XLt Herbst Radar, The Unbearable Blightness of Swallowing All The Lies
Dear arts+praxis followers, this page is a work-in-progress.
We are collecting calendar dates for this “XLt Herbst Radar”, if you know of things happening in Berlin ( aka Btropolis ) that we should include, please write us here in the comments below or in a message. Send us press releases, flyers, links, whaetever ya got ! ... Doesn’t have to be activist bits, but that IS our priority! Dark times require serious engagement ! Don't think it's dark times?! Well, maybe you haven't been following the more engaged news, i..e. the channels and cultures that aren't trying to cover your eyes !
We also have some XLT analysis about the intervention that occurred last night at the ZK/U – Center for Art and Urbanistics grand re-opening following some big renovations and expansion. A nice arts + culture event, but especially inspiring because ‘artivists’ who KNOW WHAT TIME IT IS used the opportunity to interrupt the culture industry’s bizness as usual, and posed some very difficult questions in regards to how this city and state of Germany and its Ministry of Culture are inadequately ( or disastrously ) handling the multiple crises erupting in the Middle East. And the ensuing problems which are now spreading across EU and the globe has created an especially fragile and interconnected social, political and cultural volatility in our “Btropolis”. ( continued below the calendar )
Just to be clear, this wasn’t a protest against the Z/KU center and its programs, though there were some moments that protestors questioned celebrating the arts and culture initiatives at a time, when many state-funded projects were remaining silent as some artists and culture workers were being cancelled (and/or fired ) for their political views and solidarity. And remaining silent - in general - during a time when when schools, shelters, hospitals and aid workers are being bombed in clear multiple violations of international laws requires a wake up call ! Requires resistance, until it stops !
Image: The front entrance of Z/KU, about 30mins after protestors took over the stage of the event, preventing Joe Chialo from speaking - a CDU politician who became Senator for Culture in April 2023. A position which has been renamed ( by the new ‘ampel’ coalition govt.? ) ironically as Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Gesellschaftlichen Zusammenhalt (kurz: SenKultGZ), which translates to State Minister (Senator) for Culture and Social Cohesion.
But before we get into the details of all that….
The XLT Herbst Radar
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- SEPTEMBER
11-15.09 - The Living Resistance Festival in Treptower Park
12-15.09 - Publix Open Haus, a new center for indy journalism at Hermannstr. 90
13.09 - PJ Harvey at Citadell
14.09 - German Weapons, German Silence at Hošek Contemporary ( flyer below )
14.09 - DEMO- Stoppt Den Genozid at Suedstern, 15h
15.09 - Political Walking Tour – Nikolaiviertel as East Germany’s Stalinist Disneyland
15.09 - Gaza Fundraiser at Oyoun
17.09 - The The - Ensouled World Tour at Huxleys
19.09 - Orphan Memory: Between Vanishing + Forgetting in E. Europe at Pilecki-Institut
21.09 - Ceasefire Now #4 - fundraiser events for Gaza at ACUD ( fb invite )
21-22.09 - theleftberlin Summer Camp 2024
21-22.09 - Disruption Lab - Hacking Alienation - migrant power at Bethanien
to be cont.
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- OCTOBER
02.10 - ‘Palestine Cinema Days’ - call for screenings - around the world !
02-06.10 - FFFB 6 - Female Filmmakers Festival at Kino Moviemento
03.10 - DEMO - Nein zu Krieg und Hochrüstung! Ja zu Frieden und intl Solidarität !
tbc…
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- NOVEMBER
tbc…
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XLt arts + praxis + analysis :
This is a map ( via polgeonow ) which we just came across this morning as we were looking for imagery to go with the big news of Germany implementing tighter border controls this week. Oddly this gives a perspective of exceptional changes being made already to Schengen Area conventions in 2020 due to various states reactions to the Corona pandemic.
