Liberated spaces / OVNI 2009

/ CONTEXT 1994 - 2020

Liberated spaces / OVNI 2009

OVNI Rhizomes lays bare the subterranean, rhizomatic points of contact between worlds and experiences that seem very different from each other. The remembered image is that of a rhizome (1), or rhizomes, it doesn't matter which because it is both at once, the singular and plural do not affect it.

“Advice, slogans: follow the plants” (2). In a world of concrete and asphalt we see different plant species living in cracks in the most unlikely places, gathering rain and seeking out soil that has been banished. At other times, these same plants, or the roots of trees, create the cracks and buckle the asphalt. We have also seen plants cover entire buildings, opening walls and destroying them; but so have we seen them holding together the ruins of immemorial knowledge, ancient temples in the jungle, in a strange union that seems to complete them. Like the cobra that saw Buddha meditating and instead of biting him, decided to cover him and shelter him from the rain. An image that perhaps renews a forgotten pact: to awaken to the smooth continuity between nature and human, between nature and knowledge, a continuum that hovers over words to remind us of the essential unity and manifest multiplicity of all things.

Plants also show us diverse systems. Along with the centralised and hierarchical organisation of the roots of trees, there are the spidery roots of shrubs and bushes, the rhizome of certain species (grass, reeds, ginger, mangroves...) creates "an acentred, nonhierarchical and nonsignifying system without a General and without an organizing memory or central automation, defined solely by a circulation of states" (3).

We screen videos like visions that connect and interrelate these states and realities, producing rhizome in space, but also in time, given that the first two principles of the rhizome are connection and heterogeneity: any of its points can and must be connected to anything else. This is not the case with trees and roots, which always fix a point, a particular order. Thus, like a violently smothered echo, the Black Panthers’ "all power to the people” resonates in the possibility of immigrant communities, in the “banlieues" of the world. The anti-Vietnam war protests and the underground that derived from them emit lines that break the sad, or even complicit, silence around the occupation of Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan... or around the wars "subcontracted" by big corporations in Africa. (4)

Indigenous peoples are part of a rhizome that includes the earth, plants and animals, forms of knowledge that derive from their forms of survival and celebration, and wakefulness and dreams. They see this multiplicity as a substantive, not an accumulation: another of the principles of rhizomes. They know that an attack against any one of their realities is unavoidably a prelude to other acts of violence. This is why a Yaqui Indian explains that those responsible for the genocide against his people also exterminated wild animals, domesticated others, imprisoned the survivors of his people in reserves. It is also like the indigenous community in Peru that dreams up a different kind of schools, and creates them with urgency on awakening; because they seen how the official educational system teaches their children to be enemies of their own traditions, of their own environment. They warn us, they are not isolated points on the outside of the “other”, they are lines of alert, for ourselves (5).

In Europe, the warning came from Exarchia, a neighbourhood in Athens. The death of 15 year old Alexis, shot by a policeman, triggered a new awareness, the occupying of spaces, the issuing of communiqués in which teenagers sorrowfully condemned the submissiveness of many of their parents, the conformism instilled by the schools of consumption and production;... the impossibility of imagining, together, another form of existence:

“We want a better world. Help us. We are not “terrorists”, nor “hooded ones", nor the "known-unknowns". We are your children, they are the known-unknowns... We have dreams, don’t destroy them We are alive, don’t stop us Remember, you were also young once Today you run after money, you only worry about “appearances” You’ve grown fat, you’re bald You’ve forgotten We hoped for your support We hoped for your concern We wanted you to make us proud for once. But it was in vain. You lives are nothing but lies, you have bowed down You’ve dropped your pants and you are waiting to die You don’t imagine, You don’t fall in love You don’t create You only buy and sell Materialism everywhere, Love nowhere, Truth nowhere (6).

Dark roots, prisons opposite factories, maps and imaginaries that don't include us as life, neighbourhoods in ruins, third-generation migrants – forever migrants? - bombed hospitals, hundreds of dead birds by a lake, torn rhizomes.

But unlike the cuts that isolate other kinds of structures, a rhizome can be torn and cut off at any part. Rhizomes can be broken or cut without causing any harm (7), because rhizomes are made up of ruptures, they can keep functioning and even thrive in spite of these “ruptures”. This is how other nomadic maps begin, inspired by roaming cats, in the non-useful areas of cities: where abandoned sites create space for communities of cats and, and room for the dreams of the people who feed them, humans adopted by feline tribes; in urban micro deserts, jungles and ruins. Where squatted abandoned buildings become hybrid, mingling with other distant memories, scorned by speculation. Liberated spaces that come back to life, that break the Totality (8).

