primo maggio with the movement of 1977. Sergio Bologna published La tribu delle talpe, Mailand 19789 (German version10). While many of Bologna's colleagues had adopted ideas by Foucault, together with a reception of Deleuze via Negri, his analysis was different, based on the research of Primo maggio which had had shown the new drift of the economy towards fragmentation, specialisation, house work, just-in-time, in all these disintegrating forms, so that Bologna thought to observe first signs of a transition from Fordism to Postfordism (p. 173). The participation of new social groups in workerist struggles, where sometimes the focus was to leave the factory altogether was new and remains something to come to terms with. Bologna then turns to a narration that becomes more explicitely autobiographical.

Bologna identifies himself as a freelancer from the moment on he loses his job in the course of Italian state-action against radical intellectuals, starting in 1979, affecting him in 1982. What Bologna calls "die neue selbständige Arbeit" - Il lavoro autonomo di seconda generazione11 the phenomenon of new self-employed and self-directed gives rise to the dieci tesi, the 10 theses first presented to the public in altre ragioni in 1991, printed in 199712

Bologna comes out with the strong claim that in writing the 10 theses Marxism provided him with no historic or theoretic point of reference. There is no chapter in Capital, the Theory of Surplus Value or Grundrisse which provided any orientation for him. p. 177-78 Bologna sees great scope for fields of action opened by the crisis produced by neoliberalism and finance, because of the paradigm change brought by networked computing, "the greatest industrial revolution since the combustion engine". Bologna urges us to use those spaces of action, but also warns about the myths of the knowledge worker in light of exploitation of university staff and the general decline of the middle classes. Bologna insists we do not only have to go beyond Marx but also beyond the notion of The Left if we are to tackle issues such as the defence of postfordist labour and its autonomy, which he sees the remaining socialist or even radical leftist movements uncapable of. Now politically homeless, he is happy with that, and still draws on some of the operaismo research methodologies pp. 180-181

Those strong words come a bit as a surprise and my translation may make them even more undercomplex or clumsy. But once more lets make a holding mark, about this question if Postfordism really made any form of Marxist theory formulation obsolete. That could be read in a wider context where the development of media unhinges the leverage of Marx based thought. Which is what some Postmodern media theorists think. Turning this upside down, it could be valuable to study more concretely the relationship between the rise of new media and postmodernist theory strands within the postfordist economic paradigm.

1. van Linden Md, Roth KH .
2009. Über Marx hinaus .
2. Korsch K .
1996. Krise des Marxismus : Schriften 1928-1935.
Gesamtausgabe / Karl Korsch / herausgegeben von Michael Buckmiller, 5 . 5
3. Castoriadis C .
1984. Crossroads in the labyrinth.
4. Linebaugh P, Rediker MB .
2000. The many-headed hydra: sailors, slaves, commoners, and the hidden history of the revolutionary Atlantic.
5. p. 133, Footnote 43: Harry Jerome, Migration and Business Cycless 1926Jerome Harry .
1926. Migration and business cycles,.
6. very interesting series of footnotes: Meier, August and Rudwick Elliott, Black Detroit and the rise of the UAW, New York 1979. Maloney, Thomas, N., and Whatley, Warren, C. Making the Effort: The Contours of Racial Discrimination in Detroit's Labour Market 1920 - 1940 in The Journal of Economic History, Y 53 (1995) and Foot, Whatley and Wright: Arbitraging a discriminatory labour market: black workers at the Ford motor company, 1918 - 1947, Journal of Labor Economics, Year 21 (2003)
7. Tronti Mario .
1974. Arbeiter und Kapital.
8. Marx K, Nicolaus M .
1993. Grundrisse : foundations of the critique of political economy (rough draft).
9. Bologna S .
1978. La tribu delle talpe.
Centralità operaia.
10. Der Stamm der Maulwürfe, Mai-Gruppe und Theoriefraktion, Hg., Wissenschaft kaputt, Münster 1980
11. Bologna S, Fumigalli A .
1997. Il lavoro autonomo di seconda generazione.
12. Sergio Bologna, 1997. Dieci thesi per un statuto del lavoro autonomo. in: Bologna 1997, op.cit.

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