Agreements between EU states which goes back to 1990 were suddenly subject to individual states decisions and not in Brussels ( for better or worse, we don’t have time to analyse pandemic politics here. )
The proposals now being made by an increasingly rightwing government in DE could create massive fallout to the border policies across the EU and to the already contorted EU processes in Brussels. In fact one could imagine this creating a slowly devolving Brexit-like breakdown of border inititiatives that were intended to make trade and movement of people much easier. While this of course had myriad flaws, which often favored movement of capital, and much less to do with freedom of movement as a human rights… now we see that the rising nationalism, and anti-migrant populism is going to make alot of peoples’ lives more difficult… and especially the lives of migrants and refugees.
There’s very little analysis in mainstream and corporate media about how the confluence of wars, geopolitics and ideological positions are creating more and more volatile situations.
In particular, one could also point to the impacts of a fanatical right-wing regime in Israel is having its extremely dangerous impacts on populations everywhere, and really big time in Europe. And the polarizations are heating up ! For sure, their unrelenting violence and repeated collateral damage upon civilians is exacerbating racism, extremism and terrorism. While the Israeli regime claims to be concerned about anti-semitism + ( islamic ) violence, they are currently the ones most endangering global peace AND the jewish diaspora worldwide !
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And this is why we found the situation at Z/KU with protestors decrying Germany’s complicity in a genocide extremely relevant to understanding what is happening on the ground in a city like Btropolis, which is a microcosm of protests that are occurring globally.
So many people are connecting the dots and are grasping the implications of what warmongers are doing, escalating tensions, escalating racism, escalating divisions and exploiting the clashes between diverse cultures… in order to … ?… what ?!
Essentially the XLt, in short, would analyse it - in part - as feeding the Military Industrial Complex ! And in the case of Israel, specifically, one can see them as attempts to save one asshole politician’s career and tighten and maintain his grip on power ?!! We certainly aren’t the first to consider this possibility. In fact there is a new documentary that premiered in Toronto this week at TIFF called “The Bibi Files” that has very strong evidence for this ‘theory’ or rather this version of current horrific events !
But while this angle has much credibility in the contexts this doc attempts to illuminate, in the bigger political picture(s) this would be a bit reductionist to say that all the war crimes and injustices currently occurring , and not just in the middle east, are the machinations of singular rabid fascist psychopaths ! These are also systemic problems that need to be deconstructed and dethroned !
One way of analyzing them, would be to look at them as ‘neoliberal’ expansionism that is everywhere, and it seems that a majority of state leaders seem to operate in close collaboration with ties and entanglements with the MIC, with fellow war-profiteers, with vested krapitalist interests ! And these paths are definitely not humanity’s path towards a better future !
A Swiss banker just the other day said to us in a cafe ( in a pretty casual conversation about EU politics ) that the best investment to make right now is THE WEAPONS INDUSTRY. No surprise, this game’s been running for decades, but what we see now, and in a country like Germany, is that there are so few checks against this trend. There seems to be so little hope of any political party currently in power ( or even in existence ) to put any brakes on it…
In fact, the current political configurations are rather giving cover to alot of BULLSHIT NARRATIVES that are driving war trajectories and war “ hetzerei” that have military investment and expenditures rapidly rising… i.e. this definitely defines the PR games of entities like NATO and European Parliament(s). Diplomacy seems to be increasingly absent from current nation-state governance.
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So bringing it back down to the local contexts, it’s entirely heartwarming to see protestors who are not deluded by the corporate media and scamming and complicit politicians’ narratives. The people are seeing through it, and they are calling out the BULLSHIT. In this case, at Z/KU calling out the Ministry of Social Cohesion ( laughable ! ), which has begun repressing voices from the traditional left and the voices of migrants - through a variety of cultural levers and controls - and people from all sectors and classes of society are demanding their rights to speak truth to power !
From the overall impression last nite, most people who came to the cultural event were in support of this critical action, and the majority ( a critical mass ) of people who attend such events are waking up to the violent storms being created by the warmongering forces and they are ready to shout :
BASTA ! We want peace ! We want Ceasefires ! We want our dysfunctional nation-state leaders to start acting like the civil servants they are supposed to be ! And to stop sewing divisions between the diverse cultures in our cities ! And we want the gruesome atrocities in places like Gaza and the West Bank to STOP IMMEDIATELY ! Stop covering for the GENOCIDE makers !
The good news is : The Liars and Spin-Meister Narratives are falling apart !
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to be cont.
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