“What is the Totality? It is the high residue of hazardous and potentially lethal chemicals inside your fat cells. It is you shopping when you are depressed. It is you sitting inside and turning on the television or computer on a beautiful day. It is feeling you get that something is missing. It is the headache that won't go away. It is the bleeding in your intestines from years of pain alleviating drug use. It is the drugs you have take when you need an escape. The bulldozer that destroyed the woods you might have known so well. It is the towering skyscraper that makes you feel forever tiny and powerless. It is your prison, sometimes with bars, sometimes without. It is all your fears. It is the thing that has categorised you. It is the ache in your back. It is your adrenaline. The tears that pour down your face after a sad movie. It is your longing for a dramatic romance with a happy ending. It is the extinct species. It is the dying world. It is polluted air. It is the farmer killing her/himself with the pesticides that were going to make life better. It is the feeling of superiority, which supplies the reason to destroy all else.” (9)

A Totality that is always aimed at the conquest of the other. And the result is a society based on competition, on commodification and global expansion. A society that doesn’t contemplate any logic other than growth (10). A society made up of masses of solitary individuals.

Dominant thought can be recognised in power that is directed outwards. But this outward-focus does not mean that this form of power is only exercised on material forms and surfaces. Rather, it causes and forces everything that is inwardly focused – anonymous, hidden, insignificant – to flow towards the surface, be reduced to the external, reveal itself, publicise itself, to end up becoming nothing more than the outside. This is the only way that it can impose its full cartography, group and produce its identities... so that it can allocate its experts and target its goods. This outwardly-directed power necessarily dominates and subjugates the other – whether beings, territories or forms of knowledge – but also to constantly produces it, through the exhibition of images and attitudes, the unceasing creation of politica

/ CONTEXT 1994 - 2020

This program in the form of an essay aims to shed light on some of the more disturbing aspects of contemporary life. Specifically, it looks at experiences involving conflict with power and at the imminent arrival of an even greater confrontation. A clash that exceeds the political realm and expands towards the notion of civilisation itself, and that seems to emanate from a source within the inner life of human beings.

Bearing this in mind, we present a series of screenings that look further than the immediacy of recent events, the logic of action-reaction, and the persistent notion of the other as intrinsically negative, in order to take a step back and observe from a distance that allows reflection.

We convey this vision through a programme with a dual core: La Commune by Peter Watkins, and The Mahabharata by Peter Brook, which we have contextualised with a series of documentaries and other documents that show contemporary expressions of the central theme.

La Commune offers a vision of contemporary conflict that transcends political oblivion. A cinematic reflection that looks back to a historical milestone – the emergence and disappearance of the 1871 Paris Commune and, at the same time, questions our own social reality and its representation in the media, given that Watkins chose to work with non-actors, people who express the actual conditions of their lives in Paris in 1999.

We will screen this film in three parts, each followed by a discussion session led by members of Rebond La Commune , the group that was created as a result of the making of this film.

Peter Brook’s The Mahabharata also deals with conflict but rather than taking a historical approach it positions itself outside of history, outside of linear time. It plays out in mythical time, the time of constant return and of the dialectic tension between the oblivion and remembrance of true human nature. The Mahabharata presents this conflict on several levels – linked to politics (power), civilisation, and the survival of life on Earth –, but also as an expression of the inner struggle that is fought out within every human being.

Each of the three parts of The Mahabharata will be preceded by excerpts from a conversation that we recorded with Jean-Claude Carrière, the screenwriter in charge of the theatrical adaptation of Brook's The Mahabharata , in which we explore the keys to this work in relation to the notions of conflict and oblivion.

This story is about you

The programme begins by following the course of the Mahabharata, an immense poem that flows with the majesty of a great river, which is full of “inexhaustible riches, defies all analysis, whether structural, thematic, historical or psychological. Doors are continually opening, which lead onto other doors. The Mahabharata cannot be held in the hollow of one’s hand. There are many ramifications. Sometimes seemingly contradictory, they succeed each other and intertwine, but we never lose the central theme of a looming threat, to which everything starkly points. We are living in a time of destruction. The question is, can we avoid it?” (1)

Against this background, from its very first lines, the Mahabharata takes us on an inner journey of knowledge and transformation.

• What is the poem about?

• It is about you. It is the story of your race. How your ancestors were born. How they grew. How vast war arose. It is the poetical history of mankind. If you listen carefully, at the end you will be someone else. (2)

  The illusion of power

The story gradually introduces us into a confrontation between the Pandava and the Kaurava . A confrontation that is a battle for power, although it arises from two almost opposite conceptions of life. With all their nuances and ambivalence, we see the Pandava proceed in accordance with their quest to fulfil the dharma , while the Kaurava seem to be guided only by desire and fear: the desire to possess power and the fear of losing it. They do not hesitate to use all possible means to achieve their end, they respect no limits whatsoever. And they act with the complicity of their parents, a blind king and a queen who voluntarily blindfolds herself.

