KANTUTA QUIROS & ALIOCHA IMHOff - Overlapping Biennial

the chance to bring this knowledge to a wide audience without
succumbing to its distortion.
That is why we need to develop clear criteria for deciding in
which venues we can conduct our struggle, which projects
should be boycotted and denounced, with whom and under
what conditions we collaborate.
09. OUR BASIC PROGRAM
Under the current circumstances, we propose that selfgoverned
collectives shall use the following basic program as
their guide:
- Don’t allow external factors to interfere while developing
your ideas and accomplishing your projects. Don’t give away
exclusive distribution rights for your work. Don’t directly or
indirectly advertise the institutions of power and capital used
for your projects.
- Economic relations must be politically built. You need to
collectively demand your labor should be fairly and worthily
compensated. By getting into a work relation with the institutions
of power, you demonstrate their capitalistic, exploitative
nature.
- Don’t take part in projects whose results (symbolic capital,
surplus value) might be used for political ends that contradict
the internal tasks of your collective’s work.
- While developing your project, you should try to make your
work as “non-transparent” as possible. At the same time,
you should strive to create situations whose meaning could
only be fully manifested outside the narrow frame of concrete
production relations. This means you should construe
the use value of the work in such a way that institutions of
power will be hard pressed when trying to convert it into
exchange value.
At the same time, we keep advocating uncompromising
critique of struggle against all cultural institutions that build
their work on corruption and primitive servicing according to
commercial interests, against state, and ideology. We must
constantly “slap” these dimwits and prostitutes “on the wrist”
and expose their shameful place in history. We will use all
the means at our disposal to make this happen.
DV: The most important and practical case of the implementation
of these ideas (see in appendix) – “We are not off!”
(see below)
10. THE LOCAL ASPECT OF THE STRUGGLE
The least we demand is the abolition of tacit censorship and
the ending of all repression of political and cultural activity.
Consequently, what we need in Russia is public support for social
research projects and critical art practices, independent of
any private interest. Avoiding the predicament of “reformism”
versus “radicalism,” we act for the reach of a specific, local
configuration of demands and transformational programs.
For a start, we demand a few concrete things. Public funds
should be transparently distributed for the support of research
and art in public space, as well for grassroots initiatives. They
should also support work that harshly criticizes contemporary
institutions of power, both cultural and political. On the other
hand, this is possible only during radical social transformation
that would undermine the entire system of authoritarian
capitalism. In order to foster proper conditions for this kind of
transformation, we need new forms of coordination with all
the other struggling fronts – workers, trade unions, environmentalists,
feminists, anti-authoritarian activists. We have to
disseminate models of activist self-education and politicization
of artistic and intellectual practices. These are the bases for a
future broader consolidation of leftism and for the hegemony
of our ideas in society.
DV: These are some basic demands that reflect the present
political environment of culture and activism in Russia.
At the same time, we emphasize that the demand for basic
democratic rights is urgent in our situation, for it is just a
prerequisite for further steps. Just like the Revolution in
February 1917, when the working class and all oppressed
people eventually became the main driving force of this typical
bourgeois demand.
We also stress on the fact that in formally democratic states,
where culture is supported by the tax payers, all those who
do not vote for the current power (in Russia, it is sometimes
the case for more than 50% of the population) should also
have access to public money to express their cultural and
political needs.
DR: In reality, the current demands of cultural activists in
Russia are even more basic than this. We could demand the
state stopped harassing art activists and framing them to reinforce
their power. We could also demand the state stopped
selling out all cultural institutions and just simply evict them
when necessary. Another basic demand could be for the
state and the elite to stop sponsoring or encouraging protofascists,
who become real fascists, murdering journalists and
activists, or fake art world fascists who win art prizes, and
so on. Re-reading the previous section, it all sounds more
radical than ever: to ask for transparent state sponsorship
for critical art from a state that has just evicted its own 20th
century art collection. To ask the militia, when they round
you up on mayday for money! A truly revolutionary demand,
as radical as reality itself.
11. CULTURAL WORKERS – ARTISTS, INTELLECTUALS,
CURATORS, AND RESEARCHERS!
Unite with all working people! Despite everything, they
continue their struggle for freedom and human dignity. Only
together can we free ourselves from the poverty of everyday
life, from depression, and fear. There is only one world —
and it will be what we make it today!
Chto Delat
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