Then the two sides play a game of dice, as a way of representing and temporarily avoiding direct conflict; but it is also a frame-up. The game is rigged – power play is always rigged. There can only be one outcome: defeat and the loss of everything they own, even their freedom. The Pandava face a future of exile and war.

In the present day, this rigged game takes on shapes and names that often hide its true purpose: to create a reality that is tailored to the private interests of a few. This is the case of so-called “free trade”, for example, which is supposedly a fair game in the sphere of economics. But the unequal terms of its participants and the non-reciprocal nature of the rules mean that it is inherently based on a desire for supremacy. Other examples disguise the obvious corporate and entrepreneurial nature of some social networks, and of many digital tools that barely hide their dark underside of control. And so we dwell in a realm of appearances: we appear to choose, we appear to communicate, we appear to be safe, thanks to a dense network of social devices. But inadvertently, when we comply with the daily ritual of submission to our work, to the educational and health system, to culture and to entertainment, we are signing a silent contract:

I accept competition as the foundation of our system, even though I am aware that it generates frustration and anger for the majority of those who lose. I agree to be humiliated and exploited in exchange for being allowed to humiliate and exploit those on a lower rung of the social pyramid (...)"

I accept that, in the name of peace, the largest Government expense will be Defence (...) I agree to be served up negative and terrifying news from around the world every day, so that I can ascertain the extent to which our situation is normal. (3)

Obviously, failure to sign “the contract” entails various increasing forms of exclusion. In view of this situation, protest can easily be channelled through the realm of appearance and made to give up its transformative power. But if protest tries to become real it will be stigmatised as sectarian, aggressive and violent, regardless of the means and ends it chooses.

Del Poder (“On Power”), the documentary by Zaván, focuses precisely on this aspect: the moment at which power reveals its true nature, beyond the fine names that it adopts to protect and legitimise its actions. This moment of revelation when power shows its true face comes about when it turns to the violence of repression. Genoa, 2001, hundreds of thousands of demonstrators protest on the streets. It is not an isolated event, the movement has been gaining strength, in Seattle in 1999, in Prague in 2000, and it is starting to represent a possibility for change… The “authorities” shield the city. They fence in entire neighbourhoods and suspend the Schengen treaty, to protect the summit of the heads of the world’s eight most powerful states. According to police trade union sources, they deliberately plan for a scenario of extreme violence, without ruling out the possibility that people may be killed (4). Police violence is unleashed, people are beaten indiscriminately. There are soon casualties, hundreds of them, some of people in comma. The situation quickly becomes a trap for the protesters, to such an extent that Amnesty International declares it “the greatest violation of human rights in Italy’s history since World War II.” Carlo Guiliani is killed by two shots to the head; the Commissioner who is tried for his murder is subsequently absolved. Far from reigning in the police violence, this death seems to stimulate it and give it its true meaning. The repression continues undiminished during the days that follow. De

The Margins of the Empire _ OVNI 2008

/ CONTEXT 1994 - 2020

The Margins of the Empire _ OVNI 2008

"Open your eyes and look within. Are you satisfied with the life you're living? (...) So we gonna walk, alright, through the roads of creation. We're the generation (Tell my why) trod through great tribulation". Exodus Bob Marley

The videos screened at OVNI 2008 will offer an initial reflection on the “marginal” and the desire to cross margins, on forms of personal or collective exodus – whether physical or as a state of mind. They include perspectives on different forms of marginalization and exploitation which lie directly under the oppressive vertical force of power, such as workers in Chinese export factories or clandestine Palestinian day workers in Israel. And perspectives on armed conflict zones that go beyond the “propaganda-counter propaganda” dialectic: in South America, Chechnya, Lebanon, Iraq, Darfur, Afghanistan...

But they also include reflections and perspectives on other realities and forms of organization that grow on the margins: self-organization of the homeless, indigenous communities in Ecuador and Columbia, brotherhoods of transvestites in India, ancient heterodox traditions and their rituals, self-managed collectives in Barcelona, groups of deserters in the US... Together with accounts of dreams and the inner revolution, of seeking and of exodus... These are videos that question and consider this attraction towards exodus, the desire to abandon a reality and a set of values that we can no longer believe in, or wish for. Perspectives that refuse to remain trapped in an eternal “against” stance and use resistance tactically, but embark on a journey to other possible worlds. Exodus itself is another world, functionally unmappable, because exodus is always on the side of emptiness and movement, of listening to voices of the others (?) and recognising oneself in them. What gets left behind are societies swing between an abundance of poverty – made visible and turned into spectacle by the media – and the increasingly obvious misery of abundance, the misery of consumer societies.

Let's allow fragments of transcriptions from some of the videos that will be projected talk to us about the journey:

“A society that is always sicker, but always stronger, has everywhere concretely re-created the world as the environment and decor of its illness, a sick planet. A society that still hasn't become homogenous and that isn't determined by itself, but is always more determined by a part of itself that places itself above the rest and is exterior to it, has developed a movement that dominates natures but isn't itself dominated. (...) The production of non-life has more and more pursued its linear and cumulative process; overcoming a final threshold in its progress, it now directly produces death”. (1)

“The consumer society has destroyed the environment. Exterminated millions of species of plants and animals. Poisoned the seas, the rivers and the lakes. Polluted the air. Filled the atmosphere with carbon dioxide and other harmful gases. Destroyed the ozone layer. Exhausted our oil, coal and gas reserves and rich mineral resources. Exterminated our forests and destroyed their own. So what is left for us? Underdevelopment. Poverty. Dependence. Underdevelopment. Debt. Uncertainty. For the super developed societies the problem is not growth but distribution. Not only amongst themselves but amongst everybody. Sustainable development is impossible without fairer distribution amongst all nations. After all, mankind is one great family all sharing the same destiny”. (2)

“Today's ideal is consumerism. It is a homologating civilisation that makes everything the same. Without ideology? What, it has no ideology? With a consumer ideology you don't... instead of having a flag, the clothes they wear are their flag. Some of the means and some of the external phenomena have changed but, in practice, it's a depauperation of individuality which is disguised through its valorisation (...) During the so-called “repressive” ages sex was a joy, because it was practiced in secret and it made a mockery of all the obligations and duties that the repressive power imposed. (...) And so, at a certain point, one of the characters in the films says exactly this: “Repressive societies repress everything... therefore, men can't do anything.” But I have added this concept which for me is lapidary: permissive societies permit a few things and only those things can me done. Hey! That is terrible! A degree of bestowed freedom that later becomes compulsory. As it is bestowed it becomes compulsory.

Sadomasochism is an eternal category of man: it was there in De Sade's time, it's here today, etc. But this is not what I care about. I also care about this, but the real sense of sex in my films is a metaphor of the relation between power and its subject. Therefore, in reality, it is true for all times. The drive came from the fact that I detest, above all things, today's power. Everyone hates the power he is subject to. Therefore, I hate the power of today, of 1975, with particular vehemence. It is a power that manipulates bodies in a horrible way, it has nothing to envy Himmler's or Hitler's manipulation. It manipulates them, transforming their conscience, in the worst way, establishing new values which are alienating and false. The values of consumerism, which accomplish what Marx called genocide of the living, real, previous cultures.

In reality, the producers force the consumers to eat shit. Knapp bouillon or... They give adulterated, bad things, little Robiola cheeses, processed cheese for babies,... all horrible things that are shit (...)

Power remains exactly the same, only its characteristics change, the subject is no longer parsimonious or religious, he is a consumer and so he is short-sighted, irreligious, secular, etc. The cultural characteristics change, but the relationship is identical. Therefore, it (Salò) is a film not only about power, but about what I call “the anarchy of power”. Nothing is more anarchic than power. Power does what it wants and what it wants is totally arbitrary or dictated by its economic reasons which escape common logic.

My real vision, the older, more archaic one given to me at birth and shaped in my early childhood, my original way of seeing is a sacred vision of things. In the end, I see the world like those who have a poetic vocation do, that is, like a miraculous, almost sacred fact. And nothing can desecrate my fundamental sacredness”. (3)

Constant work, constant consumption

“... We are terrorized into being consumers. We can choose between brand A, brand B or C, that's the freedom we have. Yes, I think there are too many things. Constant work and consumption, it's crazy. This is what's destroying everything, and it has to go. I can see very little worth preserving. I don't see any benefit or wellbeing in preserving this system. Achieving all these things is actually coercion. People are forced to work in mines and packaging factories. Without them we don't have all this. A world of things, which we have to spend our whole lives fighting for. I don't think anybody really takes it seriously, but inertia keeps it moving. This has to be stopped, it has to be destroyed (...)

Why do people go out and try to protest or try to do something? That's not violence. Sitting there doing dope and watching MTV. Then you go and get a job. Just schlep along. To me that is violence.

It is necessary to damage or destroy property, it lies outside political confines o the politics of the everyday. What do you achieve by holding a sign at the usual demonstration? I've seen the same thing for decades, it doesn't achieve anything! But when people fight, that’s something else. They capture people’s attention, it’s real. Corporate property is the most obvious legitimate target in my view. Banks, e